The Rudolf Steiner Archive

I have tried to reconcile the theosophical view of rounds and races, as stated in the “Ancient Wisdom”, with the Bible, and have suggested that the Genesis, the presentation of the Mosaic creation document, is to be taken in a truly literal sense, and that one then fully obtains the theosophical view. It should be noted that the true, great religious documents receive their original and real meaning through Theosophy.

To give an idea of what the Mosaic creation document means, I would like to repeat again: we have to distinguish seven rounds and in each round seven races. In the first round we have the archetypes of the mineral kingdom, in the second round the archetypes of the plant kingdom, in the third round the archetypes of the animal kingdom, in the fourth round the archetypes of man. When our present fourth round is over, the archetypes of man will have been formed. We have not even reached the archetypes yet. When our round is over, we will have expressed the human archetypes. The mineral kingdom will have already reached its completion in the round. It will dissolve again, regress. In the next round, the fifth, the plant kingdom will find its completion, in the sixth the animal kingdom, and in the seventh round the human kingdom.

In the seventh round, humanity will be the complete image of the deity in earthly development. What the deity was at the beginning, humanity will be at the end of the seventh round. The deity will have completed its task and will then rest. Nirvana will have been achieved. It will be able to hand over its task to the Masters and to the Master Lodges, to the Brotherhoods, which will then have developed into the complete image. This is described to us in the Biblical record.

The seven days of Creation signify in the esoteric sense seven rounds, so that the first chapter is to be understood in the following way.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth, and the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters. And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: Then God divided the light from the darkness and called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day. [Genesis 1:1-5]

I ask you to visualize exactly what I have described as the first round was. It was initially a reddish, brightly glowing sphere that then went through various stages of development to become a violet sphere, then disappeared into the pralaya, only to emerge again as a red sphere. The first day is thus complete. During this round, the archetypes of the mineral kingdom were formed.

Now the second round begins.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

God said, “Let there be a vault between the waters to separate water from water.” Before the mineral kingdom came into being, there could be no firmament. The waters represent spiritual substances. These did not separate from each other until the archetypes of the mineral kingdom had been formed, so that chunks now appeared in them. Then God made the vault and separated the water under the vault from the water above it. God called them heaven and earth. Only the mineral kingdom was pushed into the earthly, the other was still heavenly.

And God said: Let the waters under the heavens be gathered together into separate places, so that the dry land may be seen. And God called the dry land Earth, and the gathering of the waters he called the Sea. And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let the earth bring forth grass, and herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit whose seed is in itself, and upon the earth:” And it was so. The earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind, and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, “Let there be lights in the expanse of the heavens to separate the day from the night, and let them serve as signs to mark seasons and days and years, and let them be lights in the expanse of the heavens to give light on the earth. And it was so. God made two great lights—the greater light to govern the day and the lesser light to govern the night. He also made the stars. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven, to give light on the earth: and they did so. And God saw the light, that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

Here it is emphasized that the completion of the mineral kingdom comes on the fourth day. In the fifth round, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. That is yet to come. Now the mineral kingdom will reach its completion. In the fifth round, the plant kingdom will reach its completion. This is expressed by saying: the plant idea will reach its completion. Everything that is now connected with the peculiar life that is in the mineral kingdom will be fully expressed in the fifth round. In the fifth round the mineral kingdom will gradually dissolve, and man will have a completely different relationship to the environment. The plant idea will have been realized. The relationship to the mineral kingdom will no longer be there, so that instead of being surrounded by a world of minerals, in the fifth round we will be surrounded by a world of plants. Everything that man leaves behind today will then be a plant product. There will be no more minerals; then human beings will live in the plant nature as they now live in the mineral nature. Man will be master over the plant kingdom; he will have dominion over the plant kingdom. This is how Genesis expresses it:

And God said, “Let the waters swarm with swarms of living creatures, and let birds fly above the earth in all directions under the open heavens.” So God created the great whales and every living creature that moves with which the water swarms, according to their kinds, and every winged bird according to its kind. And God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the water in the seas, and the birds shall multiply on the earth. And there was evening, and there was morning – the fifth day.

In the sixth round, we are dealing with the complete dissolution of the plant kingdom. A high, living animal thought has been realized, so that a difference between living and non-living will no longer exist. One will only live among the living. There will be no element at all as a medium; there will only be animal-like living entities. In the sixth round, everything related to sexual reproduction has long since disappeared; in the sixth round, we are only dealing with living things. Reincarnation ceases in the middle of the fifth round.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth.

And God saw that it was good. And God said, “Let us make man in our image, in the image of ourselves; let them be masters of the fish of the sea, the birds of the air, the cattle, and all the earth and all the creatures that creep on the earth.” So God created man in his image, in the image of God he created him; male and female he created them. God blessed them and said to them: Be fruitful and multiply, and fill the earth and subdue it; and have dominion over the fish of the sea, over the birds of the air, and over every living thing that moves upon the earth. God said: See, I have given you every plant yielding seed that is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree with seed in its fruit. These shall be for food for you and for all the beasts of the earth, for all the birds of the air and for all the creatures that move along the ground; I have given you every green plant for food. And it was so. God saw all that He had made, and behold, it was very good. And there was evening, and there was morning—the sixth day. [Genesis 1:24-31]

Everything culminated in animal existence. After the fourth round, the mineral; after the fifth round, the plant; after the sixth round, the animal. In the seventh round, everything had passed into the human. God created man as man and woman, no longer bisexual, but unisexual, and so God rested on the seventh day.

That is the story of the seven rounds. The first three days are over, the fourth day is the present round, and the last three are yet to come. The second chapter presents the story of the fourth round as such. Specifically, the fourth round shows how heaven and earth came into being, that they were created by God, who made heaven and earth and so on. Man was not yet there when the plant was made.

Then came the description of the fourth round. We had the red ball first, which then turns orange, yellow, and turns into a fog. Now the fog turns into the physical. God breathed a living soul into man after he had made him out of the clod of earth - the first two races. And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, and put the man he had made there. This is the man who is still asexual. We are still very much in the first two races.

Previously, the plant and animal kingdoms were not so strictly separated. Man had a continuation that merged into the plant world. Then the plant world separated and then the animal kingdom. Even during our fourth round, there was a time - at the very beginning, when the first animals had split off - when humans were still connected to the center of the earth, similar to certain aquatic plants that hang from a long stem. Originally, men were plants, in the days when they had not yet descended into animality. They were still more plant-men, men who had not yet set the plant kingdom free from themselves.

Such a man was called Adam Kadmon. The man who still contains the plant and animal kingdoms within himself, and only later expels them, is Adam Kadmon. Then, in a new verse, on the one hand we have the Tree of Life and on the other hand an increase of consciousness, the Tree of Knowledge.

The Lord God formed man - Adam - out of dust from the earth and breathed the breath of life into his nostrils. So man was a living soul.

And the Lord God planted a garden in Eden, in the east; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground the Lord God caused to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight and good for food, with the tree of life in the middle of the garden, and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from there it was divided into four heads. [...] And the Lord God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to tend and keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, “You may eat from every tree of the garden; but you shall not eat from the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, for in the day that you eat from it you shall surely die.” [Genesis 2:7-17]

Verse 16: Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

Now the incarnation begins. The incarnation begins at the moment when Kama-Manas enters. That was in the middle of the third race, and it ends in the middle of the fourth race of the fifth round. Then the text also describes the individual races. But it describes the fourth race in particular.

Among the original Turanians, a kind of betrayal of the deeper secrets occurred. The priests allowed themselves to teach people what were priestly secrets. The soul of man is expressed as the feminine. The incarnated will is the masculine. The soul, the feminine. The initiated priests have now united with the human soul and handed over the secrets to it. This was in the fourth race of the Atlanteans. This betrayal is described in the sixth chapter of Genesis.

But when men began to multiply, the sons of God saw the daughters of men that they were fair; and they took them wives of all which were fair [Genesis 6:1-2]...

... for they are flesh. Now God decides on the downfall, the flood, the downfall of Atlantis. That Noah took a pair of each animal into the ark is based on a real event. It shows how theosophy is becoming infinitely relevant to our culture. Not so long ago, Darwinism and the history of creation were still at a different point of view than they are today. In recent years, science has undergone important transformations. It was thought that animals develop through the struggle for existence and through selection; the imperfect perish, the perfect remain. Naturalists are already talking about the powerlessness of the struggle for existence. De Vries, the Dutch naturalist, has shown that the so-called mutation plays the greatest role in the descent of living beings. It has been found that living beings, when placed in different living conditions, quickly develop into completely different forms. You have to put them in completely different living conditions, that is the only real method of producing new species. It is mutation that causes new breeds to emerge. This does not happen gradually, but in leaps. The tomato, for example, emerged rapidly from a plant that did not have the red fruit. It originated in one place and then spread throughout the earth. All other forms of reproduction and development are secondary to mutation.

Now, science wonders: how could mutation once play such a major role? The Atlanteans knew the secrets of the germination power of seeds well enough to accumulate it, even to use it as a driving force. But they also understood how to cross the seeds of animals and bring forth new forms. What lives on Earth now has come about through conscious methods of crossbreeding, through actual cultivation, so that humans have actually created the animal species. From the few animal species, the Atlanteans created the entire living animal world. It is rooted in human nature that he who possesses greatness is inclined to abuse it.

A few specimens were selected from the animals and taken to the Gobi Desert - an ark. The rest perished. This is the basis of the story of the flood. The aberration of the Atlanteans, the segregation of the animals that arose from the mistakes of the Atlanteans, and the rescue of the same with the pure priests in the Gobi Desert. We must now ask: Who bred the races? Theosophy answers: the Atlanteans. But time is also pressing. The wheat, for example, came directly from a world body, from Venus. So we have to make a connection here between science and theosophy. [...]

After man had enjoyed knowledge, he had to die, he could no longer live, he could not at the same time also enjoy the side of life.

In connection with the ancient occult sentence, I would like to show how the entire doctrine of the round is still connected in a very specific way with the thoughts we expressed last time. First of all, I would like to emphasize the following: Every great religious teacher, even if he is not a religious teacher but has only participated in the work of humanity, starts from the guiding principles. And one of the guiding principles is: the human being corresponds to the processes in the great world, the macrocosm.

Now I ask you to consider that when we look at the development within the rounds, when we look at the seven rounds, we have a kind of descending development during the first three rounds, because the whole earth and also the human being move away from the deity, as it were. Man was close to the deity in the beginning, in a childlike, innocent state. During earthly development, he gains experience and reaches his lowest point during the fourth round, in order to ascend again in the following three rounds, in the fifth, sixth, and seventh round. The question is always asked whether there is a purpose to moving away from the deity and then approaching it again. I would like to talk about this in a later lecture, if there is a purpose.

Let us consider the first stage, then all the middle stages and then the last stages of the gap in the transcript]). During the first three stages, man is formed from the outside, so to speak. Man is built up in such a way that by the fourth round he is ready to have his entire physical body built. This physical body is built around the self. The self is inside, and the physical body is around it. It took the first three and a half of the fourth round to build the body around the self. Think about what man was before. He was a purely active being before. He was a being that was not designed to receive impressions from the outside, but a being that was completely dependent on itself, however strange that may sound. When man, in the course of his earthly development, wanted an object, he made it himself. He was active. This is still the case today at the higher levels of existence. Today, initiation happens in such a way that the person concerned first learns to form the so-called “Mayavi-Rupa body”. This is not a body that is formed around us, but when the self escapes from the body, it must be able to form the mayavi-rupa body. You have to be able to form it yourself, while the other body is formed around us, whereby we remain passive. This passivity comes into consideration for the human being when the body is not formed by us. This is what everyone first has to do in the descent. He did not do this himself, but they were formed for him.

The student must learn to do what has been done to him himself. We form the mayavi-rupa body ourselves. We put it around us. The student first learns to form this body. In the second half, the self works its way out again and gradually learns to form this body. The substance of the devachan provides the substance for the mayavi-rupa body. When a person sleeps, the self leaves the body. But the mayavi-rupa body is not formed. The substance is there. It is called the mental body when it occurs in the devachan. In the case where it is thoroughly organized, it is called the mayavi-rupa body.

The situation is as follows: we have built up the three bodies during the first three stages and during half of the fourth stage. Then the self feels trapped in these bodies. It is passive, but becomes more and more active. If you want to prepare yourself for this point of activity in a dignified way, you have to recognize that you are now passive and that you have to become more and more active.

Being trapped in your body means being passive. This is the meaning of the Buddhist teachings. For Buddha, suffering does not mean feeling pain, but being passive. Being born and dying is being passive. You can only be sick in the body. The mind cannot be sick. The astral body and the Mayavi-Rupa body can still be sick. Being separated from what is loved, being united with what is unloved, is being passive. You can only desire what you cannot attain if you are in the body.

So you can see that Buddhism is not a religion that understands suffering in its deepest sense, but rather that suffering is a vehicle. It does not recognize pain or suffering as the essence of the world. There is a prohibition in Buddhism that shows how far Buddhism is from regarding suffering and life as suffering. One commandment says: If a monk murders or incites murder, or if he publicly preaches that dying is better than living, he is unworthy to be a Buddhist monk. A murderer, or one who incites murder, who preaches that suffering is not worth living, is not worthy of being a Buddhist monk. Strive to be active, says Buddha. Buddha also took this out of esoteric Buddhism, to make man an image of the whole evolution.

The first stage is when the first wave of evolution is formed, when the thought is there before existence begins. In the first state lies the thought of how existence should be, which is about to realize the sentence: Man should put himself in the state in which the deity was when it says: It should become light.

The second state is that the whole will is born. First there was the thought, then the release of the thought, then the sinking into [space].

The third is what is called: the voice resounds. Not only is the thought let out, but the thought begins to sound. The fourth stage is where not only voice is there, but where real action begins, where action begins. [Fifth:] After action comes life; the middle state [sixth]. And when that is achieved, it goes up again. [Seventh: the upward striving.]

After the seventh round is the transition to nirvana, after the sixth [gap in the transcript]. [Looking back at the entire previous illusion.] You should strive for this cosmic development. This is your path, your eight-part path. So you should live like the cosmos. It is important that you cultivate right thinking; then, secondly, right resolve; and thirdly, right speech; fourthly, right action; fifthly, right livelihood; sixthly, right effort; seventhly, right mindfulness; eighthly, right concentration. There you have the whole cosmic evolution, which the disciple should endeavor to emulate in his path. The eightfold path is a repetition of cosmic development.

When the Buddha was about to found a religion, he said to himself: “I must make cosmic truths the goal of aspiration.” How does a person become a founder of a religion? By making cosmic truths into precepts. The founder reads in the cosmos what he sees. Therefore he says: “I and the Father are one.” What he gives is the same as what is written in the stars. This thought, this harmony gives Buddhism a deeper character. I doubt that the Sinhalese recognizes this. But it does not matter. The Buddhists recognize the legitimacy of the esoteric. The Buddhist strives for the eightfold path. He does everything to fulfill it.

The priest, the monk who leads the religious community knows it, and it is not customary to communicate everything to the outside world. It is the same as in Catholicism. Catholicism is a religion of sacrifice. The priest knows. He knows the esoteric. The believer only does the prescriptions. It can also be a high priest or an administrator without being an esoteric. This is more consciously a Dominican and Franciscan order, and therefore also structured in certain ways. What can you bring in?

A moral code is approved by a seemingly subordinate monk. He has written a book. The bishop has approved it and put his name to it. This book is now used in all schools. Who has the real spiritual influence? It depends on the right person writing the book, someone who feels called to do so. The bishop does not write a book himself. Why doesn't the monk become a bishop? He wants no distraction, no external position, he wants to devote himself to the inner life.

And the Pope, he knows esotericism. It may happen that there is no one. Leo was an esoteric, Pius IX was not. The present one is probably quite harmless.

The correspondence of the eightfold path with the cosmic law - when it is carried out, evolution is perceived. When man makes himself a microcosm, he also perceives the macrocosm. This is not just a penance, it is an expansion of the being of the whole person. The reproduction of the human being brings him together with the macrocosm.

Now something else: we have described the state where man is furthest removed from the divine. That is the state where one sees the other from the outside. When one sees the other from the outside, then the self is always closed off by a shell. This looking is called “looking in tamas, in darkness.” So one sees, in complete passivity around oneself, “in tamas.”

When we begin to feel with each other, then we perceive something of the self of the other through feeling. Also, through desire, we seek to spread our self beyond ourselves. By desiring a plate of broad beans, I am already reaching beyond myself. This reaching beyond oneself in mere feeling and desire, which concerns only the astral body, is called “life in rajas.

And the next higher state is when one goes out not only with feelings and perceptions, but with thoughts. There the barriers really fall even in life when one goes out in thought. We become calm through thoughts. It stops being deceived by desires. When I rise to the thought, I am no longer deceived by desires. I think according to the higher meaning. That is the “life in Sattva”. This is the state that can be achieved through thinking.

Then there is the state of intuition. These are the ones in which wisdom guides us through the world, in wisdom. This is the higher state. This is the Durga state. “Living in the Durga state” is the state of life that the chela strives for: to have a divine mission for all his actions. Man usually always asks himself: Is it good or evil? Various such logical impulses have been employed. But he who is to become a disciple must no longer act according to logical and moral impulses, but he must also ask himself whether there is a divine mission for him. Imagine a monk. There are many right actions. Suppose he is supposed to write a book, no one can blame him if he does not write a book. He writes the book because he is carrying out the divine order to write the book. That is acting in the Durga state. There is an inner urge to do so.

Only on a geometric and mathematical basis can humanity be raised to the Sattva state. That is why Plato demanded that every student have a mathematical preparation. Because only in mathematics is the Sattva state achieved. All other things are explored in a kind of selfishness.

Once people have come to terms with this, they will also face everything else as objectively as one faces mathematical truths today. Due to the way Western science relates to mathematics, the way it studies, it cannot arrive at deeper truths. Our science has only made it so far in mathematics to attain objective truths. That is why it is a kind of ideal state.

Do you remember the introduction I once gave when I talked about the immortality of the soul? I said that in the mysteries, only the students were prepared and that they wanted neither one nor the other. Today you can find people saying, “I don't want to be reincarnated!” or “I want to be reincarnated!” These were not allowed to enter the mysteries because they were deemed incapable of objectively grasping the higher truths. People first had to unlearn desiring. It is the same with Kamaloka. We must have no desires, for that makes objective observation impossible.

And now a few words about how Buddhism is to be understood in terms of its position in the world. When Buddhism was founded by Buddha, it was not a new religion, nor was it intended to be a new religion. The Buddha wanted the religion, which at that time was only priestly wisdom, to be made accessible to all people; he was to make it popular. He wanted even those who could not be initiated not to fall prey to mere image worship, but to be introduced to certain truths of salvation, so that by participating in the truths of salvation they would not be lost as they would be if it were mere image worship.

The Brahmans then possessed very high wisdoms that would have been quite impossible to proclaim to the people. Nobody would have understood them. Gradually, the people had taken the images for realities, just as in Catholicism. We can see this when we come to Tyrol, where the images of saints are worshipped like a kind of fetish. The Buddhist said to himself: There is too great a distance between the people's worship of images and the high wisdom of the Brahmins. Let us take only the two highest sentences of Brahmanic wisdom.

The first is: “That art thou!” That means: There is only one essence, and my body and this slate are exactly the same distance away from me. This slate is just as foreign to me as my own body. The whole sensual world is one. No part of it should be closer to us. The piece of flesh that I carry around is no closer to me than any other object.

The second sentence is: “I am Brahman!” I am the real divine being, a spark of the deity.

I must elevate myself so that I recognize everything as 'you' and the divine Brahman as 'I'. These are the two guiding principles. Everything else are explanations to them. The Brahman is completed by a shell, it becomes my Brahma or Atma - these are elaborations of the two sentences.

All the theosophical teachings that we know were essentially from the lower teachings. Karma and reincarnation were Brahman teachings. It is not surprising that this Brahman teaching, which goes back many millennia before the birth of Christ, has something peculiar about it. And what is it that is peculiar about the Brahman teaching? Imagine you learn Theosophy to a certain degree. If you then penetrate into the Brahmin teaching, you will find that everything that Theosophy has can already be found in the Brahmin teaching. What Jakob Böhme said is already a step higher. But if you go back to the Brahmin teaching, you will find that That was already there too. They go further, they become chelas, go back to the Brahman teaching and find that this is already in it. We finally come to the conclusion that we cannot determine how deep the Brahman wisdom is. And when we come across even deeper wisdoms, it is likely that we will find even deeper ones in them.

Now, however, Buddha said to himself: The teaching of the Brahmins must be made as popular as possible. But popularizing wisdom is only possible with individuals - through initiation. It is not possible to bring about wisdom through research. Rather, we should shape it through life. And now imagine that there were a method of telling people how to live, that would be a substitute for initiating them. I can accept anyone as a student and initiate them step by step. In doing so, I work on the intellect, on the intuition and, little by little, on the higher realms of spiritual life. But I can also do it differently. I can arrange their life in such a way that it gets better and better. Then he will naturally strive towards the treasure of wisdom. He will meet wisdom halfway. Just as two tunnels were bored from either end and met in the middle when the Gotthard tunnel was being dug, so does Buddha want it. Therefore, he gives no insights into the treasures of wisdom. He does not want to talk about the treasure of wisdom, he wants to teach the people. The people are to be taught about the best way to live. We do not want to concern ourselves with the wisdom treasure at all. Buddha differs only in method. He did not recognize a single sentence of the old teaching. But he says: It is useless at first to bother the people with teachings. We have to get the people to the point where they learn by living. He does not say: Teach the sentence “You are Brahma,” but he says, “Do not cling to matter!” If you experience the sentence “Do not cling to matter,” then it will be easy to understand the sentence, “I am Brahma.”

We also see this from the following: The Buddha once had a conversation in which he said, roughly translated, “Here is a cart. The chariot consists of the wheels, the seat, the shaft and so on. The wheels are not the chariot, the seat is not the chariot, the shaft is not the chariot. Each individual part is not the chariot, and yet the chariot consists of the individual parts. Just as the chariot is not in any single part, so the soul is not in any single part of a human being. Not your physical body, not your physical body's garment, not your desires, not your imagination are your soul!” So when Buddha said what is not the soul, he wanted to lead people to experience what the soul is. That is why he did not say, ‘I am Brahma,’ but rather, ‘Death, birth, desire, and so on, is passivity.’

Anyone who recognizes the sentence, “I am Brahma,” knows all of this. So Buddha says, “Free yourselves as much as possible from all that is subject to birth, death, old age, and disease!” The old Brahmin told people what is permanent. That is why he does not say, “Seek your higher self,” but rather, “Free yourselves from the lower self, cast off the fetters of the lower self!” And there are ten of them. Just as the Brahmin said, “I am Brahma,” so the Buddha says, “I will enumerate the ten fetters, and then the higher self will emerge from you.”

The first fetter is the deception of the lower self-awareness. Buddha does not say, “Recognize the higher self,” but rather, “The lower self is an illusion, a composition of temporary principles:

1. Physicality, 2. Perception, 3. Feeling, 4. Desire, 5. Consciousness.

These five things make up the lower self. The higher self is in there, but Buddha does not speak of the higher self. He only says that these five things are illusions; you must recognize that! And he is convinced that when he tells people, “This is the sheath of the sword,” they will also realize what is inside.

The second fetter is that one could believe that there is no moral world order, that is, disbelief in a moral world order. Buddha did not say, “Believe in divine beings!” He said to himself, “Man has nothing to gain from that. He should believe in a moral world order and free himself from the belief that something could be unjust that could affect us. It only seems unjust to us because we cannot see through it. For example, a brick may fall on my head. If I did not deserve this in the past, I will experience compensation in the future.

The third fetter is the belief that our rites and ceremonies can have a meaning, can be something other than parables. Those who take the symbol for reality suffer from the third fetter of existence. Symbolism is beautiful and sublime – but it must not be taken as reality.

The fourth fetter is the belief in sensuality, the opinion that the sensual is real. Imagine this book! The moment the temperature is a hundred degrees higher, we and this book will no longer be here. The moment our temperature is no longer here, the whole physical world is no longer possible.

The fifth fetter is that which imprisons us in our sensuality, which teaches us the belief that we may be special beings, that we encounter other beings with antipathy, may hate them. This fetter is antipathy towards other beings. Because we have antipathy towards other beings, we indulge in the illusion of separation. This is the fifth fetter.

The sixth fetter is love of sensual personality.

The seventh fetter is the longing for the preservation of personal existence. This is particularly pronounced in Christianity, the longing for the preservation of personal existence in the earthly personality. According to Buddha, this is the seventh fetter.

The eighth fetter is pride, the struggle for the elevation of personal existence.

The ninth fetter is the belief that one can achieve something in the world without karma, through self-righteousness. The Buddha refers to karma in everything. He says: “No one can achieve anything without karma.”

The tenth fetter is something that only Buddhism has developed, and by emphasizing the tenth fetter, Buddhism indicates that it is one of the most sublime religions that has ever been taught. The Buddha calls religious ignorance the tenth fetter.

Christianity has thoroughly misunderstood the first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are the poor in spirit”. “Blessed are the ignorant,” the Christian translates. But Buddha says: “There are many kinds of dirt. But the greatest dirt that can cling to you is ignorance!” Christianity regards those who want to know as being possessed by demons. The Protestant is content with being united with God by faith. But the wise man is united with God by wisdom.

This is what Buddha taught. The religion of the Brahmans remains in its entirety; it is the highest. But we cannot bring it to the people for the time being. Therefore, we teach the people how to free themselves from the bonds of the transitory existence. The Brahmans taught: “How can one recognize the eternal?” Buddha wanted to teach: “How can one overcome the transitory?” Buddha has only changed the method. We do not want to teach the eternal, but we want to teach how to live to overcome the transitory.

The second truth is: Recognize that in the impermanent is the cause of passivity! The third truth is: Kill attachment to the impermanent! This allows the eternal to break through by itself.

What I have said today refers to the four great truths and to the doctrine of the ten fetters and to the fact that the cause of all suffering lies only in ignorance. All of this is called 'the creation of a divine future'. Knowledge, realization, is called the creation of a divine future. The Buddhist lives for the sake of what a person becomes. And life and its application in this sense, he calls 'Dharma'.

And now he is convinced of the following:

Firstly: that Buddha is not a god, but that he is enlightened, that Budhi, the realization, has arisen in him, because Buddha is also a transient. To regard the Buddha as something eternal would be superstition in the Buddhist sense. So the Buddhist says: “I believe in the enlightenment of the Buddha!”

The second is: “I believe in Dharma”.

And the third is: “I believe in the brotherhood,” in “Sangha,” in the brotherhood of those who have gone so far as to overcome their separateness, that is, I believe in the possibility that they have overcome their separateness.

I believe in: first, a cause - karma; secondly, in life - dharma; thirdly, in what has been achieved - the Sangha brotherhood; the same: “I believe in the community of saints.

Today I would like to present to you a kind of lecture on the opening words of Genesis, as they were cultivated in the first times of Christianity in secret places. What I am going to say has been said many times, but always in secret places to a few people and has never really been popularized. It is not something that relates specifically to Genesis, but to the Lemurian Age. So I will not say anything different from what has been said over and over again in occult lodges. First of all, we have to realize that we have passed through two great catastrophes, one that led from the Atlantean era to our own time, and another that led from the Lemurians to the Atlanteans. We go back in time to before these catastrophes, to a time when humans already existed but did not yet have warm blood. They had cold, white blood. This cold, white blood was the reason that these beings could live in a watery element. At that time, the separation between air and water was not yet the same as it is today. All water was still a kind of fine mist or haze, so that everything that was earth was covered with this fine mist or haze. Air and sea were not yet there, only water and fog, which settled like steam over the earth, and this steam was also something that contained the life germs for everything that could live on earth at that time. The germs of life were themselves vaporous; they were not small grains, not small seeds, but vaporous, swirling forms in the general life of the world. Such a vaporous form, like a denser cloud, was at first still man himself. Man had a form that was composed of such condensed vapor. Within this vapor moved a thin liquid. And that which was most prominent about man was an organ on his head, which in its front part protruded far over his body, an organ that had a stalk and at the end of the stalk a kind of ball. This was an organ that could perceive not light but heat. What was particularly important at that time was the different degrees of warmth. One had to know that it was too hot here and too cold there; one had to be able to avoid that, and for that the warmth organ was necessary. One could perceive the degrees of warmth with the organ and could thus turn this way or that. The organ was later completely lost. But it was the organ that served man at that time for complete orientation.

The state at that time was called the “unfathomable depth.” It was so named because these beings could see nothing, hear nothing, speak nothing, understand nothing. They did not yet have all these abilities. The Secret Doctrine refers to this whole area with all the living beings in it as “the waters,” because in these waters the beings were not yet conceiving for themselves. They could not yet conceive. The entire earthly body was endowed with a single faculty of imagination. It was one great living being, which was regarded as the spirit. Individuals of the human race existed, but their imaginations were still common. Regarding this commonality of the world of imagination, the secret schools said:

“The Spirit of God was hovering over the face of the deep.” [Genesis 1:2]

That is, this area had a common idea, and this idea hovered over the waters, it had not yet entered into the people.

So we have two things side by side: first, the “unfathomable depth” and, second, the “idea that Genesis calls the ‘Spirit of God’.

The next thing is this: The outgrowth on the front of the beings that we have described has shrunk. And this organ that has shrunk today, which arose from this outgrowth, is the pineal gland. Back then, humans did not yet have bones. They were vapor humans, fish humans. If you look at the germinating human being in the first weeks of pregnancy, you will find this fish human hinted at in the human germ. The human being really repeats these conditions in the first period of pregnancy. The small fish body that the human being has there possesses the small organ that then shrivels up. It is one of those regressed organs, like the spleen, the function of which is unknown to today's doctors. The more this stalk-organ regressed, the more the pair of eyes developed inside the human organism. The eyes arose, two eyes formed in place of the original stalk organ. Just as the stalk organ was a warmth organ, so the eyes became a light organ. This unfathomable depth worked in all beings and, by withdrawing the warmth organ, singled out the pair of eyes. In The Secret Doctrine, this unfathomable depth is also called the “forefather.

In the beginning, human beings only felt warmth and cold. Now, however, they perceive objects through their eyes, that is, the forefather allowed the ability to perceive not only warmth but also light to arise from within them.

And God said, “Let there be light!” And there was light.

Now we have come so far that these beings could perceive the light around them and consequently also the limited objects. Now I ask you to consider the following. Before that, the unfathomable depth was there; everything was contained in it. There was the idea and then the light. The light was limited by the eye or the ability to see around it, what eyes could see: the visible. Everything else had not become visible. That was beyond the visible. [The boundary of the visible was the firmament.]

And God set a firmament where the visible ends and the invisible begins. [Genesis 1:6-7]

Furthermore, man began to perceive the visible, so that a completely new state of affairs arose for him. You have to imagine what it would mean for you if you could not see and could not hear. Hearing, however, was out of the question at that time. The people of that time were themselves a fluid in a liquid element. And by swimming around like that, you would not perceive the exact boundary between yourself and the other. You only perceive boundaries when there is something visible.

The individuals were held together by the idea. The individual was not so sharply defined. Each being felt that it belonged to the whole, to the general. It would be as if today your stomach were to feel independent; it must feel that it belongs in the body. Only at the moment when a sensation of light occurs does the possibility arise of perceiving the other as something different. An object is only something outside of us when we see its boundaries outside of us. Light was what distinguished the individual beings from one another. In the moment when humans were distinguished from one another, it became necessary for understanding of the environment to open up. The beings not only had to have the idea outside of themselves, but they also had to be able to have the idea within themselves. An object that I merely look at would be something quite mysterious for me if I could not imagine it myself. This understanding [of the environment] was imparted by entities that were of a higher nature than the beings living on earth. The light-sensitive entities were guided by entities that stimulated the intellect in them. Thus they became endowed with intellect. They became the “Sons of Manas.”

This brings with it the possibility of forming a false or a correct idea. Therefore, the Secret Doctrine says: “Mind and Truth” arose as the second pair. They arose through the influence of the Sons of Manas. [I cannot feel a false coldness or a false warmth, but the mind can form a false idea.] Only now, when the idea, the mind, was within the beings themselves, did the beings hold themselves together in a kind of sense of community. Earlier, the idea was outside; but now a spark of it was within the beings themselves. I have said: warmth and cold were differently outside in the world. The beings draw this warmth into themselves and distinguish themselves as warm and cold beings. A warm being is one that no longer perceives warmth, but generates warmth. Warm blood now originated in man.

So what had happened? Man was formerly born of water. Now that which the Secret Doctrine calls the “blur” had been generated in him. Man was therefore first born of “water”, then of “blood”. And if we could go back even further in time, to before the Lemurian period, we would find, before the water, the “spirit that had not yet become water.” So we have: spirit - water - blood. The warmth that was general then appeared as the warmth of the warmth-bearing beings. Man is born of blood - that is the moment when man becomes a warm-blooded being. This enables him to organize within himself everything that was previously organized outside of him. Warmth and cold were something different outside. Now he differentiates between warmth and cold within himself. Just as creation was outside before, man now became a creator within himself. And the first thing that makes man not only an inner being, but also an inner being that manifests itself outwardly, was the “speech. And with speech, ‘life’ arose. [Man was able to express himself outwardly; what was drawn in pushes outward – that is speech.] Only then is human life present when man is not only present as a being but also expresses himself as such – [an independent, self-contained, differentiated life, not coexistence. The being has become independent, can express itself, can reveal itself.)

The third pair is therefore 'speech and life'. Animals that are unable to produce sounds are cold-blooded. Only warm-blooded creatures are capable of expressing the soul outwardly through sound. A creature that is said to have a voice must differ from its surroundings in warmth. It must have a life that is differentiated from its surroundings. The third pair is therefore “speech - or voice - and independent life”. The fish has the same temperature as the water in which it lives.

Now we have come so far that the being has become independent, that the being can reveal itself and thus appear to its surroundings as an independent living being.

I ask you to take into account that today's concepts must not be transferred to that time. In later times, the cold-blooded creatures also changed in various ways. The fish were much larger at that time and more similar to humans.

The reproduction of the creatures at that time, however, was still such that they simply emerged from one another. You have to imagine that when a new offspring was to arise – copulation or fertilization did not yet exist at that time, nor did incarnation, incarnation has only existed since sexuality has existed, since there have been two sexes [we are not dealing with incarnations, but with materializations] – so when a new being was to arise, the one being allowed matter to emerge from itself into the new being. The determination for this process came from the general world spirit. Through elective affinity a new being was brought forth. A being was overshadowed by a spirit. It is exactly the same as when the medium [at a spiritualistic sitting] provides the material for a spirit that wants to embody itself in matter, to materialize, to manifest itself. Matter was always usable, always virginal, a nourishing process. The original being remained as it was. The process is there as it has been described in the description of its plant aspect. Matter was then depleted, it had become incapable of producing a new order from itself [without new inspiration], and differentiation into sexes occurred. In this way, the descent of the Lemurians essentially occurred; they had lost the ability to have virgin matter within themselves. If a new being was to manifest itself, there had to be a germ to stimulate life. With that [sexuality entered and with that] birth and death and also incarnation. And man became, as one adds, the beginning of “gathering, of ”fraternization.”

From the middle of the Lemurian period, the process of unification begins, the process of fraternization, which must lead to the point where the mystery sites unite, and then live on into a new world epoch. [Now comes the fourth pair: 'Man - the gathering that leads to fraternization'.

This explanation was also given repeatedly in the Pythagorean schools. It was said: Since the spirit has entered into every human being, birth and death came into the world. [And in Genesis it says:] In pain you shall give birth to children, it says now. In the past, they simply emerged through overshadowing.

This is the meaning of blood, water and spirit, as can also be seen from the words: Truly, truly, whoever is not born again of water and the Spirit will not see bliss.

[...]

Today I would like to speak about Genesis again, but in a different sense. I would like to provide some concepts that will enable you to gradually take Genesis literally. To do that, I would first like to refer to a passage in the Epistle of John. You will find a very interesting passage in the fifth chapter of the first Epistle of John, verses 7-8:

There are three that bear record in heaven, the Father, the Word, and the Holy Ghost: and these three are one. And there are three that bear record in earth, the Spirit, the water, and the blood: and these three are one.

In these words, you have a differentiation of the three upper and three lower principles, as they are to be understood in the sense of Christian esotericism, of Gnosticism. That is the Father, Atma; that is the Word, Budhi, the Creative, the Spirit permeating the whole world; and thirdly, Manas or Mahat, the Holy Spirit. Holy is the Word, which means: not yet subject to the physical. Atma, Budhi, Manas are meant by these three in heaven generating.

In addition to these three, there are the three spiritual elements in man. The spiritual elements are in the entire Jewish Kabbalah, going back to the original books of Moses, and in Christian esotericism: blood, water and spirit. One must only first be clear about what Jewish esotericism means by 'blood'. It is the lowest link of the soul, what we in theosophy call the astral - not our physical blood. Jewish esotericism believes that the movement of blood comes from the astral body, and that is correct. All influences that not only go directly through the soul but also affect something physical are called blood in Jewish esotericism. It is the active, the driving force. We only call the red juice that flows through the body blood.

The second is 'water'. In every kind of secret language, 'kama' is everywhere water. These are the feelings, the passions, the desires, and so on. And now I will tell you why it is called water. You have to familiarize yourself with the idea that today's humanity is accustomed to imagining many things in a more materialistic way than was the case in earlier times. If you imagine an old kabbalist, he saw in this water not only the flowing element, but also a parable. And he came to it in the following way. He said to himself: In the water live those animals which we must consider to be the original ones. From the liquid element originally emerged the animal world: sea animals, jellyfish, amphibians. These then went out of the water onto the land. Nowhere did passions and feelings arise than from the water. It was only later that land emerged, and then what is more highly organized also emerged. The soul, the feeling of pleasure and pain, emerged from the water. Water was the element that gives rise to pleasure and pain in man. That is why he called water the source of what is pleasure and what is pain.

We distinguish the lower soul, which makes the blood surge. The blood is the actual, deeper soul. Where we feel pleasure and displeasure, the actual inner pains, he calls that the water, because he derives this soul element from the water.

Then comes the thinking soul, the spirit. We therefore have the sentient soul, the inner soul, then the reasonable soul, the rational soul, and thirdly the consciousness soul, the higher soul, the part of the soul in which the spirit shines into the soul.

Now the Jew said to himself: Where soul arises, there is soul. The Jew therefore saw in the sea and everywhere where the liquid element was, a parable for the soul. Only because people have unlearned to see the soul do they see the outer physical water.

The conversation between Jesus and Nicodemus can give us further insight here.

Now there was a man of the Pharisees, named Nicodemus, a ruler of the Jews: The same came to Jesus by night, and said unto him, Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God, for no man can do these miracles that thou doest, except God be with him. Jesus answered and said unto him, Verily, verily, I say unto thee, Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God. Nicodemus saith unto him, How can a man be born when he is old? can he enter the second time into his mother's womb, and be born? Jesus answered, “Truly, truly, I say to you, unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Do not be amazed that I said to you, you must be born again. The wind blows where it wills, and you hear the sound of it, but you do not know whence it comes and whither it goes. So is every one that is born of the Spirit.” [John 3:1-8]

This is how Jesus wants to make him understand. Because Nicodemus was a minor Mahatma, a master in those days, he said to him: Unless one is born of water and the Spirit, he cannot enter the kingdom of God. Man is born of the mother from blood; he must be reborn from water and the Spirit. What is born of blood is blood, what is born of the Spirit is spirit.

Nicodemus said to him, “How can these things be?” Jesus answered and said to him, “Are you a teacher of Israel and do not understand these things?” [John 3:9-10]

Now we can also take the first words of Genesis in the right sense. The first verse can be translated as follows:

In the beginning God begot his karma as heaven and earth.

The concept of creating, as we understand it, is not present in the ancient languages. The Latin word creare means “to create”, but it comes from the Sanskrit word kr, which in turn comes from karma; so it means “to create”, and the sentence means:

The karma of God begins to flow.

Our development on earth was preceded by the development in which the world of Kama, the world of instincts, desires and passions, was able to develop to the highest level it could reach, which in the lunar epoch constituted the actual content of the beings. It had developed to the highest degree. The human beings who are now living in the earthly world have intellect. Our ancestors did not think; they only felt what they had to accomplish. Thinking is what is given to the earth to develop. We have a feeling that stands below thinking. We do not follow feeling directly; we let it be regulated by thought. It is put on the right track by thinking. The inhabitants of the moon could give themselves up to their feelings. They did not need to think about the affairs of their lives. They felt directly what they had to do. This emotional life, which lived in all beings, developed there to an infinite height. Today, when intellectual life is important, we no longer have any idea of the infinite tenderness and kindness and the magnitude of this emotional life. These beings that developed on the moon were elevated to the level of divinity. The masters who developed on the moon were pure wisdom that flowed from feeling. These Masters joined together in great fraternities in those days, and they formed one great unity when the Moon was fading away. Everything had merged into one great unity. This divine Being, who was, so to speak, the pinnacle of the lunar epoch, is addressed in Genesis as God - Yahweh or Jehovah. Here, God is nothing other than the pinnacle of the development of the Moon. Yahweh is a Moon deity and is also called a Moon deity by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. She may have emphasized it a little too strongly, but it is so. The great Entity, which had developed the emotional life to the highest degree, that was Jehovah or Yahweh. What came over from the Moon - Kama in its highest perfection, water in its highest perfection, the flood - developed in two directions. On the one hand, it condensed and took on matter, the blood; on the other hand, it diluted and took on spirit. Above, it brightened in the spirit, below, it dawned in the blood. Thus, Yahweh differentiated. The primal water begets heaven, its spiritual pole, on the one hand, and the earth, its physical, material pole, on the other.

So what was the situation? Imagine that the Kama water comes over, the spirit is up, the physical, the blood, is down. The earth was chaotic, the blood was disorderly. Nothing but a confused and wildly intermingling physical-material. That was the one pole.

The earth was formless and chaotic, and darkness was over the face of the deep. Darkness was below the waters, darkness was in the deep. And over these waters was the spirit. The water was the middle. The spirit floated above the Kama waters like an aura.

Be very clear about what this aura is. We have already spoken about it. The physical body is not an aura, and what lives in the physical body is also not an aura, because you can see that with physical eyes. The mind is not an aura either. Only the soul provides an aura; everything that is of a spiritual nature provides an aura. This aura is influenced by the body from within or by the mind from without. Therefore there are three auras: the one clouded by the body, the one illuminated by the spirit and the actual glowing soul light. The one is the area through which the body is reflected in the soul, the other is the area through which the spirit is reflected in the soul. Now you are clear about how the spirit of God hovers over the waters or over the soul, and that the Kama is thereby illuminated by the spirit. The spirit does not have to be light. But when the spirit enters the aura, it intensifies the light.

And God said, “Let there be light!” [Genesis 1:3]

This means: Let the reflection of the spirit arise in the waters.

I would like the first three sentences of Genesis to be taken literally. It is not a matter of interpreting these sentences, but of thinking of the right thing to say with the words. For water: Kama, for God: the most highly developed that came from Kama from the lunar epoch. “This is my blood” - it is the same as what flows in the earth.

The Genesis is derived from the writings of the Egyptian temple mysteries. These had two great [moral] books. One was the Book of the Microcosm, the other was the Book of the Macrocosm. The latter described how the great cosmos is created from water through the word. The former, the Book of the Microcosm, was the Book of the Perfect Man. Both were completely parallel descriptions. It must be implied that man is a microcosm. Only someone who was initiated could have achieved this.

The Master initiates those He loves. The miracle of Lazarus is an initiation. That is why it is also said of Lazarus: 'He whom Jesus loved.

The Gospel of John begins with the same words: “In the beginning was the Word.”

Only then can the great books of the world be understood if one has the confidence that every word is only understood when one really goes deep into things and only objects to things as late as possible. That is the trust we need, because we must have trust in the great books of the world. This is what we must gradually learn again through the theosophical movement: to take these books literally.

"Mountain is the keyword for higher truths, for initiations. Jesus went up the mountain with his disciples when he saw the people. In the Holy Scriptures, we become familiar with the authority with which they were written. We recognize them as masterpieces when we see how everything fits together beautifully and how what we have gained through our masters since the last third of the nineteenth century provides the key to understanding these great books.

In a few days it will be thirteen years since the founder of the Theosophical Society left her earthly existence. She initially worked in secret societies, for it was not through free speech but in secret circles that the theosophical wisdom was presented, behind tightly closed doors.

This is to be taken more figuratively than literally, however. The Rosicrucians have preserved the treasure of wisdom that now flows in popular form in Theosophy. The tactics and diplomacy have been changed by Helena Petrovna Blavatsky. [More than in earlier times, people today are compelled to self-introspection and self-knowledge in order to get to know the secret depths of their own hearts. Therefore, the leaders of humanity have decided to bring the truth into humanity and to speak to all people of that which was otherwise hidden in the mysteries. But not only the results came out of the secret brotherhoods, but also the word itself. What we proclaim today is more of a spelling. But it should lead to reading the deepest truths of man.

Important personalities have been connected with these secret societies in some way. In his fairy tales, Goethe consciously draws on the secret knowledge of all times. There is a poem that he wrote to glorify the Rosicrucian spirit, a poem in which he expressed what is now the lifeblood of the theosophical movement. The poem is called “The Mysteries”.

In it, the humble pilgrim Brother Mark seeks a resting place for the human soul, a spiritual Montserrat, which was a high point of human spiritual development. In his search, he comes to a strange monastery. There are twelve hermits in it. The thirteenth is the bearer of the greatest wisdom, a leader of humanity. Each of the twelve hermits symbolizes one of the forces of the nations. Mark, the thirteenth, is to unite what humanity has sought in different ways. The twelve brothers symbolize human opinions. The thirteenth is the one who unites them. If we today activate the attitude characterized in the poem, we are on the ideal Montserrat.

At the entrance to the monastery is the symbol, the cross entwined with roses, [Plato says:] the world cross of matter, on which the world soul is crucified. More than ever, the necessity of self-knowledge weighs on us. We must solve this riddle of man's past, man's present and man's future. This self-examination is to be practised in order to then speak publicly about it in the language that was given at the first stage of secret learning.

A few words about an introductory lecture in the secret schools can be found in one of the monologues in Goethe's “Faust”, which Goethe only wrote afterwards. What he says there is the confession that man must live within the universe and must get his basic rules from it. It is about the scene “Forest and Cave” from “Faust I”, where it says:

Ehrlicher Geist, du gabst mir alles, was ich bat
Du hast nicht umsonst dein Angesicht im Feuer gewendet
Gabst mir die herrliche Natur zum Königreich.
Kraft sie zu fühlen, zu genießen. Nicht
Kalt staunenden Besuch erlaubst du nur,
Vergönnest mir in ihre tiefe Brust,
As in the bosom of a friend to look
You drive the series of the living
Before me and teach me my brothers
In the silent bush, in air and water know.
And when the storm in the forest roars and creaks
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And neighbor strains squeezing down
And the hillside thunders hollowly with its fall
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself and my own breast
Secret, deep wonders open up.
And as the pure moon rises before my gaze
Soothingly across, silver figures float before me from the rock walls
From the damp bush
silver figures of the ancient world,
and ease the strict pleasure of contemplation,
Oh, that nothing is perfect for man,
I now feel. You gave me the companion for this bliss,
which brings me closer and closer to the gods,
whom I can no longer do without,
can no longer do without, though he, cold and insolent,
humiliates me before myself and to nothing,
with a breath of words, transforms your gifts.
He fans a wild fire in my breast
after that beautiful image,
So I stagger from desire to fulfillment
And in fulfillment I languish for desire.

[Faust I, Vers 3217-3250]

[We first see his deep inner perception of nature, the great view that the world spirit allowed him, and then Goethe continues with the line:]

then show me myself and my own breast
Secret deep wonders open up.

[In the mystery schools, the teachers called their students together in the spring so that they could learn from the facts of nature.] Opening of the inner depths. In spring, when nature awakens, everything is full of wonder. These wonders of nature should not only be marveled at, but also deciphered. Mysticism leads us into nature at all levels, and we can learn how we ourselves as human beings should behave. What theosophical mysticism is is written in nature. If we understand the wonders of nature, we also understand our own wonders [then we understand what is alive in us, the secret meaning of life. The two lower realms of nature, the stone realm and the plant realm, lie chaste and mute before us.

The Stone Kingdom stands before us like a reminder of our distant past. [The Stone Kingdom reminds us of a distant time when we once enjoyed the brightly shining crystal in a dull trance state; the heavens themselves stand before us as a language of memory that we ourselves have gone through. The starry world and the Stone Kingdom remind us of the creative power from which we have sprung.

And the plant kingdom reminds us of another stage. We have left behind not only the crystals, but also everything that appears to be lifeless. With its millions of stars, nature appears lifeless, yet it is majestic. This realm reminds us of the omnipotence of the majestic creative power from which we have emerged. It is not just our Earth, on which we spend a short span of our existence, no, it is all the other worlds that the occultist knows.

[The whole, seemingly inanimate nature of the minerals is majestic. The kingdom of growth and life is based on this.

[Majestic] rock formations and plant formations in blissful serenity can be found everywhere. But only on our Earth does one thing [exist, a realm the seer finds only on our Earth, the realm of the higher animals, where feeling arises, where the living is contained within itself and develops self-awareness.] You cannot find the animal kingdom on other worlds as it exists on our Earth. Where we develop pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow out of blissful serenity, the forms we know arise, and our earth is the only setting for them.

It has often been said that something is expressed on the face of the animals that could only be described as compassion. Animal nature is really rooted in suffering. Animal nature arose so that humans could break free to higher levels. He had to leave animality behind him. He had to separate what lives around us as living animality. [From this follows for us compassion for the animals, which has ethics as its guide.] Man's ascent had to be paid for with the detachment of animality. Those who did not have the ability to free themselves from pain through lofty thoughts fell prey to this. Then man went the torturous path of the ego to cross over into another, higher world. All teaching and learning should only be there to lead us to what lies beyond life, because man's essence is spiritual. Anything that theosophy teaches that cannot be lived would be a futile effort.

[We can learn from nature how it presents us with three virtues in its three kingdoms.] There are three fundamental virtues of man:

- Majesty - in the first kingdom
- Blessed serenity - in the second kingdom
- Suffering and joy [compassion] - in the third kingdom.

What should we learn from pleasure and pain? [To endure pleasure and pain with patience, this is taught by] the doctrine of reincarnation. The animal cannot rise above the state of pain and pleasure. But the essence of man is spiritual. And the spirit seeks a home in that which is pleasure and pain, joy and sorrow.

Patience – that is what follows from the great teaching of reincarnation.

What can we learn from the plant kingdom in its blissful serenity? We learn what can flow to us from the great law, which the theosophical world movement has also given us in a popular form, from the law of karma, the law of the eternal causation of all spiritual things.

It seems to be the nature of plants to painlessly and calmly reproduce their kind in blissful serenity. They are completely devoted to producing their own kind. The sacrificial life of the whole plant consists of sprouting, growing and budding. When we face the world, we do not judge or condemn, but try to understand what it is doing from our own perspective. When we do not judge but seek to comprehend, we immerse ourselves in our fellow beings and draw from them the means to understand them. That is what the second kingdom teaches us. The law of karma teaches us love as the second moral principle. The plant kingdom reminds us of a preliminary stage of love.

[Then we can also understand the chaste, majestic realm of stones. Through our self-knowledge, we learn to appreciate the self in every other person, which faces us just as great as the stone kingdom; and once we have understood this, how we should approach every person with reverence, we have three fundamental virtues that the three natural kingdoms teach us: reverence for every ego, the mineral kingdom; love for every being, the plant kingdom; and patience, the animal kingdom.

Theosophy gives us the secrets of our hearts. We should practice self-knowledge. Then the deep meaning of an apparently simple saying by Goethe will become clear to us: “Know thyself and live in peace with the world.

What says “I” in every human being also says “I” in every other human being. This self-knowledge leads to true, highest respect for people. We must not interfere in the lives of other people, just as we must not or cannot interfere in the lives of the stone realm. The human self must be a sanctuary for us. Reverence for every human ego - that is the third ethical principle that the Theosophical movement wants to bring back into honor.

Patience, love and reverence are the three virtues in the human realm. Through reverence we approach the silent stone realm. From this flows what has been present as a principle in the secret schools. Make the mute, chaste realm of inanimate nature your ideal, so that you stand reverently before every other ego and it would violate your spiritual sense of shame to reach into that which is a human ego with a coarse hand. When that happens to you, then you have understood this highest ideal. This is what has been proclaimed as the sevenfold nature of nature and man. Three virtues in the realm of nature, three virtues in the realm of man. And in between the I. The I stands in the middle and develops in the same but retrograde sequence as nature offers it to us. So we progress through patience, through love, to reverence.

Yesterday we arrived at the point where the earth passed over into spiritualization; mature people go along with it and return with it to the sun.

The forces of matter have been eliminated, are no longer present. This development initially leads to an ever-increasing spiritualization; only then does the human being rise with his planet into the astral, then into the devachanic state. The sun spiritualizes with the earth. The beings who have not cared for such spiritualization do not take part in this. Initially, no lump can remain, everything astralizes, but the immature form a kind of sputum in this stage of development. There is such an astral, which is pure, noble, higher than the physical.

But another astral, in which are those beings who are more malignant and lower than those of physical development.

- devachanic
- astral
- physical

- astral world, which is below the physical. In this world, the beings that are in it are not in a physical body like a human being, but they have a terrible power of evil. All the powers that oppose our development dwell in it. The spirit of Mammon dwells in it, the spirit of obstacles, which puts the brakes on wherever there is a desire for progress. It is already active today.

When the earth itself enters an astral state, then all those beings who could not go into the higher astral world must go down into this lower one.

Thus, after the trumpets, we have a world that has been cast out, and this is a world of darkness. In the astral body, all beings are present that were unable to attain the degree of maturity to enter the sun. Before the Lemurian development, man descended into the physical body. At that time, peculiar spiritual beings were connected to the earth. Each of the planetary stages has seen a stage of humanity develop: on the moon, sun, Saturn...

There are beings that could not complete their development in a particular planetary state. This also happened on the moon. These beings were transferred to the earth. The world progresses beyond a certain level, but certain beings remain behind. The angels who had not matured stood between human beings and angels; the hosts of Lucifer. They were the ones who pulled people back in their development, who caused a deeper entanglement in matter. Thus, the Luciferic development is linked to the human being. It has its good and bad sides. The good consists in the fact that without the luciferic influence man could not have become a free being. He has made himself independent of the direct guidance of higher beings. But this has made possible the fall into evil. Thus, for the salvation of man, the luciferic beings have also made a sacrifice by holding back their development.

Now it is different. The conditions are quite different before the middle of a development and afterwards. So it is not materialistic people who are making a sacrifice now, but on the contrary, progressive people. - Do not schematize.

What is the positive thing that the luciferic beings have done?

On Saturn, man had only a physical body.

Sun: etheric body
Moon: astral body
Earth: I

The physical is the oldest link that has undergone the most transformations. Marvelous construction of the heart, brain, etc.

Sun, Moon on Earth, I-aura.

If the Luciferic beings had not been present in Lemurian times, when the 'I' began to develop, the higher beings would have remained with man. And Yahweh.

The Luciferic beings could not participate in the development of the 'I', only in the astral body. So the effect of the Luciferic beings came into that. They gave the astral body independence, but also the possibility of falling into evil. In this way, the beings of Lucifer undergo a certain development. They make up in the astral body of man what they missed on the moon and achieve what they should have achieved there. They can vicariously experience in man what they missed on the moon. They advance with us. When the Earth unites with the Sun, there will be such Luciferic beings who will unite with the Sun with it. And so, by working on the sublimation of his instincts, man can redeem Lucifer. But only to the extent that he allows himself to be redeemed. There will be those who resist, who during their time on Earth remain in the state in which they were when they came to Earth. They will be cast out and appear as the evil astral world. There emerges the group of Luciferian entities that did not want to come any further. The old serpent is cast out, and the first of the dragons emerges. When the earth enters the sun, it is what is left behind.

But there are still other returnees: the people who do not move forward. There are those who cannot help it, who do not come to the state of awakening that is necessary for spirituality. They remain slaves to their animal instincts. Even if they cannot help it, they are still an evil force. This is the second of the animals, those who remain stuck in animality, cast out as the second of the animals. The “old serpent” says the Apocalypse – the luciferic beings – appear from heaven; the second dragon rises from the sea, that is what has remained in the lower nature in the development of the earth itself, “the animal in its totality – remaining in its instincts.

Now for the third type of being that lags behind. These are those who acquire the potential for black magic on earth. They lag behind within humanity, develop abilities that lead to the supersensible nature, but they use this ability in the service of black magic. Not in their instincts, but in full consciousness, they have turned away and yield to carnal matter for the sake of Sorat. He incarnates in them as their group soul. These people will be the incarnation of the Sun Demon. When will they emerge?

Let us imagine the further course of the earth's development. Union with the Sun. Because not everything has matured, man must return to the physical plane once more. Once again, the solar element separates. This also offers a chance of salvation for those who have been left behind by instinct. The mature decide in the moment of highest union to form another world body next to the sun, and to take in the beings that have been left behind, in order to be taken back again by the sun in the next cycle.

This present cycle means what? Every world body must undergo repetitions of what it has already undergone. Before the earth was able to begin as the earth, it had to repeat [gap in the transcript]

After the earth has united with the sun, it must prophetically anticipate future planetary developments. A pre-advent of the Jupiter, Venus, Vulcan state. During the pre-advent of the Jupiter state, the beings come out and the Jupiter Earth is there next to the Sun. On the Jupiter Earth, the beings have the opportunity to be taken back; the lower states are only there in hints and on the Vulcan state everything merges into one another. So, after our Earth, we experience a Jupiter Earth. There even the black magicians – Sorat – have the opportunity to return to the sun. But a number of them will not do so. And now that they have remained on the Jupiter Earth, a number of people, the Earth spiritualizes again. Once more, those who have spiritualized decide to return and form an intermediate Earth. Some Sorat-beings allow themselves to be redeemed once again; others still stubbornly resist on Venus Earth; and for them there is no longer any possibility of redemption on Vulcan Earth. The sixth, the Venus intermediate state, is therefore the decisive one. It is only in the sixth state of the Venus Earth planet that this decisive step comes. In this, there is again something that parallels the sub-races, so development waits for the smallest cycle, that is, for the sixth sub-state there, in order to still save. And only there, in the sixth sub-state of the sixth main state of the Venus cycle, is everything over: 666.

Those who give their corporeality to incarnate the sun demon as their group soul have finally decided to put their powers at the service of evil. The first dragon is therefore not a human being – Lucifer. Nor is the second – animal. But in the most eminent sense, they are people who have surrendered to the Sorat. 666 is therefore not an animal sign, but a human one. “Here is wisdom."

The apocalypticist therefore probably knew what we know as the development of the earth through 7x7x7 states. This apocalypse is truly an outline of the whole development. Let us consider the Venus Earth. It is a colorful place. On the Jupiter Earth, many can still be saved. For the Venus Earth, the worst human material remains. But there is not much hope there either. Those who spiritualize have only limited power to save. The forces are not sufficient to save. The worst have to wait for the future Jupiter and the future Venus, where the spiritual people have stronger powers. So the most wicked prevail on this Venus Earth. Indeed, much must be expelled; vice must be overcome, for which there is no power to redeem it. This presents itself to the apocalyptic as a plunge into the abyss of evil Babylon. The woman - the spirit of Venus-Earth - is completely filled with evil vices. Thus the fall of Venus-Earth is foreshadowed in the fall of Babylon.

Those people who have tried to save what can still be saved continue to develop; what has reached maturity rises to a final state of the earth, to the volcano earth. There everything is cleansed and purified.

In what field is man creative today? He is able to put the lifeless forces of nature at his service by painting a canvas or carving marble. But he cannot make marble come alive. He does not rule over the living, he masters inanimate nature. In the white-magical sense, he will only be able to control plant forces on the future Jupiter.

What will become of the cathedrals, the domes, the Raphael Madonnas? Their physical materiality will disintegrate - Leonardo's Last Supper. But they will not disappear. Analogous to this are today's crystals, which are formed out of the mountains. The saying of the Egyptian sages: [gap in the transcript] Just as we build and create works of art today, in the past forms were gradually worked out in the cosmos. This now grows out of the earth as a natural being. When the Earth has reached its goal, the works of art will grow out of it like natural products out of the renewing Earth. The Madonna on the canvas will fade away, but today's human labor will give the dwelling place into which later humanity will be born. The apocalyptic calls this dwelling place the “New Jerusalem.” There human labor will be resurrected. The human labor invested in it will be the seeds for the New Jerusalem. Thus the new earth will come into being, and it will be possible for people to live there who fit into this new state and who have kept pace with the development. These people will be able to say to themselves: This is the place for us, who will have developed love out of wisdom so that peace can be. “Jeru Salem” means “the place of peace.”

There were a few directives that I could give to better understand this momentous work. Today, we want to deal with a single issue of human development, because it will shed light on the whole development.

There are seven periods in post-Atlantean culture, and we are currently in the fifth. Each period has a specific task in relation to the human being. The human being is reborn because the conditions on Earth have changed. The great developmental epochs really work on the human being. Let us bear in mind that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric body, an astral body and an I. When the human being began his development on Earth, he had developed the first three bodies. The task on Earth is to develop the I.

Let us look back at Atlantis, at the last third. In the last third, man had received the first seed to say “I” to himself. That was only a first seed. The two previous post-Atlantean thirds had to draw this “I” to themselves bit by bit. The main moment for the development of the “I” is the event of Golgotha. What is the fact that man received his “I” in the last third of Atlantis? Before man had arrived at this germ of the I, the connection between the physical body and the etheric body was quite different than later. Today, the etheric body of the head has approximately the same size and shape, which was not the case in Atlantis, where the etheric body still protruded. A certain point of the etheric head had to enter in order to connect with a point in the forebrain. Through this “mating”, the human being became mature enough to gradually develop his ego. To educate this ego, the human being needed the processing of the entire physical body, and all the rest of the Atlantean development was used to make the human physical body a carrier of the ego.

It was only after the Atlantic catastrophe that the human brain was so dense that it could become an ego carrier. The hydrocephalus is an atavism from ancient times. A firm, compact head was made by the etheric head going inside. And so the Indian culture could arise, in which a similar brain was already present. But the etheric body inside the physical body had not yet been educated to become a complete I-bearer. That is why the Indian longed to get out of this world.

Thus, in post-Atlantic culture, people begin to make changes to their etheric body that make it possible for the body to develop into an I-bearer. The I works from the inside out to transform the other bodies. Because the work of reworking the physical body begins with regulating the breath, the spiritual person is called “Atm”. Thus we can speak of seven basic parts. If we want to go into more detail in the sense and spirit of post-Atlantean culture, then we have to base it on the division into nine limbs as in my “Theosophy”. In Nordic mysteries, the division into nine was always taught.

In a sense, the future conscious work with the lower members must be anticipated. It must be preceded by unconscious work. This already took place in the Atlantean body – and also now. Only the initiated work quite consciously. First, therefore, there is an unconscious transformation of the astral body through the influence of higher powers of the ego. The result of this unconscious transformation of the astral body is now called the sentient soul. The transformed etheric body is the mind soul, and the transformed physical body is what we call the consciousness soul.

But even under the guidance of higher spiritual beings, the human being then begins to work more consciously and to develop the spirit self.

Physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual soul, consciousness soul, spirit self, life spirit, spiritual man – these are the nine members of the human being. These were the nine members taught in the old Nordic mysteries. What is formed between the astral body and the spirit self is developed step by step. In the first impulse, the I-radiation in the Atlantean time transformed it into the consciousness soul. This consciousness soul must educate the others in order to educate itself; then it must allow the Christ principle to permeate it in order to develop the spirit self.

In Indian culture, the etheric body is permeated by the Christized I.

In Persian culture, the sentient body
In Egyptian culture, the sentient soul
In Greco-Roman culture, the mind soul
In our culture, the consciousness soul.

In Philadelphia [the apocalypse], the first spark of the spirit self is struck under the influence of the Christ principle.

We are therefore in the culture that develops the consciousness soul and have to prepare ourselves to receive the Christed spiritual self. In Philadelphia, Christ will appear again in a finer body that will be visible to those who have prepared themselves.

In this way, the theosophical movement enables people to see Christ. This is how this processing of the bodies is gradually and thoroughly carried out. This is how we, through the wisdom of Theosophia, lead people to rise above themselves, to not get stuck in the personal, and thus become able to recognize Christ. Because it was necessary in terms of the evolution of the earth, Theosophy has entered our lives.

In the sixth period, meteorical phenomena that have materialized are evoked, and the others begin to ascend higher. But the sub-periods in it, which are characterized by the horses - white clothes and so on - do not pass by human development without leaving a trace. The three bodies interpenetrate more intimately with the three souls and with what will be acquired as a spiritual self. So what has happened in the sixth period? The four members and the finer differentiations of the I will have been worked through to a completely different extent. The three souls will have grown into the three bodies, they will have grown into them intimately.

What does it mean when we say that these members have grown together? They will have acquired the ability to create expression in the physical body. This ability is acquired through the fact that the person has worked through three periods of time. The fact that the person brings with them a development in the sixth period of time, in which they have worked on their soul, means that they have endeavored to spiritualize themselves. The third and the fourth will become intimately interwoven when they have completed the three cycles or epochs. This passage through a cycle, in which he has truly absorbed everything that a cycle offers, is called ©. Man is then finished with the completion of the cycle to its end.

They have achieved the interpenetration of the three with the four.

Sensitive soul / intellectual soul / consciousness soul.

First the number seven. Then, for the next period, the characteristic number is twelve, the multiplier. The twelve-thousanders emerge after completing the three cycles. Three zeros next to the twelve: 12,000.

And I heard the number of those who were sealed: a hundred and forty-four thousand sealed from all the generations of the sons of Israel: of the tribe of Judah, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Reuben, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Gad twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Asher, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Naphtali, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Manasseh, twelve thousand sealed; of the tribe of Simeon, twelve thousand sealed; of the thousand of the tribe of Levi were sealed; of the tribe of Issachar, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Zebulun, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Joseph, twelve thousand were sealed; of the tribe of Benjamin, twelve thousand were sealed. [Rev 7,4-8]

Now the various groups of people with 12 and 3 zeros who have joined the brotherhood of Philadelphia are designated. 144,000 are multiplied by the twelve groups (12x12) that have thus formed. Those who have developed the power over their soul will also have the power in the other souls. When soul works its way into soul, the deeds of men multiply. Thus, the apocalyptic shows us in depth that he knows the whole secret of human development. The truth is told in such a way that the human being is educated to penetrate from the cover into the real form, so that the consciousness soul is also developed. It is important to find certain things for oneself. That is why theosophy is presented later in a different form of wisdom. Even what is said today is still veiled.

Those who were initiated at the time of the apocalypse have already received the meaning. But what is esoteric in one age later becomes exoteric. That is the meaning of development. The esoteric transforms into the exoteric in the course of human development. This is also the case with the secret of Golgotha. The last act in the initiation of the mysteries. Awakening from the lethargic death and crucifixion, entombment and resurrection of the one to be initiated. Then it emerged, became an external historical fact, the historically evolved mystery wisdom of ancient times. The conservative mind always resists what is esoteric being carried out into the world. Christ was regarded as one who brought the mysteries into public life. The inner will appear more and more in the outer, unfolding splendor and color. If they had been able to follow the apocalypticist, they would have heard exactly the same thing when he spoke to his intimate disciples.

The sixth period has something of a decision everywhere. Philadelphia culture over into another time. The sixth seal brings the number twelve. The sixth trumpet also brings something crucial. 5 Jupiter Earth, 6 Venus Earth - overcoming the great Babylon.

Saved all who can be saved. It is decided who has to wait until the next time.

Repetition of Saturn 1, Sun 2, Moon 3, Earth 4, Jupiter 5, Venus 6, Vulcan 7.

When the Earth is forming into a world body for the sixth time, having completed five rounds, the sixth state is there, but the seventh is not yet. Therefore, for the time when Babylon is overcome, we are told:

Here is wisdom.

Five have fallen, that is Saturn, Sun...

They are gone for the elect - only sputum as beast -, and the sixth is, and the seventh has not yet come.

Up to this, the apocalypticist characterizes exactly.

One more thing: we have seven states, these are the proper ones that are gone through to ascend. But those who have proven to be immature are also placed under Sorat. What happens to them? They now have to separate a world of their own, on which they continue their development. So a special sphere separates, it falls out.

A small colony of the wicked, the black magicians, settle there. Read in the theosophical literature about the mysterious eighth sphere, which goes left, while the other goes right. He will remain there for a time, and the beast is the eighth and has come from the seventh and leads to destruction. The apocalypticist also knows that in addition to the seven balls, there is also an eighth. All theosophy could be extracted. The more development progresses, the more strength is needed to lead those who have turned away from spiritualization back to it. Therefore, an attempt must be made to save what can still be saved through the best. That is why Moses and Elijah are called upon. And we see them saying Wisdom in a later epoch on Earth. Moses and Elijah are among those who are initiated very early on. Therefore, they have to work later. Karma is at work in the world. The highest and the lowest are subject to it. Those who are initiated before Golgotha must attain the karmic correspondence. What happened earlier?

Lived in a lethargic state in the physical body for three and a half days. What was done? Nothing. Left to the outer powers. These three and a half years drop out of the development of these initiates. These are the only three and a half years that the old initiate has ignored in the work of his ego. Such a thing must also find its karmic balance. There, where they occur in their state of development, they must again leave their physical body to the outer world for three and a half days. Therefore we read:

And when they have finished their testimony, the beast that rises from the abyss will make war with them, and overcome them and kill them. And their dead bodies will lie in the street of the great city, which is called spiritually “Sodom and Egypt”, because there also the Lord was crucified. And they of the peoples and tribes and tongues and nations shall lie three days and a half, and their dead bodies shall not be left in graves. And they that dwell upon the earth shall rejoice over them, and make merry, and shall send gifts one to another; because these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth.

And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon them which saw them. And they heard a great voice from heaven saying unto them, Come up hither. And they went up into heaven in a cloud; and their enemies beheld them. [Rev 11, 7-12].

And so we have the karmic fulfillment of leaving the body to external powers. Even deeds that are done as sacrifices must find their karmic compensation. Except for the names, we find in the Apocalypse what Christ is. Christ is the deepest impulse that enters into the I of man. The I takes the Christ. We can characterize the I through intimate contemplation. Everyone can call all external things by their name. The name of the I must resound from within. The Christ plunges into this principle of the human being and gradually permeates it. A name that is not written in the external world, that only the one with the name can fertilize, who has it - recognize.

And he had a name written that no one knew [recognized] except himself.

That in the end the earth will be spiritualized in the sun, that everything will be spiritualized in the outer Jerusalem, is expressed:

And the city has no need of the sun or of the moon to shine in it, for the glory of God has illumined it, and its lamp is the Lamb. [Rev 21,23]

First the apocalyptic seer sees the leader who guided our Earth as Vishnu Karma, then as Ahura Mazdao and so forth. He sees him as the one who carries the seven stars, who has the brazen rod, the spirits of development in his hand and the sword in his mouth. The word [gap in the transcript]

Everything undergoes a certain transformation. Even the organs, for example the heart muscle; it is on the way to becoming an arbitrary muscle. The larynx is on the way to becoming a reproductive organ. Through the voice, human beings will produce their own kind. Today, human beings can only communicate that which inspires their soul by communicating with the air. But more and more of the human being is communicated in this way. And man will multiply out of himself through the voice. “In the primeval beginning” and at the end will be the Logos - creating word. And so the mighty vision of the sword from the mouth is at a higher level the reawakening of Atlantis.

Vision: Lamb instead of four animals. Sorat pushed down by an archangel - Sorat. “In brief” is a wrong translation: the apocalypticist does not mean “in a short time”, but “in a brief outline”. Theosophy is the commentary on the Apocalypse - and in our time it is the only possible commentary.

I wanted to say a few more words about the significance of the oldest parts of the Old Testament before moving on to other things. I have often told you that in interpreting the Old Testament, you come to a point where you can begin to take it more or less literally. Now, in the nineteenth century, we experienced an age that was as ill-suited as possible to comprehend something like the five books of Moses. Anyone who understands these five books of Moses will not only see an increase in their insight into the world, but also an increase in their inner appreciation and reverence for all the writings that speak to us, as something that is not only a human voice, but - let us leave this for the time being in an unspecified way - something that resonates down to us from higher spheres than the human spheres.

In fact, we could and perhaps will be able to go back to the origin, to the actual theories of such writings, to the first inspirers. But we do not want to do that today. We want to touch on a question that goes back to an historical fact, which admittedly cannot be established by the external means of literature today, but which will become quite clear once the theosophical movement has taken root. So, I would like to consider an historical fact first. At the time when Christianity had its first starting point, when Jesus of Nazareth lived, there was the school of Philo in the famous Alexandria. Among the manifold teachings that Philo gave, the most outstanding were those that he gave his students about the five books of Moses.

I note that one of these students was the evangelist who wrote the Gospel of John. So the spirit that lived in the Egyptian schools also lives in the Fourth Gospel. This interpretation required a very special spiritual quality, and Philo began by telling his students that the five books of Moses were not written to express what is told in them, but that this was only an outer garment to express deep inner human truths. Line by line, the Old Testament is to be understood as allegorical, symbolic of human inner processes, of such processes that also took place in time at the same time, that is, the processes took place in the hearts of the people for many hundreds of years, from the time when Abraham wandered in the Canaanite land until the time when the Jews were led into Babylonian captivity. There events took place that did not happen outwardly, but in the souls, which were, however, connected with historical events. But one does not understand the historical events if one does not bring them into connection with the inner happenings. Above all, the students entered into a mood in which the whole of the Old Testament appeared to them as a revelation of the inner human self.

I will give you a few examples in a moment. What I have told you was regarded by nineteenth-century scholars as mere myth, especially the explanations given by Philo. He still gave these in a very forceful manner in oral discourse. Everything that has come down to posterity from this has been regarded as an allegorical interpretation, to which nothing more can be added. In the nineteenth century, the aim was to remain on the physical plane and to examine the facts that arise for the historian. Even if the Bible was doubted in its chronology, even if it was no longer believed that the world was created 4000 years before the birth of Christ, at the beginning of the nineteenth century the Bible was still taken as a kind of historical document, as something that gave us information about historical events. The events that were narrated - even if they were inaccurately narrated - were taken as if they mattered. I am now talking from the point of view of external scholarly research. The other things that occurred in the occult realm were not noticed at all.

But something did result from the achievement of deciphering the cuneiform script. It turned out that what can be found in the stories of the Old Testament can also be found in the Babylonian legends and myths. In particular, they tell us of a creation of the world that is very similar to the biblical creation of the world. The story of the Fall of Man is also told in a very similar way in the Babylonian myth. The content of the significant seal impressions is significant. It is the impression that shows two people sitting under a tree with a snake. We have the Fall of Man depicted on a seal impression that is much older than the writings themselves. So in cuneiform writing we have the story of the Fall of Man, the salvation of humanity in a similar way to Noah and so on, so that it became clear that the view that the Old Testament was based on divine revelation, given directly to Moses by God, could no longer be maintained. It is self-evident that secular scholarship has concluded from this that the Jews did not receive these legends by revelation, but that they brought them down with them from their ancestral homeland at the time when they came down, and that they were then influenced from outside.

The further you get into the Old Testament, the clearer it becomes. You have to assume that what we are told about Joseph, who lived around the time of the pharaohs and who helped the Jews achieve a respected position in Egypt, is true. And it must also be assumed that there was also such a Moses.

At least you could feel that there would be a story together. In later times, historical records have again undermined the ground for purely historical research. We have documents that testify that in the time in which the story of Joseph took place, peoples whom we cannot describe otherwise than as Hebrews lived in the land of Canaan and that they turned to Pharaoh for support in a famine. These letters are written in the Babylonian language and addressed to the Egyptian pharaoh. From this it can be seen that the Babylonian language must have been highly regarded. The language of the educated at that time was the Babylonian language, as in earlier centuries with us it was the French language.

But something else has emerged. The person of Joseph has become highly doubtful. History has gradually eroded this figure. It has been established that a personality who was governor in a Jewish land is identical to Joseph, so that the story in the Bible corresponds to a governor who could not have experienced the story. At the court of the Pharaoh, he advocated for the Jews' petitions to the Pharaoh. So we would not have a Joseph who spoke for his people in the way it is written in the Bible, but who, as governor, took care of the Jews, and that they also made the Egyptian journey back then. Today it seems more questionable than ever that the Israelites' journey to Egypt really took place. It is quite impossible that the retreat under Moses could have taken place as it is told. It is said that the Jews went into the desert, and it is said as if no other peoples were there. But at that time, this area must have been inhabited by other peoples who would have fiercely resisted. If we understand all this literally, then everything is in the air.

Secular [historiography] has contributed to the dismemberment of the Bible. If the critic begins with his criticism, he sees himself standing before nothingness. The critic must end up saying, “I can't say anything.” It may be so, but it may also be otherwise – this is the conclusion that the secular critic must necessarily come to.

In this regard, I can only provide a sketch. However, if you were to go through the matter and look at it, you would find – as I have indicated – that the result can only be what I have indicated: higher criticism and absolute lack of results. This probably has the effect that one will ask oneself: Are the interpretations that Philo of Alexandria gave, that it is just a play on words, correct, or are the old documents perhaps written in the sense that Philo of Alexandria could still know, but which was later forgotten?

Not only in the first book of Moses, but also in the later books, an answer can be found if one examines it esoterically and if one asks oneself: Did it literally happen as it seems to be written there, or were the writers such who championed esotericism, were they spirits who, with what they outwardly presented, connected an inner meaning? The whole area that is involved and about which it is said that Abraham passed through it, that Abraham must have lived in it at the time that preceded a great invasion of the people, the area north of the Euphrates; Persia, India, but also Egypt, all these areas were full of occult schools. They were more or less left alone, especially until 2005 BC. But in the middle of the third millennium BC, great migrations of peoples took place. What is referred to as the Babylonian people also settled there around that time. In the past, there were even more peoples who knew what priestly rule meant.

In all these areas there were seven degrees of initiation. The first degree was the degree of the “ravens”. Initiates of this degree were those who ensured the connection between the outside world and the secret places. Hence the ravens are the scouts who bring news of the outside world to those inside the temple, from which they can find the opportunity to work. When the old Barbarossa asks from century to century whether the ravens are still flying around the mountain, this is nothing more than the occult interpretation of whether the connection with the outside world still exists.

In the second degree of initiation, those who could use the word were those who had learned so much that they were inspired by spiritual life. They were called the champions.

In the third degree of initiation were those who could work through action, who stood firm through their power. They were called the “lions”. A warrior is one who works through the word; he is also called a prophet. But those who have become lions work through action. Sometimes, however, their work remains more or less unnoticed. They are often not recognized at all.

Those initiated in the fourth degree were called the “occult” [those working inside the temple].

Those initiated in the fifth degree were called in each country according to the name of the [people] in question. In India they were called: “Man” - . He was only truly a man when he had risen to Manas. The Persians called them “Persians”; the ancient Chaldeans called them “Chaldeans.” The entire nation was called Chaldeans, but the initiated of the fifth degree were especially called that. That is why they were always confused, when the people and when the initiated priests were designated. The initiates of this degree were priests who studied astronomy and astrology.

The initiates of the sixth degree were universally called the “sun-runners”. Their life had become so rhythmic that it ran as regularly as the course of the sun. He would have caused confusion if he had deviated from his path, just as the sun would cause confusion if it ever stepped out of its orbit. The sun-runners were the ones who were called upon to rule the nations. The kings of Western Asia, Southern Asia and Egypt were prepared for this by being initiated in the sixth degree. In the governors of Egypt, we therefore find sun-walkers who had reached a high degree of development, who understood the secret language of the world, and who also understood how to live out the spiritual secrets. It was said of such people that they led a life like the sun and that the sun, moon and stars bowed down before them, just as the moon and stars bow down before the sun.

These solar walkers or solar heroes are told in the most diverse legends and myths. Hercules is nothing other than a solar hero. The twelve labors are the passage through the twelve signs of the zodiac. Jason is also such a solar walker who set out to bring the golden fleece from the rough land of the barbarians. Thus, you can find myths with solar heroes among different peoples. Scholars have often wondered why the heroes of the myths are so often depicted in similar ways. They have been surprised that the lives of Buddha, Hercules and Zarathustra, Osiris and Christ are so similar. If they had known that these were initiates of the sixth degree and that the life of a sun-runner was simply being told, then they would not have needed to wonder. Even the story of Christ is part of it, and it shows that these were real events in their lives, but that they were predetermined by their fellow brothers. Their course of life was mapped out thousands of years before. The life of a sun-runner was described before, because through thousands of years the life of such a hero has taken the same course.

I would like to draw your attention to the story of Joseph. Read it and listen to my suggestions for how you might teach it. Joseph's father, Israel, made him a colorful coat. Among the Persians, those initiated at the fifth degree were called “Persians,” while among the Israelites they were called “Israeb.” It was a real event that those initiated at the fifth degree bowed to those initiated at the sixth degree on a certain day. Joseph told his brothers about his dream in which the sheaves bowed down to him, whereupon the brothers said to him: “Should you become our king and rule over us?” But they did not understand everything. Now he spoke even more clearly by telling his brothers another dream: “Behold, the sun and the moon and eleven stars bowed down to me.” Here Joseph spoke of the fact that he wants to be initiated in the sixth degree. - Let us throw him into a pit, said the brothers. The “pit” is the place of initiation. A “wild beast” has torn Joseph apart. The tearing of the earthly garments is the dying of the lowly. The story shows us that Joseph has grown up to become a sun-runner, a sun-hero.

Egypt was the place of those temples where the most highly initiated were. The seventh degree is the degree of the “fathers.” Abraham belonged to the fathers only in Chaldea. Moses could then also be initiated into the Egyptian mysteries through Joseph, and from this emerged what Moses spoke to his people.

This is a brief example of the kind of instruction that Philo gave his students. The scholars had no idea that these were spiritual processes, but believed that real historical events were being described. But now we also understand why there is nothing left for biblical criticism. It does not stick to the real content, which it lets slip through its fingers.

The Jews of the first Christian communities told the story of Jesus' initiation in a similar way. The key to this lies in the old commentaries that exist for the Bible and the Vedas.

[Spiritual processes that must be read esoterically are also the fairy tales, for example, “The Seven Little Goats.” - The outer criticism always lets the real content slip through; it takes the symbols as deeds. - The keys are not available to external scholarship; it does not know how to read such things.)

Next time, I will discuss one of the most significant stories that you have often heard, but whose inner meaning is as infinitely deep as hardly anything else – the story of Cain and Abel. On the one hand, we have Cain's murder, and on the other hand, the whole human race is derived from Cain. The great secret lies in Abel, who sacrificed the animals of the forest, and Cain, who sacrificed the fruits of the field.

The eye is called upon to perceive. Sensation – perception – can only arise when a nervous system begins to develop. Half of the eye is a living physical apparatus; the other half is permeated by the nervous system. The optic nerve would never perceive if the physical were not constructed in a certain way; with the same physical laws as an inanimate apparatus, plus life.

So these two things are to be formed in humans: an apparatus to receive and one to mediate. Outside in nature we have the mineral kingdom, and the mineral kingdom has given us the apparatus, which is formed from the components of the same kingdom, with which we absorb this kingdom. Everything in the outside world we also have; little by little we have to absorb the whole mineral kingdom.

In the fourth round, we assimilate the mineral kingdom, and by the end of the fourth round we will have consumed the entire kingdom. During the first round, we expose the mineral, while during the fourth we absorb it. During the second, the same thing happens with the plants, while during the third, the same thing happens with the animals.

During the seventh, man is within himself; he has absorbed all the realms. How does this happen? In the nineteenth century, the materialistic one, people began to completely deny the life force. For example, urea, which was previously thought to be produced only by the organism, was produced in the laboratory. The researchers thought that if they could now chemically represent what was previously believed to come from the living, there would be no difference between the living and the inanimate, only a more complex organism. They should have said: there is life in the mineral too.

Man is first able to recognize the inorganic, only later will plant and animal life be understood. The sense by which the nerve spreads perceives the mineral process from the outside. But the nerve will then grasp the life contained in the eye, grasp the incoming prana as we do today with light. The eye will have progressed so far that the plant will flow in directly. The mineral has ceased to exist. The mineral has reached its greatest density in the fourth round and will soon disintegrate into cosmic dust. Therefore, the stone is the image of perfection within our round, and the leaf is the nearest cover. The image of the jewel in the middle of the lotus flower is the symbol of the tendency of human striving today. Buddha sitting in the lotus flower is such a symbol. Today, the human being perceives so strongly in a mineral way that the researcher even denies everything else. But within him is the life - prana - that now takes everything assimilated with it through the pralaya and possesses the processed as a spiritual inner life, as something absorbed within him. - So in each round, until the human being - absorbing everything - remains only in God.

During the first round, man had developed his physical self, the bone system emerged in the system; in the second round it was animated, man became a plant. It is hollow, the plant as an outline.

In the fifth round, he will have the core within him. The human being as a plant-human being in the second round reproduces, life begets life. In the first round, unity prevailed; in the second, number, the emergence of one from the other. Form also prevails – shape – because number comes together.

In the third round, the beings begin to live within themselves. Reciprocity rules – pleasure and pain.

Something new begins in the fourth round. Until now, there was still a shell everywhere. The mineral kingdom begins to form a core. We are only now able to distinguish between shell and core. The core can separate and control ever new shells. Birth and death prevail. The core can retain a germ that outlasts all shells, and we experience birth and death.

In the first three rounds up to the middle of the fourth, the daughter essence is released from the mother essence; it separates. Everything was there as long as the round lasted; only with the fourth round is birth and death possible.

The first is unity, which dominates the first round. The second is number, which dominates the second round. The third is interdependency, which dominates the third round. The fourth is birth and death, which dominate the fourth round.

The union of the Pitri with the Dhyan Chohan is the core. [...]