The Rudolf Steiner Archive

[ 1 ] The important experiences marking the student's ascent into the higher worlds include his meeting with the Guardian of the Threshold. Strictly speaking, there are two Guardians: a lesser and a greater. The student meets the lesser Guardian when the threads connecting willing, feeling, and thinking within the finer astral and etheric bodies begin to loosen, in the way described in the foregoing chapter. The greater Guardian is encountered when this sundering of the connections extends to the physical parts of the body, that is, at first to the brain. [ 2 ] The lesser Guardian is a sovereign being. He does not come into existence, as far as the student is concerned, until the latter has reached the requisite stage of development. Only some of his most important characteristics can here be indicated.

[ 3] The attempt will now be made to describe in narrative form this meeting with the lesser Guardian of the Threshold, as a result of which the student learns that his thinking, feeling, and willing have become released within him from their inherent connection.

[ 4 ] A truly terrible spectral being confronts him, and he will need all the presence of mind and faith in the security of his path which he has had ample opportunity to acquire in the course of his previous training.

[ 5 ] The Guardian proclaims his signification somewhat in the following words: “Hitherto, powers invisible to thyself watched over thee. They saw to it that in the course of thy lives each of thy good deeds brought its reward, and each of thine evil deeds was attended by its evil results. Thanks to their influence thy character formed itself out of thy life-experiences and thy thoughts. They were the instruments of thy destiny. They ordained that measure of joy and pain allotted to thee in thine incarnations, according to thy conduct in lives gone by. They ruled over thee as the all-embracing law of karma. These powers will now partly release thee from their constraining influence; and henceforth must thou accomplish for thyself a part of the work which hitherto they performed for thee. Destiny struck thee many a hard blow in the past. Thou knewest not why. Each blow was the consequence of a harmful deed in a bygone lie. Thou foundest joy and gladness, and thou didst take them as they came. They, too, were the fruits of former deeds. Thy character shows many a beautiful side, and many an ugly flaw. Thou hast thyself to thank for both, for they are the result of thy previous experiences and thoughts. These were till now unknown to thee; their effects alone were made manifest. The karmic powers, however, beheld all thy deeds in former lives, and all thy most secret thoughts and feelings, and determined accordingly thy present self and thy present mode of life. [ 6 ] But now all the good and evil sides of thy bygone lives shall be revealed to thee. Hitherto they were interwoven with thine own being; they were in thee and thou couldst not see them, even as thou canst not behold thine own brain with physical eyes. But now they become released from thee; they detach themselves from thy personality. They assume an independent form which thou canst see even as thou beholdest the stones and plants of the outer world. And . . . I am that very being who shaped my body out of thy good and evil achievements. My spectral form is woven out of thine own life's record. Till now thou hast borne me invisibly within thee, and it was well that this was so; for the wisdom of thy destiny, though concealed from thee, could thus work within thee, so that the hideous stains on my form should be blotted out. Now that I have come forth from within thee, that concealed wisdom, too, has departed from thee. It will pay no further heed to thee; it will leave the work in thy hands alone. I must become a perfect and glorious being, or fall a prey to corruption; and should this occur, I would drag thee also down with me into a dark and corrupt world. If thou wouldst avoid this, then thine own wisdom must become great enough to undertake the task of that other, concealed wisdom, which has departed from thee. As a form visible to thyself I will never for an instant leave thy side, once thou hast crossed my Threshold. And in future, whenever thou dost act or think wrongly thou wilt straightway perceive thy guilt as a hideous, demoniacal distortion of my form. Only when thou hast made good all thy bygone wrongs and hast so purified thyself that all further evil is, for thee, a thing impossible, only then will my being have become transformed into radiant beauty. Then, too, shall I again become united with thee for the welfare of thy future activity.

[ 7 ] “Yet my Threshold is fashioned out of all the timidity that remains in thee, out of all the dread of the strength needed to take full responsibility for all thy thoughts and actions. As long as there remains in thee a trace of fear of becoming thyself the guide of thine own destiny, just so long will this Threshold lack what still remains to be built into it. And as long as a single stone is found missing, just so long must thou remain standing as though transfixed; or else stumble. Seek not, then, to cross this Threshold until thou dost feel thyself entirely free from fear and ready for the highest responsibility. [ 8 ] Hitherto I only emerged from thy personality when death recalled thee from an earthly life; but even then my form was veiled from thee. Only the powers of destiny who watched over thee beheld me and could thus, in the intervals between death and a new birth, build in thee, in accordance with my appearance, that power and capacity thanks to which thou couldst labor in a new earth life at the beautifying of my form, for thy welfare and progress. It was I, too, whose imperfection ever and again constrained the powers of destiny to lead thee back to a new incarnation upon earth. I was present at the hour of thy death, and it was on my account that the Lords of Karma ordained thy reincarnation. And it is only by thus unconsciously transforming me to complete perfection in ever recurring earthly lives that thou couldst have escaped the powers of death and passed over into immortality united with me.

[ 9 ] “Visible do I thus stand before thee today, just as I shave ever stood invisible beside thee in the hour of death. When thou shalt have crossed my Threshold, thou wilt enter those realms to which thou hast hitherto only had access after physical death. Thou dost now enter them with full knowledge, and henceforth as thou wanderest outwardly visible upon the earth thou wilt at the same time wander in the kingdom of death, that is, in the kingdom of life eternal. I am indeed the Angel of Death; but I am at the same time the bearer of a higher life without end. Through me thou wilt die with thy body still living, to be reborn into an imperishable existence.

[ 10 ] “Into this kingdom thou art now entering; thou wilt meet beings that are supersensible, and happiness will be thy lot. But I myself must provide thy first acquaintance with that world, and I am thine own creation. Formerly I drew my life from thine; but now thou hast awakened me to a separate existence so that I stand before thee as the visible gauge of thy future deeds—perhaps, too, as thy constant reproach. Thou hast formed me, but by so doing thou hast undertaken, as thy duty, to transform me.”

[ 11 ] (It will be gathered from the above that the Guardian of the Threshold is an (astral) figure, revealing itself to the student's awakened higher sight; and it is to this supersensible encounter that spiritual science conducts him. It is a lower magical process to make the Guardian of the Threshold physically visible also. That was attained by producing a cloud of fine substance, a kind of frankincense resulting from a particular mixture of a number of substances. The developed power of the magician is then able to mould the frankincense into shape, animating it with the still unredeemed karma of the individual. Such physical phenomena are no longer necessary for those sufficiently prepared for the higher sight; and besides this, anyone who sees, without adequate preparation, his unredeemed karma appear before his eyes as a living creature would run the risk of straying into evil byways. Bulwer Lytton's Zanoni contains in novel form a description of the Guardian of the Threshold.)

[ 11 ] What is here indicated in narrative form must not be understood in the sense of an allegory, but as an experience of the highest possible reality befalling the esoteric student.

[ 12 ] The Guardian must warn him not to go a step further unless he feels in himself the strength to fulfill the demands made in the above speech. However horrible the form assumed by the Guardian, it is only the effect of the student's own past life, his own character risen out of him into independent existence. This awakening is brought about by the separation of will, thought, and feeling. To feel for the first time that one has oneself called a spiritual being into existence is in itself an experience of deepest significance. The student's preparation must aim at enabling him to endure the terrible sight without a trace of timidity and, at the moment of the meeting, to feel his strength so increased that he can undertake fully conscious the responsibility for transforming and beautifying the Guardian.

[ 13 ] If successful, this meeting with the Guardian results in the student's next physical death being an entirely different event from the death as he knew it formerly. He experiences death consciously by laying aside the physical body as one discards a garment that is worn out or perhaps rendered useless through a sudden rent. Thus his physical death is of special importance only for those living with him, whose perception is still restricted to the world of the senses. For them the student dies; but for himself nothing of importance is changed in his whole environment. The entire supersensible world stood open to him before his death, and it is this same world that now confronts him after death.

[ 14 ] The Guardian of the Threshold is also connected with other matters. The person belongs to a family, a nation, a race; his activity in this world depends upon his belonging to some such community. His individual character is also connected with it. The conscious activity of individual persons by no means exhausts everything to be reckoned with in a family, a nation, or a race. Besides their character, families, nations, and races have also their destiny. For persons restricted to their senses these things remain mere general ideas; and the materialistic thinker, in his prejudice, will look down with contempt on the spiritual scientist when he hears that for him, family and national character, lineal or racial destiny, are vested in beings just as real as the personality in which the character and destiny of the individual man are vested. The spiritual scientist becomes acquainted with higher worlds of which the separate personalities are members, just as arms and legs are members of the human being. Besides the separate individuals, a very real family and national group soul and racial spirit is at work in the life of a family, a people, or a race. Indeed, in a certain sense the separate individuals are merely the executive organs of these family group souls, racial spirits, and so on. It is nothing but the truth to say, for instance, that a national group soul makes use of each individual man belonging to that nation for the execution of some work. The group soul of a people does not descend into physical reality but dwells in the higher worlds and, in order to work in the physical world, makes use of the physical organs of each individual human being. In a higher sense, it is like an architect making use of workmen for executing the details of a building. In the truest sense, everyone receives his allotted task from his family, national, or racial group soul. Now, the ordinary person is by no means initiated into the higher design of his work. He joins unconsciously in the tasks of his people and of his race. From the moment the student meets the Guardian, he must not only know his own tasks, but must knowingly collaborate in those of his folk, his race. Every extension of his horizon necessarily enlarges the scope of his duties. What actually happens is that the student adds a new body to his finer soul-body. He puts on a second garment. Hitherto he found his way through the world with the coverings enveloping his personality; and what he had to accomplish for his community, his nation, his race, was directed by higher spirits who made use of his personality.

And now, a further revelation made to him by the Guardian of the Threshold is that henceforth these spirits will withdraw their guiding hand from him. He must step out of the circle of his community. Yet as an isolated personality he would become hardened in himself and decline into ruin, did he not, himself, acquire those powers which are vested in the national and racial spirits. Many, no doubt, will say: “Oh, I have entirely freed myself from all lineal and racial connections; I only want to be a human being and nothing but a human being.” To these one must reply: “Who, then, brought you to this freedom? Was it not your family who placed you in the world where you now stand? Have you not your lineage, your nation, your race to thank for being what you are? They have brought you up. And if now, exalted above all prejudices, you are one of the light-bringers and benefactors of your stock and even of your race, it is to their up-bringing that you owe it. Yes, even when you say you are `nothing but a human being,' even the fact that you have become such a personality you owe to the spirits of your communities.” Only the esoteric student learns what it means to be entirely cut off from his family, national, or racial spirit. He alone realizes, through personal experience, the insignificance of all such education in respect of the life now confronting him. For everything inculcated by education completely melts away when the threads binding will, thought, and feeling are severed. He looks back on the result of all his previous education as he might on a house crumbling away brick by brick, which he must now rebuild in a new form. And again, it is more than a mere symbolical expression to say that when the Guardian has enunciated his first statement, there arises from the spot where he stands a whirlwind which extinguishes all those spiritual lights that have hitherto illumined the pathway of his life. Utter darkness, relieved only by the rays issuing from the Guardian himself, unfolds before the student. And out of this darkness resounds the Guardian's further admonition: “Step not across my Threshold until thou dost clearly realize that thou wilt thyself illumine the darkness ahead of thee; take not a single step forward until thou art positive that thou hast sufficient oil in thine own lamp. The lamps of the guides whom thou hast hitherto followed will now no longer be available to thee.” At these words, the student must turn and glance backward. The Guardian of the Threshold now draws aside a veil which till now had concealed deep life-mysteries. The family, national, and racial spirits are revealed to the student in their full activity, so that he perceives clearly on the one hand, how he has hitherto been led, and no less clearly on the other hand, that he will henceforward no longer enjoy this guidance. That is the second warning received at the Threshold from its Guardian.

[ 14 ] Without preparation, no one could endure the sight of what has here been indicated. But the higher training which makes it possible at all for the student to advance up to the Threshold simultaneously puts him in a position to find the necessary strength at the right moment. Indeed, the training can be so harmonious in its nature that the entry into the higher life is relieved of everything of an agitating or tumultuous character. His experience at the Threshold will then be attended by a premonition of that felicity which is to provide the keynote of his newly awakened life. The feeling of a new freedom will outweigh all other feelings; and attended by this feeling, his new duties and responsibilities will appear as something which man, at a particular stage of life, must needs take upon himself.

[ 1 ] It has been described in the foregoing chapter how significant for the human being is his meeting with the so-called lesser Guardian of the Threshold by virtue of the fact that he becomes aware of confronting a supersensible being whom he has himself brought into existence, and whose body consists of the hitherto invisible results of the student's own actions, feelings, and thoughts. These unseen forces have become the cause of his destiny and his character, and he realizes how he himself founded the present in the past. He can understand why his inner self, now standing to a certain extent revealed before him, includes particular inclinations and habits, and he can also recognize the origin of certain blows of fate that have befallen him. He perceives why he loves one thing and hates another; why one thing makes him happy and another unhappy. Visible life is explained by the invisible causes. The essential facts of life, too—health and illness, birth and death—unveil themselves before his gaze. He observes how before his birth he wove the causes which necessarily led to his return into life. Henceforth he knows that being within himself which is fashioned with all its imperfections in the visible world, and which can only be brought to its final perfection in this same visible world. For in no other world is an opportunity given to build up and complete this being. Moreover, he recognizes that death cannot sever him forever from this world; for he says to himself: “Once I came into this world because, being what I was, I needed the life it provided to acquire qualities unattainable in any other world. And I must remain bound to this world until I have developed within myself everything that can here be gained. I shall some day become a useful collaborator in another world only by acquiring all the requisite faculties in this physical world.”

Thanks to his insight into the supersensible world, the initiate gains a better knowledge and appreciation of the true value of visible nature than was possible before his higher training; and this may be counted among his most important experiences. Anyone not possessing this insight and perhaps therefore imagining the supersensible regions to be infinitely more valuable, is likely to underestimate the physical world. Yet the possessor of this insight knows that without experience in visible reality he would be totally powerless in that other invisible reality. Before he can live in the latter he must have the requisite faculties and instruments which can only be acquired in the visible world. Consciousness in the invisible world is not possible without spiritual sight, but this power of vision in the higher world is gradually developed through experience in the lower. No one can be born in the spiritual world with spiritual eyes without having first developed them in the physical world, any more than a child could be born with physical eyes, had they not already been formed within the mother's womb.

[ 2] From this standpoint it will also be readily understood why the Threshold to the supersensible world is watched over by a Guardian. In no case may real insight into those regions be permitted to anyone lacking the requisite faculties; therefore, when at the hour of death anyone enters the other world while still incompetent to work in it, the higher experiences are shrouded from him until he is fit to behold them.

[ 3 ] When the student enters the supersensible world, life acquires quite a new meaning for him; he discerns in the physical world the seed-ground of a higher world, so that in a certain sense the higher will appear defective without the lower. Two outlooks are opened before him; the first into the past and the second into the future. His vision extends to a past in which this physical world was not yet existent; for he has long since discarded the prejudice that the supersensible world was developed out of the sense-world. He knows that the former existed first, and that out of it everything physical was evolved. He sees that he himself belonged to a supersensible world before coming for the first time into this sense-world. But this pristine supersensible world needed to pass through the sense-world, for without this passage its further evolution would not have been possible. It can only pursue its course when certain things will have developed requisite faculties within the realm of the senses. These beings are none other than human beings. They owe their present life to an imperfect stage of spiritual existence and are being led, even within this stage, to that perfection which will make them fit for further work in the higher world. At this point the outlook is directed into the future. A higher stage of the supersensible world is discerned which will contain the fruits matured in the sense-world. The sense-world as such will be overcome, but its results will be embodied in a higher world.

[ 4 ] The existence of disease and death in the sense-world is thus explained. Death merely expresses the fact that the original supersensible world reached a point beyond which it could not progress by itself. Universal death must needs have overtaken it, had it not received a fresh life-impulse. Thus this new life has evolved into a battle with universal death. From the remnants of a dying, rigid world there sprouted the seeds of a new one. That is why we have death and life in the world. The decaying portion of the old world adheres to the new life blossoming from it, and the process of evolution moves slowly. This comes to expression most clearly in man himself. The sheath he bears is gathered from the preserved remnants of the old world, and within this sheath the germ of that being is matured which will live in the future.

Thus man is twofold: mortal and immortal. The mortal is in its last, the immortal in its first stage. But it is only within this twofold world, which finds its expression in the sense-world, that he can acquire the requisite faculties to lead the world to immortality. Indeed, this task is precisely to gather the fruits of the mortal for the immortal. And as he glances at himself as the result of his own work in the past he cannot but say: “I have in me the elements of a decaying world. They are at work in me, and I can only break their power little by little, thanks to the new immortal elements coming to life within me.” This is the path leading man from death to life. Could he but speak to himself with full consciousness at the hour of his death, he would say: “The perishing world was my task-master. I am now dying as the result of the entire past in which I am enmeshed. Yet the soil of mortal life has matured the seeds of immortal life. I carry them with me into another world. If it had merely depended on the past, I could never have been born. The life of the past came to an end with birth. Life in the sense-world is wrested from universal death by the newly formed life-germ. The time between birth and death is merely an expression for the sum of values wrested from the dying past by the new life; and illness is nothing but the continued effect of the dying portions of the past.”

[ 5 ] In the above the answer will be found to the question why man works his way only gradually through error and imperfection to the good and true. His actions, feelings, and thoughts are at first dominated by the perishing and the mortal. The latter gave rise to his sense-organs. For this reason, these organs and all things activating them are doomed to perish The imperishable will not be found in the instincts, impulses, and passions, or in the organs belonging to them, but only in the work produced by these organs. Man must extract from the perishable everything that can be extracted, and this work alone will enable him to discard the background out of which he has grown, and which finds its expression in the physical sense-world.

[ 6 ] Thus the first Guardian confronts man as the counterpart of his two-fold nature in which perishable and imperishable are blended; and it stands clearly proved how far removed he still is from attaining that sublime luminous figure which may again dwell in the pure, spiritual world. [ 7 ] The extent to which he is entangled in the physical sense-world is exposed to the student's view. The presence of instincts, impulses, desires, egotistical wishes and all forms of selfishness, and so forth, expresses itself in this entanglement, as it does further in his membership in a race, a nation, and so forth; for peoples and races are but steps leading to pure humanity. A race or a nation stands so much the higher, the more perfectly its members express the pure, ideal human type, the further they have worked their way from the physical and perishable to the supersensible and imperishable. The evolution of man through the incarnations in ever higher national and racial forms is thus a process of liberation. Man must finally appear in harmonious perfection. In a similar way, the pilgrimage through ever purer forms of morality and religion is a perfecting process; for every moral stage retains the passion for the perishable beside the seeds of an ideal future.

[ 8 ] Now in the Guardian of the Threshold as described above, the product of the past is manifest, containing only so many seeds of the future as could be planted in the course of time. Yet everything that can be extracted from the sense-world must be carried into the supersensible world. Were man to bring with him only what had been woven into his counterpart out of the past, his earthly task would remain but partially accomplished. For this reason the lesser Guardian of the Threshold is joined, after a time, by the greater Guardian. The meeting with the second Guardian will again be described in narrative form.

[ 9 ] When the student has recognized all the elements from which he must liberate himself, his way is barred by a sublime luminous being whose beauty is difficult to describe in the words of human language. This encounter takes place when the sundering of the organs of thinking, feeling, and willing extends to the physical body, so that their reciprocal connection is no longer regulated by themselves but by the higher consciousness, which has now entirely liberated itself from physical conditions. The organs of thinking, feeling and willing will then be controlled from supersensible regions as instruments in the power of the human soul. The latter, thus liberated from all physical bonds, is now confronted by the second Guardian of the Threshold who speaks as follows:

[ 10 ] “Thou hast released thyself from the world of the senses. Thou hast won the right to become a citizen of the supersensible world, whence thine activity can now be directed. For thine own sake, thou dost no longer require thy physical body in its present form. If thine intention were merely to acquire the faculties necessary for life in the supersensible world, thou needest no longer return to the sense-world. But now behold me. See how sublimely I tower above all that thou hast made of thyself thus far. Thou hast attained thy present degree of perfection thanks to the faculties thou wert able to develop in the sense-world as long as thou wert still confined to it. But now a new era is to begin, in which thy liberated powers must be applied to further work in the world of the senses. Hitherto thou hast sought only thine own release, but now, having thyself become free, thou canst go forth as a liberator of thy fellows. Until today thou hast striven as an individual, but now seek to coordinate thyself with the whole, so that thou mayst bring into the supersensible world not thyself alone, but all things else existing in the world of the senses. Thou wilt some day be able to unite with me, but I cannot be blessed so long as others remain unredeemed. As a separate freed being, thou wouldst fain enter at once the kingdom of the supersensible; yet thou wouldst be forced to look down on the still unredeemed beings in the physical world, having sundered thy destiny from theirs, although thou and they are inseparably united. Ye all did perforce descend into the sense-world to gather powers needed for a higher world. To separate thyself from thy fellows would mean to abuse those very powers which thou couldst not have developed save in their company. Thou couldst not have descended had they not done so; and without them the powers needed for supersensible existence would fail thee. Thou must now share with thy fellows the powers which, together with them, thou didst acquire. I shall therefore bar thine entry into the higher regions of the supersensible world so long as thou hast not applied all the powers thou hast acquired to the liberation of thy companions. With the powers already at thy disposal thou mayst sojourn in the lower regions of the supersensible world; but I stand before the portal of the higher regions as the Cherub with the fiery sword before Paradise, and I bar thine entrance as long as powers unused in the sense-world still remain in thee. And if thou dost refuse to apply thy powers in this world, others will come who will not refuse; and a higher supersensible world will receive all the fruits of the sense-world, while thou wilt lose from under thy feet the very ground in which thou wert rooted. The purified world will develop above and beyond thee, and thou shalt be excluded from it. Thus thou wouldst tread the black path, while the others from whom thou didst sever thyself tread the white path.”

[ 11 ] With these words the greater Guardian makes his presence known soon after the meeting with the first Guardian has taken place. The initiate knows full well what is in store for him if he yields to the temptation of a premature abode in the supersensible world. An indescribable splendor shines forth from the second Guardian of the Threshold; union with him looms as a far distant ideal before the soul's vision. Yet there is also the certitude that this union will not be possible until all the powers afforded by this world are applied to the task of its liberation and redemption. By fulfilling the demands of the higher light-being the initiate will contribute to the liberation of the human race. He lays his gifts on the sacrificial altar of humanity. Should he prefer his own premature elevation into the supersensible world, the stream of human evolution will flow over and past him. After his liberation he can gain no new powers from the world of the senses; and if he places his work at the world's disposal it will entail his renouncement of any further benefit for himself.

It does not follow that, when called upon to decide, anyone will naturally follow the white path. That depends entirely upon whether he is so far purified at the time of his decision that no trace of self-seeking makes this prospect of felicity appear desirable. For the allurements here are the strongest possible; whereas on the other side no special allurements are evident. Here nothing appeals to his egotism. The gift he receives in the higher regions of the supersensible world is nothing that comes to him, but only something that flows from him, that is, love for the world and for his fellows. Nothing that egotism desires is denied upon the black path, for the latter provides, on the contrary, for the complete gratification of egotism, and will not fail to attract those desiring merely their own felicity, for it is indeed the appropriate path for them. No one therefore should expect the occultists of the white path to give him instruction for the development of his own egotistical self. They do not take the slightest interest in the felicity of the individual man. Each can attain that for himself, and it is not the task of the white occultists to shorten the way; for they are only concerned with the development and liberation of all human beings and all creatures. Their instructions therefore deal only with the development of powers for collaboration in this work. Thus they place selfless devotion and self-sacrifice before all other qualities. They never actually refuse anyone, for even the greatest egotist can purify himself; but no one merely seeking an advantage for himself will ever obtain assistance from the white occultists. Even when they do not refuse their help, he, the seeker, deprives himself on the advantage resulting from their assistance. Anyone, therefore, really following the instructions of the good occultists will, upon crossing the Threshold, understand the demands of the greater Guardian; anyone, however, not following their instructions can never hope to reach the Threshold. Their instructions, if followed, produce good results or no results; for it is no part of their task to lead to egotistical felicity and a mere existence in the supersensible worlds. In fact, it becomes their duty to keep the student away from the supersensible world until he can enter it with the will for selfless collaboration.

[ 1 ] Herewith appear in book form my expositions originally published as single essays under the title Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. For the present, this volume offers the first part; one that is to follow will constitute the continuation. This work on a development of man that will enable him to grasp the supersensible worlds cannot be presented to the public in a new form without certain comments which I shall now make. The communications it contains concerning the development of the human soul are intended to fill various needs.

First of all, something is to be offered those people who feel drawn to the results of spiritual research, and who must raise the question: “Well, whence do these persons derive their knowledge who claim the ability to tell us something of the profound riddles of life?”—Spiritual science does this. Whoever wishes to observe the facts leading to such claims must rise to supersensible cognition. He must follow the path I have endeavored to describe in this book. On the other hand, it would be an error to imagine these disclosures of spiritual science to be valueless for one who lacks the inclination or the possibility to pursue this path himself. In order to establish the facts through research, the ability to enter the supersensible worlds is indispensable; but once they have been discovered and communicated, even one who does not perceive them himself can be adequately convinced of their truth. A large proportion of them can be tested offhand, simply by applying ordinary common sense in a genuinely unprejudiced way. Only, one must not let this open-mindedness become confused by any of the pre-conceived ideas so common in human life. Someone can easily believe, for example, that some statement or other contradicts certain facts established by modern science. In reality, there is no such thing as a scientific fact that contradicts spiritual science; but there can easily seem to be contradictions unless scientific conclusions are consulted abundantly and without prejudice. The student will find that the more open-mindedly he compares spiritual science with positive scientific achievements, the more clearly is complete accord to be seen.

Another category of spiritual-scientific disclosures, it is true, will be found to elude purely mental judgment more or less; but the right relation to these also will be achieved without great difficulty by one who understands that not the mind alone but healthy feeling as well is qualified to determine what is true. And when this feeling does not permit itself to be warped by a liking or antipathy for some opinion or other, but really allows higher knowledge to act without prejudice, a corresponding sentient judgment results.

And there are many more ways of confirming this knowledge for those who cannot or do not wish to tread the path into the supersensible world. Such people can feel very clearly what value this knowledge has in life, even when it comes to them only through the communications of those engaged in spiritual research. Not everyone can immediately achieve spiritual vision; but the discoveries of those who have it can be health-giving life-nourishment for all. For everyone can apply them; and whoever does so will soon discover what life in every branch can be with their aid, and what it lacks without them. The results of supersensible knowledge, when properly employed in life, prove to be—not unpractical, but rather, practical in the highest sense.

One who does not himself intend to follow the path to higher knowledge, but is interested in the facts it reveals, can ask: How does the seer arrive at these facts? To such a one this book is intended to picture the path in such a way that even one not following it can nevertheless have confidence in the communications of the person who has done so. Realizing how the spiritual scientist works, he can approve, and say to himself: The impression made upon me by the description of this path to higher worlds makes clear why the facts reported seem reasonable. Thus this book is intended to help those who want their sense of truth and feeling for truth concerning the supersensible world strengthened and assured.

No less, however, does it aim to offer aid to those who themselves seek the way to supersensible knowledge. The truth of what is here set forth will best be verified by those who achieve its reality within themselves. Anyone with this intention will do well to keep reminding himself that in an exposition on the development of the soul, more is called for than becoming acquainted with the substance, which is frequently the aim in other expositions. It is necessary to familiarize oneself intimately with the presentation. One must postulate the following: no single matter is to be comprehended only by means of what is said about the matter itself, but by means of much else that is disclosed concerning totally different matters. This will develop the conception that what is vital is to be found not in any single truth but in the harmony of all truths. This must be seriously considered by anyone intending to carry out the exercises. An exercise can be rightly understood and even rightly executed, and yet produce a wrong effect unless another be added to it—one that will resolve the one-sidedness of the first into a harmony of the soul. Whoever reads this book in an intimate way, so that the reading resembles an inner experience, will not merely familiarize himself with its content: one passage will evoke a certain feeling, another passage another feeling; and in that way he will learn how much importance should be seen in the one or the other in the development of his soul. He will also find out in what form he should try this or that exercise, what form best suits his particular individuality. When one has to do, as is the case here, with descriptions of processes that are to be experienced, it is necessary to refer again and again to the content; for it will become manifest that much can be satisfactorily assimilated only after trial, which in turn reveals certain finer points that at first are bound to be overlooked.

[ 2 ] Even those readers who do not intend to take the way prescribed will find much in the book that can be of service to the inner life, such as maxims, suggestions that throw light on various puzzling problems, and so on.

[ 3 ] And those who have had experiences in their lives that serve, to some extent, as an initiation through life may derive a certain satisfaction from finding clarified through co-ordination what had haunted them as separate problems—things they already knew, but perhaps without having been able to consolidate them in adequate conceptions.

[ 1 ] The observer of the course of scientific development in the last decades cannot doubt that a great revolution is in preparation. Today when a scientist talks about the so-called enigmas of existence, it sounds quite different than it did a short time ago.

Around the middle of the nineteenth century some of the most daring spirits saw in scientific materialism the only creed possible to one familiar with the then recent results of research. The blunt saying of that time has become famous: “Thoughts stand in about the same relationship to the brain as gall to the liver.” This was stated by Karl Vogt, who in his Köhlerglauben und Wissenschaft (Blind Faith and Science) and in other writings, declared everything to be superannuated which did not make spiritual activity and the life of the soul proceed from the mechanism of the nervous system and of the brain in the same manner in which the physicist explains that the movement of the hands proceeds from the mechanism of the clock. That was the time when Ludwig Buechner's Kraft und Stoff (Force and Matter) became a sort of gospel among wide circles of the educated. One may well say that excellent, independently thinking minds came to such convictions because of the powerful impression made by the successes of science in those times. A short time before, the microscope had shown the synthesis of living beings out of their smallest parts, the cells. Geology, the science of the formation of the earth, had come to the point of explaining the development of the planets in terms of the same laws which still operate today. Darwinism promised to explain the origin of man in a completely natural way and began its victorious course through the educated world so auspiciously that for many it seemed to dispose of all “old belief.” A short time ago, all this became quite different. It is true that stragglers who adhere to these opinions can still be found in men like Ladenburg at the Congress of Scientists in 1903, who proclaim the materialistic gospel; but against them stand others who have arrived at a quite different way of speaking through more mature reflection on scientific questions. A work has just appeared which bears the title, Naturwissenschaft und Weltanschauung (Science and World Conception). Its author is Max Verworn, a physiologist of the school of Haeckel. In this work one can read the following: “Indeed, even if we possessed the most complete knowledge of the physiological events in the cells and fibers of the cerebral cortex with which psychic events are connected, even if we could look into the mechanism of the brain as we look into the works of a clock, we would never find anything but moving atoms. No human being could see or otherwise perceive through his senses how sensations and ideas arise in this mechanism. The results which the materialistic conception has obtained in its attempt to trace mental processes back to the movements of atoms illustrates its efficiency very clearly. As long as the materialistic conception has existed, it has not explained the simplest sensation by movements of atoms. Thus it has been and thus it will be in future. How could it be conceivable that things which are not perceptible by the senses, such as the psychic processes, could ever be explained by a mere splitting up of large bodies into their smallest parts? The atom is still a body after all, and no movement of atoms is ever capable of bridging the gulf between the material world and the psyche. However fruitful the materialistic point of view has been as a scientific working hypothesis, however fruitful it will doubtless remain in this sense in the future—I point only to the successes of structural chemistry—just as useless is it as the basis for a world conception. Here it shows itself to be too narrow. Philosophical materialism has finished playing its historical role. This attempt at a scientific world conception has failed for ever.” Thus, at the beginning of the twentieth century, a scientist speaks about the conception which around the middle of the nineteenth was proclaimed as a new gospel demanded by the advances of science.

[ 2 ] It is especially the 'fifties, the 'sixties, and the 'seventies of the nineteenth century which may be designated as the years of the high tide of materialism. The explanation of mental and spiritual phenomena on the basis of purely mechanical processes exercised a really fascinating influence at that time. The materialists could tell themselves that they had won a victory over the adherents of a spiritual world conception. Those also who had not started from scientific studies joined their ranks. While Buechner, Vogt, Moleschott and others still built on purely scientific premises, in his Alten und neuen Glauben (Old and New Belief, 1872), David Friedrich Strauss attempted to obtain bases for the new creed from his theological and philosophical ideas. Decades before he had already intervened in the intellectual life with his Leben Jesu (Life of Jesus) in a manner which caused a sensation. He seemed to be equipped with the full theological and philosophical culture of his time. He now said boldly that the materialistic explanation of the phenomena of the universe, including man, had to form the basis for a new gospel, for a new moral comprehension and formation of existence. The descent of man from purely animal ancestors seemed about to become a new dogma, and in the eyes of scientific philosophers, all adherence to spiritual-soul origin of our race amounted to an antiquated superstition from the infancy of mankind, with which one did not have to disturb oneself further.

[ 3 ] The historians of culture came to the aid of those who built on the new science. The customs and ideas of savage tribes were made the object of study. The remains of primitive cultures, which are dug out of the ground like the bones of prehistoric animals and the impressions of extinct plants were to bear witness to the fact that at his first appearance on earth man was distinguished only in degree from the higher animals, and that mentally and spiritually he had risen to his present eminence from the level of animalism pure and simple. A time had come when everything in this materialistic edifice seemed to be right. Under a kind of coercion which the ideas of the time exercised on them, men thought as a faithful materialist has written: “The assiduous study of science has brought me to the point where I accept everything calmly, bear the inevitable patiently, and for the rest help in the work of gradually reducing the misery of mankind. The fantastic consolations which a credulous mind seeks in marvelous formulas I can renounce all the more easily since my imagination receives the most beautiful stimulation through literature and art. When I follow the plot of a great drama or, under the guidance of scientists, make a journey to other stars, an excursion through prehistoric landscapes, when I admire the majesty of nature on mountain peaks or venerate the art of man in tones and colors, do I not then have enough of the elevating? Do I then still need something which contradicts my reason? The fear of death, which torments so many of the pious, is completely unknown to me. I know that I no more survive after my body decays than I lived before my birth. The agonies of purgatory and of hell do not exist for me. I return to the boundless realm of Nature, who embraces all her children lovingly. My life was not in vain. I have made good use of the strength which I possessed. I depart from earth in the firm belief that everything will become better and more beautiful.” Vom Glauben zum Wissen. Ein lehrreicher Entwickelungsgang getreu nach dem Leben geschildert von Kuno Freidank. (On the Belief in Knowledge. An Instructive Course of Development Described in a Manner Faithfully True to Life by Kuno Freidank.) Many people who are still subject to the compulsive ideas which acted upon the representatives of the materialistic world conception in the time mentioned above, also think in this manner today.

[ 4 ] Those however who tried to maintain themselves on the heights of scientific thought have come to other ideas. The first reply to scientific materialism, made by an eminent scientist at the Congress of Scientists in Leipzig (1876), has become famous. Du Bois-Reymond at that time made his “Ignorabimus speech.” He tried to demonstrate that this scientific materialism could in fact do nothing but ascertain the movements of the smallest material particles, and he demanded that it should be satisfied with doing this. But he emphasized at the same time that in doing this it contributes absolutely nothing to an explanation of mental and spiritual processes. One may take whatever attitude one pleases toward these statements of Du Bois-Reymond, but this much is clear: they represented a rejection of the materialistic interpretation of the world. They showed how as a scientist one could lose confidence in this interpretation.

[ 5 ] The materialistic interpretation of the world had thereby entered the stage where it declared itself to be unassuming as far as the life of the soul is concerned. It admitted its “ignorance” (agnosticism). It is true that it declared its intention of remaining “scientific” and of not having recourse to other sources of knowledge, but on the other hand it did not want to ascend with its means to a higher world-conception. In recent times Raoul Francé, a scientist, has shown in comprehensive fashion the inadequacy of scientific results for a higher world-conception This is an undertaking to which we would like to refer again on another occasion.

[ 6 ] The facts now steadily increased which showed the impossibility of the attempt to build up a science of the soul on the investigation of material phenomena. Science was forced to study certain “abnormal” phenomena of the life of the soul like hypnotism, suggestion, somnambulism. It became apparent that in the face of these phenomena a materialistic view is completely inadequate for a truly thinking person. The facts with which one became acquainted were not new. They were phenomena which had already been studied in earlier times and up to the beginning of the nineteenth Century, but which in the time of the materialistic flood had simply been put aside as inconvenient.

[ 7 ] To this was added something else. It became more and more apparent on how weak a basis the scientists had built, even as far as their explanations of the origin of animal species and consequently of man were concerned. For a while, the ideas of “adaptation” and of the “struggle for existence” had exercised an attraction in the explanation of the origin of species. One learned to understand that in following them one had followed mirages. A school was formed under the leadership of Weismann which denied that characteristics which an organism had acquired through adaptation to the environment could be transmitted by inheritance, and that in this way a transformation of organisms could occur. One therefore ascribed everything to the “struggle for existence” and spoke of an “omnipotence of natural selection.” A stark contrast to this view was presented by those who, relying on unquestionable facts, declared that a “struggle for existence” had been spoken of in cases where it did not even exist. They wanted to demonstrate that nothing could be explained by it. They spoke of an “impotence of natural selection.” Moreover, in the last years de Vries was able to show experimentally that changes of one life-time into another can occur by leaps, mutation. With this, what was regarded as a firm article of faith by the Darwinists, namely that animal and plant forms change only gradually, was shaken. More and more the ground on which one had built for decades simply disappeared beneath one's feet. Even earlier, thinking scientists had realized that they had to abandon this ground; thus W. H. Rolph, who died young, in 1884 declared in his book, Biologische Probleme, zugleich als Versuch zur Entwicklung einer rationellen Ethik (Biological Problems, with an Attempt at the Development of Rational Ethics): “Only through the introduction of insatiability does the Darwinian principle of the struggle for life become acceptable. Because it is only then that we have an explanation for the fact that wherever it can, a creature acquires more than it needs for maintaining the status quo, that it grows to excess where the occasion for this is given . . . While for the Darwinists there is no struggle for existence wherever the existence of a creature is not threatened, for me the struggle is an omnipresent one. It is primarily a struggle for life, a struggle for the increase of life, not a struggle for existence.”

[ 8 ] It is only natural that in view of these facts the judicious confess to themselves: “The materialistic universe of thought is not fit for the construction of a world-conception. If we base ourselves on it, we cannot say anything about mental and spiritual phenomena.” Today there are already numerous scientists who seek to erect a structure of the world for themselves, based on quite different ideas. One need only recall the work of the botanist, Reineke, Die Welt als Tat (The World as Deed). However, it becomes apparent that such scientists have not been trained with impunity amidst purely materialistic ideas. What they utter from their new idealistic standpoint is inadequate, can satisfy them for a while, but not those who look more deeply into the enigmas of the world. Such scientists cannot bring themselves to approach those methods which proceed from a real contemplation of the mind and the soul. They have the greatest fear of “mysticism”, or “gnosis” or “theosophy.” This appears clearly, for example, in the work of Verworn quoted above. He says: “There is a ferment in science. Things which seemed clear and transparent to everybody have become cloudy today. Long-tested symbols and ideas, with which everyone dealt and worked at every step without hesitation a short time ago, have begun to totter and are looked upon with suspicion. Fundamental concepts, such as those of matter, appear to have been shaken, and the firmest ground is beginning to sway under the scientist's steps. Certain problems alone stand with rocklike firmness, problems on which until now all attempts, all efforts of science have been shattered. In the face of this knowledge one who is despondent resignedly throws himself into the arms of mysticism, which has always been the last refuge when the tormented intellect could see no way out. The sensible man looks for new symbols and attempts to create new bases on which he can build further.” One can see that because of his habits of conceptualization the scientific thinker of today is not in a position to think of “mysticism” otherwise than as implying intellectual confusion and vagueness. What concepts of the life of the soul does such a thinker not reach! At the end of the work referred to above, we read: “Prehistoric man formed the idea of a separation of body and soul in face of death. The soul separated itself from the body and led an independent existence. It found no rest and returned as a ghost unless it was banned by sepulchral ceremonies. Man was terrorized by fear and superstition. The remains of these ideas have come down to our time. The fear of death, that is, of what is to come after, is widespread today. How differently does all this appear from the standpoint of psychomonism! Since the psychic experiences of the individual only take place when certain regular connections exist, they cease when these connections are in any way disturbed, as happens numberless times in the course of a day. With the bodily changes at death, these connections stop entirely. Thus, no sensation and conception, no thought and no feeling of the individual can remain. The individual soul is dead. Nevertheless the sensations and thoughts and feelings continue to live. They live beyond the transitory individual in other individuals, wherever the same complexes of conditions exist. They are transmitted from individual to individual, from generation to generation, from people to people. They weave at the eternal loom of the soul. They work at the history of the human spirit. Thus we all survive after death as links in the great interconnected chain of spiritual development.” But is that something different from the survival of the wave in others which it has caused, itself meanwhile disappearing? Does one really survive when one continues to exist only in one's effects? Does one not have such a survival in common with all phenomena, even those of physical nature? One can see that the materialistic world conception had to undermine its own foundations. As yet it cannot lay new ones. Only a true understanding of mysticism, theosophy, and gnosis will enable it to do so. The chemist Osterwald spoke several years ago at the Congress of Scientists at Luebeck of the “overcoming of materialism,” and for this purpose founded a new periodical dealing with the philosophy of nature. Science is ready to receive the fruits of a higher world-conception. All resistance will avail it nothing; it will have to take into account the needs of the longing human soul.

[ 1 ] By means of ordinary history man can learn only a small part of what humanity experienced in prehistory. Historical documents shed light on but a few millennia. What archaeology, paleontology, and geology can teach us is very limited. Furthermore, everything built on external evidence is unreliable. One need only consider how the picture of an event or people, not so very remote from us, has changed when new historical evidence has been discovered. One need but compare the descriptions of one and the same thing as given by different historians, and he will soon realize on what uncertain ground he stands in these matters. Everything belonging to the external world of the senses is subject to time. In addition, time destroys what has originated in time. On the other hand, external history is dependent on what has been preserved in time. Nobody can say that the essential has been preserved, if he remains content with external evidence.

Everything which comes into being in time has its origin in the eternal. But the eternal is not accessible to sensory perception. Nevertheless, the ways to the perception of the eternal are open for man. He can develop forces dormant in him so that he can recognize the eternal. In the essays, Wie erlangt man Erkenntnisse der hoheren Welten? (How Does One Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds?), which appear in this periodical,¹, this development is referred to. These present essays will also show that at a certain high level of his cognitive power, man can penetrate to the eternal origins of the things which vanish with time. A man broadens his power of cognition in this way if he is no longer limited to external evidence where knowledge of the past is concerned. Then he can see in events what is not perceptible to the senses, that part which time cannot destroy. He penetrates from transitory to non-transitory history. It is a fact that this history is written in other characters than is ordinary history. In gnosis and in theosophy it is called the “Akasha Chronicle.” Only a faint conception of this chronicle can be given in our language. For our language corresponds to the world of the senses. That which is described by our language at once receives the character of this sense world. To the uninitiated, who cannot yet convince himself of the reality of a separate spiritual world through his own experience, the initiate easily appears to be a visionary, if not something worse.

The one who has acquired the ability to perceive in the spiritual world comes to know past events in their eternal character. They do not stand before him like the dead testimony of history, but appear in full life. In a certain sense, what has happened takes place before him.

Those initiated into the reading of such a living script can look back into a much more remote past than is represented by external history; and—on the basis of direct spiritual perception—they can also describe much more dependably the things of which history tells. In order to avoid possible misunderstanding, it should be said that spiritual perception is not infallible. This perception also can err, can see in an inexact, oblique, wrong manner. No man is free from error in this field, no matter how high he stands. Therefore one should not object when communications emanating from such spiritual sources do not always entirely correspond. But the dependability of observation is much greater here than in the external world of the senses. What various initiates can relate about history and prehistory will be in essential agreement. Such a history and prehistory does in fact exist in all mystery schools. Here for millennia the agreement has been so complete that the conformity existing among external historians of even a single century cannot be compared with it. The initiates describe essentially the same things at all times and in all places.

[ 2 ] Following this introduction, several chapters from the Akasha Chronicle will be given. First, those events will be described which took place when the so-called Atlantean Continent still existed between America and Europe. This part of our earth's surface was once land. Today this forms the floor of the Atlantic Ocean. Plato tells of the last remnant of this land, the island Poseidon, which lay westward of Europe and Africa. In The Story of Atlantis and Lost Lemuria, by W. Scott-Elliot, the reader can find that the floor of the Atlantic Ocean was once a continent, that for about a million years it was the scene of a civilization which, to be sure, was quite different from our modern ones, and the fact that the last remnants of this continent sank in the tenth millennium B.C. In this present book the intention is to give information which will supplement what is said by Scott-Elliott. While he describes more the outer, the external events among our Atlantean ancestors, the aim here is to record some details concerning their spiritual character and the inner nature of the conditions under which they lived. Therefore the reader must go back in imagination to a period which lies almost ten thousand years behind us, and which lasted for many millennia. What is described here however, did not take place only on the continent now covered by the waters of the Atlantic Ocean, but also in the neighboring regions of what today is Asia, Africa, Europe, and America. What took place in these regions later, developed from this earlier civilizations.

Today I am still obliged to remain silent about the sources of the information given here. One who knows anything at all about such sources will understand why this has to be so. But events can occur which will make a breaking of this silence possible very soon. How much of the knowledge hidden within the theosophical movement may gradually be communicated, depends entirely on the attitude of our contemporaries.

Now follows the first of the writings which can be given here.

• 1. this development is referred to. These essays were published in book form, Berlin, 1909.

[ 1 ] Our Atlantean ancestors differed more from present-day man than he would imagine whose knowledge is confined wholly to the world of the senses. This difference extended not only to the external appearance but also to spiritual faculties. Their knowledge, their technical arts, indeed their entire civilization differed from what can be observed today. If we go back to the first periods of Atlantean humanity we find a mental capacity quite different from ours. Logical reason, the power of arithmetical combining, on which everything rests that is produced today, were totally absent among the first Atlanteans. On the other hand, they had a highly developed memory. This memory was one of their most prominent mental faculties. For example, the Atlantean did not calculate as we do, by learning certain rules which he then applied. A “multiplication table” was something totally unknown in Atlantean times. Nobody impressed upon his intellect that three times four is twelve. In the event that he had to perform such a calculation he could manage because he remembered identical or similar situations. He remembered how it had been on previous occasions. One need only realize that each time a new faculty develops in an organism, an old faculty loses power and acuteness. The man of today is superior to the Atlantean in logical reasoning, in the ability to combine. On the other hand, memory has deteriorated. Nowadays man thinks in concepts; the Atlantean thought in images. When an image appeared in his soul he remembered a great many similar images which he had already experienced. He directed his judgment accordingly. For this reason all teaching at that time was different from what it became later. It was not calculated to furnish the child with rules, to sharpen his reason. Instead, life was presented to him in vivid images, so that later he could remember as much as possible when he had to act under particular conditions. When the child had grown and had gone out into life, for everything he had to do he could remember something similar which had been presented to him in the course of his education. He could manage best when the new situation was similar to one he had already seen. Under totally new conditions the Atlantean had to rely on experiment, while in this respect much has been spared modern man due to the fact that he is equipped with rules. He can easily apply these in those situations which are new to him. The Atlantean system of education gave a uniformity to all of life. For long periods things were done again and again in the same way. The faithful memory did not allow anything to develop which was even remotely similar to the rapidity of our present-day progress. One did what one had always “seen” before. One did not invent; one remembered. He was not an authority who had learned much, but rather he who had experienced much and therefore could remember much. In the Atlantean period it would have been impossible for someone to decide an important matter before reaching a certain age. One had confidence only in a person who could look back upon long experience.

[ 2 ] What has been said here was not true of the initiates and their schools. For they are in advance of the stage of development of their period. For admission into such schools, the decisive factor is not age, but whether in his previous incarnations the applicant has acquired the faculties for receiving higher wisdom. The confidence placed in the initiates and their representatives during the Atlantean period was not based on the richness of their personal experience, but rather on the antiquity of their wisdom. In the case of the initiate, personality ceases to have any importance. He is totally in the service of eternal wisdom. Therefore the characteristic features of a particular period do not apply to him.

[ 3 ] While the power to think logically was absent among the Atlanteans (especially the earlier ones), in their highly developed memory they possessed something which gave a special character to everything they did. But with the nature of one human power others are always connected. Memory is closer to the deeper natural basis of man than reason, and in connection with it other powers were developed which were still closer to those of subordinate natural beings than are contemporary human powers. Thus the Atlanteans could control what one calls the life force. As today one extracts the energy of heat from coal and transforms it into motive power for our means of locomotion, the Atlanteans knew how to put the germinal energy of organisms into the service of their technology. One can form an idea of this from the following. Think of a kernel of seed-grain. In this an energy lies dormant. This energy causes the stalk to sprout from the kernel. Nature can awaken this energy which reposes in the seed. Modern man cannot do it at will. He must bury the seed in the ground and leave the awakening to the forces of nature. The Atlantean could do something else. He knew how one can change the energy of a pile of grain into technical power, just as modern man can change the heat energy of a pile of coal into such power. Plants were cultivated in the Atlantean period not merely for use as foodstuffs but also in order to make the energies dormant in them available to commerce and industry. Just as we have mechanisms for transforming the energy dormant in coal into energy of motion in our locomotives, so the Atlanteans had mechanisms in which they—so to speak—burned plant seeds, and in which the life force was transformed into technically utilizable power. The vehicles of the Atlanteans, which floated a short distance above the ground travelled at a height lower than that of the mountain ranges of the Atlantean period, and they had steering mechanisms by the aid of which they could rise above these mountain ranges.

[ 4 ] One must imagine that with the passage of time all conditions on our earth have changed very much. Today, the above-mentioned vehicles of the Atlanteans would be totally useless. Their usefulness depended on the fact that then the cover of air which envelops the earth was much denser than at present. Whether in face of current scientific beliefs one can easily imagine such greater density of air, must not occupy us here. Because of their very nature, science and logical thinking can never decide what is possible or impossible. Their only function is to explain what has been ascertained by experience and observation. The above-mentioned density of air is as certain for occult experience as any fact of today given by the senses can be.

Equally certain however is the fact, perhaps even more at that time the water on the whole earth was much thinner than today. Because of this thinness the water could be directed by the germinal energy used by the Atlanteans into technical services which today are impossible. As a result of the increased density of the water, it has become impossible to move and to direct it in such ingenious ways as once were possible. From this it must be sufficiently clear that the civilization of the Atlantean period was radically different from ours. It will also be understood that the physical nature of an Atlantean was quite different from that of a contemporary man. The Atlantean took into himself water which could be used by the life force inherent in his own body in a manner quite different from that possible in today's physical body. It was due to this that the Atlantean could consciously employ his physical powers in an entirely different way from a man of today. He had, so to speak, the means to increase the physical powers in himself when he needed them for what he was doing. In order to have an accurate conception of the Atlanteans one must know that their ideas of fatigue and the depletion of forces were quite different from those of present-day man.

[ 5 ] An Atlantean settlement—as must be evident from everything we have described—had a character which in no way resembled that of a modern city. In such a settlement everything was, on the contrary, still in alliance with nature. Only a vaguely similar picture is given if one should say that in the first Atlantean periods—about to the middle of the third subrace—a settlement resembled a garden in which the houses were built of trees with artfully intertwined branches. What the work of human hands created at that time grew out of nature. And man himself felt wholly related to nature. Hence his social sense also was quite different from that of today. After all, nature is common to all men. What the Atlantean built up on the basis of nature he considered to be common property just as a man of today thinks it only natural to consider as his private property what his ingenuity, his intelligence have created for him.

[ 6 ] One familiar with the idea that the Atlanteans were equipped with such spiritual and physical powers as have been described, will also understand that in still earlier times mankind presented a picture which reminds him in only a few particulars of what he is accustomed to see today. Not only men, but also the surrounding nature has changed enormously in the course of time. Plant and animal forms have become different. All of earthly nature has been subjected to transformations. Once inhabited regions of earth have been destroyed; others have come into existence.

The ancestors of the Atlanteans lived in a region which has disappeared, the main part of which lay south of contemporary Asia. In theosophical writings they are called the Lemurians. After they had passed through various stages of development the greatest part of them declined. These became stunted men, whose descendants still inhabit certain parts of the earth today as so-called savage tribes. Only a small part of Lemurian humanity was capable of further development. From this part the Atlanteans were formed.

Later, something similar again took place. The greatest part of the Atlantean population declined, and from a small portion are descended the so-called Aryans who comprise present-day civilized humanity. According to the nomenclature of the science of the spirit, the Lemurians, Atlanteans and Aryans are root races of mankind. If one imagines that two such root races preceded the Lemurians and that two will succeed the Aryans in the future, one obtains a total of seven. One always arises from another in the manner just indicated with respect to the Lemurians, Atlanteans, and Aryans. Each root race has physical and mental characteristics which are quite different from those of the preceding one. While, for example, the Atlanteans especially developed memory and everything connected with it, at the present time it is the task of the Aryans to develop the faculty of thought and all that belongs to it.

[ 7 ] In each root race various stages must also be gone through. There are always seven of these. In the beginning of a period identified with a root race, its principal characteristics are in a youthful condition; slowly they attain maturity and finally enter a decline. The population of a root race is thereby divided into seven sub-races. But one must not imagine that one subrace immediately disappears when a new one develops. Each one may maintain itself for a long time while others are developing beside it. Thus there are always populations which show different stages of development living beside each other on earth.

[ 8 ] The first subrace of the Atlanteans developed from a very advanced part of the Lemurians who had a high evolutionary potential. The faculty of memory appeared only in its rudiments among the Lemurians, and then only in the last period of their development. One must imagine that while a Lemurian could form ideas of what he was experiencing, he could not preserve these ideas. He immediately forgot what he had represented to himself. Nevertheless, that he lived in a certain civilization, that, for example, he had tools, erected buildings and so-forth—this he owed not to his own powers of conception, but to a mental force in him, which was instinctive. However, one must not imagine this to have been the present-day instinct of animals, but one of a different kind.

[ 9 ] Theosophical writings call the first subrace of the Atlanteans that of the Rmoahals. The memory of this race was primarily directed toward vivid sense impressions. Colors which the eye had seen, sounds which the ear had heard, had a long after-effect in the soul. This was expressed in the fact that the Rmoahals developed feelings which their Lemurian ancestors did not yet know. For example, the attachment to what has been experienced in the past is a part of these feelings.

[ 10 ] With the development of memory was connected that of language. As long as man did not preserve what was past, a communication of what had been experienced could not take place through the medium of language. Because in the last Lemurian period the first beginnings of memory appeared, at that time it was also possible for the faculty of naming what had been seen and heard to have its inception. Only men who have the faculty of recollection can make use of a name which has been given to something. The Atlantean period, therefore, is the one in which the development of language took place. With language a bond was established between the human soul and the things outside man. He produced a speech-word inside himself, and this speech-word belonged to the objects of the external world. A new bond is also formed among men by communications through the medium of language. It is true that all this existed in a still youthful form among the Rmoahals, but nevertheless it distinguished them profoundly from their Lemurian forefathers.

[ 11 ] The soul powers of these first Atlanteans still possessed something of the forces of nature. These men were more closely related to the beings of nature which surrounded them than were their successors. Their soul powers were more connected with forces of nature than are those of modern man. Thus the speech-word which they produced had something of the power of nature. They not only named things, but in their words was a power over things and also over their fellow-men. The word of the Rmoahals not only had meaning, but also power. The magic power of words is something which was far truer for those men than it is for men of today. When a Rmoahals man pronounced a word, this word developed a power similar to that of the object it designated. Because of this, words at that time were curative; they could advance the growth of plants, tame the rage of animals, and perform other similar functions. All this progressively decreased in force among the later sub-races of the Atlanteans. One could say that the original fullness of power was gradually lost. The Rmoahals men felt this plenitude of power to be a gift of mighty nature, and their relationship to the latter had a religious character. For them language was something especially sacred. The misuse of certain sounds, which possessed an important power, was an impossibility. Each man felt that such misuse must cause him enormous harm. The good magic of such words would have changed into its opposite; that which would have brought blessings if used properly would bring ruin to the author if used criminally. In a kind of innocence of feeling the Rmoahals ascribed their power not so much to themselves as to the divine nature acting within them.

[ 12 ] This changed among the second subrace, the so-called Tlavatli peoples. The men of this race began to feel their own personal value. Ambition, a quality unknown to the Rmoahals, made itself felt among them. Memory was in a sense transferred to the conception of communal life. He who could look back upon certain deeds demanded recognition of them from his fellow-men. He demanded that his works be preserved in memory. Based upon this memory of deeds, a group of men who belonged together elected one as leader A kind of regal rank developed. This recognition was even preserved beyond death. The memory, the remembrance of the ancestors or of those who had acquired merit in life, developed. From this there emerged among some tribes a kind of religious veneration of the deceased, an ancestor cult. This cult continued into much later times and took the most varied forms. Among the Rmoahals a man was still esteemed only to the degree to which he could command respect at a particular moment through his powers. If someone among them wanted recognition for what he had done in earlier days, he had to demonstrate by new deeds that he still possessed his old power. He had to recall the old works to memory by means of new ones. What had been done was not esteemed for its own sake. Only the second subrace considered the personal character of a man to the point where it took his past life into account in the evaluation of this character.

[ 13 ] A further consequence of memory for the communal life of man was the fact that groups of men were formed which were held together by the remembrance of common deeds. Previously the formation of groups depended wholly upon natural forces, upon common descent. Man did not add anything through his own mind to what nature had made of him. Now a powerful personality recruited a number of people for a joint undertaking, and the memory of this joint action formed a social group.

[ 14 ] This kind of social communal life became fully developed only among the third subrace, the Toltec. It was therefore the men of this race who first founded what is a state. The leadership, the government of these communities, was transmitted from one generation to the next. The father now gave over to the son what previously survived only in the memory of contemporaries. The deeds of the ancestors were not to be forgotten by their whole line of descent. What an ancestor had done was esteemed by his descendants. However, one must realize that in those times men actually had the power to transmit their gifts to their descendants. Education, after all, was calculated to mold life through vivid images. The effectiveness of this education had its foundation in the personal power which emanated from the educator—He did not sharpen the power of thought, but in fact, developed those gifts which were of a more instinctive kind. Through such a system of education the capacities of the father were generally transmitted to the son.

[ 15 ] Under such conditions personal experience acquired more and more importance among the third subrace. When one group of men separated from another for the foundation of a new community, it carried along the remembrance of what it had experienced at the old scene. But at the same time there was something in this remembrance which the group did not find suitable for itself, in which it did not feel at ease. Therefore it then tried something new. Thus conditions improved with every one of these new foundations. It was only natural that what was better was imitated. These are the facts which explain the development of those flourishing communities in the period of the third subrace, described in theosophic literature. The personal experiences which were acquired found support from those who were initiated into the eternal laws of spiritual development. Powerful rulers themselves were initiated, so that personal ability might have full support. Through his personal ability man slowly prepares himself for initiation. He must first develop his powers from below in order that the enlightenment from above can be given to him. In this way the initiated kings and leaders of the Atlanteans came into being. Enormous power was in their hands, and they were greatly venerated.

[ 16 ] But in this fact also lay the reason for decline and decay. The development of memory led to the pre-eminent power of a personality. Man wanted to count for something through his power. The greater the power became, the more he wanted to exploit it for himself. The ambition which had developed turned into marked selfishness. Thus the misuse of these powers arose. When one considers the capabilities of the Atlanteans resulting from their mastery of the life force, one will understand that this misuse inevitably had enormous consequences. A broad power over nature could be put at the service of personal egotism.

[ 17 ] This was accomplished in full measure by the fourth subrace, the Primal Turanians. The members of this race, who were instructed in the mastery of the above-mentioned powers, often used them in order to satisfy their selfish wishes and desires. But used in such a manner, these powers destroy each other in their reciprocal effects. It is as if the feet were stubbornly to carry a man forward, while his torso wanted to go backward.

[ 18 ] Such a destructive effect could only be halted through the development of a higher faculty in man. This was the faculty of thought. Logical thinking has a restraining effect on selfish personal wishes. The origin of logical thinking must be sought among the fifth subrace, the Primal Semites. Men began to go beyond a mere remembrance of the past and to compare different experiences. The faculty of judgment developed. Wishes and appetites were regulated in accordance with this faculty of judgment. One began to calculate, to combine. One learned to work with thoughts. If previously one had abandoned oneself to every desire, now one first asked whether thought could approve this desire. While the men of the fourth subrace rushed wildly toward the satisfaction of their appetites, those of the fifth began to listen to an inner voice. This inner voice checks the appetites, although it cannot destroy the claims of the selfish personality.

[ 19 ] Thus the fifth subrace transferred the impulses for action to within the human being. Man wishes to come to terms within himself as to what he must or must not do. But what thus was won within, with respect to the faculty of thought, was lost with respect to the control of external natural forces. With this combining thought mentioned above, one can master only the forces of the mineral world, not the life force. The fifth subrace therefore developed thought at the expense of control of the life force. But it was just through this that it produced the germ of the further development of mankind. New personality, self-love, even complete selfishness could grow freely; for thought alone which works wholly within, and can no longer give direct orders to nature, is not capable of producing such devastating effects as the previously misused powers. From this fifth subrace the most gifted part was selected which survived the decline of the fourth root race and formed the germ of the fifth, the Aryan race, whose mission is the complete development of the thinking faculty.

[ 20 ] The men of the sixth subrace, the Akkadians, developed the faculty of thought even further than the fifth. They differed from the so-called Primal Semites in that they employed this faculty in a more comprehensive sense than the former.

It has been said that while the development of the faculty of thought prevented the claims of the selfish personality from having the same devastating effects as among the earlier races, these claims were not destroyed by it. The Primal Semites at first arranged their personal circumstances as their faculty of thought directed. Intelligence took the place of mere appetites and desires. The conditions of life changed. If preceding races were inclined to acknowledge as leader one whose deeds had impressed themselves deeply upon their memory, or who could look back upon a life of rich memories, this role was now conferred upon the intelligent. If previously that which lived in a clear remembrance was decisive, one now regarded as best what was most convincing to thought. Under the influence of memory one formerly held fast to a thing until one found it to be inadequate, and in that case it was quite natural that he who was in a position to remedy a want could introduce an innovation. But as a result of the faculty of thought, a fondness for innovations and changes developed. Each wanted to put into effect what his intelligence suggested to him. Turbulent conditions therefore began to prevail under the fifth subrace, and in the sixth they led to a feeling of the need to bring the obdurate thinking of the individual under general laws. The splendor of the communities of the third subrace was based on the fact that common memories brought about order and harmony. In the sixth, this order had to be brought about by thought-out laws. Thus it is in this sixth subrace that one must look for the origin of regulations of justice and law.

During the third subrace, the separation of a group of men took place only when they were forced out of their community so to speak, because they no longer felt at ease in the conditions prevailing as a result of memory. In the sixth this was considerably different. The calculating faculty of thought sought the new as such; it spurred men to enterprises and new foundations. The Akkadians were therefore an enterprising people with an inclination to colonization. It was commerce, especially, which nourished the waxing faculty of thought and judgment.

[ 21 ] Among the seventh subrace, the Mongols, the faculty of thought was also developed. But characteristics of the earlier sub-races, especially of the fourth, remained present in them to a much higher degree than in the fifth and sixth. They remained faithful to the feeling for memory. And thus they reached the conviction that what is oldest is also what is most sensible and can best defend itself against the faculty of thought. It is true that they also lost the mastery over the life forces, but what developed in them as the thinking faculty also possessed something of the natural might of this life force. Indeed they had lost the power over life, but they never lost their direct, naive faith in it. This force had become their god, in whose behalf they did everything they considered right. Thus they appeared to the neighboring peoples as if possessed by this secret force, and they surrendered themselves to it in blind trust. Their descendants in Asia and in some parts of Europe manifested and still manifest much of this quality.

[ 22 ] The faculty of thought planted in men could only attain its full value in relation to human development when it received a new impetus in the fifth root race. The fourth root race, after all, could only put this faculty at the service of that to which it was educated through the gift of memory. The fifth alone reached life conditions for which the proper tool is the ability to think.

This book is the first volume of a new edition of all Rudolf Steiner's written work—Classics in Anthroposophy. It can be called a classic for several reasons that I will describe, and it contains an important presentation of Rudolf Steiner's Christology (his research into the Christ impulse in earthly and cosmic evolution). It is one of the best accounts of this teaching with which to begin ones study, and one to which we can profitably return again and again.

Steiner had little time to revise his lectures—even during the early years of the century—due to the sheer amount of his lecturing activity, which increased each year; he sometimes gave two or more lectures in twenty-four hours. Today, about 6,000 of these lectures are in print. In addition to his lectures, Steiner's days were filled with administrative and other teaching duties, as well as meeting the needs of people who sought his advice for personal concerns. The lectures in this book and those now published as The Mission of the Folk-Souls are the only lectures he was able to revise in all his years as a spiritual teacher. Rudolf Steiner often emphasized the qualitative difference between his written works and his lectures, which are unrevised stenographic reports. Indeed, he did not write many books, and most of those that he did write underwent at least one revision during his lifetime, as he sought constantly for the clarity and precision which epitomize his approach to spiritual science.

Originally he had not wanted the lectures to be published at all, but his students began to pass around lecture notes to facilitate their study. One must imagine their excitement in those days, when each cycle of lectures seemed to present new revelations from Steiner's research. It was natural for those who could travel to the various cities and attend the lectures to want to convey these esoteric treasures to their friends. On the other hand, Steiner lectured to each specific audience according to what he thought they needed to hear out of their karmic backgrounds, and many of the lectures that are now available to the general public were originally given for members of the Theosophical Society and, later, the Anthroposophical Society. Many listeners had been personal students of Steiner for some years and had acquired a familiarity with the general outlines of his teachings. In 1923, after the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, he decided to make all his lectures available to the public. The public lectures contained a note that some familiarity with fundamental anthroposophy was necessary for an intelligent reading, and that criticism not based on such knowledge would have to be disregarded.

Yet, in the case of this book, he undertook to revise the lectures he had given June 5–8, 1911 in Copenhagen. He spent about two weeks on the revision, and the lectures were printed only two months later, on August 26, 1911. In his preface, Steiner says there were reasons he allowed these lectures to appear when they did. We may ask what those reasons were.

Rudolf Steiner sought for many years a place where he could speak openly out of his spiritual insights. Accordingly, he accepted an invitation in 1900 to lecture to the Berlin Lodge of the Theosophical Society. The enthusiastic reception of these and other lectures led to his assuming the position of General Secretary of the German section of the Theosophical Society in 1902. From the beginning, he asserted his intention to teach from the results of his own research in accordance with the needs of Western humanity, and this freedom was granted. Within the organizational framework of the Theosophical Society, Steiner worked to serve those souls who sought a spiritual impulse they could not find in either the sciences or in the established churches. For several years, Steiner's relationship with the Society was largely cordial and fruitful, and he lectured in many European cities to the lodges of the Theosophical Society.

The Theosophical Society took an increasingly Eastern direction, both spiritually and geographically, The headquarters was moved to Adyar, India. The leaders of the Theosophical Society, at first the remarkable Helena Petrovna Blavatsky, and then Annie Besant and Charles Leadbeater, as well as many members had strong feelings against Western spirituality and the Christian churches. In 1911, in Mrs. Besant proclaimed Jiddhu Krishnamurti, then a young boy, the incarnation of the Christ, and she created the Order of the Star of the East to promote this idea. This, of course, directly contradicted Rudolf Steiner' s perception that the physical incarnation of Christ could occur once during the history of the earth, for reasons carefully delineated in this book.

In 1912, some of the German members, opposed to the Order of the Star of the East, decided to form a new organization; Steiner, when asked, offered the name “Anthroposophical Society.” Steiner neither desired nor actively pursued the break with the theosophists but, recognizing that it was impossible to work within the increasingly hostile atmosphere of the Theosophical Society, he agreed to work with the new “anthroposophical” organization. The first meeting was held in 1913, after Mrs. Besant had excluded the German section. Readers new to anthroposophy may see these events as typical of the regrettable yet apparently inevitable infighting that occurs within spiritual organizations of all kinds. They take on quite a different coloring, however, when seen in the context of Steiner's struggle to insure that his unique teaching of Christian esotericism could find its proper audience and the necessary methods of presentation.¹

Thus it was that Rudolf Steiner revised these lectures—an important element in the initial exposition of his Christology—during the height of difficulties within the Theosophical Society, just before the inaugurations of the Anthroposophical Society. During these years he also wrote and produced his four mystery dramas, and began the work that later matured as eurythmy and speech formation². Rudolf Steiner introduced something quite foreign to the mode of theosophical meetings when he began to include artistic presentations, begun by Rudolf Steiner in 1907. The effect of his dramas, which included eurythmy and the new method of speech, gave the impetus to create a special building in which to perform them. Looking back, we can see how Steiner's studies in Christology and his artistic work in drama, painting, and sculpture culminated in the building of the first Goetheanum in Dornach.³

It is not surprising, then, to find that The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity reveals an extremely artistic composition. Rudolf Steiner weaves together the themes of the beings that guide humanity, the working of the Christ impulse before and after the Mystery of Golgotha, and our common soul experience in a way that can best be called musical. Each new expression brings a variation that imports new information and yet relates to what precedes it. In some of his other lectures, Rudolf Steiner builds mighty pictures of the earth and of the cosmos, and portrays the activities of spiritual beings whose deeds are revealed externally through the natural sciences and through history. Until one achieves a sufficient background through contemplative study of a variety of anthroposophical concepts and makes the effort to allow these concepts to create the inner organs for further work, these initial studies can be overwhelming in their complexity and seem quite dry. For that reason, this book can be most helpful, because Steiner relates the entire subject matter to the human soul, to observations and experiences we share as human beings. These can help us find an inner strength to begin to take' anthroposophy more deeply into our own soul life.

The first chapter begins with a description of how, in the first three years of life, the higher self in each of us works to establish three capacities. Unlike the animals, we learn to orient our body in space in a way that is not innate or instinctual. Next, we learn the use of language; and then comes the ability to work with thoughts, with ideas. Thus, in the time before we are aware of our “I”, we have already done our wisest work on ourselves. If, however, our higher, divine self continued to work in this way, we would remain as children and not have the possibility of freedom. This active working must fall away as we achieve our own self-consciousness, which is constantly subject to the lure of pride and deceit, but which also gives us the possibility of self-development. Indeed, if the higher self lived within us in our present constitution for longer than three years, our body would die. In the same way, when the cosmic Christ entered the body of Jesus during the baptism in the Jordan, it could live even in this special human body for only three years.

Even if the Gospels had not been written, Steiner asserts, this knowledge of the first years of childhood would reveal that Christ lives in us: “To perceive and understand the forces at work in our childhood is to perceive Christ in us.” Through inner striving, we can contact again the wisdom that worked so powerfully in our first years, and we can find the Christ because of his incarnation into humanity. Indeed, the goal of earthly evolution, of the existence of this planet and our life on it, is to gradually make our entire being an expression of these divine cosmic forces—of the Christ impulse. Childhood is a perpetual reminder of the higher self, and it reveals the spiritual guidance that also lives in the Gospels and in the great initiates.

In the second chapter, Steiner describes humanity's own childlike condition in ancient times, and then he outlines how the higher spiritual beings have passed through their own “human” stage in earlier incarnations of the earth. As recently as ancient Egypt, people could recognize the spiritual beings who spoke through their leaders and teachers. The focus of the chapter is on the angels, the beings closest to humanity, who guided human development during the Egyptian epoch and again during our time. He shows how some of the angels have progressed properly in their development, while others have developed more slowly. These two types of angels bring to humanity both the possibility for our own progressive evolution, and also the two kinds of evil: the tendency to ignore our earthly responsibilities and become dreamers and visionaries, and the increasing temptation toward materialism. While their activities cause trouble in the present life of humanity, these beings actually work together in the spiritual world to guide human development. With delicacy and beauty, Steiner indicates the necessity for these retarding spirits in our evolution, for without them, we would not have the opportunity to achieve full self consciousness, diversity and freedom. The more progressive beings could only have produced uniformity in human nature.

This chapter concludes with a caution against fanaticism. “The most beautiful things can seduce and tempt us if we pursue them one-sidedly.” To guard against this, he urges us to insure that clairvoyance is augmented by an effort to grasp conceptually just the kind of spiritual facts that are presented in this book. Spiritual science helps us to avoid error; clairvoyance should be accompanied by initiation, the training that allows “a clear assessment of what is perceived in the supersensible world.” This is the difference between seeing and understanding, by being able to distinguish between the different kinds of beings and events of the higher worlds. Most important, through the study of anthroposophy, we begin to meet the Christ with our higher soul forces.

In the final chapter, Rudolf Steiner surveys the sweep of the Post Atlantean Age, the present age of the world.⁴ He shows how the progressive spiritual beings have also met the Christ, but the retarding beings have not. These latter spirits have inspired the natural science that has formed the present world culture. In the future, scientists will perceive that the Christ has arranged every atom of the earth, and a new physics and chemistry will result. We can say, then, that in the future there will live in people's hearts a Christ-idea whose magnitude will be beyond anything humanity has believed to know and understand so far. What has developed through Christ as a first impulse and has lived on as an idea of him until now is—even in the best representatives of the Christ—principle only a preparation for a true understanding of Christ. Christ first entered human hearts through the pictures from his life on earth in a human body. Today we must prepare for a spiritual meeting with the Christ, similar to Paul's experience at Damascus. An essential part of this preparation is a strengthened consciousness and a sense of responsibility toward spiritual perception, and this vital discrimination can be enhanced through the careful study of such a book as this one.

In conclusion, one hopes that this new edition will find the active readership it deserves. Many people who first approach anthroposophy for the first time are suspicious and even resentful of Christianity as it has manifested in the past two thousand years, and when they discover that anthroposophy is Christ-centered, they may feel disappointed or even upset. For others, it is perplexing that Steiner's Christology puts forward quite radical elements when compared to the theology of his day or ours. In this book, Rudolf Steiner gives both a broad, sweeping picture of human and cosmic evolution and the central place of the Christ impulse in that development, and also relates this evolution to our inner life, to the experiences and insights that anyone with the good will to look within can have, and from which they can then follow these anthroposophical thoughts to the reality of the Christ experience. Here we are given a deeply rewarding perspective of the age in which we live and in which we are witnessing the rapid dissolution of our cultural life; here also we can find the inner sustenance to work toward building the culture of the new age. From this point of view, The Spiritual Guidance of the Individual and Humanity is a “classic” work of spiritual science.

HILMAR MOORE

• 1. For further information, see Guenther Wachsmuth, The Life and Work of Rudolf Steiner (Whittier Books, 1955) 158–193; and Stewart C. Easton, Rudolf Steiner: Herald of a New Epoch (Anthroposophic Press, 1980), chapters 6 and 8. It should be noted that Krishnamurti publicly repudiated the claims of Besant and Leadbeater and dissolved the organization, called the Order of the Star of the East, in the 1920s. Stewart Easton has managed to portray with admirable clarity the issues and personalities which are of great importance in Steiner's work. In chapter five of his Man and World in the Light of Anthroposophy (Anthroposophic Press, 1975) he has provided a succinct presentation of Rudolf Steiners Christology.
• 2. Eurythmy. System of movement created by Rudolf Steiner expressing both music and the sounds of speech. See Marjorie Raffe et al., Eurythmy and the Impulse of Dance (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1974). Speech. Steiner developed a particular mode of artistic speech in the production of his Mystery Dramas. See Rudolf Steiner, Speech and Drama (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press / London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1968). Also, Steiner, Four Mystery Dramas, trans. Ruth Pusch (North Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre, 1973), and Steiner, Three Lectures on the Mystery Dramas (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1983).
• 3. The Goetheanum is the world headquarters of the Anthroposophical Society in Dornach, Switzerland. Architecturally unique. See biesantz, The Goetheanum, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979) and Rex Raab et al., Eloquent Concrete, (London: Rudolf Steiner Press, 1979).
• 4. For a description of earth evolution, including post-Atlantean times, see Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Esoteric Science, trans. Catherine E. Creeger (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1997).

[ 1 ] A man reflecting on his own nature soon becomes conscious that there is within him a second and more powerful self than the one bounded by his thoughts, his feelings, and the fully-conscious impulses of his will. He becomes aware that he is subject to that second self, as to a higher power. It is true that at first he will feel it to be a lower entity as compared with the one limited by his intelligent and fully-conscious soul, with its inclinations towards the Good and True. And at first he will strive to overcome that lower entity.

But closer self-examination may reveal something else about this second self. If we often, in the course of our lives, make a kind of survey of our acts and experiences, we make a singular discovery about ourselves. And the older we are, the more significant do we think that discovery. If we ask ourselves what we did or said at a particular period of our lives, it turns out that we have done very many things which are only really understood in later years. Seven or eight, or perhaps twenty years ago, we did certain things, and we know quite well that only now, long afterwards, is our intellect ripe enough to understand what we did or said at that earlier period.

Many people do not make such discoveries about themselves, because they do not look for them. But it is extremely profitable frequently to hold such communion with one's own soul. For directly a man becomes aware that he has done things in former years which he is only now beginning to understand, that formerly his intellect was not ripe enough to understand them,—at that moment, something like the following feeling arises in the soul: The man feels himself protected by a good power, which rules in the depths of his own being; he begins to have more and more confidence in the fact that really, in the highest sense of the word, he is not alone in the world, and that everything which he understands, and is consciously able to do, is after all but a small part of what he has really accomplished in the world.

[ 2 ] If this observation is often made, it is possible to carry out in practical life something which is very easy to see theoretically. It is easy to see that we should not make much progress in life if we had to accomplish everything we have to do, in full consciousness, with our intelligence taking note of every circumstance affecting us. In order to see this theoretically, we have only to reflect as follows: In what period of his life does a human being perform those acts which are really most important as regards his own existence? When does he act most wisely for himself? He does this from about the time of his birth up to that period to which his memory goes back when in later life he survey his earthly existence. If he recalls what he did three, four or five years ago, and then goes farther and farther back, he comes at last to a certain point in childhood, beyond which memory cannot go. What lies beyond it may be told by parents or others, but a man's own recollection only extends to a certain point in the past. That point is the moment at which the individual felt himself to be an ego. In the lives of people whose memory is limited to the normal, there must always be such a point. But previous to it, the human soul has worked in the wisest possible manner on the individual, and never afterwards, when the human being has gained consciousness, can he accomplish such vast and magnificent work on himself as he does when impelled by subconscious motives during the first years of childhood.

For we know that at birth man carries into the physical world what he has brought with him as the result of his former earthly lives. When he is born, his physical brain, for instance, is but a very imperfect instrument. The soul has to work a finer organization into that instrument, in order to make it the agent of everything that the soul is capable of performing. In point of fact, the human soul, before it is fully conscious, works upon the brain so as to make it an instrument for exercising all the abilities, aptitudes and qualities, which appertain to the soul as the result of its former earthly lives. This work on a man's own body is directed from points of view which are wiser than anything he can subsequently do for himself when in possession of full consciousness.

Moreover, man during this period not only elaborates his brain plastically, but has to learn three most important things for his earthly existence. [ 3 ] The first is the equilibrium of his own in space. The man of the present day entirely overlooks the meaning of this statement which touches upon one of the most essential differences between man and animals. An animal is destined from the outset to develop its equilibrium in space in a certain way; one animal is destined to be a climber, another, a swimmer. An animal is organized from the beginning in such a way as to be able to bear itself rightly in space, and this is the case with all animals up to and including the mammals most resembling man. If zoologists would ponder this fact, they would lay less emphasis on the number of bones and. muscles similar in men and animals, for this is of much less account than the fact that the human being is not endowed at birth with the complete equipment for his conditions of equilibrium. He has first to form them out of the sum total of his being. It is significant that man should have to work upon himself in order to make out of a being unable to walk at all, one that can walk erect. It is man himself who gives himself his vertical position, his equilibrium in space. He brings himself into relation with the force of gravitation. It will obviously be easy for anyone taking a superficial view of the matter to question this statement, with apparently good reason. It may be said that the human being is just as much organized for his erect walk as, for instance, a climbing animal is for climbing. But more accurate observation will show that it is the peculiarity of the animal's organization that causes its position in space. In man it is the soul which brings itself into relation with space and controls the organization.

[ 4 ] The second thing which the human being teaches himself is speech. This is by means of the entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another as the same being. Through speech he comes into relation with his fellowmen. This relation makes him the vehicle of that spiritual life which interpenetrates the physical world primarily through man. Emphasis has often been laid, with good reason, on the fact that a human being removed, before he could speak, to a desert island, and kept apart from his fellows, would not learn to talk. On the other hand, what we receive by inheritance, what is implanted in us for use in later years and is subject to the principles of heredity, does not depend on a man's dwelling with his fellows. For instance, his inherited conditions oblige him to change his teeth in the seventh year. If it were possible for him to grow up on a desert island, he would still change his teeth. But he only learns to talk when his soul's inner being, which is carried on from one life to another, is stimulated. The germ, however, for the development of the larynx must be formed during the period in which the human being has not yet acquired his ego-consciousness. Before the time to which his memory goes back, he must plant the germ for developing his larynx, in order that this may become the organ of speech.

[ 5 ] And then there is a third thing, the life within the world of thought. It is not so well known that the human being acquires this of himself, from that part of his inner nature which be carries on from one incarnation to another. The elaboration of the brain is undertaken because the brain is the instrument of thought. At the beginning of life, this organ is still plastic, because the individual has to form it for himself as an instrument of thought, in accordance with the intention of the entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another. The brain immediately after birth is, as it was bound to be, in consonance with the forces inherited from parents and other ancestors. But the individual has to express in his thought what he is as an individual being in conformity with his former earthly lives. Therefore he must re-model the inherited peculiarities of his brain, after birth, when he has become physically independent of his parents and other ancestors.

[ 6 ] We thus see that man accomplishes momentous things during the first years of his life. He is working on himself in the spirit of the highest wisdom. In point of fact, if it were a question of his own cleverness, he would not be able to accomplish what he must accomplish without that cleverness during the first period of his life. Why is all this accomplished in those depths of the soul which lie outside consciousness? This happens because the human soul and entire being are, during the first years of earthly life, in much closer connection with the spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than they are later. A clairvoyant who has gone through sufficient spiritual development to be able to witness actual spiritual events, sees something exceedingly significant at the moment when the ego acquires consciousness, i.e., at the earliest point to which the memory of later years goes back. Whereas what we call the child's aura hovers around it during its earliest years like a wonderful human and superhuman power and, being really the higher part of the child, is continued on into the spiritual world, at the moment to which memory goes back, this aura sinks more into the inner being of the child. A human being is able to feel himself a continuous ego as far back as that point of time, because that which was previously in close connection with the higher worlds, then passed into his ego. Henceforward the consciousness is at every point brought into connection with the external world. This is not the case with a very young child, to whom things appear only as a surrounding world -of dreams.

Man works on himself by means of a wisdom which is not within him. That wisdom is mightier and more comprehensive than any conscious wisdom of later years. The higher wisdom becomes obscured in the human soul which, in exchange, receives consciousness.

The higher wisdom works out of the spiritual world deep into the bodily part of man, so that man is able by its means to form his brain out of spirit. It is rightly said that even the wisest may learn from a child, for in the child is working the wisdom which does not pass later into consciousness. Through that wisdom man has something like telephonic connection with the spiritual beings in whose world he lives between death and rebirth. From that world there is something still streaming into the aura of the child, which is, as an individual being, immediately under the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which it belongs. Spiritual forces from that world continue to flow into the child. They cease so to flow at the point of time to which memory goes back. It is these forces which enable the child to bring itself into a definite relation to gravitation. They form the larynx, and so mold the brain that it becomes a living instrument for the expression of thought, feeling, and will.

[ 7 ] What is present in childhood to a supreme degree, so that the individual is then working out of a self which is still in direct connection with higher worlds, continues to some extent even in later years, although the conditions change in the manner indicated above. If at a later stage of life we feel that we did something years before which we are only now able to understand, it is just because we previously let ourselves be guided by higher wisdom, and only after the lapse of years have we attained to an understanding of the reasons for our conduct.

From all this we can feel that, immediately after birth, we had not escaped so very far from the world in which we were before entering upon physical existence, and that we can never really escape from it wholly. Our share in higher spirituality enters our physical life and accompanies us throughout. We often feel that what is within us is not only a higher self which is gradually being evolved, but is something higher which is there already, and is the motive cause of our so often developing beyond ourselves.

[ 8 ] All ideals and artistic creations which man is able to produce, as well as all the natural healing forces in his own body, by means of which he is continually able to adjust the injuries that befall him in life—all these powers do not proceed from ordinary intellect, but from those deeper forces which in our earliest years are at work on our equilibrium in space, on the formation of our larynx, and on the brain. For these same forces are still at work in man in later years. When sickness attacks us, it is often said that external forces cannot help us, but that our organism must develop the healing powers latent within it; by this is meant that there is a profoundly wise activity present in us. Moreover, it is from this same source that proceed the best forces whereby knowledge of the spiritual world, true clairvoyance; is attained.

[ 9 ] The question now suggests itself: why do the higher forces which have been described work upon human nature only during early childhood? [ 10 ] One-half of the answer may be easily given as follows: If those higher forces went on working in the same way, man would be always a child. He would not attain the full ego-consciousness. From within his own being must proceed the motive power which previously worked on him from without. But there is a more important reason which explains still more clearly the mysteries of human life, and that is the following:

It is possible to learn through occult science, that the human body, as it exists at its present stage of evolution, must be regarded as having arrived at its present form under different conditions. It is known to the occultist that this evolution was effected by means of the working of various forces on the sum-total of man's being; certain forces worked on the physical body, others on the etheric, others on the astral body. Human nature has arrived at its present form through the action of those beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. By their means it has, in a certain way, become more imperfect than it need have been if only those forces had been active within it which proceed from the spiritual rulers of the cosmos who desire to evolve man along straight lines. The causes of sorrow, disease, and even of death are to be sought in the fact that, besides the beings who are evolving man in a straight line forwards, there are also the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are continually crossing the line of straightforward progressive development.

Man brings with him at birth something which he cannot improve upon later in life. This is so, because the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have little influence over man during early childhood; they are virtually operative only in what man makes out of himself by his conscious life. [ 11 ] If he were to retain in full force beyond early childhood that more perfect part of his being, he would be unable to endure its influence, because his whole being is weakened by the opposing forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. Man's organism in the physical world is so constituted that it is only as a soft and pliable child that he can endure within him those direct forces of the spiritual world. He would be shattered, if during his later life there were still directly working in him those forces which underlie the faculty of equilibrium in space, and the formation of the larynx and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous that, if they were to continue working, our organism would pine away under the influence of their holiness. Man must only have recourse to such forces for the purpose of developing the power to make conscious connection with the supersensible world.

[ 12 ] But out of this there arises a thought which is of great significance, if rightly understood. It is expressed in the New Testament in the words, ‘Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom of Heaven.’ What then becomes manifest as man's highest ideal, if what has just been said be rightly received? Surely this—the drawing ever nearer and nearer to what we may call a conscious relation to the forces which work in man unknown to him during early childhood, 0niy it must be borne in mind that man would collapse under the power of those forces, if they were at once to operate in his conscious life. For this reason, careful preparation is necessary for the attainment of those faculties which induce the perception of supersensible worlds. The object of such preparation is to qualify man to bear what he is unable to bear in ordinary life.

[ 13 ] The passing of the individual through successive incarnations is of importance for the collective evolution of the human race. The latter has advanced through successive lives in the past, and is still advancing, and parallel with it the earth too is moving forwards in its evolution. The time will come when the earth will have reached the end of its career. Then the earthly planet will fall away as a physical entity from the sum-total of human souls, just as the human body falls away from the spirit at death, when, in order to continue living, the soul enters the spiritual realm which is adapted to it between death and re-birth. When once this is realized, it must appear as man's highest ideal to have progressed far enough at earthly death, to be able to reap all possible benefits which may be obtained from earthly life.

[ 14 ] Now those forces which prevent man from being able to endure the powers working upon him during early childhood come out of the substance of the earth. When these have fallen away from a human being, the latter, if he has attained the aim of his life, must have advanced far enough to be able actually to give himself up, with his whole being, to the powers which at present are only active in man during childhood. Thus the object of evolution through successive earthly lives is gradually to make the whole individual, including therefore the conscious part, into an expression of the powers which are ruling in him under the influence of the spiritual world—though he does not know it—during the first years of his life. The thought which takes possession of the soul after such reflections as these, must fill it with humility, but also with a due consciousness of the dignity of man. The thought is this man is not alone; there is something living within him which is constantly affording him proof that he can rise above himself to something which is already growing beyond him, and which will go on growing from one life to another. This thought can assume more and more definite form; and in that case it affords something supremely soothing and elevating, at the same time filling the soul with corresponding humility and modesty. What is it that man has within him in this way? Surely a higher, divine human being, by whom he is able to feel himself interpenetrated, saying to himself, ‘He is my guide within me.’

[ 15 ] From such a point of view, it is not long before we arrive at the thought that by all the means in our power we should strive to be in harmony with that within our being which is wiser than conscious intelligence. And we shall be referred on from the directly conscious self to an enlarged self, in the presence of whom all false pride and presumption will be extinguished and subdued. This feeling develops into another which opens the way to accurate understanding of the nature of present human imperfection; and the consciousness of this leads to the knowledge that man may become perfect, if once the larger spirituality ruling within him is allowed to bear the same relation to his consciousness which it bore to the unconscious life of the soul in early childhood.

[ 16 ] If it often happens that memory does not extend as far back as the fourth year of a child's life, it may nevertheless be said that the influence of the higher spirit-sphere, in the above sense, lasts through the first three years. At the end of that span of time a child becomes capable of linking its impressions of the outer world to the ideas of its ego. It is true that this coherent ego- conception can only be reckoned as existing as far back as memory extends. Yet we must say that virtually memory extends to the beginning of the fourth year, only it is too weak at the beginning of distinct ego-consciousness to be perceptible. It may be granted that those higher powers which dispose of a human being in the early years of childhood can be operative for three years; therefore man, during the present middle period of the earth, is so organized that he can receive these forces for only three years.

[ 17 ] Supposing a man now stood before us, and that some cosmic powers could cause his ordinary ego to be removed. For this purpose we must assume that it would be possible to remove from the physical, etheric, and astral bodies the ordinary ego which has passed through successive incarnations with the human being. And now suppose that into the three bodies could be introduced an ego which works in connection with spiritual worlds, what would happen to a person thus treated? At the end of three years his body would necessarily be shattered, Something would occur, through cosmic karma, which would prevent the spirit-being which would be in connection with higher worlds, from living more than three years in that body.¹ Only at the end of all his earthly lives will man have that within him which will enable him to live more than three years with that spirit-being. But then, it is true, man will be able to say to himself, ‘Not I, but that Higher One within me, who was always there, is now working in me.’ Till that time comes, he is not able to say this. The most he can say is that he feels that higher being, but has not yet progressed far enough with his real, actual human ego, to be able to bring that higher being to full life within him.

[ 18 ] Supposing then that, at some time in the middle earth-period, a human organism were to come into the world, and later in life be freed from his ego by the action of certain cosmic powers, receiving in exchange the ego which usually only works in man during the first three years of life, and which would be in connection with the spiritual worlds in which man exists between death and rebirth: how long would such a person be able to live in an earthly body? About three years. For at the end of that time, something would arise through cosmic karma, which would destroy that human organism.

[ 19 ] What is here supposed is, indeed, a historical fact. The human organism which stood in the river Jordan at John's baptism when the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left the three bodies, contained, after the baptism, in complete conscious development, that higher Self of humanity which usually works with cosmic wisdom on a child without its knowledge. At the same time, the necessity arose that this Self which was in connection with the higher spirit-world could only live for three years in the appropriate human organism. Events had then to take place which brought the earthly life of that being to a close. [ 20 ] The outer events in the life of Christ Jesus are to be interpreted as absolutely conditioned by the inner causes just set forth, and present themselves as the outward expression of those causes.

[ 21 ] We are now able to see the deeper connection existing between that which is man's guide in life, which streams in upon his childhood like the dawn and is always working below the surface of consciousness as the best part of him, and that which once upon a time entered the whole of human evolution and was able to dwell for three years in a human frame.

[ 22 ] What then is manifested in that ‘higher’ ego, which is connected with the spiritual hierarchies, and which in due time entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth, this entrance being symbolically represented by the sign of the Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and by the words; ‘this is my well-beloved Son, to-day have I begotten him’ (for so stood the words originally)? If we fix our eyes upon this picture, we are contemplating the highest human ideal. For it means that the history of Jesus of Nazareth is a statement of this fact; the Christ can be discerned in every human being. And even if there were no Gospels and no tradition to tell us that once a Christ lived on earth, we should yet learn through knowledge of human nature that the Christ is living in man.

[ 23 ] The recognition of the forces working in human nature during childhood is the recognition of the Christ in man. The question now arises, does this recognition lead to the further perception of the fact that this Christ once really dwelt on earth in a human body? Without bringing forward any documents, this question may be answered in the affirmative. For genuine clairvoyant knowledge of self leads the man of the present day to see that powers are to be discovered in the human soul which emanate from the Christ. These powers are at work during the first three years of childhood without any action being taken by the human being. In later life they may be called into action, if the Christ be sought within the soul by inner meditation. Man was not always able, as he is now, to find the Christ within himself. There were times when no inner meditation could lead him to the Christ. This again we learn from clairvoyant perception. In the interval between that past time when man could not find the Christ in himself, and the present time when he can find him, there took place Christ's earthly life. And that life itself is the source of man's power to find the Christ in himself in the manner that has been pointed out. Thus to clairvoyant perception the earthly life of Christ is proved without any historical records.

[ 24 ] It is just as if the Christ had said; ‘I will be such an ideal for you human beings that, when it is raised to a spiritual level, you will be shown that which is fulfilled in each human body.’ In his early childhood man learns from the spirit how to walk; he is shown by the spirit his way through earthly life. From the spirit he learns to speak, to form truth; in other words, be develops the essence of truth out of sound during the first three years of his life. And the life too, which man lives on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man learns to walk, to find ‘the way’; he learns to present ‘truth’ through his physical organism; and he learns to bring ‘life’ from the spirit into expression in his body. No more significant interpretation seems possible of the words ‘Except ye become as little children ye cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.’ And momentous is that saying in which the ego-being of the Christ comes into expression thus, ‘I am the Way, the Truth, and the Life.’ Just as, unknown to a child, the higher spirit-forces are fashioning its organism to become the bodily expression of the way, the truth, and the life, so the spirit of man, through being interpenetrated with the Christ, gradually becomes the conscious vehicle of the way, the truth, and the life. He is thereby making himself, in the course of his earthly development, into that force which bears sway within him as a child, when he is not consciously its vehicle.

[ 25 ] This saying about the way, the truth, and the life, is capable of opening the doors of eternity. It sounds to man out of the depths of his soul, if his self-knowledge is true and real.

[ 26 ] Such reflections as these open up, in a double sense, the vision of the spiritual guidance of the individual and of collective humanity. As human beings we are able, through self-knowledge, to find the Christ within us as the guide Whom, since His life on earth, we can always reach, because He is always in man. Furthermore, if we apply to the historical records what we have apprehended without them, we discover their real nature. They express something which is revealed of itself in the depths of the soul. They are therefore to be accounted as guiding humanity in the same direction as the soul itself is proceeding.

[ 27 ] If we thus understand the suggestion of eternity in the words, ‘I am the way, the truth, and the life,’ we cannot feel ourselves justified in asking, ‘Why does a person who has passed through many incarnations always re-enter life as a child?’ For it becomes evident that this apparent imperfection is an ever-recurring reminder of the Highest that is in man. And we cannot be reminded often enough—at any rate each time we enter earthly life is not too often to remind us—of the vast importance of man's connection with that Being Who underlies all earthly existence, untouched by its imperfections.

[ 28 ] It is not well to make many definitions or summaries in spiritual science or theosophy, or indeed in occultism generally. It is better to give a description, and to try and call forth a feeling of what really exists. On this account we have attempted to induce a feeling of what distinguishes the first three years of human life, and of the way in which this is related to the light that streams from the cross on Golgotha. The meaning of this feeling is that an impulse is passing through human evolution, and that through this impulse the Pauline saying, ‘Not I—but the Christ in me,’ will become a fact. We have only to know what man is in reality, in order to be able to proceed from such knowledge to insight into the nature of the Christ. When once, however, we have arrived at the Christ-idea, through true observation of humanity, we know that we discover the Christ in the best way if we first look for Him in ourselves; and if we then return to the Bible records we value them rightly for the first time. And no one prizes the Bible more, or more consciously, than one who has found the Christ in this way. It is possible to imagine a being, let us say, an inhabitant of Mars, descending to earth, without ever having heard of the Christ and His work. Much that has taken place on earth would be incomprehensible to the Martian; much that interests people nowadays would not interest him. But it would interest him to discover the central impulse of earthly evolution, the Christ-idea as it is expressed in human nature itself.

Having grasped this, a man is able for the first time rightly to understand the Bible, for he finds expressed there in a marvelous way what he has previously observed in himself, and he says: It is unnecessary to have been brought up with any special reverence for the Gospels; by means of what I have learned through spiritual science, they need only be presented to me, a fully-conscious human being, to stand revealed before me in all their greatness.

[ 29 ] Indeed, if it is not too much to say that in the course of time people who have learned through spiritual science rightly to appreciate the contents of the Gospels, will value them as guides of the human race more justly than hitherto. It is only through knowledge of human nature itself that humanity will learn to see what is latent in those profound records. It will then be said: If there is to be found in the Gospels that which forms an integral part of human nature, it must have come from the people who wrote these documents on earth, Therefore what genuine reflection brings home to us about our own lives—the more so the older we grow—must hold especially good with regard to those writers. We ourselves have done many things which we only understand years afterwards, and in the writers of the Gospels may be seen people who wrote out of the higher self which works in man during childhood, so that the Gospels are writings emanating from the wisdom which molds human nature. Man is a manifestation of spirit through his body, and the Gospels are such a manifestation in writing.

[ 30 ] On this assumption the idea of inspiration regains its true and loftier meaning. Just as higher forces are at work on the brain during the first three years of childhood, so there were higher forces from spiritual worlds impressed on the souls of the Evangelists, under the influence of which they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of humanity is expressed in such a fact as this. For the human race must surely be guided, if within it people are writing records under the influence of those same powers that are at work on the molding of man in profound wisdom. And just as the individual says or does things which he only understands at a later period of life, so collective humanity has produced in the Evangelists means of revelation which can only be understood by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the greater will be the understanding of these records. The human being can feel spiritual guidance within himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those of its members who work as did the writers of the Gospels.

[ 31 ] The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity may be extended in many directions. Let us suppose that a man finds disciples—a few people who follow him. Such a one will soon become aware, through genuine self-knowledge, that the very fact of his finding disciples gives him the feeling that what he has to say does not originate with himself. The case is rather this—that spiritual powers in higher worlds wish to communicate with the disciples, and find in the teacher the fitting instrument for their manifestation.

[ 32] The thought will suggest itself to such a man: when I was a child I worked on myself by the aid of forces proceeding from the spiritual world, and what I am now able to give, of my best, must also proceed from higher worlds; I may not look upon it as belonging to my ordinary consciousness. Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, something like a ‘daimon’—using the word in the sense of a good spiritual power—is working out of a spiritual world through me on my disciples.

Socrates felt something of this kind. Plato tells us that he spoke of his ‘daimon’ as of the one who led and guided him. Many attempts have been made to explain this ‘daimon’ of Socrates, but it can only be explained by supposing that Socrates was able to feel something like that which results from the above reflections. Then we are able to understand that throughout the three or four centuries during which the Socratic principle was active in Greece, a state of feeling permeated the Greek world, which prepared the way for another great event. The feeling that man, as he now is, is not the whole of what comes through from higher worlds—this feeling went on working. The best of those in whom it was present were those who afterwards best understood the words, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me.’ For they could say to themselves: Socrates used to speak of a being working as a ‘daimon’ from higher worlds; the Christ-ideal makes clear what Socrates meant. Socrates could not as yet speak of Christ, because in his time no one was able to find the Christ-nature within himself.

[ 33 ] Here again we feel something of the spiritual guidance of man, for nothing can be established in the world without preparation. Why was it that Paul found his best disciples in Greece? Because the ground had been prepared there by the teaching of Socrates and the state of feeling that has been described. That is to say, what happens in human evolution may be traced back to events which operated previously, and made people ripe for what was afterwards to be brought to bear upon them. Do we not feel here how far the guiding impulse passing through human evolution extends and how at the right moment it places people where they will best be used to further that evolution? In such facts is manifested the guidance of mankind.

[ 34 missing ]

• 1. The vitality of the human organism is maintained at the transition from childhood to later life, because the organism is capable of change at that period. Later in life, it is no longer susceptible of change, and on this account cannot continue to exist with that other Self.

[ 1 ] If we turn our attention to what was said to the Greeks by the teachers and leaders of ancient Egypt about the direction and guidance of the spiritual life of their country, we may trace a remarkable parallel between that which is manifested in the individual life of man, and that which governs human evolution as a whole. It is related that when a Greek once asked an Egyptian, who had guided and led his nation from ancient times onwards, he answered, ‘In the times of yore, the gods ruled and taught us, and only afterwards men came to be our leaders.’ The Egyptians named Menes to the Greeks as their first leader on the physical plane to be recognized as a human leader. That is to say, the directors of the Egyptian people alleged that in earlier times the gods themselves—as Greek records confirm—guided and led the Egyptian nation. Such an assertion, coming down to us from ancient times, must, however, be rightly understood. What did the Egyptians mean when they said, ‘Our kings and great teachers were gods?’

The man who thus answered the question of the Greek meant that if any one had gone back into the ancient times of the Egyptian nation, and had asked those people who felt something within them like a higher consciousness, or wisdom from higher worlds: ‘Who are really your teachers?’ they would have answered: ‘If I wanted to tell you about my real teacher, I should not point to such and such a person and say, ‘That is my teacher,’ but I should first have to put myself into a clairvoyant state (it is known from spiritual science that this was comparatively easier in ancient times than it is now), and then I would find my real inspirer and teacher, who comes to me only when the eyes of my spirit are opened.’ For in ancient Egypt beings who were not incarnated in a physical human body came down amongst men. In those remote ages, it was the gods who still ruled and taught the Egyptians, and by “gods” they understood beings who had preceded man in evolution.

[ 2 ] According to spiritual science, the earth passed through an earlier planetary condition, called the Moon-state, before it became Earth. During this condition man was not yet human in the present sense of the word. On the old Moon were present beings not possessed of the present human forms and differently constituted, who nevertheless were then at the evolutionary stage which man has now attained on earth. We may therefore say, that on the ancient Moon-planet which has perished, and out of which the Earth afterwards originated, there lived beings who were man's predecessors. In Christian esoteric language they are called Angel-beings (Angeloi). The beings immediately above them, Archangels (Archangeloi), were human at a still earlier period. The angels, or angeloi in Christian esotericism, Dhyanic beings in eastern mysticism, were ‘men’ during the Moon-period. Now these beings, during the present Earth-period, are a stage farther advanced than man—those of them, that is to say, who completed their evolution on the Moon. Only at the end of the Earth's evolution will man have arrived at the stage which those beings had reached at the end of the Moon-period.

When the Earth-state of our planet began and man appeared on earth, these beings were not able to appear in an external human form, for the human body of flesh and blood is essentially a product of earth, and is only adapted to the beings who are now human. The beings who are a stage farther advanced than man could not be incarnated in human bodies. They were only able to take part in the government of the earth by illuminating and inspiring those people in primeval times who had attained the stage of clairvoyance. Indirectly, then, through such clairvoyant persons the angels intervened to guide the destinies of earth.

[ 3 ] Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a time when the leading personalities of the nation were clearly conscious of their connection with what are called gods, angels, or dhyanic beings. Now what sort of beings were these, who were not incarnated in a human form of flesh and blood, but who influenced mankind in the way we have described? They were man's predecessors, advanced beyond the human stage.

[ 4 ] There is in these days much misuse of a word which may in this connection be applied in its true meaning, the word “Superman.” If we really wish to speak of “Supermen,” it is these beings who may rightly be so called. Human during the Moon-period, the planetary stage preceding our Earth, they had now outgrown humanity. They were only able to appear in an etheric body to clairvoyants. It was thus that they came down to earth from spiritual worlds and ruled here even as late as post-Atlantean times.

[ 5] These beings had, and still have, the remarkable quality of not being obliged to think; in fact, we might even say that they cannot think at all as man does. How then does man think? More or less in this way. He starts from a certain point and says, “I understand this or that,” and from that point he then tries to understand various other things. If this were not the method of human thought, school-life would not be such a difficult period for many. We cannot learn mathematics in a day, because we have to begin at a certain point and go slowly forwards. This takes a long time. We cannot survey a whole world of thought at a glance, for human thought runs its course in time. A system of thought does not enter the mind in a flash. We have to make an effort and have to exert ourselves, in order to find the sequence of thought. The beings described above are without this human peculiarity. A far-reaching train of thought comes into their minds with the same rapidity with which an animal makes up its mind that it will snatch at something which its instinct tells it is eatable. Instinct and reflective consciousness are in no wise distinct in these beings; they are one and the same. Just as animals have instinct at their stage of evolution, in their kingdom, so these dhyanic beings or angels have direct spiritual thought and conceptions. By virtue of this instinctive inner life of conception they are of an essentially different nature from human beings.

[ 6 ] Now we can easily understand why it is impossible for these beings to use a brain or physical body like ours. They have to use an etheric body, because the human body and brain only allow of thoughts in time, whereas these beings do not develop their thoughts in time, but feel the wisdom that is approaching them blaze forth, as it were, spontaneously within them. It is impossible for them to think erroneously in the sense in which man does. The process of their thought is a direct inspiration. Hence the personalities who were able to come into contact with these super-human or angelic beings were conscious that they were in the presence of unerring wisdom, Therefore, even as late as ancient Egyptian times, when the man who was the human teacher or king was in the presence of his spiritual guide, he felt thus the command which he is giving, the truth which he is enunciating, is literally right and cannot be wrong. This was also felt by those to whom the truths were passed on.

[ 7 ] The clairvoyant guides of the human race were able to speak in such a manner that in their words people believed they were receiving exactly what came down from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct current down from the higher spirit-hierarchies which were directing humanity. [ 8 ] Thus what works on the individual in early childhood may be seen working on humanity at large in the form of the next world of spirit-hierarchies which hovers over human evolution as a whole. This is the next kingdom of the angels or super-human beings, standing a step higher than man, and extending directly into spiritual spheres. They bring down to earth from those spheres what is worked into human civilization. In the child, it is on the formation of the body that the higher wisdom leaves its impress; in human evolution of past ages, it was civilization that was so matured.

[ 9 ] Thus the Egyptians, who described themselves as being in connection with divinity, felt that the soul of humanity was open to the action of spirit hierarchies. Just as the soul of a child opens its aura to the hierarchies up to the time mentioned in the preceding pages, so, through its work, did the whole of humanity open its world to the hierarchies with which it was connected.

[ 10 ] This connection was most important in those teachers whom we call the holy teachers of India, the great teachers of the first post-Atlantean or Indian civilization, which unfolded itself in southern Asia. When the Atlantean catastrophe was over, and the physiognomy of the earth had changed, so that the new conformation of Asia, Europe, and Africa had evolved in the Eastern hemisphere, the civilization led by the ancient great teachers of India began. This was before the time we have mentioned as reported in ancient records. The man of today is apt to get quite a wrong idea about these teachers. If, for example, one of the great Indian teachers were to be confronted with an educated man of the present day, the latter would gaze upon him with astonishment, and perhaps say, “Is that a great teacher? I should never have thought it.” The words “clever” or “learned” in the sense of modern culture could not be applied to the holy teachers of ancient India. They had nothing clever to say. They were simple, homely people, who would have answered even questions of everyday life in the simplest fashion possible. And there were many periods during which scarcely anything could be elicited from them but what would seem, to an educated man of today, insignificant. On the other hand, there were certain times when these holy teachers were revealed as something more than simple, homely men. At these times they were obliged to be together to the number of seven, because what each individual was able to feel had to combine harmoniously with the feelings of the other six teachers, as though in a consonance of seven sounds. For it was then possible for each one to see something according to his particular gift and degree of development. Assuming that we know how to decipher the real occult records, we find that from the harmony of the separate parts which each individual was able to see, there arose the primeval wisdom which comes down to us from ancient times. These records are not the revelations of the Vedas, however much we may admire them. What the Indian holy teachers taught is of much earlier date than the composition of the Vedas, and it is only a feeble echo of their wisdom which lies before us in those mighty works. But when each of these men was in the presence of a super-human predecessor of humanity, was gazing clairvoyantly into higher worlds, and listening clairaudiently to what was being taught through that predecessor, it was as though the sun shone from their eyes. What they were then able to say worked with overpowering force on their environment, so that all who heard them knew that it was not human life or wisdom that was speaking, but that gods, super-human beings, were influencing human civilization.

[ 11 ] The ancient civilizations had their rise in this sounding to mankind of the knowledge of the gods. Only by degrees in post-Atlantean times was the door closed into the divine spiritual world which in the Atlantean period had still been wide open for the human soul. And in the various countries and nations it was felt that man was thrown ever more and more on his own resources. What is revealed in the case of a child appears in humanity in a different way. The divine spiritual world is first diffused into the unconscious soul of a child, and the soul works upon the formation of the body. Then comes the moment at which the child learns to feel itself an ‘ego’ and this is the moment to which its memory goes back in later life. This is what makes it possible to say that the wisest of men may still learn something from the soul of a child. From this point, however, the individual is left to himself. The ego-consciousness comes into being, and everything combines to make it possible for him to remember his experiences.

So, too, in the life of nations there came a time when they began to feel themselves shut off from the divine inspiration of their early forefathers. Just as the child becomes gradually shut off from the aura that floats about its head in its earliest years, so in the life of nations did the divine ancestors withdraw themselves more and more, and mankind was left to its own research and to its own knowledge. When history speaks in this manner, the fact of the guidance of humanity is realized Menes was the Egyptian name of him who inaugurated the first human civilization, and it is at the same time hinted that man thereby became liable to error, for thenceforward he was left to look for guidance to the instrument of his brain. That man was liable to fall into error is symbolically indicated by the fixing of the date of the construction of the labyrinth at the time when humanity was abandoned by the gods; for the labyrinth is an image of the convolutions of the brain as the instrument of man's own thoughts—windings in which the thinker is able to lose himself. The Orientals called man, as a thinking being, Manas, and Manu stands for the first great thinker. The Greeks called the first organizer of the human principle of thought Minos, and with him is associated the myth of the labyrinth, because it was felt that, since his time, mankind had gradually passed from the direct guidance of the gods to a guidance in which the “ego” feels the influence of the higher spirit-world in a different way.

[ 12 ] Besides those predecessors of man, the true supermen, who had completed their humanity on the Moon and had become angels, there are, however, other beings who did not perfect their evolution on the Moon .The beings called dhyanic in Oriental mysticism and angelic in Christian esotericism, consummated their evolution on the ancient Moon, and when man began his earthly career were already a stage higher than he was. But there were other beings who had not finished their evolution on the ancient Moon, any more than the higher categories of Luciferic beings had finished theirs. When the Earth-state of our planet began, man as we have described him was not the only being there. He felt also the inspiration of divinely-spiritual beings; otherwise, like a child, he would have been unable to progress. Accordingly, besides these childlike human beings, and acting through them, there must have been also present on the earth beings who had completed their evolution on the Moon. But between these and man there were yet other beings who had not finished their evolution on the Moon—beings of a higher order than man, because, even as early as the ancient Moon-period, they might have become angels or dhyanic beings. At that time, however, they had not come to full maturity. They were angels in a backward state, yet they far outdistanced man as regards everything which man called his own. Generally speaking, they are beings occupying the lowest grade in the ranks of Luciferic spirits. They hold a middle position between men and angels, and with them begins the kingdom of Luciferic spirits.

[ 13 ] Now it is extremely easy to get an erroneous idea of these spirits. We might ask why did the divine spirits, the regents of good, allow them to fall short, and thereby admit the Luciferic principle into humanity? And it might further be objected on this ground, that surely the good gods turned everything to good. This question is obvious. And another misunderstanding which might arise, is expressed in the idea that these are “evil” spirits. Both ideas are merely misunderstandings; for these spirits are by no means purely “evil,” although the origin of evil in human nature is due to them. Since they stand midway between man and superman, they are, in a sense, more perfect than men. In all the qualities which human beings have to acquire for themselves, these spirits have attained a high standard, and they only differ from man's predecessors described above in being able to incarnate in human bodies whilst man is being evolved on Earth. This is because they did not consummate their humanity on the Moon.

The dhyanic or angelic beings proper, who are the great inspirers of humanity, and to whom the Egyptian referred as being still their teachers, did not appear in human bodies. They could only manifest themselves through human beings. On the other hand, the beings in a mid-position between men and angels were still able, in very early times to incarnate in human bodies. Hence amongst the human race inhabiting the earth in the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, we find people whose innermost soul-nature was that of an angel in a backward state. Not only ordinary people were going about the earth, who through their successive incarnations were to arrive at the ideal of humanity, but beings who only outwardly appeared like them. These had to bear a human body, for the outward form of a human being in the flesh is dependent on earthly conditions. Especially in more ancient times did it happen that beings belonging to the lowest category of Luciferic individualities were present amongst men. And so at the same time that the angel-beings were working on human civilization through man, Lucifer-beings were also incarnated and founding human civilizations in various places. And when in the old folk legends it is related that in some place there lived a great man who was the founder of a civilization we are not to understand that such a Lucifer-being was necessarily the vehicle of evil but rather that human civilization was to receive countless blessings from him.

[ 14 ] Now it is known through occult science that in ancient times, particularly in the Atlantean period, there existed a kind of primitive human language, a manner of speech, which was the same all over the earth, because “speech” in those days came much more out of the depths of the soul than it does now. This may be gathered from the following: In Atlantean times, people felt all outward impressions in such a way that if the soul wished to express anything outward by a sound, it was constrained to use a consonant. What existed in space pressed for imitation in a consonant. The blowing of the wind, the murmur of the waves, the shelter given by a house were felt and imitated by man in consonants. On the other hand, the sorrow or joy which was felt inwardly, or was observed as feeling in another being, was imitated in a vowel. From this we can see that the soul became one, in speech, with outer events or beings. [ 15 ] The following instance is taken from the Akashic Records: A man drew near a hut, which was arched in the ancient fashion and gave shelter and protection to a family. He noticed this, and expressed the protective arch by a consonant; and by a vowel he expressed the fact, which he was able to feel, that within the hut the embodied souls were comfortable. Thence arose the thought “shelter”; “there is a shelter for me—shelter for human bodies.” The thought was then poured forth in consonants and vowels, which could not be otherwise than they were, because they were a direct impression of experience and had but one meaning. [ 16 ] This was the same all over the earth. It is no dream that there was once an original human root-language. And, in a certain sense, the initiates of all nations are still able to feel that language. Indeed there are in all languages certain similar sounds which are the remains of that universal language.

[ 7 ] This speech was prompted in human souls by the inspiration of the super-human beings, man's true predecessors, who had perfected their evolution on the Moon. From this it may be seen that if that evolution alone had taken place, the entire human race would practically have remained one great unity, and there would have been uniformity of speech and thought all over the earth. Individuality and diversity could not have been developed, nor at the same time could human freedom. In order that man might become individual, cleavages had to take place in humanity, and the difference of language in different parts of the world is due to the work of those teachers in whom a Luciferic spirit was incarnated. According as a particular angel-being, who had fallen short in his evolution, was incarnated in a particular race, was he able to instruct its people in a particular language. Thus the ability to speak a separate language is, in all races, traceable to the illuminating presence of these great beings who were angels in a backward state and who stood far above the people of their immediate environment. For instance, the beings described as the original heroes of the Greeks and other nations, and who worked in a human form, were those in whom an angel who had fallen short was incarnated. Therefore these beings must by no means be characterized as entirely “evil.” On the contrary, they brought to man that which predestined him to be a free human being all over the globe, and they differentiated what otherwise would have constituted a uniform whole everywhere on earth. This is not only true of languages but of many other departments of life. Individualization, differentiation, freedom, we may say, come from the beings who fell short in their Moon-evolution. It is true that it was the purpose of the wise rulership of the cosmos to bring all beings in planetary evolution to their goal, but if this had been done in a direct way particular ends would not have been attained. Certain beings were therefore arrested in their development because they were to have a special mission in the progress of humanity. Since the beings who had fulfilled their mission on the Moon would only have been able to educate a uniform human race, beings who had fallen short on the Moon were set against them, and it thereby became possible for these backward ones to turn into good what appeared as a defect.

[ 18 ] This opens up the question, why do evil, wickedness, imperfection, and disease exist in the world? This problem should be looked at from the point of view from which we have just considered the imperfect angel-beings. Everything which at any time exhibits imperfection or backwardness will be turned into good in the course of evolution. It is obvious that this affords no justification for bad actions on man's part.

[ 19 ] Why does a wise Providence allow certain beings to lag behind and not reach their goal? There will be good reason for it at the time following the formation of such a purpose. For it was when nations were not yet able to guide and govern themselves that the teachers of particular periods and individuals arose. And all the different race-teachers, Cadmus, Cheops, Pelops, Theseus, etc, are, in one aspect, angel-beings in the depths of their souls. From this it appears that in this respect also, humanity is really subject to direction and guidance.

[ 20 ] Now at every stage of evolution there are beings who lag behind and do not attain the possible goal. Let us look once more at the ancient Egyptian civilization which ran its course thousands of years ago in the Nile valley. Super-human teachers manifested themselves to the Egyptians, who said that these teachers guided mankind like gods. At the same time, however, other beings were also at work, who had only half or partially attained the angelic stage. Now we must fully understand that the souls of people of the present day had attained a definite stage in the Egyptian period. But it is not only man who gains by letting himself be guided; the beings directing him attain thereby something which furthers their evolution. For instance, an angel is something more after he has guided humanity for a while, than he was before that guidance began. His guiding work helps him to progress, and this is true not only of one who has completed his evolution as an angel, but also of one who has lagged behind. All beings are able continually to advance; everything is in a state of perpetual development; but at every stage beings are left behind. Thus, in accordance with what has just been said, there can be distinguished in the ancient Egyptian civilization the divine leaders or angels, the semi-divine leaders who did not quite attain the angelic stage, and the men. But certain beings in the ranks of the angels again lag behind; they do not bring all their powers into expression when guiding humanity, but remain behind as angels during the ancient Egyptian stage of civilization. Similarly some of the incomplete angels lag behind. Thus while men below were progressing, certain of the beings above, the dhyanic spirits or angels, fell behind in their evolution. When the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization came to an end, and the Graeco-Roman period began, certain guiding spirits from the former period, who had fallen behind in their evolution, were present. But they could not use their powers, for other angels or half-angelic beings had replaced them, and that meant that their own evolution was at a standstill.

[ 21 ] Hence there comes under our notice a category of beings who might have used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not at that time use them fully. In the ensuing Graeco-Roman period they were not able to use them, because they were replaced by other guiding spirits, and all the conditions of that time made their intervention impossible. But just as the beings who had not reached the angelic stage on the old Moon were, during the Earth-period, once more allotted the task of interposing actively in human evolution, so also the beings who, as guiding spirits in the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, had stopped short in their development, had lagged behind, later received the mission of intervening again in civilization. We shall be able to watch a later period of civilization in which beings sent to be guides are certainly there to direct the normal progress of evolution, but in which, at the same time, other beings are intervening who were left behind at an earlier stage, and more particularly those who fell behind during the ancient Egyptian period. The civilization to which we are referring is our own. We live at a time when, side by side with the normal directors of humanity, others are interposing who were left behind in the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic period.

[ 22 ] Now we have to look upon the evolution of events and beings in such a way that occurrences in the physical world must be considered only as effects or manifestations, the true causes of which are to be sought in the spiritual world. On the one hand our civilization is in the main marked by an upward movement towards spirituality, and this tendency of certain people towards spirituality is the manifestation of the spiritual directors of our contemporary humanity, who have attained their own normal stage of development. In everything which tends to lead man up to the great spiritual wisdom-truths transmitted to us by theosophy, these normal guides of our evolution are manifested. But the beings out-distanced during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization are also affecting the tendencies of our age. They are manifest in much that is being thought and done at the present and will again be manifest in the near future. They are revealed in everything which gives a materialistic stamp to our civilization, and may often be seen even in aspirations after spiritual things. In our age we are virtually experiencing a revival of Egyptian civilization. The beings who are to be looked upon as the invisible directors of that which takes place in the physical world fall accordingly into two classes. The first includes those spiritual individualities who have passed through their own normal course of development up to the present time. They were able to interpose in the guidance of our civilization, whilst the directors of the preceding Graeco-Roman period were gradually finishing their task of guiding civilization during the first thousand years of Christianity The second class, who work simultaneously with the first class of beings, are spiritual individualities who did not complete their evolution during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. They were obliged to remain inactive during the ensuing Graeco-Roman period, but are now able to resume their activity because our present age has points of resemblance to the Egypto-Chaldæic period. It thus comes about that many things arise in contemporary humanity which look like a revival of ancient Egyptian forces, but there is also much which is like a materialistic resuscitation of forces which then worked spiritually. To illustrate this, we may point to an example of the way in which ancient Egyptian knowledge has been revived in our days.

Let us think of Kepler. He was quite possessed by the feeling of the harmony of the cosmos, and this idea was expressed in his important mathematical laws of the mechanism of the heavens, the so-called laws of Kepler. These are outwardly very dry and abstruse, but in Kepler they were the outcome of an understanding of the harmony of the universe. We may read in Kepler's writings that in order to discover what he did, he was obliged to go to the sacred Egyptian mysteries, purloin their temple-vessels, and by this means bring knowledge into the world, the importance of which to humanity would only be known in later times.

This utterance of Kepler's is by no means an empty phrase, but contains a dim consciousness of a revival of what he had learned in the Egyptian period, during a former incarnation. We may certainly entertain the idea that Kepler assimilated the ancient Egyptian wisdom during one of his previous lives, and that it reappears in his soul in a new form, adapted to a later age. That a materialistic impulse should enter our civilization through the Egyptian spirit is quite intelligible, for Egyptian spirituality had a strong materialistic tendency, which found expression, for instance, in embalming the physical bodies of the dead. This meant that the Egyptian attached value to the preservation of the physical body. This has come down to us from the Egyptian period in a different form, but in one corresponding to our time. The same forces which had not then run their course, affect our age, but in a different way. The temper of mind which embalmed dead bodies gave rise to that which idolizes the merely material. The Egyptian embalmed dead bodies and thereby preserved what he accounted valuable. He thought that the development of the soul after death was connected with the preservation of the physical material body. The modern anatomist dissects what he sees, and thinks that in this way he understands the laws of the human organism. Thus in our modern science are living the forces of the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic world. At that time progressive forces, they now lag behind, and must be recognized for what they are if a correct estimate is to be formed of the character of the present time. These forces will injure a man of the present day if he does not know their real significance. If he knows their effect and thereby brings himself into the right relation to them, he will take no harm from them, but will turn them to good account. They must be used, for without them we should not have the present great achievements in technology and industry. They are forces belonging to Luciferic beings of the lowest stage, and the danger lies in the fact that if they are not recognized aright, the materialistic impulses of the present time are thought to be the only possible ones, and the other forces, which lead up to the spiritual world, are not taken into consideration. For this reason any clear diagnosis is certain to discern two currents of thought in the present age. [ 23 ] Now if a wise Providence had not allowed certain beings in the Egypto-Chaldæic period to fall short in their evolution, our contemporary civilization would have been wanting in necessary weight. In that case only those forces would be operative which would bring man into the spiritual world by main force. People would be only too ready to yield themselves up to those forces, and would become dreamers. The only life they would wish to know about would be one which is being spiritualized as fast as possible, and their standard of action would be a view of life showing a certain degree of contempt for what is physical and material. But the present epoch of civilization can only fulfill its mission if the forces of the material world are brought to the fullest perfection, and if thus by degrees their sphere too is won for spirituality. Just as the fairest things may become corrupters and tempters of mankind if pursued in a one-sided way, so if this one-sidedness took root, there would be great danger that all kinds of good efforts would come into manifestation as fanaticism, True though it is that humanity is helped forward by its noble impulses, it is also true that wild and fanatical advocacy of the noblest impulses may bring about the worst of results as far as true evolution is concerned. Only when people strive after the highest modestly and sensibly, not out of wild fanaticism, can anything beneficial to the progress of humanity take place. In order that the work done on earth at the present day may have the necessary weight, and that material beings of the physical plane may be understood, the wisdom which directs the government of the world left those forces behind which would normally have completed their evolution during the Egyptian period; and it is these which are now directing man's attention to physical life.

[ 24 ] It is obvious from the foregoing that evolution takes place under the influence both of normally progressive beings and of those who lag behind. Clairvoyant vision is able to trace the co-operation of both classes of beings in the super-sensible world, and hence is able to comprehend the spiritual events of which the physical facts surrounding humanity are the manifestations.

[ 25 ] We observe that, in order to understand cosmic events, it is not enough to have spiritual eyes and ears opened to the spiritual world by some kind of exercise. This only means that we see what is there, that we are cognizant of spiritual beings and know that they are entities of the soul-world or spirit-sphere. But it is also necessary to recognize what kinds of beings they are. We may meet some being of the soul or spirit world, but we do not necessarily know whether it is progressing in its evolution, or whether it belongs to the category of powers that have lagged behind; whether therefore it is pushing evolution onwards, or hindering it. Those people who acquire clairvoyant faculties and do not at the same time gain complete understanding of the conditions of human evolution which we have described may know absolutely nothing of the nature of the beings whom they meet. Mere clairvoyance must be supplemented by clear judgment of what is seen in the supersensible world. There is urgent necessity for this especially in our own time, but it had not always to be so much considered. If we go back to very ancient civilizations, we find different conditions. If in the most ancient Egyptian times a person was clairvoyant, and was confronted with a being from the supersensible world, the latter had, as it were, written on his forehead who he was. The clairvoyant could not mistake him. Now, however, the possibility of misunderstanding is very great. Whereas humanity in early times still stood very near the kingdom of the spiritual hierarchies and could see what beings it was meeting, it is now very easy to be mistaken. The only protection against being severely injured is the effort to gain ideas and conceptions like those indicated above.

[ 26 ] A person who is able to look into the spiritual world is called esoterically a “clairvoyant,” but merely to be clairvoyant is not enough, for such a man might be able to see well enough although unable to discriminate. He who has acquired the faculty of distinguishing the various beings and events of higher worlds, is called an “Initiate,” Initiation brings with it the possibility of distinguishing between different kinds of beings. It is possible to be clairvoyant in the higher worlds without being an initiate. In ancient times distinguishing between spirits was not specially important, for when the ancient occult schools had brought a pupil so far as clairvoyance, there was no great danger of error. Now, however, this danger exists to a high degree. Therefore in all esoteric training, care should be taken that initiation should be acquired in addition to clairvoyance. In proportion to the extent of his clairvoyance must a man become capable of distinguishing between the various kinds of supersensible beings and events.

[ 27 ] In modern times the powers guiding humanity are faced by the special task of bringing about a balance between the two principles of clairvoyance and initiation. Leaders of spiritual training had necessarily to pay attention to this at the beginning of the modern era. Therefore the esoteric spiritual movement which is adapted to present conditions, always makes a point of maintaining the right proportion between clairvoyance and initiation. This became necessary at the time when mankind was passing through a crisis with regard to its higher knowledge. That time was the thirteenth century. About the year 1250 was the point of time when mankind felt itself most shut out from the spiritual world. A clairvoyant looking back upon that period sees the following: The most eminent minds of that time who were striving after some kind of higher knowledge could only say to themselves: “What our reason, our intellect, our spiritual knowledge are able to find out is limited to the physical world around us. With all our human endeavor and power of perception, we cannot reach a spiritual world. We only know of it by accepting the information concerning it which our forefathers bequeathed us.” This was the time when direct view of the higher worlds was obscured. That this can be said of the era in which scholasticism flourished, is not without significance.

[ 28 ] About the year 1250 was the time when men were compelled to fix a boundary between what they were able to apprehend for themselves, and what they had to believe from the impression made upon them by the traditions which had been handed down. What they could find out for themselves then became limited to the physical world of sense. Afterwards, however, came the time when there was more and more possibility of again winning a view of the spiritual world. But the new clairvoyance was of a different kind from the old, which virtually became extinct just about the year 1250. In the new form of clairvoyance, western esotericism was obliged strictly to uphold the principle that initiation must be the guide of spiritual sight and hearing. This was the special task assigned to an esoteric current which then entered the stream of European civilization. As the year 1250 drew near there arose a new kind of guidance into the super sensible worlds.

[ 29 ] This guidance was prepared by the spirits then standing behind outer historical events, who centuries before had provided for the kind of esoteric training which would be rendered necessary by the conditions prevailing in 1250. If the term “modern esotericism” be not misused, it may be applied to the spiritual work of those very highly evolved personalities. External history knows nothing of them, but what they did is apparent in every form of civilization which has developed since the thirteenth century.

[ 30 ] The importance of the year 1250 for the spiritual evolution of humanity is specially apparent if we look at the result of clairvoyant research given in the following fact: Even those individualities who had attained high stages of spiritual development in previous incarnations, and who were re-incarnated about 1250, were compelled for a while to undergo a complete clouding over of their direct view of the spiritual world. Quite enlightened individuals were as though cut off from the spiritual world, and their only knowledge of it was through their remembrance of earlier incarnations. Thus we see how necessary it was that from that time onwards a new element should be brought into the spiritual guidance of humanity. This element was true modern esotericism. By its means it is for the first time possible rightly to understand how that which we call the “Christ-impulse” may intervene to guide in all eventualities, not alone the individual, but the whole of mankind.

[ 31 ] Between the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha and the beginnings of modern esotericism, lies the first period of the working of the Christ-principle in human souls. During that period, people received Christ to a certain degree unconsciously as far as their higher spirit-forces were concerned, and this caused them afterwards, when they were obliged to receive them consciously, to make all kinds of mistakes, and to lose themselves in a maze instead of understanding Christ. In primitive Christian times we may trace the adoption of the Christ-principle by the lower soul- forces. Then came a new period, in which mankind of today is still living. Indeed, in a certain respect, people are only now beginning to understand the Christ-principle with the higher faculties of their souls. In the further course of this work it will be shown that the decline of supersensible knowledge down to the thirteenth century, and on the other hand its slow revival since that time, coincide with the interposition of the Christ-impulse in human evolution.

[ 32 ] We may therefore take modern esotericism to mean the raising of the Christ-impulse to be the motive power in the guidance of souls desiring to work their way to a knowledge of higher worlds, in accordance with the evolutionary conditions of modern times.

[ 1 ] In accordance with what has been said in the preceding chapters, the spiritual guidance of the course of human evolution may be sought for amongst those beings who went through their stage of humanity during the previous embodiment of the Earth-planet, during the ancient Moon period. This guidance stood contrasted with another which checked, and yet in a certain sense furthered it, and which was carried out by those beings who had not completed their own evolution during the Moon-period. Reference is made in both these cases to those guiding beings immediately above man; to those who lead humanity forward, and to those who provoke resistance, thereby strengthening and confirming the forces arising through the progressive beings, by bestowing on them balance and individuality. In Christian Esotericism, these two classes of superhuman beings are called Angels (Angeloi). Above these beings in ascending order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the Archangels, the Archai, and so forth, who likewise take part in the guidance of humanity.

Within the ranks of these different beings there are all possible gradations in regard to perfection. At the beginning of the present Earth-evolution, some in the category of the Angels stand high, while others are less developed. The former have progressed far beyond the minimum of their Moon-development. Between these and those who had just reached this minimum when the Moon-evolution had come to an end, and the Earth-evolution had begun, are all possible gradations. Conformably with this gradation of rank, the beings in question entered during the Earth-period upon the leadership of human evolution. Thus the evolution of the Egyptian civilization was effected under the guidance of beings who had become more perfected on the Moon than those who were the leaders of the Graeco-Roman period, and these again were more perfect than those who have the leadership at the present time. In the Egyptian as also in the Greek Period, those who later on assumed the direction, were meanwhile developing, and making themselves ready to guide the civilization of later periods.

[ 2 ] Since the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, seven consecutive epochs of civilization have to be differentiated; the first is the ancient Indian epoch, and it is followed by the ancient Persian.¹ The third is the Egypto-Chaldæic, the fourth is the Graeco-Roman, and the fifth is our own, which, since about the twelfth century, has been gradually developing and in which we are still living. And since the separate periods overlap, we see already in our times those early events preparing which will lead over into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And a seventh epoch will succeed the sixth in due course. On closer observation we find the following evidence with regard to the guidance of mankind. It was during the third epoch of civilization, the Egypto-Chaldæic, that the Angels (or lower dhyanic beings according to Oriental mysticism) were to some extent independent leaders of humanity. They were not so during the ancient Persian civilization. For then they were subject to a higher direction in a much greater degree than in the Egyptian times, and had to regulate everything in conformity with the impulses of the hierarchies immediately above them. In this way everything was under the immediate guidance of the Angels, who themselves submitted to the rulership of the Archangels. And in the Indian epoch when post-Atlantean life had reached such a height in spiritual matters as has never been attained since—a natural height under the direction of great human teachers—the Archangels themselves were subject in a similar sense to the guidance of the Archai or Primal Powers. [ 3 ] Thus if we trace the evolution of humanity from the Indian epoch through the ancient Persian and Egypto-Chaldæic civilizations, we may say that certain beings of the higher hierarchies withdrew ever more and more from the direct guidance of humanity. In the fourth post-Atlantean period, the Graeco-Roman, man bad become quite independent. The guiding superhuman beings were certainly intervening to develop humanity, but only in such a way that the reins were tightened as little as possible, and also that the spiritual leaders themselves might profit as much through the deeds of men as men profited through them. Hence arose that peculiar and quite “human” civilization in the Graeco-Roman time in which man was made to rely entirely on himself. For all the distinctive characteristics of art and political life in Greek and Roman times are traceable to the fact that man had to live out his own life in his own way.

[ 4 ] So, when we look back to the most ancient times of civilization, we find evolution guided by beings who, in earlier planetary conditions, had accomplished their development as far as the human stage. But the fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization was intended as a time when man should be put to the test as much as possible. Consequently the whole spiritual guidance of humanity had to be reorganized. We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization. The leading beings of this period belong to the same hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldæans. In fact those beings who then took the lead, have again begun to be active in our times. As has been stated certain of these beings remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, and are to be found manifest in the materialistic feelings and perceptions of our own period.

[ 5 ] Now the progress made by the two classes of Angels or lower dhyanic beings—the class which leads mankind forward and that which obstructs—consisted in their being able to be leaders among the Egyptians and Chaldæans. They achieved this by means of those qualities which they had acquired in primordial times, and which they had further developed by their work as leaders. The progressive angels are intervening to guide the fifth post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities which they themselves had won during the third or Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. Through the progress they make they are acquiring for themselves quite special capabilities, for they are qualifying themselves to receive the influx of forces emanating from the most important Being in the whole evolution of the Earth.The power of the Christ is working in them; for that power works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth, but also in the spiritual worlds upon the super-human beings. The Christ exists not only for the earth but also for these beings. The beings who guided the old Egypto-Chaldæic civilization were not under the direction of the Christ. It is only since that period that they have placed themselves under His guidance. Their progress consists in their following Him in the higher worlds, so that they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of civilization in accordance with His influence. Those beings who operate as obstructive powers remain behind because they failed to put themselves under the leadership of the Christ. Thus they continue to work independently of Him. More and more in human evolution will become evident a materialistic movement under the guidance of these backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits. This movement will have a materialistic character and the greater part of contemporary science is under its influence. There are, for example, people today who say that our earth in its final essence consists of atoms. Who instills this thought into men's minds? It is the super-human angel beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. But, side by side with this movement, there is another making itself felt, the one which has as its goal the eventual finding of the Christ-principle by man in all that he does.

[ 6 ] Now what will those beings teach who attained their goal in the old Egypto-Chaldæic sphere of civilization, and who then learned to know the Christ? They will be able to instill into man other thoughts than those that assert that there are only material atoms; they will be able to teach that, even to the minutest particle of the world, the substance is permeated with the Spirit of the Christ. And, strange as it may seem, there will be in the future chemists and physicists who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are now taught under the influence of the backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits; but who will teach that ‘matter is built up in the way in which the Christ gradually ordained it,’ The Christ will be found working even in the very laws of chemistry and physics. It is a spiritual chemistry and spiritual physics that will come in the future. Today such a statement may appear to many people as fanciful or worse. But often the sense of the future seems folly to the past. [ 7 ] The factors which enter into the evolution of human civilization are there for the careful observer. But be will know quite well the objections which may, with apparent justice, be urged against such alleged folly from the modern scientific or philosophic point of view.

[ 8 ] From such hypotheses we are able to understand the advantage the guiding super-human beings have over man. Humanity learned to know Christ in the fourth civilization period of the post-Atlantean times, the. Graeco-Roman epoch, for it was in the course of this civilization that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, and it was then that man learned to know the Christ. The guiding super-human beings, however, learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldæic times, and worked themselves up to Him. Then during the Graeco-Roman civilization they had to leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, they might re-enter the sphere of human evolution. And if nowadays anthroposophy is cultivated, this constitutes recognition of the fact that the super-human beings who formerly guided humanity are now continuing their task as leaders in such a way as to be themselves under the direct guidance of the Christ. Thus it is with other beings also.

[ 9 ] In the ancient Persian epoch, the leadership of humanity was apportioned to the Archangels. They put themselves under the direction of the Christ earlier than did the beings in the rank next below them. Of Zarathustra it can be said that pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and his people in some such words as these: “In the sun there lives the great Spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will one day come down to the earth.” For the beings out of the region of the Archangels who guided Zarathustra, pointed to the great sun-leader who had not at that time come down upon the earth but had only begun his journey thither in order, later on, to enter directly into the earth evolution. And the guiding beings who directed the great teachers of the Indians, also pointed out to these the Christ of the future; for it is a mistake to think that these teachers had no foreknowledge of the Christ. They said that He was “beyond their sphere” and that they “could not attain” unto Him.

[ 10 ] As now in our fifth period of civilization, it is the Angels who bring down the Christ into our spiritual evolution, so the sixth period of civilization will be directed by beings belonging to the ranks of the Archangels who guided the ancient Persian civilization. And the spirits of Personality—the Primal Powers—or Archai—who guided humanity during the ancient Indian epoch will have to guide humanity in the seventh period of civilization. In the Graeco-Roman period the Christ descended from the heights of the spirit-world and revealed Himself in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physical world. It will be possible to find Him in the world immediately above ours when humanity shall have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be possible in the future to find Him in the physical world, but only in the world immediately above, for human beings will not always remain the same. Having become more mature, they will then find the Christ in the spiritual world, as Paul found Him in his experience before Damascus, which event prophetically foreshadowed the future means of finding the Christ. And since in our times the same great teachers who have already guided mankind through the Egyptian civilization are working, so also in the twentieth century it will be these same teachers who will lead men out to behold the Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show mankind how the Christ not only works upon the earth, but how He spiritualizes the whole solar system. And those who will be the reincarnated holy teachers of India in the seventh period of civilization will proclaim the Spirit Who was foreshadowed by the undivided Brahma. To such teaching, however, the right content and meaning can only be given through the Christ, as the great, the immense Spirit, of Whom these teachers formerly said He hovered above their sphere. Thus will humanity be led upwards from stage to stage into the spiritual world.

[ 11 ] To speak in this way about the Christ—how He is the leader of the higher hierarchies also in the successive worlds, is to teach the science which, under the sign of the Rose Cross, has endured in our civilization since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. If from this aspect we observe more closely the Being Who lived in Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery of Golgotha, we shall find the following: [ 12 ] up to the present time many ideas concerning the Christ have found expression. There was for instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics in the first centuries who said that the Christ Who lived in Palestine was not present in any physical body of flesh at all; that He had only an apparent body—an etheric body which had become physically visible; so that His death on the Cross had been no real death but only an apparent one. Then we find diverse disputes among those who professed Christianity, as for example, the well-known controversy between the Arians and Athanasians, and the most varied explanations concerning what the Christ really was. Indeed, right up to our own times people express and have expressed the most different ideas concerning the Christ.

[ 13 ] Now spiritual science must recognize in Christ not merely an earthly but also a cosmic Being. In a certain sense man is, taken as a whole, a cosmic being. He lives a twofold life—one in a physical body from birth to death, another in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth. When he is incarnated in a physical body, he is living in dependence on the earth, because the physical body is restricted by the forces and conditions of existence belonging to the earth. The human being, however, does not only take the substances and forces of the earth into himself, but is joined to the whole of the earth's organism. When he has passed through the gate of death, he no longer belongs to the forces of the earth; but it would be incorrect to imagine that he belongs to no forces at all, for he is then connected with the forces of the solar system and the more distant star-systems. In this way, between death and a new birth, he lives in the domain of the cosmic, just as in the period between birth and death he lived in the domain of the earthly. From death to a new birth he belongs to the cosmos, as on the earth he belongs to the elements—Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, while he is passing through a life between death and a new birth, he comes into the region of cosmic influences. For the planets send forth not merely the physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as gravitation and others, but also spiritual forces. With these spiritual powers of the cosmos man is connected, each person in a special manner according to his own individuality. If he is born in Europe, he lives in a different relation to warmth conditions, and so forth, than if he had been born, let us say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life between death and a new birth, one person may stand more closely related to the spiritual powers of Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to those of the whole planetary system in general, and so on. It is also these forces which bring man back again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is living in connection with the collective whole of stellar space.

[ 14 ] According to the way in which a man stands individually related to the cosmic system, so are the forces directed which lead him to this or that set of parents and to this or that locality. The impetus, the inclination to incarnate here or there, in this or that family, in this or that people, at this or that time, depends on how the person was organically connected with the cosmos before birth. [ 15 ] In former times, in that territory where the German tongue was spoken, a specially apt expression was used to indicate a person's entrance into the world through birth. When a person was born, people said that in such and such a place he had “become young” (junggeworden). Therein lies an unconscious reference to the fact that man in the time between death and a new birth continues at first to be subject to the powers which had made him old in a previous incarnation, but that before birth there come iii their place such forces as again make him “young.” Thus Goethe in “Faust” still uses the expression “to become young in Nebelland.”—Nebelland being the old name for mediaeval Germany.

[ 16 ] The truth underlying the casting of a horoscope is that those who know these things can read the forces which determine a person's physical existence. A certain horoscope is allotted to a person because, within it, those forces find expression which have led him into being. If for example in the horoscope Mars stands over Aries (the Ram), this signifies that certain of the Aries forces are not allowed to pass through Mars, and are weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within physical existence, and it is in accordance with his horoscope that he guides himself before entering upon earthly existence. This subject, which in our times seems so much a thing of chance, should not be touched upon without our attention being called to the fact that nearly everything practised in this connection today is simply dilettantism. It is pure superstition, and for the external world the true science of these matters has been for the most part completely lost. Consequently, the principles expressed here are not to be judged according to that which nowadays frequently leads a questionable existence under the name Astrology.

[ 17 ] Now it is the active forces of the stellar world that impel a man into physical incarnation; and when clairvoyant consciousness observes a person, it can perceive in his organization how this has resulted from the cooperation of cosmic forces. We may now attempt to illustrate this hypothetically, but in a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant observation. [ 18 ] If a person's physical brain were extracted and its construction clairvoyantly examined, so that it might be seen how certain parts are situated in certain places and how they send out appendages, it would be found that each individual's brain is different from that of every other. No two people have brains alike. Let us imagine further that such a brain could be photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind of half sphere in which every detail was visible. In a series of such pictures each would be different according to the brains of the different individuals. And if one were to photograph a person's brain at the moment of birth and then photograph also the heavens lying exactly over the person's birthplace, this latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the human brain. As certain centers were arranged in the latter, so would the stars be in the photograph of the heavens. Man has within himself a picture of the heavens, and every man has a different one, according to whether he was born in this place or that, and at this or that time. This is one indication that man is born from out of the whole cosmos.

[ 19 ] When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to the idea of how the macrocosm manifests itself in each separate individual, and then, starting from this point, we can attain a conception of how it showed itself in the Christ. But if we were to imagine the Christ after the Baptism of John as though the macrocosm had then been living in Him in the same way as in other people, we should be mistaken.

[ 20 ] Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth. His conditions of existence were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era two boys were born and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of David,¹ the other through the Solomon line of the same house.² These two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In the Jesus descended from Solomon, described in the Gospel of St. Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there appears the re-incarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St. Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter Child became suddenly quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child, after having been lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not recognize Him. They only knew Him, the Child descended from Nathan, as He had been up to this time. But when He began to reason with the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a still higher perfection. The following remark must here be added: as regards this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra now lived, an extraordinary feature was that into his astral body the Buddha rayed forth his impulses from the spiritual worlds.

[ 21 ] The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as a “Bodhisattva” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. [ 22 ] When the Gautama Buddha was a little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that this King's son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place. Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master,” What he had not been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke's Gospel: the Bodhisattva become Buddha.

[ 23 ] All this was necessary in order that that body might be produced which received the baptism of St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the physical, the etheric and the astral body of that Jesus Who had grown up in so complicated a manner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be able to dwell in Him. The reincarnated Zarathustra had to pass through two possibilities of development which were given in the two Jesus children. Thus there stood before the Baptist the body of Jesus of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards there acted the cosmic individuality of the Christ. Now, as we have shown, in the case of any other human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon him only in so far as they give him a start in earth-life. Afterwards there appear in opposition to these laws, others which arise out of the conditions of the earth-evolution. In the case of the Christ-Jesus, after the baptism of John the cosmic-spiritual forces alone remained effective without being influenced in any way through the laws of the earth evolution.

[ 24 ] Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of Nazareth walked on earth as Christ-Jesus—during the three last years of his life, from his thirtieth to his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and was working into Him. The Christ stood always under the influence of the entire cosmos—He made no step without this working of the cosmic forces into and in Him. That which here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred that which otherwise happens only at a person's birth. This could be so only because the whole body of Jesus descended from Nathan had remained open to the influence of the sum total of the forces of the cosmic spiritual hierarchies which direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the cosmos worked into the Christ Jesus, who was it that went, for example, to Capernaum? He who went about as a being upon the earth appeared quite like any other man. The forces active within Him, however, were the cosmic forces, coming from the sun and stars; and these directed His Body. And it was always in accordance with the collective Being of the whole Universe with whom the earth is in harmony, that all which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is because of this that in the case of the acts of the Christ-Jesus there is so often some slight hint given in the Gospels about the relative grouping of the stars at the time. We read in St. John's Gospel how the Christ finds His first disciples. There we are told: “It was about the tenth hour,” because in this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos found expression in conformity with the appointed moment of time. Such intimations are less clear in the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly read the Gospels finds them everywhere. [ 25 ] From this point of view also the miracles are to be judged. Let us take one passage—the one that runs thus: “When the sun was set, they brought the sick unto Him, and He healed them.” What does that mean? The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that this healing was connected with the whole position of the constellations and that, at the time in question, the constellations throughout the heavens stood as they only could have when the sun had set The meaning is that, at the time, the requisite healing forces could make themselves felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is represented as the intermediary Who brought the sick into connection with the forces of the cosmos which, just at that time, could work curatively. These forces were the same as those which worked as Christ in Jesus. It was through the presence of Christ that the healing took place. Only thus could the sick person be exposed to the healing forces of the cosmos which could only work as they did when they were in the right relationship to time and space. Thus these forces worked on the sick person through their representative, the Christ. [ 26 ] But it was only just during the time of Christ on earth that they could so work. It was only then that such a connection existed between the cosmic constellations and the powers of the human organism that for certain illnesses, healing could intervene when through the instrumentality of the Christ Jesus the cosmic grouping of the same forces was able to work on men. A repetition of this relationship in the evolution of the cosmos and the earth is as little possible as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human body. Regarded in this way, the life of the Christ Jesus appears as the earthly expression of a definite connection between the cosmos and the forces of man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of Christ means that through the proximity of Christ this sick person found himself in such a relation with the macrocosm that the latter could work upon him curatively.

[ 27 ] Herewith the points of view have been stressed which enable us to discern how the guidance of humanity has come under the influence of the Christ. The other forces, however, which had remained behind in the Egypto-Chaldæic times worked on side by side with those that are permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in the attitude frequently adopted today towards the Gospels. Literary works appear in which great pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be understood through an astrological interpretation. The greatest opponents of the Gospels employ this astrological interpretation to prove, for example, that the way taken by the Archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary signifies merely the progress of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to another. This, in a certain sense, is correct, except that these thoughts were poured in this manner into our age by the beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic period. Under such an influence people are induced to a make-belief that the Gospels present only allegories in the place of definite cosmic relations. The truth really is that in the Christ the whole cosmos finds expression. Therefore one can express the life of the Christ by connecting its separate events with the cosmic relations which work into earth existence unceasingly through the Christ. A right understanding of this matter will thus lead to a full recognition of the Christ as having lived on earth. Whereas if the interpretation were true that the Christ life as expressed in the Gospels is only a matter of constellations being treated allegorically, then we should have to conclude that there was no real earthly Christ at all.

[ 28 ] If a comparison were to be used, we might think of each human being as represented by a spherical mirror—which, if it were set up, would give pictures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we were to trace with a pencil the outline of all that is shown from the surroundings. We could then take the mirror and carry the picture about with us wherever we went. Let this be a symbol for the fact that when a person is born, he brings with him a copy of the cosmos in himself, and afterwards carries about with him all through his life the effect of this one picture. The mirror might, however, be left untouched by the pencil, so that wherever the person carried it, it would depict the immediate surroundings. It then would always be giving a picture of the collective environment. This would be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism of St. John up to the Mystery of Golgotha. That which, in the case of any other person, passes into his earthly existence only at birth, flowed into the Christ-Jesus at every moment. And when the Mystery of Golgotha was consummated, that which had been radiating from the cosmos passed over into the spiritual substance of the earth, and has from that time forward been united with the spirit of the earth.

[ 29 ] When St. Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, he could recognize that That Which had formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into the spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be convinced who can bring his soul into such a condition that he can have the same experience as had St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those people will first appear who will have St. Paul's experience of the Christ event in a spiritual way.

[ 30 ] Whereas up to our times this event could be experienced only by such persons as had gained clairvoyant powers by means of an esoteric training; hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual sphere surrounding the earth will be possible for the advanced powers of the soul in the course of the natural evolution of humanity. This—as a repetition of the experience of the event before Damascus—will be possible for some people from a certain point of time in the twentieth century. The number of such people will afterwards increase, until in the distant future, it will be a natural faculty of the human soul.

[ 31 ] With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of the earth an entirely new impulse or direction was given to this evolution. External facts of history also express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean evolution men knew very well that above them there was not merely a physical Mars, but that what they saw as Mars, Jupiter, or Saturn was the expression of a spiritual being. In later times this perception was completely forgotten. The heavenly bodies became, according to human ideas, mere bodies to be estimated according to their physical condition. In the Middle Ages people saw in connection with the stars what only the eyes can see—the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, the sphere of Mars and the other planets, up to the sphere of the fixed stars. Then came the eighth sphere like a solid blue wall behind. Later Copernicus appeared and broke down the idea that only that which is perceptible to the senses can be authoritative. The modern physical scientists may indeed say: “It is madness to declare that the world is Maya, or illusion, and that you must look into a spiritual world in order to see the truth, for in spite of all you say true science is that which relies on the senses and records what these senses tell.” But when did astronomers rely only on the senses? Surely at the very time when that astronomical science was dominant which is attacked by the science of today! It was at that time when Copernicus began to think out what exists in the cosmic space beyond the evidence of the senses, that our modern astronomy as a science began. And so it is in every domain of science. Wherever science, in the most modern sense of the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition to what had been apparent to the senses. When Copernicus declared “what you see is Maya or deception; rely on what you cannot see”—that was the moment when the science came into being which is recognized as such today. It might thus be said to the representative of modern science “your science itself only became ‘science’ when it was no longer willing to depend upon the senses only.”

[ 32 ] Giordano Bruno came as philosophical interpreter of the teachings of Copernicus. He led the gaze of man out into cosmic space, and announced that what people had called the limitations of space, what they had placed there as the eighth sphere limiting everything in space—was in reality no limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an infinite number of worlds had been poured forth into cosmic space. That which was formerly considered to be the boundary of space was shown to be only the boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we direct our gaze beyond the sense-world, we shall no longer see the world only as known to the senses, but we shall also recognize Infinity.

[ 33 ] From this it is apparent that in the course of human evolution man originally started from a spiritual view of the cosmos and in time lost it. In its place there came a mere sense-perception of the world. Then there came into evolution the Christ Impulse. Through this, mankind was led to stamp the spiritual view once more upon the materialistic. At that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the fetters of sense illusion, the Christ evolution was so far advanced that the soul power which bad been kindled by the Christ Impulse could then become active within him. An indication is thus given of the whole significance of the manner in which the life of Christ penetrates all human evolution, at the mere beginning of which humanity stands today.

[ 34 ] To what then does spiritual science now aspire? [ 35 ] It completes the work begun for external science by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says: that which external science is able to perceive is Maya, or illusion. Just as formerly one looked to the “eighth sphere” and thought that space was thereby bounded, so contemporary human thought believes that man is shut in or enclosed between birth and death. Spiritual science, however, expands man's vision by directing his attention out and beyond the limits of birth and death.

[ 36 ] There is a continuous chain in human evolution which such ideas as these make us recognize. And in the true sense of the words, that which resulted in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus and Giordano Bruno proceeded from the inspiration arising from that spiritual current now working in the modern spiritual science of anthroposophy. What one might call the newer esotericism worked in a mysterious manner on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those therefore who now base their thought on foundations laid by Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not wish to accept anthroposophy, are unfaithful to their own traditions in desiring to hold fast to sense illusion. As Giordano Bruno forced a way through the blue firmament of heaven, even so does spiritual science break down the barriers of birth and death for man by showing how he originates from out of the macrocosm, lives in a physical existence, passes through death, and reenters macrocosmic life. And what we see in a limited degree in each individual meets us unrestrictedly and in a larger sense in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos—in the Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that impulse be given which the Christ gave. Once only could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the conjunction of the stars which then took place can never be repeated. In order to give an impulse to the earth, this conjunction was obliged to work through a human body. As it is true that this same grouping cannot occur a second time, so it is equally true that the Christ was only once incarnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ is the representative of the whole universe and only if it were impossible to win one's way to this Christ-Idea, the elements for which are given through spiritual science—only then would it be possible to maintain that Christ could appear more than once upon the earth.

[ 37 ] Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of the new spiritual science, which reveals to man in a new form his connection with the whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a true knowledge of the Christ, those inspiring forces are absolutely necessary which are now being bestowed by the same super-human beings who formerly guided the Egypto-Chaldæic epoch and who have now put themselves under the Christ. There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of an inspiration which the great esoteric teachers of the middle ages had prepared from the thirteenth century onwards, and which from this time forth must ever come more and more into publicity. When man, according to the meaning of this science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge of the spirit-world, he can then hear clairaudiently and he can see clairvoyantly what is revealed by the old Chaldæic and Egyptian angel beings who are now again acting as spiritual leaders under the guidance of the Christ. That which humanity will some time later actually gain thereby, could only be prepared in the first centuries of Christianity and up to our times.

Consequently we may say that in the future there will live in the hearts of men an idea of the Christ incomparable in greatness with anything which humanity has so far recognized. That which arose as a first impulse through the Christ, and has lived as an idea of Him up to the present time—even in the case of the best representatives of the Christ-principle—is only a preparation for the true understanding of the Christ. It would be strange indeed if, against those who in the West gave expression in such a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were brought as a reproach that they do not stand on the foundation of western Christian tradition. But it is quite possible, for this western tradition does not by any means suffice to help us to comprehend the Christ of the near future.

[ 38 ] From the hypothesis of western esotericism we can see the spiritual direction of humanity gradually flowing into what may be in a real, true sense called the guidance which comes from the Christ-impulse. That which is appearing as the new esotericism will flow slowly into the hearts of men, and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity will ever more and more be consciously seen in such a light. We realize within ourselves how at first the Christ-principle flowed into the hearts of men because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth. Because men by that time were gradually surrendering themselves to reliance on the world of sense, they could receive the impulse which corresponded to their perception. Afterwards that same impulse so worked through the inspiration of the new esotericism that such spirits as Nicholas of Cusa, Copernicus, and Galileo were inspired, and Copernicus, for instance, was enabled to make this assertion: “That which is evident to the senses cannot teach the truth about solar systems; if we want to find the truth we must investigate behind sense appearances” At that time men, even spirits like Giordano Bruno, were not yet ripe enough to join consciously to the new esoteric stream. The spirit of the movement had to work in them unconsciously. Yet powerful and magnificent was the announcement of Giordano Bruno: “When a human being enters into existence by means of birth, then it is something macrocosmic that concentrates itself as a monad; and when a human being passes through death the monad spreads itself out again; that which was enclosed within the body spreads itself out in the cosmos in order to draw itself together again in other stages of existence, and again to spread itself out.” There Bruno gave expression to mighty conceptions which, even if expressed in stammering tongue, were in entire accord with the sense of the new esotericism.

[ 39 ] The spiritual influences which lead humanity need not work in such a way that man is always conscious of them. For example, they put Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the old church lamp there, but they had not seen it as did Galileo. He saw the church lamp swinging; compared the time of its oscillation with the beat of his own pulse; found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm resembling his pulse-beat; and from this discovered the laws of the pendulum in the sense of modern physics. Anyone acquainted with contemporary physics knows that this science would not be possible without Galileo's principle. In this way the force was then working which is now appearing as spiritual science; Galileo was placed in the cathedral of Pisa before the oscillating church lamp, and modern physics gained its principles. In such a mysterious way do the guiding spiritual forces of humanity perform their work.

[ 40 ] We are now approaching the time when people are to become conscious of these guiding powers. We shall always come to a better and better understanding of what has to happen in the future if we rightly understand what is working inspirationally as the new esotericism. We must recognize that those same spiritual beings indicated as their gods by the ancient Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, are now again assuming control through having placed themselves under the leadership of the Christ Ever more and more will men feel how they can cause to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style and on a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. The consciousness necessary for the present time, which must be an intensified consciousness, ought to give us a feeling of our high duty and great responsibility in reference to the recognition of the spiritual world. This can only penetrate our souls when we have recognized, in the sense indicated, the task of spiritual science.

• 1. By “ancient Persian” is not meant “Persian” in the usual historic sense, but a pre-historic Asiatic (Iranian) civilization which developed in that land over which, later on, the Persian Kingdom extended.
• 1. Luke III, 23–38.
• 2. Matthew 1, 1–17. See also Appendix.