The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Since today is the last time that we will see each other before the holidays, I would like to briefly discuss an object that is truly suitable to provide people with nourishment for the holiday season. What we want to take a look at today is the spirit of the Gospel of John. This gospel is regarded by learned theologians today as the one that is of least importance for the religious education of man.

The first three gospels are called the three synoptic gospels and it is thought that these three evangelists report, to a certain extent, what happened in Palestine between the years 3 and 33. On the other hand, today's theologians are of the opinion that the Gospel of John is a kind of fiction and does not actually present facts. They dismiss it and consider it to be a kind of fervent confession of its author, but they do not want to act on it.

We will now try to penetrate a little into the meaning and power of this Gospel of John. For those for whom it is the main thing to penetrate into the spirit of Christianity and into the tasks of our immediate future, for them the Gospel of John is the most important, and it is only due to a misunderstanding of our time that the Gospel of John is neglected today. The mystics knew that the Gospel of John is a book of life. I have mentioned something similar before. Anyone who reads the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter onwards is not just reading a book, not just absorbing the knowledge of certain facts; each sentence is a source of occult powers. And when we read this Gospel from there on, we generate spiritual forces in ourselves, we become different people. It is not important that we know the sentences by heart, but that we experience their meaning, that we become one with it. The occultist says: Each sentence from the thirteenth chapter onwards is written for you in such a way that it initially means an inner human experience. Something happens in us when we become completely absorbed in it and let the magic of the words take effect on us. Things light up in us that we did not know before, and through this we understand our task for the near future.

Even in our last hours, I said that we are facing a significant task, that we can only rise to our task if we grasp it in the spiritual, if we have absorbed the spirit of our time within us at all, and this spirit is the spirit of true, genuine Christianity.

What has civilization been striving towards in the last few decades? Towards external possessions, towards such an organization of the external, material world that this external world is as comfortable as possible, that it satisfies the external, sensual needs as much as possible. Even the greatest spiritual progress has only served to make the life of the senses more comfortable. Likewise, all our inventions, all our advances in technology, the efforts of our greatest thinkers, and so on, have only provided us with means to satisfy the needs of our senses. The animal goes out to pasture and feeds itself, and man has used his reason in recent centuries to ultimately satisfy the same needs. Let us immerse ourselves in this: what mental power is needed to invent the railroad, the telephone, the steam engine, and so on; and we use them to satisfy our nutritional needs. [We speak on the telephone, we take the train to the farthest reaches of the earth. And for what? Why do we use the telephone and why do we take the train? We telephone in order to get some grain, we travel by train to get things that serve purely sensual needs.] Ultimately, we use the means of our culture so that people can satisfy their purely sensual and material needs. It is as if the animal kingdom in us wants to satisfy its sensual needs in the most sophisticated way.

In the distant past, it was different. Then, primitive people provided the necessities of their material existence in the simplest way possible, while, in contrast, the spiritual needs of the human being were in the foreground. All this has become more sophisticated today as far as the material life is concerned. Man has woven himself into a web of intellect and reason in order to satisfy only the external life. But in those days, when we turn our gaze back, a high spiritual movement was at the center of life. People were simple, but a high spiritual culture presents itself to us. Within those masses of people, there were places where highly developed spiritual beings took possession of high spiritual powers, with which they brought about a spiritual culture. A stream of spiritual life emanated from these mystery centers. [In simple fables and fairy tales, the mystery priests told the masses about their wisdom.] The old Druid priest told fairy tales that may seem very elementary to us, but that arose from the deepest spiritual insight. [But they are not, as our fantastic scholars believe, created by the childlike spirit of popular fantasy, but they have emerged from deep spiritual insight.] The goblins, undines, nixies, which are now thought to be superstition and fantasy, originated from the living interaction with the highest spiritual beings that inhabited other planes. Because we are surrounded by spiritual worlds. The astral world is everywhere, it is just as [animated and just as] colorful and resounding as our [physical] world, [no, it is even much more resounding and much more colorful].

All this appears to the advanced human being [to whom the chakras are open; he sees a new world, somewhat like someone who was previously blind or deaf and then, through some circumstance, became seeing or hearing]. In particular, he gets to know a whole range of new beings that cannot become visible on the physical plane because they cannot come to this material, but because they have their corporeality in the astral material. The legends and fairy tales originate from the interaction with these higher entities. The spiritual powers worked wonders in our present sense at that time. The primitive conditions that naturalists tell us about are not correct. These people satisfied their material needs in the simplest way, but in contrast to that, they participated in the spiritual life of those higher personalities.

[Their state and gender associations were imbued with the spiritual power of the spiritual beings.] An anthill [or a beehive] is much more sensibly arranged than many a present-day state. But where is the leader for a present-day state in this sense? Behind all those states in the past, however, was the intelligentsia, and those individualities of which we are speaking here ruled over everything around them with their spiritual insights. The outer life was simple and primitive, but behind it stood a spiritual life. Thus the world is the symbolic imprint of a higher spiritual life.

Even today, those who are in possession of higher spiritual powers live, who can see into the higher worlds, who can counsel with beings of higher worlds. But it has become their destiny that they had to step back for a while, that they had to stay in the background.

Over the last few millennia, the wave of materialism has risen ever higher and the wave of spirituality has descended ever lower. So today they live in obscurity, these masters [of wisdom and] of the harmony of sensations, and so only those who have undergone special training to open up access to them know about them.

For two millennia, humanity has been guided by a different force; but this force has only developed the first chapter here on earth today: that is Christianity.

Christianity has the task of consciously guiding the human being who is to enter the material plane. We still have to draw comparisons from the animal kingdom if we want to know how our ancestors were guided by spiritual beings. Let us use an image again that can make the whole process clear. An army of slaves worked on the Egyptian pyramids, and in a way that people today cannot even imagine. But each one had a consciousness: “This life is one of our many - but I will live many on this earth; and just as he who commands today, where I am a slave, so I will also command one day.” - So life was bearable for them. They knew that if they suffered now, they had laid the foundation for it in previous lives. They knew that they are visitors here on Earth. This constituted a completely different cultural awareness.

But it could not remain that way, because human beings have a completely different task. We are not meant to be mere visitors; we are meant to transform the Earth in such a way that all material things become more and more spiritual; we are meant to work the spirit into the Earth. Everything we do for the earth, we have done for God, no matter what we accomplish, we are all links in a great chain. We are the messengers of the deity, and the earth must one day become a golden age, a paradise; people must transform the earth as free creative beings.

To achieve this, man on earth had to be prepared by first looking up at the sky. But then there had to come a time when man realized the importance of the material – realized that every move is important. Everything that seems to be vain will one day become important on other levels.

Christianity was to become an education: first, to distract the view from the spiritual. Such importance was to be attached to things on earth that the man of two millennia should not think at all of the spiritual. So there was an age in which the spiritual receded. People had forgotten the connection with the spiritual, but for that they should also remain aware of it. [That is why Christ Jesus appeared, so that they could endure living on earth for two millennia.] That is why the Christ came to Earth; that is why he gave his disciples the order not to say anything about reincarnation in the scene of the transfiguration. The Christ said: Elijah has come back, and people have not recognized him. Then he explained the doctrine of reincarnation to them; but they should not say anything about it until he had reappeared.

[The doctrine of reincarnation is a truly Christian doctrine. He chose Peter, James and John to witness the transfiguration. The time differences disappear, Moses and Elijah become visible. From the disciples' question: What do the scribes say, Elijah must come back first? - it is clear that they knew about the doctrine of reincarnation. Jesus said: Elias has already come, but they have not recognized him.

He explained re-embodiment to them, but he said: Tell no one about this until I have reappeared. The reappearance refers to our own age.

For two millennia, people have become more and more immersed in the material world - the Christ was their leader. But now humanity is called upon to experience the Christ within themselves again. The occultist knows the truth:

I am with you always, even to the end of time.

This always refers to the end of a current era and the dawn of a new one. [Christ was elevated into the so-called common astral body of humanity. The time will come when he will be here again; the time will come when everyone, albeit in a different way, will know that the Christ will reappear in the etheric plane.

The time will come when everyone will know in a completely different light what the Christ actually is. The Christ will reappear on earth in glory, and then the second chapter of Christianity will begin. The “new gospel” will then begin - the “new gospel is the Gospel of John. A correct understanding of the old gospel is the Gospel of John.

Through materialistic science, the matter of the “simple man from Nazareth” arose. Theologians set out to interpret the events in Palestine in a purely materialistic way from their liberal point of view. Materialism was a necessary phenomenon; but it is misunderstood in many ways, and theology has also been seized by this misunderstanding. [Harnack's school also emphasizes that what matters is the historical. It is pure materialism. We do not fight it because we know that it is necessary. The materialistic lack of understanding has also seized the theologians. And this materialistic lack of understanding is now taught at the universities and in the schools. They mock themselves and do not know and do not realize it.]

A new understanding of Christianity will awaken, and man must consciously approach it - a culture full of light, in which violence will not threaten, in which the spirit of the initiated will flood over souls and bring a different age.

We are being led towards this age not only spiritually and psychically; we cannot remain in lethargy; the last moment is upon us. World history is connected with the spiritual world.

Today there is a disease that is the disease of all diseases – we call it 'nervousness'. People in the past did not suffer from this condition. If we cannot convey to the young consciousness of our age how great the materialistic danger is, then we should at least convey to people the fact that they are nervous. Only a century ago, only those who could use their muscles could be called 'nervous'. Now a new thing has emerged: a sensitivity that goes as far as the external senses – up to now materialism has driven us. Material things in the external world have their counterpart in nervousness, and as the striving in the material world becomes more widespread, people will ruin their nerves to the same extent.

The Baron Rothschild, who has now died in Vienna, was a signature for this example. He left twenty million for a foundation for the benefit of people with nervous disorders. He gathered this fortune as a sick man throughout his life. He entered life with ruined nerves, and that is how he left it. It cannot be separated: the chasing and rushing and mere thinking of the material with the collapse of the nervous system. The twenty million are supposed to be for the care of nervous people – a signature for the ruination of the nervous system. – The occultist knows that deep relationship between the spiritual and the outer physical life – but today's man does not yet know that.

Especially in the material life, today's doctors live. But we know that the truth will come to light. If we do not want the materialistic attitude to ruin people physically as well, we must take hold of the spiritual life again. All those who do not see this say: Behind us the deluge! It will take its revenge that many today no longer want to know anything about penetrating into the depths of the mystical writings of Christianity. Another dawn will have shone in our time when the Christian churches have a better understanding of what Christianity is. With powerful hieroglyphs, our age is also written into the Bible: Who betrays Christ Jesus? The one who has the thirty pieces of silver, who represents material possessions. At the beginning of the Christian era, the divine spirit descended. The Christian spirit descended to sanctify the earthly valley as well, and anyone who does not consider that he is called upon to usher in a different era violates his deepest responsibility. Man had to lend a hand to two thousand years of education. Judas of Kariot had to make the sacrifice. He had to deliver the Christ to the material forces of life. Because humanity followed the thirty pieces of silver, the Christ disappeared into the astral plane. Through the betrayal of Judas, you are characterized by what the task of Christianity has been during the two thousand years. But another task lies ahead for Christianity today. We have only to knock again at the gates from which the words resound, which were spoken to the apostles at that time:

[I tell you, Elijah has already come.) [Matt. 17,12]

Today's Christianity is called “Theosophy” and it is a false Christianity that denies Theosophy. Has any of today's theologians thought about the Bible passage John 13, verse 16?

The servant is not greater than his master, nor the apostle greater than he who sent him.

One would like to understand why people do not reflect on such an important matter when it would be the other way around: the Lord is not greater than his servant and he who sent him, not greater than the apostle.

It follows the washing of the feet. You know this significant scene. At first, Peter refuses, but then asks that the Master also wash his whole body. Then the Master points out that there is one who is not pure, who will betray him.

[If you do not let yourself be washed, you have no part in me.] [John 13:8]

... Those who are pure only need to have their feet washed. You are pure, but not all.) [John 13:10]

The entire mystery of the present human condition is hidden in this chapter. Fundamentally, the education of the last two millennia should be a washing of feet. While on the one hand Judas stands with knowledge [with the thirty pieces of silver], Christ washes the feet of the others.

Let us consider our physical body and our astral body. The physical body is within this physical world. The same physical and chemical forces that work outside [in stones and machines] also work within our physical body. Our astral body is determined by our drives and passions.

What did Christ want to achieve by washing feet? I have often said that the physical body of modern man is the most perfect and significant, and that his other bodies must first reach that level.

Take, for example, a piece of the thigh bone. No technician could put such a piece together better. Our physical body is constructed in a wise and perfect way, an imprint of the highest wisdom. If the physical body were only on earth, the physical world would be more perfect. There are no low activities in our physical body. That is what the astral body first works down there. Nothing is sinful that the physical body does, only the astral body is sinful. The astral body works as the enemy of our physical body, and sin and wrong are thereby brought about in the physical body.

The astral body had to adapt to the physical. It had to descend during the last two millennia – the Christ had to descend, he had to be betrayed. He had to find those things by which he can best serve the physical body. The passions had to pour over the physical life. Judas with the purse had to move in to bring about harmony with the physical world. [Gap in the transcript]

Our physical body is a seal imprint of perfection and wisdom; therefore the occultist will say: the perfect gods have created the physical body in perfection and the astral body must first grow into this perfection; it must become divine itself. The astral must purify itself, just as the physical has purified itself by descending into the physical world, which is represented by the earth. And when we descend to earth, we must cleanse our feet; and when the astral body descends to earth, its feet must be particularly clean. It must be able to descend into the material world, to take part in everything, but remain pure.

If those who now live in their astral body and want to ennoble it want to fulfill their task, then they must take this wise man as their model. In our time, the astral body is the servant of the physical body; for in the physical body lives the God. And it would be bad for man if he were to place his physical body below the astral body. “Lord” is what works in our physical body, and the 'servant' is the astral body. He Himself, the God, has perfected the physical body; He has sent forth the astral body and placed it forever under the influence of spiritual forces that are to perfect it and make it ever more perfect. This makes us servants, and it would be arrogance on our part if we were to place ourselves higher than the higher forces at work in nature. We should be edified by the divine nature [and be edified by the sun's rays, by the orbits of the planets, and so on] and not place ourselves above it, otherwise we violate this commandment [which is expressed in the words: The servant - the astral man - is not greater than the one who created the physical body].

Today, from the theosophical point of view, we understand such a profound passage when it says: “The apostle is not greater than his master.” Such words have a similar effect to how the devas used to work. And they worked like our ancestors,

the voice of the masters in the folk tales and folk legends – there is the Lord within. Our material wisdom has become bungled and servile; here we are told that the servant should not rise above the Lord.

In the margin, it may be added here: one cannot make a more humble confession than Schelling and Hegel. [Hegel, Fichte, Saint-Martin, Baader - they all say]: There will come a time when all that is material science, [that is, knowledge of the external world of the senses] will be seen as child's play - and we will stand there again like children and prostrate ourselves before the old legends and seek the ancient wisdom therein.

[This time has come. We seek this wisdom in every religious confession.] We know that we are Christians; and let us not misunderstand our task of working spiritually now; the better Christians and the better theosophists we become. There is no better guide for this than the Gospel of John. If we live with the Gospel of John, then we live into a new future of Christianity; then we also follow the sentence that the servant should not place himself above the master. But if you come with material, chaotic wisdom and criticism, and want to master it, then it is a crime and presumption – before man has recognized the book. To recognize and be silent and to surrender in humility to that which is rooted in these writings, to do nothing but fulfill this task of the time, the masters have taught us the harmony of the ancient truths again. They themselves have worked on building our world. Thus speaks he who, from the theosophical standpoint, has looked into the hustle and bustle of the world, not as one speaking from theory but from the knowledge drawn from the sources themselves.

He who has sat at the Steps of Wisdom – before our older, more perfect brothers – who has kissed their feet and heard their voice, draws his words from the future itself, which apocalyptically shines before him; he can speak again as it was once permitted to speak prophetically, and he will have the strength to speak of what will come once.

This power is given to us by the great masters, who are the seal-keepers, and in whose service we place ourselves. Because we believe we can discern the pulse of the future, and because we know what speaks to us from the sounds of the future, that is why we are Theosophists, because we cannot help it. And when we let the breath of the spirit flow through our souls, then we are true theosophists. This spirit is a spirit of worship and humility. Christ was born of the spirit; and when the spirit carries us again, then we will become true Christians once more.

Let us work together, wherever we may be, like brothers; each one is not too weak to do so; each one can do it: to work in the spirit of the light that comes to us from our greatest Master, Christ-Jesus. So we will meet again in the fall and try to penetrate further into the halls of spiritual life.

Last time I took the liberty of saying a few words about the task or the significance of a theosophical branch. What I said then is really something that cannot be emphasized enough, perhaps, for those who are in the theosophical movement or who want to participate in what is called theosophy today. Nothing is more common today than opposing, than fighting against mere theory, against mere teaching, and on the other hand, again, the desire for life, for sensation and feeling, for that which is not theory and not teaching; for no time has been so caught up in theories, teachings and dogmas - without one really knowing it - as the present one.

That seems to be a strong claim, and yet I would like to maintain it, even against those who object: Isn't that the dark ages, the dark dogma, and isn't our time beyond that? You will find a well-known magazine on display this week, in which the first page talks about a book that deals with Christianity and that comes from the philosopher Eduard von Hartmann. It is not obvious enough for us today to deal with the ideas of this writing. But a well-known fighter for the current renewal of Christian ideas has expressed ideas in the “future” in connection with this writing, which do give us food for thought because they are very widespread in our present time. Jentsch says that Hartmann said in this writing something that has often been said before, but that the logical mind of Eduard von Hartmann has stated as clearly as possible once again, so that everyone now knows that one can never again deal with any theoretical or systematic, doctrinal basis of religious views or truths. The time when religion was philosophically or theologically justified is over. Today we know full well – and in saying this he expresses something that will resonate in many hearts – that all systems of thought become entangled in contradictions and that only life, looking up into a world beyond, to a divine world order, can truly interest us.

The good man does not realize that, although he rejects all other dogmatics, two or three dogmas, even if they remain merely abstract, have a certain value for him. He wants to cast off all dogmatics, and he is precisely a dogmatist of the most pronounced kind. Although one does not want to be a dogmatist, and yet one is one, without knowing how strong one is as a dogmatist. This has also led to the fact that all similar movements - be it the “Giordano Bruno League” or the “Society for Ethical Culture” - more or less stand on a strictly doctrinal point of view, that it is therefore more important to them to spread teachings. Whether they are teachings about the right moral action or about monism or about a reform of our religious education in schools, which is to be replaced by a moral education that only amounts to a certain moral dogmatics - because something has to be taught after all - it makes no difference. So the old dogmas are replaced by new ones, by the dogmas of liberalism. Everywhere it comes down to doctrine, everywhere to the content of the word.

This is not at all necessary in the theosophical movement. I wanted to emphasize this point: Whatever we teach, whatever one or the other writes or teaches in his books, may it be high truths, and may there be many people who feel addressed by such truths because they represent a world system without contradictions and so on – that is not what matters in the theosophical movement. What matters is not what we teach, what we assert, what we say, but how we live together in the theosophical movement, what kind of attitude we develop. This attitude, which we should develop and want to develop, is that in our soul lives the consciousness of spiritual activity, the consciousness that thoughts, sensations, feelings are just as real forces in the world as magnetism, electricity, light or steam power. Not the one who admits that there is truth in the things spread in our literature is a true theosophist, but the one who, together with his fellow human beings, finds himself in the ever-recurring awareness in his soul that when he thinks, feels or wills something that may not even be translated into an external action, that it will then have an effect.

And when one of us speaks to such a congregation, which brings this awareness to him, then his words are quite different from the words of any other lecturer or any other speaker. Because then you will be sitting here in the knowledge that not only your physical body, which is here, is something real, but that your feelings and emotions and your thoughts, which pass through your mind, are as present as your physical body. And when you cross the threshold with this awareness and absorb the words that are spoken here, then these words will find the way they are meant to find into the world. The words of the theosophist are not spoken for the sake of one or the other agreeing or disagreeing with them. It is not whether they are true or not that is of primary importance, but the fact that they are forces. No matter how beautiful and excellent the thoughts expressed in the words of the individual may be, this is of less importance; what is of primary importance is through which channels these thoughts pass. A theosophical lodge or branch is the starting point for numerous channels through which these thoughts, when spoken, find their way out into the whole world.

But these words will only be heard in this way if the listeners are aware of a spiritual world. Then the speaker's powers are strengthened by the consciousness of each person present; then the spiritual forces are like those in an electric battery, and they penetrate out into the world like waves and are effective wherever the opportunity arises. It is this attitude, this consciousness, this life in the teaching that is important, not the content. Our teachings are drawn from the contemplation of the great spiritual connections of existence and from the contemplation of the nature of the human being. The goal is not that we know them, but that they have an effect. And this effect is important for the reason that these thoughts are the same ones through which everything in the world has happened for millions of years, ever since there has been a time. And as true as the world has become as it is now through these thoughts, so true will the world become in the future through the same thoughts, as it should and must become.

But there is a factor that must be involved in order for the right thing to happen in the future, and this factor is called “human being”, this factor is called “knowing and conscious human being”. We can say: There was a time when the great thoughts of the world order were realized by what we call the gods. At that time, man was still completely unconscious. At that time man could not yet participate in the building of the world. You see, man is now at the beginning of the development of his consciousness. He will approach times when this consciousness will draw ever wider and wider circles. Thus he will be ever more called upon to collaborate in what the gods once did. That is why we call our theosophy 'Divine Wisdom', because we have the wisdom from it, and because we must have our share if we want to set up our construction in the future.

In the future, man will be called upon in a broader sense to participate more consciously than he does today. Just as today's society creates a moral world order for itself, so too will a time come when spiritual forces will permeate the soul of man to a much greater extent than they do today, and the rigid social order will have a much deeper, more intense meaning. And just as man today only uses the laws of nature on the surface in order to do what lives and works in industry, so a time will come when man will use the spiritual laws of the world to make our institutions. Man will gain mastery over health and disease by applying the great laws of the world. There is a divine being in man at the beginning of his development, and to bring out this divine being and make it a creative one is the goal of Theosophy or 'divine wisdom'. Theosophy does not exist to satisfy the curiosity of those who want to know something about God, but to give people the strength to fulfill their task as a divinizing being. Although it may not happen in a short period of time, we will be able to realize this more and more.

What I would now like to summarize in one sentence may seem quite peculiar to some people, but it is a truth that the occultist knows as a natural scientist knows some other truth, some external truth. There is such a truth. I have already pointed this out in the twenty-seventh issue of Lucifer-Gnosis. It is connected with health in the world. It is a truth, admittedly, in the spiritual sense, and the connection is not so obvious. Ultimately, it is absolutely true that a healthy external physical body is the result of an inner life of the spirit in truth. To express myself more clearly, but somewhat remotely: a theosophical lodge, a theosophical branch is also a source of health. As you sit here together in the attitude of mind of which I have spoken, and absorb into your consciousness those truths which are nothing other than an echo of the great world thoughts that have created the harmonies of the world, tremble and vibrate through your soul the true thoughts of the world. And just as it is true that everything physical is an effect of the spirit, it is just as true that the state of the physical will be determined by the vibrations, by the waves that now tremble through your soul. If the thoughts that stimulate the wave vibrations of your soul are healthy, then these will also stimulate the physical vibrations, and these must then be healthy. By radiating these vibrations in all directions throughout the world, we are creating a source of health. A source of health emanates from the theosophical lodges. You will not notice this recovery in your life tomorrow or the day after. But in the future you may find that health is the result of the current pursuit of truth. We build healthy bodies for future generations by allowing our souls to cultivate the truth in spiritual life. We place ourselves in the whole course of time, we place ourselves in the course of the world, if we have the right faith.

Many say, yes: What harm has materialism done us? It has brought us many powerful devices and so much knowledge and understanding of life at all naturalist and medical gatherings. You can hear so much about life there. You can hear how great the hygienic progress is and so on, how much lower the mortality rate is today than it was a century ago. All this has been brought to us by the study of natural laws, a study that works with pure matter. But you also have to see deeper. You have to see that the outside does not always correspond to the inside, and that the outside is a very deceptive indicator of the inside.

Yes, we do not want to deny that great and magnificent things have been created in our age of materialism. But who created it? Here we come to a point that teaches us the difference between what man merely thinks, what merely lives in the human mind, and what lies deep in the bottom of his soul. You must strictly distinguish these two things. You go through the world and do your daily tasks according to what you think today. But what you think today is based on a reason that is not from today. What you think today is based on a deeper soul reason that is the result of the past. Even from a purely external point of view, even the materialistic thinkers of the nineteenth century grew out of the thinking of the past. They were educated in schools that had not yet fallen prey to materialism. Where did the great teachers of materialism such as Büchner, Vogt, Moleschott learn their subject, and why do their books have such a seductive quality? It is because their school was in a time when it had not yet been so taken over by materialism. In truth, we carry within us the essence of what we were in past lives. Indian philosophy tells us with profound wisdom: What you think today, you will become tomorrow. This applies to people and to all facts and beings in the world. Today, our thinking is superficial. Today, we are what we thought in the past.

They believe that we have overcome the old. People speak of the dark, gray Middle Ages. But the first times of the Middle Ages rest as our deepest being in our soul. At that time we lived in an earlier incarnation. What we think today, we will only be in a future incarnation. We should not be surprised that we think in a materialistic way, but nevertheless have reaped fruits that are the result of earlier epochs. What we have today is only the result of an age that we are inclined to look down on with ridicule and scorn. It was out of this deep realization that the impulse arose that led to the theosophical movement in the last third of the nineteenth century.

We are now facing the fruits of earlier times and earlier ways of thinking. But those who are watching over the signs of the times know that our thoughts, what we have in our souls today, determine our future life. This future will be an ever faster and faster unfolding of life. You must be aware that life does not proceed at the same pace in all ages. All those sitting here have heard many theosophical lectures, and I may therefore often say a word that is taken from deeper wisdom. We know that besides the physical plan there is the astral plan, and he who knows the higher life also knows how to predict the course of development in this higher world and to follow the course of progress.

If we compare the period from the time of Charlemagne to the end of the eighteenth century with the period from the beginning of the nineteenth century to the beginning of the twentieth century, thus comparing a millennium with a century, we note the surprising fact that approximately the same things happened in both periods. The progress of the human wave was only ten times faster and it will be faster and faster in the time to come. Therefore, we must be prepared for the things that our thoughts bring about to become external reality in the not too distant future. This shows you the impulse from which the theosophical movement has flowed.

The recovery of the following generation should be due to our thoughts, just as we owe the progress we have made to the preceding generations. Those who look at the theosophical movement in this light may be called 'prophetic' in nature. But at all times, prophets have been, and had to be, those who really wanted to guide the course of events. For to determine what should happen in the future, on a large scale, one must first know what is lawful for that future. The great individuals who know what is lawful for the future have therefore given us the opportunity to get to know again the great laws of the world, which had been forgotten for so long, and to feel them for the spiritual and physical recovery of our race. Take this quite literally, that true thoughts have a healing physical effect, and that those thoughts, which are awakened in the theosophical lodge through our soul vibrations, are medical-medical forces that pulsate through humanity. Feel this truth, this truth of life, with all your soul and feel the importance in the theosophical movement, then you will come to another chapter and be able to grasp it.

There are many among us who say: Yes, the theosophical movement spreads a beautiful, high ethics, it spreads beautiful teachings that are consistent in themselves. But one should stick to it and not raise one's eyes and confuse people in mystical, mysterious, abstract and mental worlds. How many there are in the Theosophical Society who say: Leave us alone with the astral and mental realm, we want to develop the consciousness of unity. A certain shyness can be noticed towards what we know as the doctrine of the astral and mental. But one day it must be said: The one who wanted to exclude this teaching of these higher worlds from the theosophical movement was acting against the intentions that the great individuals, whom we call the masters, gave us. We might as well abandon the theosophical movement if we ban the teaching of the higher worlds from it. Certainly, one can speak of an ethic, of an ethical teaching today. This ethical teaching is already being introduced in schools. Ethical societies have been founded that attempt to establish and introduce general human duties without regard to this or that worldview, to this or that religious belief. But you can only establish duties based on what you know. But take a look at these teachings of duty. They are a true reflection, a perfect imprint of the material age in which we live. What you find in the way of new duties among the new enlightened ones is nothing more than the consequence of a materialistic world view, the consequence of what the eyes can see, ears hear and hands can touch. This is certainly idealism, and one can be a noble idealist in this field – without doubt. But this is the last consequence, the last outflow of a materialistic time.

And because even those who believe themselves to be idealists, and who aspire with their thoughts and feelings to a higher world and at least want to retain a dark foreboding of a higher world, because they want to start thinking, feeling and acting and not just talk, immediately fall back into materialistic habits of thought. Because there are many such people in the theosophical movement, the idea is spreading in it too: we should limit ourselves to such a materialistic ethics, to a unity consciousness that one cannot grasp and does not want to grasp because people are afraid of touching the higher worlds in a certain way.

The theosophists, who say that one should not speak of the astral and mental planes, also point out that a certain amount of theosophical truth can be spread with the mere intellect. They also want to hint at what is the deeper essence and foundation of all reality, as a divine reality underlying all realities. But to see it for themselves, to grasp it, to face it as it is, they shrink back from that. That would be just as if someone wanted to say: Yes, there is an electrical force, we want to admit it; but to apply it, to study it in order to construct electrical machines and so on, we do not want to get involved in that. That is dangerous, we could confuse ourselves, that gives the world a different picture. But such a one does not really approach the power of electricity. Rather, the right approach is taken by the one who says, “I want to get to know the power of electricity in every respect, so that I can bring it into existence and use it in the outer arrangements of men.” The first follower of the power of electricity would resemble the theosophist who says, “Let us not concern ourselves with the astral and mental worlds, but only with the consciousness of unity.” He would not apply spiritual power to the immediate present.

But if we do not want to just dream of the divine, not just have hunches, not just talk and at most feel vaguely, but actually implement it in reality, then we have to get to know it in its individual forms, as it reveals itself in the higher worlds, and then we can penetrate into the higher worlds. Just as we conquer our physical world by getting to know the individual forms of electrical power, we get to know our life as a tangible reality when we make this power our own. In the future, this power, which today is only realized in the world by universal beings, will be consciously realized and controlled by human beings.

It is not to satisfy our curiosity that we look into the spiritual world, not in vain do we seek to open the eyes of the mind and soul to those beings who do not live in the physical body, but as if from our passions and instincts and inner soul forces. It is not without reason that we rise to those beings whose body is not physical, whose body is woven from the same material as our thoughts are woven, to those beings whom we call the beings of the mental world. We rise to them in order to learn what needs to be woven into the world in which we live. That is a fundamental truth, that the spirit is always present. When you see a flower, you do not just see a physical object – today's science does not want to know anything about that: this flower is spirit, and its sensual form is only an expression of the spirit. I have said many times: if you have a surface of water and you let the water cool more and more, ice will form. Someone will now come and say: ice is real water, only in a different form. Then another person comes and says: But it is not water, it is solid and not liquid. Everyone knows that ice is condensed water, shaped by cold and differently formed. It is quite similar with the flower. In this flower you have only a differently formed spirit. Just as you can transform ice into water, so you can also dissolve the flower into its spiritual essence. Our physical world is nothing but astral and mental substance that has become too solid. All those sitting here are also mental beings and express themselves in their physical bodies in a condensed form. If you want to work for the greater good, you have to know the forces. If you want to create ice, you need to have cold and water. If you want to shape the physical world in the right way, you have to know the spirit.

You have to explore the forces of the spirit, not to satisfy our curiosity about the higher worlds and to learn all kinds of interesting things, but because we draw from them our knowledge for our practical life. What is astral today will be physical in the future; and what is mental today will be astral in the future and physical in the more distant future. When we speak of the astral plane in a theosophical lodge and allow these astral truths to permeate our soul and create vibrations in it, these souls will in the future be incarnated in people who are disposed to the astral plane. If we are then incarnated on earth again, these truths will flow out of us. What will then take physical shape through us are the things that descended into our soul as parts, as children of the astral world. We are here to bring down the laws of our work and life from the higher worlds. Therefore, the question cannot be whether one or the other likes to ascend to the higher worlds, but only whether we should and must ascend. That we should ascend, that there should come again an age which spiritualizes the world, which spreads spiritual views among mankind, this was the realization of the great beings who inspired the theosophical movement.

The age that lies behind us, the epoch in which man became material, was preceded by another. This era relied on great, exalted spiritual beings who were the teachers and guides of humanity. In ancient times, when great holy leaders guided humanity, all of these leaders were at least deeply imbued with the truths that the theosophical movement is spreading among humanity today, including the truth of the repeated incarnation of the human soul. If you imagine the relationship of the great teachers of antiquity to the masses, you will get an idea of the way of teaching in ancient times. Think back to those times and to the great advanced individuals who looked into the mysterious, secret structure of the world, which was closed to the eyes of others - as St. John expresses it in the Apocalypse. They spoke to people in a pictorial form that they could not yet grasp with their minds, but which they had to be prepared for in order to grasp with their minds in later incarnations. And that led to the form of language that was spoken at that time, to the language of legends, myths and fairy tales.

This is where you are sitting today. But all your souls were once embodied in those distant times, all your souls listened to one of the great teachers of the distant past as he told the fairy tales. These fairy tales were not of the same kind as those conceived from light, superficial fantasy, as today's are, but in these fairy tales the great truth of existence lived and breathed. And even if the truth was not expressed conceptually in them, it was not the conceptual that descended into your souls with the figures and persons of the fairy tale, but rather the intuitive perception. The fairy tales that you read in the Grimm's Fairy Tale Collection mostly contain such teachings of wisdom. When they were absorbed into the human soul, you learned them in such a way that today you are able to grasp the truths that were once contained in the fairy tale. It is the greatest untruth to say that fairy tales contain no truths. They contain the most ancient truths of the human race. The soul that allows the fairy tale to flow into it receives the seed of feeling for the truth, which later unfolds. In our youth, because everything in the world must repeat itself that has been there in the past, we must briefly relive those souls and states of mind that we went through in earlier times when we heard the eternal words of the saints of humanity. And when today a mother tells her child a fairy tale from the treasure of ancient times, then truth flows into the soul of the child. Thus the child is repeatedly prepared for his later age, when he is then able to absorb these truths with his mind.

If we look at it this way, we understand the course of time. We hear about the time that we have described, when the great mysteries of humanity were given, down to our time. Our time should become great through what man himself can produce. It had to gradually develop out of what was wrapped up in fairy tales, just as a child develops into greatness and independence.

It was good that humanity referred to itself, to its own soul, for a while. That is a middle state. And what has it led to? It has led to the saying: we cannot know anything about the beyond. We know nothing about what first opens up beyond death. It is a great immodesty to speak like that. Not those who know nothing about it can speak about it, but those who know something about it. Those who have correctly understood the theosophical movement in its deepest essence have also tried to grasp the right thing through this feeling. The insistence on itself has inevitably led man to ignorance. In the beginning, man's intellect sees only what lies on this side of death. So when he looks at himself, he cannot know anything of what lies beyond death. But they will get used to listening to the teachers who have already crossed the threshold of death in this life and who know how to tell about this life from their own experience.

What is happening here is giving rise to a new modesty. It is not immodesty when those who speak for the Theosophical Society emphasize time and again: “We do not speak our wisdom, no, we speak not our wisdom, we speak that which the great leaders and sages of humanity still teach us today. We do not speak of masters because we presume to draw the higher truths from ourselves, from our own source. We sit at the feet of the masters because we know that as long as we insist on our own rightness, as long as we do not make ourselves disciples of the masters, we must remain at the “I do not know” level. Out of this humility, we do not express our own thoughts. I speak through that which we want to inspire in the world, I speak the wisdom of the great, superior, wise guides who have left our stage of development behind them. And we try in every way to hear the voice of these masters. That is why teachings such as those in “Light on the Path” have been spread as the golden teachings of the theosophical movement. That sentence

Before the Masters can speak the voice, the wounding must be unlearned.

becomes our guiding principle. We try to unlearn the wounding. We try to break off the tip of each of our thoughts that wounds, because we know that words that hurt others reflect badly on the Word of the Master. Sharp thoughts that hurt reflect badly on the Master's words. But when our heart opens up like a bell flower, when our words are soft and mild and do not wound, then the voice of the masters, the word of the masters, goes through us purely and brightly like a bell.

You will hear the voice of the master when you can pass through the words that do not wound without resistance. Then you will hear the words of the master. Through such thoughts the thoughts of the masters flow. And when a person behaves in this way, the voice of the masters resounds through him, through what he thinks and says. The “masters of the harmony of thoughts and feelings” become audible to him. Those who have a true relationship with the Master speak in this sense. Only in this sense may they speak. Otherwise their word is not truth, but deception and falsehood. Everything that is brought as a message from the Master in any other sense is not true. It is true, however, that the thoughts and impulses of higher beings flow through the theosophical movement, if we do not want to spread our thoughts but make ourselves the instrument of those who today want to rekindle spiritual life in the world.

From the Questions and Answers

Can one cultivate the art of listening to the inner voice while out in nature?

The school of solitude in nature is very important. Most people cannot associate any true sensation with what was once called “silence in the forest”. And yet there is something very significant behind it. Imagine a very loud sound becoming weaker and weaker, and then imagine it falling completely silent. Otherwise, think of nothing. Then you will hear nothing around you. Imagine the same with light. You see light. The light grows dimmer and dimmer; then you see darkness. And yet, the darkness is not nothing. Darkness is as positive a sensation as whiteness. But you see, the nothingness of hearing and seeing is caused by the gradual weakening of light and sound. The complete darkness and soundlessness has occurred gradually. Ask yourself now, could this weakening and weakening of the sound not be continued even further? Below this nuance, down to where it is even quieter than when you hear nothing. In ordinary life, everyone admits this. One who always and always spends his money has nothing; but he can still have even less. He can get into debt. Then he has even less than nothing. When the tone goes deeper and deeper, you come to the point where you hear the tone again on the other side of nature. But first you have to learn to live the voice. In the beginning, this can be felt as a mood. If you did such exercises, you would already find that on the other side of the mental world, the new day is born for spiritual ears. Those who can do this are on the right track. A lot can be achieved with it. In our cities, however, it is almost impossible. It is easy in nature, where spring really greens, where the trees, the leaves and the forest look different every day. It is not for nothing that the occult sites where culture was cultivated were located in nature.

Are plant colors audible? I read a sentence from Stifter: “I heard the blue color of the flower.

Sounds in colors, and not just colors in sounds, also appear to have a less extensive sensitivity. This goes even further, that when another 'I' is pronounced, certain people have a certain color in their consciousness. The beginning of the Ninth Symphony has already been recomposed in colors. The physiologist Nussbaumer has studied this, as have French physiologists.

Do cities also have certain colors?

Yes, Berlin is gray, Vienna is red. The Gothic church is a piece of music in the astral, a sound structure in the mind.

Yesterday we discussed the composition of the human body up to the development of the ego, and today we come to the development of the spiritual man. Here we are presented with perspectives for further development, which we cannot overlook and fully comprehend in their ultimate goal in our present consciousness.

The human ego has undergone profound changes over time, changes that are in line with equally profound changes on our earth. It would be a mistake to think that people in earlier times looked exactly the same or were at exactly the same stage of spiritual development as people today. A being that we would hardly call human today populated the early earth. It was only with the end of Atlantis that the human ego had developed to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego. We know the place, near present-day Ireland, where the human ego has elevated itself to such an extent that one can speak of a conscious ego, of a consciousness soul.

It was only from this point in time that the physical conditions of the earth had developed to such an extent that one could speak of a separation of air and water. Only these ancient Irish were able to see the sun as we see it.

Before that time, during the Atlantic and Lemurian periods, people lived in a kind of air-water ocean, a mixture of air and water that is best compared to fog, through which the sun shone only as a kind of cold disk, as we see it on very foggy days. There was no sunshine or rain. Our old Germanic saga speaks of that time as of “Nifelheim.”

The soul had not yet developed outwards at that time. It did not see an object as such, it felt it more and actually experienced it only inwardly. If we encountered an unpleasant person at that time, we did not see him as a human being, but experienced a color appearance that touched us unpleasantly. We can best compare this with the feeling of pain; we do not see the pain either, we only feel it.

Even though it was primitive, language was already present at that time and enabled us to express our feelings. Man had intellect, but this intellect was not a reflected consciousness; the human soul had only developed into an intellectual soul.

In ancient Lemuria, the earlier period of our Earth, man had only inner feeling, no language. He had only a sentient soul. The state of our globe was even more fluid than that. Man did not yet have feet for locomotion; he would not have been able to use them in the surrounding elements. His movement was more like swimming; in those days man breathed through gills, just like fish today. He had no lungs, for balancing he used an air bubble.

But even during these periods, man had developed his sentient soul, his intellectual soul and his consciousness soul to the animal. Only then did the ego sprout up within the soul, through a continued transformation, a continued unification of the astral body, which was continuously supplied to man by the cosmic forces of its development.

It was only at the end of the Atlantean period that man could begin to develop consciously. Only now did the work begin from the inside out, whereas before it was only a matter of developing strength from the outside in. We must realize that the three stages discussed earlier do not represent a transformation product, nor an actual development of the human ego, but rather a separation of the sentient, intellectual and conscious soul as parts of the human soul. It is only with consciousness that the animal in the astral body is transformed and transmuted. The result of the consciousness work of the ego on its astral body is the spirit self or manas.

At this stage, man had only moral concepts, logic - in short, pure intellectual work - he had the possibility to transform his ego, but only in relation to his astral body.

Religion and art, the pure joy of beauty, had a stronger effect than moral concepts; they generated the spirit of life or Budhi. Here we see a direct spiritualization of the etheric body, no longer of the astral body.

A chela, a disciple, consciously transforms his body; he wants to transform everything, to spiritualize everything, right down to the life body. He has finished learning when his life body has become a life spirit. Man has his moral concepts under control, he can learn from experience, but he can only think of transforming and spiritualizing those qualities that have their seat in his ether body - temperament, habits, character, memory - in the highly developed stage. But he learns this extremely slowly.

To understand this, let us compare it to our childhood. We learned a great deal very quickly about what we already knew ten years ago, but we changed our character very little. The temperamental impulses that we had as children have, for the most part, remained with us into our old age; even our handwriting has basically remained the same.

The chela's task is to speed up this change, this transformation of the life body, in a word: to become a different person, to redevelop the main forces of the etheric body, so to speak, to get it under the control of consciousness.

This transformation of the physical body into a spiritual body is even more difficult. All the functions of our physical body take place completely unconsciously at our present stage of development. We know, for example, that our pulse rate slows down quite significantly from childhood to adulthood, but this slowing down takes place completely unconsciously. We have no control over it. Everything in our body undergoes a change without our knowledge, without our will.

It is up to progressive development to make these changes in our life functions conscious. Thus it is possible, in particular, for the advanced person to consciously change their breathing and so on. There is a conscious union with the cosmic power that has built our physical body. The Atman or the spiritual person arises. At such a level of development, the chela has long since completed his task. The master has created this level.

But all these changes presuppose the ego, just as lung breathing is only to be seen as an external expression of the emergence of the ego, [...] so the attainment of complete control over one's physical functions is the external expression of the emergence of the spiritual man.

Looking back over what has been said, we see how the structure of the human body is first formed unconsciously through the natural forces, how the development and formation of the ego takes place, and how the conscious ego then, through the active powers of the chela and the master, brings about a conscious purification and transformation of the body, a complete spiritualization. The result is the opening up of new worlds. Twice the feeling of a new birth is repeated. The feeling when the life body is transformed into the life spirit and the physical body into a spiritual life corresponds to the feeling when the child leaves the mother's womb.

All major religions are based on this tripartite division of the spiritual man into Atman, Budhi and Manas. In the Christian religion, Atman corresponds to the Father, Budhi to the Son – Word, Manas to the Holy Spirit.

On Friday at seven o'clock there is a meeting of the Besant branch. On the agenda is: “Preliminary discussion of the general assembly taking place on Sunday”. On Sunday at ten o'clock is the general assembly: reporting on the management and so on. If the general assembly permits, a more factual discussion about Theosophy will take place at four o'clock in the afternoon. At the assembly next Monday, I will speak about “Occultism, Esotericism and Theosophy. I would like to point out that this topic will be related to current trends. I would like to invite as many external members as possible.

Today I would like to speak to you first about “Self-knowledge” and “Knowledge of God”. These are two terms that are very easily misunderstood in the sense of occult world striving and, from experience, are also very easily and often misunderstood. Again and again you read in theosophical books and hear in these or those popular theosophical lectures or in other lectures that belong to related schools of thought that man carries the divine self in his soul, carries it within himself, and that in order to come to the knowledge of God, he need only let this self speak, then he will also find the highest knowledge of God in himself. The “knowledge of the divine self” has almost become a familiar saying. As true as it is that the old sentence “know thyself” should stand as a sacred motto before every theosophical assembly, it is also true that this “know thyself” causes the greatest difficulties. Today we will spend a little time trying to understand this saying: “Know thyself” — and the other saying “Self-knowledge is the first step, the beginning of improvement.” “Self-knowledge” sounds much more trivial, but it is just as true. These two sayings must complement each other. I have met people who approached me with the saying, “I am the Atma, the divine self lives in me, the divine man lives in me” — and the like. Above all, anyone who wants to penetrate into the occult views of life must thoroughly unlearn the trivial view of such sayings. And today we want to discuss some of these sayings from the point of view of the occultist. The occultist does not speak like that, and his words will never be: “Self-knowledge is knowledge of God”. But to see this in the right light, we must ask ourselves: What can we actually find in ourselves? How much can we learn from ourselves? I will start this lecture with a saying of such individuals who have progressed far beyond us all and from whom we all have much to learn. They tell us about self-knowledge: “We learn a great deal” - that is, the higher individuals - “from the nature around us, we learn a great deal from the human life around us. We learn infinitely valuable things from our older brothers; we learn nothing at all from ourselves.”

Let us keep this saying in mind. It is a saying of those who have progressed far ahead of us in development. Those who realize what a human being actually is will gradually learn to understand this saying. What is a human being? Here we have to look back at some of what has been discussed here during these lessons. We know, of course, that a human being is not something that is born out of nothing. We know that he is the re-embodiment of his earlier personality. When we look at the person of today, we have to ask ourselves: in which personalities was this person embodied earlier? And so we come to a series of life courses of the individuality standing before us. And even when we have reached the first incarnation of such a person, we have still not come to a beginning. We only reach older regions. Man was not yet anything that resembles what he is today. But he was already something. And further back, we find man embedded in the facts and beings of the things of the past. There we find the causes of present human existence. And when we ask ourselves, “What are we?” we have to say, “We are the effect of past lives, of days in times gone by.” If we look at ourselves today, we are basically nothing more than what is composed of the causes of our past actions and the actions of the powers of the world that are at work in us. We are a consequence of the past, and everything we can find in us has happened once in the past. Whatever is personality in us was an action - karma, personal, individual or world karma - in the past. We are an expression of this karma. And if we could look into ourselves with true self-knowledge, then, when we undergo the training that the occult schools offer us, we find our own past lives, the people who were connected to us in the past, then we find ourselves entangled with the world of people around us.

If we take into account what I have said in previous lessons, we also know where to look if we want to see the matter in a different form. Before we became physical, we were astral bodies. These are the sum of passions and desires as they were prepared at the time and as they then emerged in the physical body. What is at work in our physical body today is the astral body of the past. It contained the instincts and passions. And what we see outside of us in the animals are the passions that have split off from us. If you look out at the lion, you can say: I once had this lion nature within me; I threw it out so that I could develop higher. What is in me as an impulse, I have cast off and purified. I have fused it into harmony within me, while they have spread out in the animal kingdom. I see my astral past spread out in the various animal groups of the world.

And before I was in the astral body, I was in the mental body. Even then I shed beings to develop myself higher. And in the plant world that I see around me, I see the whole past in the mental body. The delicious fruits of the plants express it.

And when I look into the very depths of nature, into what has become mind and consciousness in me, then I have to perceive this thinking mind in its various images and forms in all mineral nature. This too is part of my own past.

You see, we understand the mineral world because we once were it ourselves. We understand rock crystal because we have separated it from ourselves. What our mind thinks, that once created the whole mineral world. Thus our own being is spread around us, and by looking around in this world, we see only our own self, our past self. And by seeing the people around us, people who may be at a lower level of development, by seeing everything around us, we see the images of our own past embodiments and form our own later embodiment. Just as some people around us are today, so were we once ourselves. [As the Hottentots were, so were we; in the Divine we shall be.]

Thus we come to a picture of the past and a picture of the future. Knowledge of nature is knowledge of the self, a mirror of the past and the future. Bearing this in mind, the only truly clarifying word about self-knowledge that comes from the depths of our being is the Vedanta wisdom, the most wonderful wisdom the world has ever produced: 'Tat twam asi' - 'That thou art'. There is no thing in the external world that is not part of our being, of our self. Look at the stone you step on – that is something that was once connected to your own self. Look at the plants and the animals – all of them are pieces of our own self. They were once woven into our self. We belong to a single being, with the past and the future. That is why we say to what is spreading out in space: “That is you.”

Not that is self-knowledge when you look into your inner self, but precisely when you look out into the world with the awareness that in every world being there is a piece of your own being: The world is not within you, but out there on the great tableau of the universe. It is not from within you, but from the great tableau of the universe, that the creative God speaks. You attain self-knowledge by attaining knowledge of the world, by listening to every being in nature, by opening the senses and spiritual organs to what speaks to you from the outside world. You should not close yourself off from the outside world, but open the self outwards, by first expressing the self and becoming aware that your true self is outside in the outside world, which has created in the most ancient times that which still rests within you as perceptible. Feel yourself one with that which lives and moves in the outer space, and feel this in the saying: “That art thou [dw]. The stone outside is the cause that certain things are within you. Feel, by looking at minerals: ”That art thou [dw].

Man belongs not only to the past but also to the future. He must work into the future; he must learn what he will become. This self that we carry within us will one day be something quite different from what it is today. But what it will be in the future, we cannot find in our self. That is not in our self. Our self is karma – the effect of the past. What the self makes of this, that we will only be in the future. But we cannot learn this from ourselves, but only from those who have progressed one step further than we have, from our older brothers, who are in a more advanced reincarnation than ours. That is why the more highly developed person says: I must learn what I was and what I will be. I can learn a lot from the nature around me, a great deal from the people around me, infinitely valuable lessons from my older brothers, but nothing at all from myself – and by that he means the self that is present at the moment.

Perhaps it needs to be understood more that a deeper self is spread out in nature, insofar as it has its cause in the past. And it must also be understood that what our older brothers, the wise brothers of humanity, experienced is a prefiguration for our own future today. So we must understand that we cannot counter self-knowledge with what our older, wise brothers teach, but that we have to see our own self in these older brothers, that we have to see our future in these older brothers. What they are today, we will be one day, and if we want to learn what we will be in the future, then we have to let ourselves be told what they have already been through. How could the animals, plants and lowly humans provide an explanation of their own selves? That which we are today, they will be in a later time. But we can only have our own selves explained to us by those who have reached the stages that we still have to come to.

Thus we can only sit in humility at the feet of the great teachers of mankind. The wise of India say: The disciple must sit devoutly at the feet of the great guru. This does not exclude self-knowledge, but includes true self-knowledge. Imagine: I am sitting at the feet of the exalted guru – I dare not say: I do not want to learn from you, but from myself. That would be a misunderstanding of the true, higher self. The higher self speaks from all. From his words, my self also speaks.

What I can learn from my self, that sounds from the lips of my guru. Theory, gray theory, is when you think you should let your own self speak. And true esoteric practice is when you listen to the older brothers of humanity. What we are, what our self has to say to us, is best expressed in a book like “Light on the Path” or similar. In the eternal sentences that you find in this book or in the New Testament, namely in the Gospel of John or in the venerable writings of the great masters, your self speaks to you. And when you become silent and still in what you are even now, as an effect of the past at the feet of the guru – he need only be more developed than you – then your own self speaks to you instructively in your ears, in your soul.

And when you are confronted with a sentence as it is written here: “Expect the blooming of the flower in the silence after the storm, not before,” then this is a saying of a master who has long since passed through the stage at which I am standing and who can teach me about my self. That is why the occultist says: First of all, I have to immerse myself in what the wise guides of humanity have produced. And so, in humility and serenity, he gradually ascends. First, we listen to what the greats of humanity have to say, who have emerged in all fields and who were wiser than we were. We look up to the great artists, to the great wise leaders, insofar as they come to us in the outer, exoteric history.

When we let a picture by Raphael work on us, when we let Plato's great works on the immortality of the soul or his “Phaedo” penetrate us, when we let the writings left to us by our German Johann Gottlieb Fichte, for example, or similar great men, then our self speaks to us, then our self talks to us, and then we rise up the first step to a higher element of our self. Then, when we have absorbed what is on this level within us, at least partially, then we can reach the depths of those who do not call themselves because their name is not important, for example in a writing like “Light on the Path”, which was only written down through the instrument of Mabel Collins, but which comes from a great, wise guide, then we can climb to higher levels.

In the same way, our Self speaks to us through the Gospel, through the Bhagavad Gita, through the ancient scriptures of mankind. It is all our Self that speaks, and we find it best when we seek it not within us but without, as it says in the Vedanta verse: 'Tat twam asi' - 'That art thou'.

And then, when we no longer feel that we have something to say to ourselves, when we merely want to be a vessel, when we have given up everything that is connected with our narrower self, which is an effect, then, only then does higher individuality speak to us. But there is still more to it than that. Above all, we must take to heart the saying that self-knowledge, the knowledge of our so-called inner being, is the beginning of the will to perfect not only our knowledge but ourselves as well. We learn nothing at all from our self. In truth, man is subject to the most serious deceptions through this self. This self – just take a look at it. Is it you in your daily activities? Is it you when you go to eat? Is it you when you go about your business? A clear self-knowledge will tell you that it is not yourself, but that it is natural instincts. What your physical body, what nature makes of you, that drives you, that only pushes and pushes in you. It is the greatest illusion when someone says: I eat, I go for a walk, I do this or that business - because he is not the driver, but the driven. For those who immerse themselves in this self-knowledge, it is not the source of the truth that they might find in their self, but they realize that it is precisely in their self that they find the outside world, that which pushes and drives them from the outside. No matter how much you are connected to your present individuality, what are you? You are the result of your karmic development from the past. What we think and feel today, we think and feel that way because we have been driven to this or that in past lives. The past lives continue to have an effect throughout our lives.

When you ask yourself in the process of self-knowledge why you do this or that, you do not arrive at your self, but at the earlier causes in your past lives. And if you go further and examine for yourself what you have acquired in the present life, you will find the same thing. Take language, for example. Is language your self? You speak, you mean to speak. Can a person speak from his or her self? If that were so, every person would have to be able to form new words, every person would have to give birth to language out of their self. But language speaks, the language of the tribe, of the people. The whole nation speaks through language. The whole nation stands behind us and speaks to us, through us.

We can always strive for self-knowledge and will find that the self goes further and further out of us. And when we understand “Tat twam as” and see this self spread and poured out over the outside world, then we live in self-knowledge. You just have to realize this clearly and feel it once, what it means to stand before yourself so hollowed out by self-knowledge. Hollowed out, the self-aware stands before himself. It must first become bleak and dark within us if we want to reach the end of self-knowledge. Where we used to feel warmth, we later feel through self-knowledge that this warmth does not come from our heart, but that it is only poured into it by the outside world and that our self is only the confluence of the forces of the outside world. In place of every arrogant feeling of self, there then comes the most perfect modesty and the realization that we are nothing compared to the world around us. Barrenness and emptiness and hollowness is the result of that self-knowledge, which only wants to search within itself. When we have arrived there and realized that our self lies entirely in the outside world, then we are ripe to let the teachings of our older brothers flow into us, then they speak to us, the seal-keepers of our higher self, when we want to be nothing more of this higher self. Our lower self is spread out in the various stages outside, and our higher self is spread out outside in those who have come further than we have.

Self-knowledge is knowledge of the world, and the beginning of self-knowledge is that our self must flow into us from the outside. No one can walk the path and feel the saying, “Seek the way of inner contemplation,” without being driven to the other saying, “Seek the way by boldly stepping out of yourself.” That is true self-knowledge, that we no longer search within ourselves, but in the outside world. And then something of the future reveals itself to us, of that which is not yet. There are those who, by virtue of their further development, can already see into that which our own self will only see in the future.

We have passed through the astral and mental worlds, and we will struggle up again to an astral and mental world through this physical world of ours. But to do that, we must first develop the strength to move up to these higher worlds, where we depart with death; they can be seen by our older brothers. Those who have humbly reached the level of the older brotherhood already see within life those realms that man enters when he has passed through the gate of death.

And how does man learn to see into this world? Not by brooding over himself, but by listening to what our older brothers tell us; by understanding the sentence that self-knowledge is listening to the teaching of our older brothers. In the words of our older brothers lie the powers that not only teach and instruct us, but also awaken organs, spiritual eyes and spiritual ears in our own astral body and our own mental body. When the guru speaks to me, currents flow into me that awaken spiritual eyes and spiritual ears in me, through which I learn to see into the worlds into which he can see. Only when I no longer want what is within me and is only an effect of the past, when I have hollowed myself out and let the content of the higher brothers flow into the empty vessel, then I receive the content that allows me to see into the future of human life.

Thus, for the true occultist in practice, self-knowledge is the humble listening to those who have already learned what he still has to learn. And from this point of view, one learns the most. Therefore, the occultist worships the disciple and the master, and he seeks the disciple and the master not in himself, but in the other greater self that is out there in the world. For the occultist, self-knowledge means devotion to a disciple and to the master; and seeking the greater self in him, the saying is also true here: “That is you.”

And it would be immodest, in the highest sense of the word, to say that one could find within oneself what our older brothers teach. That is why one becomes so modest when one advances a little in knowledge. That is why, from a certain point on, one stops saying one's own opinion. Because what is it? Nothing but an effect of karma. But when we stand there and suppress our own opinion, initially keeping silent about everything we ourselves believe we have called for, and instead listen to what comes to us from the outside world from those who have progressed further than we have, then we deserve to be truly heard. And then even the simple person who lives in this way has beautiful and great things to say. If a man only expresses his opinion, he will have very little to say to you. If a man comes to you but only wants to express his opinion, he will have very little to say to you. But if he lets the eternal truths of those who are wiser than he is and of whom he is aware resound from his individuality, then he will have an infinite amount to say to you, even if it seems simple.

The highest truth sounds from the deepest modesty and humility. Those who have spoken the highest truths have spoken differently than those who so often speak to us, saying, “I mean this, I believe that, that is my point of view, that is my opinion.” Those who have progressed do not speak in this way; they refer to those who stand behind them. They know that their own opinion is worthless.

Those who founded the Theosophical Society, those who represent it in the right way, have always referred to the individuality behind them, to a true higher self that speaks behind them, [an individuality] that is a master and is therefore our higher self. The words of the external master personalities communicate the actual understanding of the work of the Theosophical Society. They [the founders of the Theosophical Society] completely surrender their will and make themselves their instruments. That is their attitude. They prefer to be able to step in front of others and say: There is nothing in me, nothing should come from me, I want to make myself an empty vessel from which the master speaks. But he should not be my own self, but this higher self should be the wise guides and brothers of humanity who live alongside us and whose words we want to hear and understand in the right sense.

We can learn a lot from the nature around us, a great deal from the people and the life around us, and we can learn the most valuable lessons from our older brothers. But we should learn nothing from ourselves, because we are only a point of passage. We can accomplish nothing in the world if we want to make this point of transition in our present effective. Think of what you would be if you only wanted to make your present effective. This is only the effect of karma. If you reject everything that is above you, nothing happens through you that has not already happened. You would be a barren fruit on the tree of humanity. For everything that could happen through you has already happened if you remain with your own self. Only when you fertilize your self with the higher self, with the higher self present in the world, can you bring something new into this world. Then something works out of you that is not merely the past and its effects. Only the connection with what has been achieved in the world as higher than we ourselves are, only this connection and this full, modest awareness gives us the strength to bring something productive into the world. And this decision to seek the connection with what is higher in the world than we are, out of the desert of our own self, this decision is the first step towards becoming a disciple. Those who seek a different self-knowledge than the one suggested can never become disciples or chelas in the occult sense. Only this gives us the strength to learn something in the world. Without this awareness, we are powerless and powerless - nothing.

All occult schools have summarized this awareness as a full reality in two sentences, which, if a person does not just keep them in mind theoretically, but lives by them in every moment of his life, give him an infinite abundance of soul power, as much as a person can have. All occultism and all human striving is included in these two sentences, which we will discuss in a moment. But these sentences must be lived in such a way that we are completely pulsed and flowed through by them at every step, that we do nothing without being aware of these two sentences. These two sentences basically go together, because what is around us has flowed together in us and brought us to the present point of view. There we stand and give ourselves everything that is around us. That is our own extended past.

You cannot find more in your self. You find the sensations spread out outside in your own astral body. Everything that can feel is a mirror image of what lives in your own astral body. [Everything that lives is a mirror image of our etheric body.] What is around us as stone and mineral is a mirror image of what lives in our own physical body.

At first, your self is completely empty; because you say nothing to it other than 'I'. If you want to have more in this self, then you must look into the future, you must look at what is not the past for yourself. Then you must be aware that something important is expressed in the bridge between these two, namely that you yourself are expressed in the bridge between these two, that you are only a bridge between what you yourself have developed and what is yet to be developed. What we can see, we have already been; what we learn to see when we look at the teachings of the older brothers, we will see that is working towards the future.

Thus, he who has understood this looks out into the world and says: That has been and is there for my sake, so that I could arise. What I can perceive is all part of it. Take anything out of this environment, you would not be the same as you are today. And everything had to be there for you to be. Just as you build a house brick by brick, so it is also there. The lowest stone must be there so that the upper floors can be built. If you take out a single stone, the house will no longer look the way it should. It is the same with people. If you take out a building block, they will no longer look the way they do now. You don't understand this right away. But as the yoga student says, through some yoga exercises you learn to understand this. If we look at the world, we see what is around us in the world. If we look within ourselves, we find what is to become, we find the buds for the fruits of the future.

And then we also realize that we are not here for our own sake, but for the sake of becoming what our older brothers are, that we strive for them as our ideals. Not sophisticated ideas, but the example of [our older brothers] we should strive for. We should live in reality, not in abstractions. That is the second sentence.

This is how the divine develops, by connecting with what is present for us and what we are predisposed to become in the future. We are here for the sake of the divine, not for our own sake. Thus, the one who understands these two occult sentences does not think of himself at all. He thinks of what is there for his sake and of what is to become for the sake of what he is there for. From these two perspectives flows the strength to work, not for ourselves, but for the Divine, which is developing out of us. These are the two pillars of all occultism. If you want to ascend to the higher sources, then you must live under the auspices of these two sentences. They must permeate and pulsate through everything, and they must become very intimate and familiar to you. The two sentences in which the meaning of our discussion today is to be summarized are the sentences that stand in front of every secret school in golden letters, letters that only speak to the soul, but which are erased when someone wants to look at them with self-interest or selfishness. He who enters the gate of the secret school in complete selflessness sees these two pillars of all knowledge of reality, which read:

“All around us for us. And we ourselves for God.”

These are two sentences that give the occultist power when he has fully grasped them. We must really want to learn what is around us.

And when someone asks us about our higher self, we must point beyond ourselves, not to an indefinite, abstract emptiness, but to a concrete reality. We have nothing within ourselves; everything around us is there for us, and we are there for the divine.

The two principles of all occultism, they were written in golden secret letters that lost their luster when a profane eye looked at them, above the portals of all occult schools.

Not only can the profane not read them, but even if they could, they would not understand them. These are sentences that give strength to the occultist when he fully comprehends them.

This is how we should speak today. Because when such things are understood, then one also understands that the theosophical movement is not possible without an occult foundation, without the knowledge of the masters and without the knowledge of the higher worlds. These higher worlds are our future. What we do today is worked into our astral body, and this will build the world to come. There are also souls that have worked into it more than we ourselves are, and these provide us with images of our actual higher self.

When we live under the influence of such knowledge, we may encounter all kinds of difficulties in the theosophical movement. These difficulties usually come from people, not from our older brothers. And one comes more and more to the realization that the mistakes of such great movements, as the theosophical movement is, do not come from within, but are carried into it. What is a movement like Theosophy? It can come into being when a number of people are called together and the life and wisdom of the masters are to flow through their souls. Now they are together and this life flows through them. But these souls came from outside, they came together from all sides, and they bring their faults with them, do not immediately discard them, and so their faults must appear within the movement. But these are not the errors that come from the movement itself. People bring their errors into the movement. If there are bad habits in the movement, they are not those that lie in the theosophical movement, but those that are also out there in the world. We must be clear about this: serious crises may still come. We must also bear the mistakes of the people entering the theosophical movement. We should look at everything that happens in our movement in this way. Some of what we all do is open to criticism. But we have come in from outside and still have the faults of the outside world. And let us be clear about the fact that we must discard these faults through the theosophical movement. And if it were the most valuable members, they too would strive to discard their faults. It is a mistake to point out the mistakes. We should look for the mistakes in ourselves, and if there is greatness and sublimity, outside ourselves. Then we have properly aligned ourselves with the theosophical movement. If we criticize ourselves and not the movement, we can make progress. The Master's words in the sentences: “We learn much from nature, much more from people and infinitely valuable from the older brothers. Nothing from ourselves.” At most one thing: how we have to improve ourselves by the example of the older brothers.

I would like to announce once again that I will take the liberty of giving a lecture tomorrow morning on certain current occult issues related to Freemasonry. And this will be done according to old occult custom, separately for gentlemen and ladies. The lecture for gentlemen will take place at ten o'clock, and for ladies at half past eleven. You may ask why this custom exists, which will only be overcome in the Theosophical worldview. This will become clear from the content of the lectures, and I would also like to take the liberty of noting that the Besant Branch will have its regular meeting tomorrow evening at eight o'clock.

So I would like to talk about the relationship between occultism and the theosophical movement and some other related questions. It has been discussed many times whether the theosophical movement, especially as it is expressed in the Theosophical Society, is an occult movement, or whether one should disregard all occultism in the theosophical movement. The Theosophical movement as such, insofar as it expresses itself in the Theosophical Society, cannot be an occult movement. An occult movement has different prerequisites from those that may be expressed in the Theosophical Society. There have been occult societies at all times. Above all, these had one essential requirement: namely, that they were a kind of hierarchical structure by the very nature of their aspirations. This means that the members of such a society, brotherhood, were organized in degrees. Each degree, from the first up to the ninetieth degree, had its own specific task. Within each degree there were very specific tasks. No one could be promoted to a higher degree until they had fulfilled the tasks of the lower degree.

I can only give a very general indication of why this is so. In fact, we have to talk in general terms about the tasks of such occult brotherhoods. Those revered friends who have heard me speak about such things before will understand me all the better today. Occult brotherhoods are brotherhoods of guides for humanity. Their task is to prepare the things of the future. Everything that is to happen in the future is already being prepared in the present, finding its expression in the present as an idea, as a plan, and is then realized in the future. Even if you look at the development of the human race on the external physical plane, you will still find that things that were later realized first germinated as ideas in the minds and souls of leading personalities and individuals, striving for expression. Take the steam engine, for example. If you trace the matter back, you will find how the steam engine developed from the simplest facts; how even the cooking pot filled with boiling water contains the idea of the steam engine, which then progresses from this simplest form to the most complicated mechanism. But these are trivialities compared to the great structure of humanity that we have before us. The most important things presuppose much larger and much more meaningful perspectives. They presuppose that what is to happen in the distant future is, in a sense, already being prepared today. How can such a thing happen?

By the fact that it is in our hands to lay the forces into the world today that are to take effect in the future. Everything that will happen in the future here on the physical plane is already preparing much earlier on the astral and devachan planes; so that in fact distant future events can be traced in the higher planes and worlds, according to their power. But man cannot work well into the future if he does not prepare this effect from the knowledge of the acting forces. Man is a self-conscious creature and must take his fate into his own hands. Therefore, there have always been advanced brothers of our human race who can see not only on the physical plane, but also on higher planes.

Let us try to understand what it means to foresee on higher planes. Suppose you have a pond of water. You can foresee that when the temperature drops, the pond will be frozen, that there may be skaters on it and so on. Similarly, we are dealing with the relationship between the so-called astral plane and the physical plane, that is, with our world. If one follows the events on the astral plane, then one can indeed see with the help of the astral event what will be there in later time, as it were, as a condensation of it. And so one can see from the astral events what will later appear in condensed form on the physical plane. Physical events are nothing other than such condensed happenings that previously occurred in the higher worlds.

An example: Throughout antiquity there were mysteries. These had the task of accepting individual people and initiating them into the secrets of existence, or - as John the Revelator says - to show what is to happen in the future in brief. When we enter such a temple, we find that instruction is taking place there for those students who are accepted into the first degree. We also find instruction for students who are more highly developed and ever more highly developed. The first step was for the students to purify their astral body. This consisted of them not merely adopting the usual bourgeois ethics. The bourgeois ethic was presupposed; what is considered here had to be followed in strict fulfillment of duty. When the student then ascended more and more to higher ideals, rising from the passions and drives of ordinary life to desires that are above all pettiness of man, and purified his pleasure and displeasure so that the great world-embracing affairs of the human race became his own, when he felt and sympathized with others, then he was on the way to accomplishing what was called the “purification of the astral body.

Then he was allowed to intervene in the denser bodies; he was allowed to work on his etheric body, he was not only allowed to reshape the soft, pliable and flexible astral matter in his spirit and soul bodies, but he was allowed to work into his etheric body. Then he was what is called a chela.

Such a chela is one who not only recognizes higher duties, who has not only purified himself to the point of making human duties his own, but has grown beyond the lower and higher concerns of individual peoples, even of individual creeds. His gaze is directed towards the life of all humanity. And through the more thoroughly organized etheric body, he becomes a participant in the great affairs of the building of the earth. For this to happen, the following had to occur.

The chela had to paralyze all the forces that prevented him from working on his etheric body. When you have a person in front of you, he has a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. The chela has purified his astral body and can now work on his ether body. You will understand why a person must purify his astral body. What happens when the astral body is purified? What enters the ether body? That which is in the astral body.

The things that live in the astral body are imprinted on the etheric body. As long as you work on the astral body, you can rework the mistakes over and over again: the astral matter is thin and soft. You can always bring that into balance. But once a person has begun to develop the etheric body as a chela, these qualities are imprinted on the etheric body, and it is much more enduring. By making what is defective in the earthly permanent, the person would become a dangerous member of humanity. Hence the constant emphasis on the need for purification. This etheric body is impressed by the forces that act on it. Think of it as separate from the physical body, and it has a completely different elasticity. When it is within, it holds the physical body in shape; but as long as it remains within, it is initially too weak to hold that which has passed through the catharsis as astrality. Therefore, throughout antiquity, one had to do the following.

One had to first remove the forces that prevented the elasticity of the etheric body. This was done by bringing the whole physical body into a state of lethargy. The person lay there, and the etheric body was taken out of the physical body. The physical body then remained as if dead, and the etheric body was formed according to its own forces. This is the 'burial'. The person concerned was put into a state of lethargy for three to three and a half days. And then he could work on the etheric body. And then, after he had shaped the etheric body according to the astral body, he returned to the physical body. Then he had awakened the inner life in himself, then he was a resurrected one, and he was given a new name. This was an act on the astral plane. Everything I have described took place in the astral plane; the physical body had nothing to do with it.

This event was repeated in all the ancient mysteries. Every initiate knew it. Now imagine it in a condensed form, brought down to the physical plane, so that something has happened with this event that used to take place only in the astral. Comparatively speaking, it is as if you now have a piece of ice where you used to have water. Many such astral events must coincide, merge, so that physical condensation will one day be possible. Through the appearance of Christ on the physical plane, that which had so often and repeatedly taken place in the mystery centres on the astral plane, the Mystery of Golgotha has become historically possible. It could be brought down to the physical plane. From this example we learn to understand how the future is actually prepared in occult brotherhoods.

If we now ask ourselves: “What is actually happening there?” the answer is: Certainly, in thoughts, in the idea, one can grasp a great deal. But the idea has no reality. The idea is nothing more than what is brought down from the higher planes to the physical plane. But what man thinks about it is the most ineffective thing, because it is only present on the physical plane. It is different when something is added to this idea that also comes from the higher spheres.

Take, for example, Pythagoras' teaching of the music of the spheres, as he taught it to his students. Philosophers seek to present Pythagoras' occult music as a very simple system. The intellect can grasp this quickly. But for him, it was important that the student only came to it when his mind, his mood, was prepared for it. It is also impossible for someone who has no sense for images that originate in the astral to want to explain the deeper meaning of Raphael's Sistine Madonna: the feeling, the mind, must climb up to it. What otherwise leaves the idea cold appears here in the picture artistically full of life as the divine world thought, as that which the divine forces have created the world after - and a simple line becomes something sacred! By entwining thoughts around the element of the divine, thought is brought to divine influence.

Thus, the aim of such training is to prepare man step by step to approach the great world thoughts, to receive them. Then, by gradually penetrating into these great world thoughts, he connects that effective but otherwise occult power which, in the astral, already prepares the future for the physical plan. If the leading human brother has students who are attached to such spirit-imbued ideas, then these are a force that also helps him to advance in his work for the outer world; the great spiritual centers of spiritual work arise.

So you can see that what I have called occultism actually has a great deal to do with the progress of humanity. And in our time we have a particularly important task. Let us try to hint at how we have come to this task of ours with just a few words.

We are part of the great root race of humanity that has populated this earth. Since the ground we live on today emerged from the depths of the sea, since the Atlantean race gradually began to disappear, the great Aryan root race has been the one that has ruled the earth. If we look at ourselves, we here in Europe are the fifth sub-race of the great Aryan root race. The first sub-race lived in ancient India in the distant past. And today's Indians are descendants of that first sub-race, whose spiritual life is still present in the ancient Vedas of the Indians. The Vedas, however, are only echoes of the ancient Rishi culture. At that time there was no writing; there was only tradition. Then came the second, the third and the fourth sub-races. The fourth sub-race adopted Christianity. Then we see that around the middle of the Middle Ages the fifth sub-race had formed, to which we and the neighboring peoples belong. The ancient Indians of the first sub-race lived under different conditions than we did and were basically organized differently. Even their present-day descendants, the present-day Indians, are organized quite differently from our European peoples. The occultist who studies the differences finds that in the ancient Indian people, the etheric body is much less bound to the physical body, is not as deeply embedded in the physical body, but is much more easily influenced by the astral body.

This is why the Indian race can easily transfer something from the astral body to the etheric body, and why this Indian race can easily work into the etheric body. This means nothing other than that through occult training, it is easier for Indians to arrive at certain higher insights. The more easily the etheric body can be influenced by the astral body, the easier it is to influence the etheric body with pictures, without abstract concepts. It is all the easier for someone who undergoes the yoga training in the astral to relate to the higher realms through pictorial representations. These act on the etheric body, which is still soft. There is no need to work in strict concepts, but with the simplest of images one can work on the soul of an Indian person, and he will be able to reach very high levels of development.

Throughout the various sub-races, the human race has changed. Our etheric body is now much more influenced by the physical body than it was in the case of the ancient Indians. And so it is that we have to work much more strongly and inwardly to influence the etheric body. We cannot resort to half-dreamlike images. We must subject everything to a sharp concentration, work on our inner being through strong soul concentration into the pure supersensible, not merely through pictorial concepts. Such a conception, which brings about a strong concentration of our inner being, can then have a much stronger effect on the etheric body, which is tied to the physical body. In order for the astral body to be able to influence the etheric body, it used to have to be outside the etheric body. But now the etheric body can also be influenced from within the physical body by the astral body. If we were to perform the same experiment that was common in the ancient mystery centers, and induce lethargy, we would be able to act on the etheric body. But when the consciousness of the earth and the mobility of thinking return, these would immediately extinguish what the astral body has impressed in the ether body. We have to strongly influence the ether body if we want it to retain what we have imprinted on it. The occult task today has become a different one, it is now more inward.

And so you can also see how, over time, great differences arise in the occult schools that follow one another. The yoga system of the Indians is different from the schooling of the Rosicrucians. The Rosicrucian schooling is calculated on what I have now explained to you. Furthermore, something else occurs: in order for such progress to occur at all, the power of the intellect had to be influenced. The mind was strained much more than before, and then, through the power of inner concentration, it was able to develop its ability to grasp the supersensible. So in modern times, it had to be taught much more conceptually; emphasis had to be placed on developing the intellect and on abstract imagination. Compare the changes in culture from ancient India to our own time. In ancient India, there was a high level of intuition and little external impact of civilization. Now, in our time, it is the other way around. This means that the position of occultism is also gradually changing. Much of what used to be kept secret has now become common knowledge. Many, many such insights and concepts were formerly kept within the occult brotherhoods, and a person could only gain access to these things if they had completely transformed their hearts. Today, the occultist no longer has this in their hands. Much of what used to be kept for later stages of training must now be recognized as having already been revealed by the culture of the outside world. The mystery initiate must take this into account. And so many truths that were taught in the occult schools had to be gradually brought out onto the physical plane.

Even what is taught in today's elementary schools would lead us away from the spiritual if it were not for the occult background that comes from another side. In earlier times, the student knew that there was something higher behind what he received as teaching material in school and in the world of scholars, and that he himself might one day be able to access this higher knowledge. He knew that he was a link within a spiritual organism; today, in the democratic world, many concepts are adopted that do not lead to such insight. The top of the pyramid had to be added to the structure of external democratic knowledge, as it were. The elementary knowledge of the hidden forces in the world had now been given. The top, leading to a spiritual world view, was still missing. To provide this, a world-embracing movement had to be founded. The theosophical movement was conceived as such. Therefore, in certain brotherhoods, when the popularization of the previously hidden wisdom had gone on and on, it was decided to reveal to the world as much of the secrets behind it as was necessary to harmonize the knowledge of the outer world with the comprehensive occult knowledge of the brotherhoods.

Here we are at the point where we can see the connection between the Theosophical Society and the Theosophical movement and occultism. The Theosophical Society is not an occult movement or an occult brotherhood; it is built on a democratic foundation in which each person is an equal member with the others. However, it is another matter entirely to grasp the task of the Theosophical Society. The task of the Society is on the physical plane. If one wants to grasp this fully, one must be able to see up into the higher worlds. But it is not a matter of the Theosophist already being able to see up into the higher worlds, but rather of the fact that occult powers are also being developed within the movement, so that the Theosophical Society can be a place from which occultism can radiate and be expressed. It is one thing for a society to be an occult brotherhood, and quite another for it to say: We are not an occult brotherhood, but occultism is being discussed again in our society.

Today, when basically all of humanity is looking longingly to the higher worlds, without finding the ways to get there, today an even greater part of occult knowledge must be popularized accordingly. And this task has been given to occultism within the Theosophical Society. Spiritual movements have always had a fruitful effect on the development of culture on the physical plane as well. Their external expression is nothing other than the earthly realization of what has been prepared spiritually. What is it, then, when we consider the works of Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci, for example? In these works, they have conjured up something spiritual on the wall in colors and forms: the picture is permeated by that which first lived in the soul of the artist as a spiritual being. The spiritual precedes that which later appears as its expression in the material world.

And materialistic external culture is only the imprint of people's inner attitudes that have become materialistic. Since 1850, purely materialistic city culture has been spreading in civilized countries. We see the great things it has achieved on the physical plane, but we also see what it has not been able to achieve. In the artistic field, for example, it has not produced any real new style, except for one: and that is the style of the department store. This is something that is inwardly true in relation to our outer civilization. Everything else that is taken over from ancient times has no relation to the present time. Only when we have formed a society whose members are seized by a spiritual power, as it used to live in Christianity, and as it still lives in the best Christian souls as a longing and can be regained, then we will have a spiritual culture again. And such a culture will again produce artists in all areas of life.

Let Theosophy live in the souls of people, then it will flow out of the souls again as style, as art, it will be there for our eyes and ears. The outer world will be able to express the spiritual again, which is already being experienced in such a society today. In this sense, the Theosophical Society could serve the shaping of the more distant culture.

When we are together, we must realize that we are like cells that must join together to shape a future culture. In our souls, those forces are being prepared which will in future transform the world in such a way that it will become a physical expression of our present-day moods and views of life. Everything that is revealed and manifested today was once occult. Just as electricity is a manifest force today, it was once an occult force. And what is still occult today is destined to become a driving force for the future. Just as millions of years ago our present human body was prepared from forces that are in our environment, so today a higher body is preparing in us, a body of the future; but only in a distant time will this body of the future be ours.

Let us retrace our path of development a little. What was there once? A dull human consciousness. The world around us looked different and was a dreamlike mirror. People had a dreaming consciousness. And even as the development of their community progressed, they had no parliaments based on the exchange of opinions, nothing of the kind. Everything was merely reflected in the consciousness that arose in the human being. And today's bodily organs: how did they come about? Through the fact that those forces worked on human beings. Just as the animals in the dark caves of Kentucky lost their eyesight because they did not need it, so the external forces also organized what we have as eyes and ears. These have been developed and evolved out of our organism by the forces of sound and light. In the future, our spiritual organism will develop out of what is now living in us. The things that stand before us as expressions of our spiritual culture – the churches and so on, the cultural works that convey beauty and truth to us – will imprint themselves on our higher being. And when these will one day unfold into a life of their own, then what lives as beauty and truth in the outer culture will arise within us. What the eyes and ears perceive now are the building blocks for the organization of a higher future. If we look at the world from this point of view, the human inner life takes on a completely different meaning.

We are thus confronted with a fact that can easily make understandable what is called yoga training or inner occult training. From the words I have spoken, you will be able to see that what once created in the world, what worked and strengthened in the world, has been taken up by our inner being. What is in me today was once outside of me: this is the basic idea of occult training. Before our physical body existed, our etheric body was already present. Our etheric body, in turn, is a structure that was formed by our astral body. And this is the starting point of yoga training. Those who engage in yoga training descend into their etheric body and know that in the etheric body they will find the power that once built them up millions of years ago. The physical body has slowly emerged from the basis of the etheric body.

I can only give a rough description of how the descent into the etheric body takes place. There are certain currents in the etheric body that are the forerunners of the physical body organs. The nervous system, the nerve cords, the sympathetic system that runs up the back, the nerve ganglia of the sympathetic nervous system, these are parts that were formed out of etheric matter in the distant past. This is a process that took place in the dim and distant past. Then, after man had progressed further and further, there was a time when the structure developed within this body, which now had the potential for the physical nervous system, which enables us to develop internal body heat and to prepare warm blood. This is again a later structure of the etheric body, which was then already strongly influenced by the forces of the astral body. And from what we subsequently find as the basis of the brain, the spinal cord has developed - again from the etheric body, as the other pole of the etheric body, which on the one hand developed into the brain, and on the other hand into the inner warmth of the blood. This happened in the past. Not only the forces of nature have worked on this formation of the human being, but also higher spiritual beings.

When the yogi now descends step by step into this etheric body, he penetrates into the times of the past, where his spiritual form of origin was influenced by these forces and beings and brought forth what lives in us today. When man has descended into life in this way, he can reach that point again during the descent. He descends from the head down into the lower regions, which were built up in the most ancient times, and then back again into his head. This is a description of the occult path of knowledge, albeit a scant description. More can be given in the occult schools.

Thus the student of mystery wisdom developed the ability to look into the past; then the time comes when he can undertake the occult pilgrimage. He achieves this by means of a certain practice, through which he overcomes his personal self and thereby ceases to be the small, bound ego. Only then can he make the ascent into the universe. Once more he descends, taking the world power with him, into the sea of the past, in an ascending line. He can then gradually follow the path he has taken. Slowly and gradually, the human being learns to descend into the sea of his formative forces, and finally he arrives at a point near the origin. This must have been the experience of those human beings to whom the eye was first given to direct their gaze into the universe.

Then the disciple realizes the confluence of the I with the great world I. And now he must learn to say to the small I: “I am not you.” It is an important moment when he realizes what this means: “I am not you.” This is a moment when one begins to realize that there are higher forces at work in nature than thinking, that there is something beyond oneself that cannot be expressed in the words of the present, but which has the effect that when two people who can speak about the same thing, the speech of one is clear but dull, while that of the other is pulsating with the warm light that will create the future.

When the student has reached this stage, they can learn in yet another way than they have been able to learn until now. They experience something very special. They encounter a spiritual being in the supersensible world. They meet the individuality that was once connected to them. It is a great and important mystery that certain stages of our existence are repeated. We consciously ascend from the manas to the higher forces. We once descended from spiritual worlds, and at that time the same being descended into us something that we now meet again at the stage corresponding to that point in the past when it was with us then. It is the teacher, the so-called guru. We met him for the first time then; now we meet him again when we can consciously grasp what he has sunk into our souls and we have unconsciously received.

And if we descend further, we meet the spirits who helped to build us eons ago. We meet the twelve spirits: the spirits of will, the spirits of wisdom, the spirits of form, the spirits of movement, the spirits of personality or egoism, the spirits of fire or warmth, the spirits of dawn or twilight, and so on. All this presents itself to our mind's eye on this descent into the universe, on this pilgrimage. And that alone makes it possible for us to glimpse the future, to anticipate what is to happen “in the near future,” as the apostle says.

This is the task of occultism. It is to be solved because this solution is necessary. There are enough movements that are idealistic and ethical. But the movement called Theosophy differs from others in that occultism consciously comes into its own in this movement. This clarifies the relationship between occultism and Theosophy. The Theosophical Society can never aspire to be an occult brotherhood. The strength it needs to fulfill its task, the life it needs, can only come from the currents of occultism. Therefore, the Theosophical Society will flourish when there is an understanding for the cultivation of occult teachings and occult life. This does not mean that the members themselves should be occultists. But if Theosophy forgets that this blood pulsates within it, then it may be an interesting society, but it will not fulfill what was intended by the exalted powers that stood at its starting point.

Anyone who understands this will never want to take away the occult character of the Theosophical Society. But anyone who stands in Theosophical Society in this way is put in a conflicting position. He will have to turn his ear to the side from which the occult truths flow to us, and on the other hand, turn his attention to the outer exoteric life of the Society. These things must be strictly separated; they must never be mixed. But one must not, when speaking of the outer Theosophical Society, speak of the occult personalities who are at the starting point. The Powers that live on the higher plane and those who live outside the physical body for the sake of human development never interfere in these matters. They never give anything but impulses. When we work objectively for the spread of the Theosophical Society, the great individualities we call Masters are always at our side; we may turn to them and let them speak through us. When the subject is the expansion of occult life, the Masters speak. When it is only a matter of organizing the Society, they leave it to those who live in the physical plane. That is the difference between the occult current and the framework of the Theosophical Organization.

Let me express the difference between what goes as an inner spiritual current and what is lived out through the individual personalities in the way that it can perhaps best be expressed: When it is a matter of spiritual life, then the Masters speak. When it is a matter of mere organization, then error is possible, because then the Masters are silent.

From the question and answer session

What is the significance of memory in occult training?

Memory is one of the things that have to be sacrificed in occult training. However, everything that was lost on the descent is reclaimed on the ascent. When you develop occultly, you no longer have any memory at all. The memory has developed into something else. You can read about this in Lucifer issues 14 and 15. This is where real reading in the past occurs. First on the astral plane and then in the Akasha Chronicle. The student's lost memory is replaced by reading power. He will no longer know when Caesar was born, but he will be able to trace back the whole process up to that time.

How are the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount to be understood?

The Sermon on the Mount is a teaching by Christ to his disciples. First of all, one must know what it means to be “on the mountain.” There Christ Jesus explained the great world connections to the disciples. It is extremely interesting from the occult point of view. In the occult world, everything appears to us in a mirror image. They see their own passions wrongly. As a wild animal, the animal in him meets the human being. It is the outpouring of one's own passion that comes back to him in the mirror image. Therefore, we may say that man necessarily evokes the reflection of his actions on the higher plane through himself. The number 126 appears as 621. That this is so, the Christ said to his disciples in the Beatitudes. “To be blessed” means to approach the soul. The Holy Spirit is the Spirit that heals. The first sentence, if translated correctly, would read something like:

Blessed are those who beg for the Spirit, for they find within themselves the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And further:

Whoever is persecuted for My sake finds the kingdom of heaven within himself. [Matt. 5:6]

Then something emerges from the inner being into the outer world, and in the outer world it meets him again in the mirror image. All this can be seen beautifully in a good Greek translation. But the correct meaning can only be understood with occult knowledge.

What is the difference between a highly developed and a less developed person in the occult?

The difference is only a matter of time. Why did the highly developed reach spiritual greatness earlier? Because they traced their origin back to earlier world creations. The occultist speaks from experience, and beyond a certain point, one cannot say anything. After that, there is only speculation. Only after the end of all things will it be possible to speak about those things that go beyond the end of all things.

Are there also dangers in occult striving?

Yes, there are dangers in occult striving. Above all, you have to be alert, awake. Not mediumistic. The occultist does not enter any area of the higher life other than with a clear consciousness, so that he is present, similar to the way he walks in the physical world. I must not lose my physical consciousness. If I do that, then the danger begins. I may not absorb anything in a dull state of consciousness, but only in a completely clear state of consciousness. Persons who enter into twilight states, trance and mediumistic states must beware of approaching their teachers other than in complete freedom. On the whole, the development is not such that the student turns to the astral, but the methods lead to the fact that one only comes to the astral plane when one can have higher experiences on the astral plane, when one is no longer exposed to all the confusing impressions.

The person who is on the physical plane lives in his or her self on the devachan plane. What must be striven for is that the person retains this life, which he has on the devachan plane, just as he retains the physical one, so that the following must not occur.

Suppose the person suddenly gains sight on the astral plane. Then he will go astray because he is accustomed to the outside world entering him. His ego cannot be there because it is unaccustomed to living on the astral plane, because it is only accustomed to having contact with the world through the physical senses. If you put a person unprepared into the astral world, he is exposed to all kinds of dangers. He must be able to reconnect with the world, he must have a base from which to move on. To gain this foothold is called “building a hut”. In the Transfiguration scene, Christ introduced the disciples to the Devachan plain, and there the disciples said, “Let us build huts here”.

If the astral power is developed before the mental center, then it is possible that the disciple exposes himself to all sorts of urges and passions. This should be avoided by the new method.

The question is raised about the occult side of Christianity and whether black magic is possible in this way.

It is true: what is called Christian development is not identical with occultism and also not identical with Eastern philosophies. The matter appears even deeper when one looks at the occult side of Christianity. Christianity emerged in the fourth sub-race. There is a deep significance to the fact that it came into the world in the form it is. But it need not remain so. This Christianity, like every spiritual current, takes on a special form in the dawn of the fourth subrace.

I will only briefly characterize how it emerges there. Imagine yourself back in ancient India and among the people who were the bearers of the ancient Zarathustra culture. Then to the time of the culture of the Semites, Jews, Hebrews, and then we see the fourth race of men coming up. It was the Greek-Latin culture that developed in Southern Europe. The coming up of the Greek-Latin race is expressed in ancient art, for example in the Laocoon group. If you look at this Laocoön Group, you will see Laocoön fighting the snakes. Laocoön was an old priest in Troy. And the culture of ancient Troy was still a priestly culture. As is well known, Anchises fled after the capture of Troy. Then a priestly colony was founded in Italy: Alba longa. Alba longa also means the long chasuble, the garment for a priestly culture. Alba Longa was founded for a new priestly culture, as a branch of the old Trojan one. The snake winds around the priest. This is a symbol for the overcoming of priesthood, which has nothing to do with cunning, but only with spirituality. This is what we see in the Laocoön Group. It is a great document for the transition from the third to the fourth sub-race.

There is a law in the occult that expresses itself in the fact that in a race - I cannot prove this today - in which the leading individuals nourish their organism, that is, the instrument of the spirit, with alcoholic or similar drinks, it is simply impossible to arrive at a knowledge of the higher members of the human being. There are only two possibilities: either knowledge of the higher worlds and no alcohol, or alcohol and development on the physical plane with the prospect that there may be other planes, but that we cannot see into them ourselves. This is why all ancient cultures were influenced by the idea of reincarnation. Even the slave who worked on the Egyptian pyramids knew the truth of reincarnation. He knew that he would also one day take the place from which orders were given, just as he had to obey now. Christianity was an education of humanity for the importance of the physical plane. The fifth sub-race with the culture of authority was then prepared. How does this fifth sub-race prepare itself externally? By taking a completely different direction in the mysteries. Before Dionysus, there is no trace of the later sacrifice. There are ablutions, and the water is the sacrifice. With Dionysus, the god of becoming takes effect. The culture of the ram or lamb appears. Homer. Christ is the individuality that descends from the highest regions. Today, it already contains in its physical being what the other human beings will also contain in the very distant future. If you want to contemplate Christ, he is best described in the Gospel of the intimate disciple John. The Word became flesh, it says there. Man will one day become the Word, and this Word lives in the flesh in Christ. When you contemplate this Christ in the fourth sub-race, then he could say one thing: “In a certain way, I am deeply related to this sub-race, this fourth, but at the same time I am also growing out of this fourth sub-race. I represent that which will appear again and again in the future. This is how he is connected to the development of humanity, to the earthly wave of evolution that makes up the fourth and fifth sub-races and will then make up the sixth sub-race. In this way, he looks at everything that develops as material life on earth.

The life of Christ belongs to this; and how did this body become a member of the fourth sub-race? Because a culture emerged that rejected the teaching of reincarnation. After all, the Christ also taught his disciples about reincarnation. For they themselves asked him: “That should not happen until Elijah has reappeared.” Then he said: “He has reappeared. John was Elijah, but they did not recognize him.

We therefore understand Theosophy as the realization of Christianity. It teaches what Christianity has only hinted at. The ancient sacrifices were water sacrifices. The sacrifices of the fourth sub-race are wine sacrifices. And Christ turns the water into wine. This is to be understood physically and materially. The Christian monks are allowed to drink wine. They are not forbidden to drink wine. This makes Christianity a different kind of development. The Christian development must completely entrust itself to the leader. The disciple is not allowed to see for himself, not allowed because he has drunk wine. This also takes place at the Lord's Supper.

What is present then? The body of the whole earth is present in the Christ. He can say: “This is my body.” And what is the blood? That is what immediately brings forth the passions in the time to come. That is the lifeblood of the Dionysian culture. The wine is the astral element. In its all-encompassing individuality in concentrated physical form. I can only hint at all this now. Take the individualities that have grown out of the Christian life: for them this can apply. They surrender to the one who guides them because they are only walking on the physical plane for a while. This is Christian occult development.

But then there is also a Christian black magic. It really exists and plays a certain role. In conversation, it may be possible to provide specific information about this as well. Take a fully developed occultist of the old world, one in whom the light originally shines from the beginning, and then the modern occultist, who starts from the Rosicrucians and is now developing. That is the one where the light is where one develops with a certain awareness and entrusts oneself to the leader. It is being awake when one wants to develop occultly.

Can you tell us more about Noah and the Flood?

The question about Noah is connected with my very latest occult research. No one will find anything in 'Lucifer' that I did not know at the time I wrote the articles. But now I know a little more about it. Now the climatic conditions have become clear and vivid to me. I have come to understand something that I would have mentioned at the time if I had understood it at the time. I took the position of Noah allegorically at the time. It was a picture for the deep spiritual meaning. But now I know that this rainbow in the Bible corresponds to a literal fact. On the old Atlantis, the climatic conditions were different. The distribution of air and water was different. It is not without reason that German legend speaks of the 'Fogheim'. There is no rain there yet. There is a different distribution in the cycle of water in the air, and different cloud formations are present, so that one finds that on the old Atlantis the formation of a rainbow is not yet possible. Such conditions only became possible when Atlantis was flooded and the new continents rose.

Now we are given a hint as to how the rainbow emerges from the flood. Noah is the biblical representative of a certain tribe that originally came from Atlantis. We speak of the Proto-Semites. All sub-races descend from them in a certain way. This is well known to us from theosophical literature. So it is in a sense correct to say that all descend from the Proto-Semitic race. The fourth sub-race, which developed from the then existing one, is predisposed in the Proto-Semites, so that one tribe, which is presented to us biblically as Noah's, is particularly characterized by its wine drinking.

How is race formation related to Germanic mythology?

There was a center in the Gobi Desert. From there, the northern cultural current flowed, which had a tragic course. It is contained in the Nibelungen, in the twilight of the gods. Druid means oak. The arrival of Christianity forms one of the expectations in all Nordic mysteries. This is expressed in a symbolum. Certain truths are indicated to the initiated by certain symbols. What was it that had to be brought, that was predicted by the old Druid priests? It was the cross.

Now there is a Nordic initiate to whom all these things go back. He is called Sieg. All the names like Siegfried, Sieglinde, Siegmund and so on go back to this Sieg. This Nordic initiate found expression in the later Siegfried. He is described as an initiate. It is stated that he was invulnerable through the dragon blood, but that he was still vulnerable at a certain point on his shoulder blade. And it was taught: There will come another who will overcome this vulnerable spot. From the fertilization of the fourth sub-race with what had remained behind and came over from earlier, the fifth sub-race developed. This provided the impetus for the founding of the fifth sub-race.

You often hear, especially from the learned or, let's say, from the progressive side: Yes, spiritual entities are present for those who still cling to old childish beliefs, who live in their imagination and their feelings. But for people who have clear, logical concepts, such spiritual entities are not there. I would like to remind you of what the Leipzig university professor Wundt wrote, in which he fights against all spiritual facts. He says: Those people who believe in such spiritual entities from the outset see these things, but those who do not believe in them do not see them. For them, it remains something that must always be doubted. But that is the decisive factor.

Now let us ask ourselves whether those who see the world with clear logical concepts are really decisive in their statements about the phenomena of a higher world. Here we must take into account a little of what is a condition of life for a whole series of initially elementary phenomena in the higher world.

We are not only constantly surrounded by sensual things and beings, but we are also always surrounded by a world of supersensible entities. One should not think that these supersensible entities have no relation to the visible nature. Just as man consists of visible and invisible parts, of his visible physical body and of his invisible spirit and soul, so also other entities consist of a visible and an invisible part. The relationships can then, however, be very different from those in humans.

The simplest supersensible beings we have to deal with are the so-called elementary beings. These are entities that surround us at every turn. The whole space around us is filled with such entities. Just as plants, animals and people live around us, so do supersensible beings. But they are not always fully developed; they are in a more or less imperfectly developed state. If you look at the natural world around us, you will recognize the same thing in the visible world of the senses. If you have a bean here, a bean seed, and there a bean plant that has shot up, winding around the stick and unfolding bean blossoms, then you can say to yourself: In a certain respect, the bean seed and the bean plant that has shot up and is winding around a stick in many turns are basically the same from a certain point of view. If you put the bean in the ground today, it can sprout up in exactly the same way on the vine in a while, and can be exactly the same as the fully-grown bean plant standing before you today. So here in the world of the senses you seemingly have two entities. From a different point of view, however, they are in fact the same. It is the same in the spiritual world. There you actually have beings that, like beans in the seed state, exist as spiritual germs that surround us all the time in the spiritual world. Just as you give the bean the opportunity to be the expressed bean plant, you can also give these spiritual germs, which constantly surround us in the astral realm, a soil in which they can take root. If you keep the bean on the surface of the earth, on stony ground, it will never be able to develop. But if you sink it into suitable soil, it will sprout. It can be the same with a spiritual seed. There are beings around us, such seed beings, that simply grow through what we develop, that thereby have a breeding ground in which they grow and flourish. Suppose there are spiritual beings around you who, just as the bean plant needs physical soil, salts, physical light and so on to build a physical body, want to build an astral body out of astral matter.

What is astral matter? These are, for example, human passions, urges, desires. Astral matter is greed, generosity, which develops love. All this relates to a being that is not rooted in the physical in its entire nature and wants to make an astral body for itself [like the ground for seeds]. What a person emits, develops in desires and instincts, is necessary for certain entities, so that one can say: Here in the astral realm is a spiritual seed, and there a person develops a pronounced instinct for greed. That is a spiritual soil for a certain spiritual being that is in its environment; it finds an opportunity in it to grow, so you give spiritual beings the opportunity to live in it. In fact, that is present.

For example, it is also known that people seek to discharge their pain in tears. No one will deny that the tears have something that alleviates the pain. A certain pain-relieving agent is the tears. An astral substance causes this peculiar soothing effect that lies in tears. This astral substance, which comes about because the pain is discharged in tears, causes certain entities to incarnate, to embody themselves. In fact, the person who cries draws in spiritual entities from the environment. These cause the pain to become less and less.

Now, however, pain is often, when we experience it ourselves without it discharging in tears, a significant increase in strength, which can have an even stronger effect if we accumulate it as a good experience and do not seek the voluptuousness of tears. Then they are a source of wisdom. Painful experiences are a source of wisdom. Time and again, the one who knows something, who sees something in the world, will gladly give up his pleasures; but he will not gladly give up his pains, because painful experiences reveal what we should and should not do. If something has caused pain, then we know that it is not life-promoting, and we know how to behave in later times.

Great idealists in previous incarnations were often martyrs. From these painful experiences, which they bore with dignity and equanimity, an ideal sense arose. From this you can see that bitter experiences are connected with wisdom. You will also have to admit that when a person cries out the painful experiences, he then also dulls their effects. That is indeed the case. He who wants to see into higher worlds must, above all, understand how to bury pain in his soul, how to turn it into an active ferment and not let it disappear in outwardly flowing tears. In addition to all the figurative interpretations, the word in “Light on the Path” is also to be taken literally as a real truth:

Before the eye can see, it must wean itself from tears.

This is not to say anything against tears in people at a certain stage of development. So you see how this provides a breeding ground for spiritual beings who are constantly present, and from which astral beings sprout like plants from sown soil.

What then are these astral germs? Where do they exist? If you ask yourself these questions very carefully, you will understand many things in nature that would otherwise be difficult for you to grasp. For those who seek to fathom the world in this way, the things of nature are not purely physical entities, as one would usually assume, but they are permeated with spiritual life. All of nature is alive, truly alive with spiritual entities. The ancients knew this and still know it today. Paracelsus, for example, said that spiritual entities rest everywhere in plants and stones.

Now let us try to explore the nature of such spiritual entities that are different from the entities that surround us. First, I have to discuss some concepts that will help you understand the whole supersensory nature. Some of you already know these things, but I believe I can put them in a different context. Besides, it is good to hear them from time to time.

People know their environment and act out of their consciousness. What does that mean? When they are asleep, they do not act out of their consciousness, because then their actual higher self, their actual higher being, is separated from the body. The body is on its own. When you look at a sleeping person, what are you actually looking at? The human being consists of the physical body, [which you see with your eyes,] then of an etheric body, which is similarly constructed and forms a kind of model for the physical body, then of the astral body with the life of feelings, instincts, desires and passions, and finally of the I, in which I combine the higher parts.

When a person is awake, the following parts are present: physical body, etheric body, astral body and I. The physical body is in the sensory world, the etheric body, the astral body and the I are in the supersensible world. So we have a being that has its consciousness in the supersensible and only the body on the physical plane. During sleep, it discards the physical body and lives in the higher worlds. What the human being represents here in the state of sleep can be seen as a constant state in the other physical beings that surround you. With plants, you can say – and not just figuratively – that they sleep. What man is during the night – approximately – that is what the plant always is: it is a sleeper, has a sleeping consciousness. It is important to realize this correctly. You see, just as man, when he sleeps, does not have his consciousness in the physical body, so the plant also does not have its consciousness in the physical body, and therefore it is a sleeper.

This is how man differs from the plant, in that man has his consciousness within his body, while the plant has its consciousness outside of its body. The plant is not without consciousness, it just has it outside of its body; it has it on the mental plane. The animal has its consciousness on the astral plane, but the plant has it on the mental plane.

We now come to the description of the external sensory world, of sensory nature. I will try to present it to you schematically. When you look at this whole world, it comes to you through your senses, through your eyes, ears, through sensation and feeling. We call this the physical plane. Just as a sponge is permeated by water, so this world is permeated by the astral world; it permeates the physical world. The astral plane, however, does not have objects and entities that can be touched and seen with the eyes. The “matter that is present on it is made of the same stuff as your desires and longings.

If you have a candle here and light it, it will burn on the physical plane. The fire is therefore the result of a physical process. But if you curse your neighbor, fire will burn on the astral plane. He is in pain, and that is visible on the astral plane in a kind of flame. Lust is something similar on the astral plane.

An even more refined substance is that from which your thoughts are woven, we call that the mental substance.

Then there is an even higher plane, that is the higher mental plane. The substance on this plane is the same as that from which the thoughts consist, which are completely free of sensuality, the highest thoughts that a person can have at all.

Now we have the following beings on earth: minerals, plants, animals and human beings. When a person is awake, his consciousness is here on the physical plane; his consciousness dwells in the physical body. The animal's consciousness is not in the physical body, but on the astral plane. This means that the animal is not able to express its self on the physical plane. It lacks the ability to think for itself. There is a so-called generic soul in animals; this lives on the astral plane. The plant has its self-awareness on the mental plane. Thus man, animal, plant and finally mineral are in their duality as form and consciousness. From this we can see what mineral, plant, animal and human being are. The animal is not able to grasp the ego. There is no instrument through which it can work. On the astral plane, animals are like human beings on the physical plane; they are beginning to speak to you. And on the mental plane, plants are like human beings on the physical plane. The animal is on the physical plane and rooted in the astral plane with its consciousness. It can also be the other way around, namely, the consciousness is on the physical plane and the body is on the astral plane, which then reaches into our world with its consciousness. What would such a being mean? Such a being would move up in the astral realm, it would go for walks in the astral realm. And just as we experience the animal down here, the “animal that has its consciousness in the physical realm expresses itself in physical action, that is, in the form of an attraction.

For example, the physicist has a magnet here, and if he brings something iron close to it, it is attracted. The physicist then speaks of an attraction. Of course, that is just a word. What is the truth here? The truth is what I have described. In truth, the magnetic force that is at work and visible here is based on an astral entity. All natural forces are based on astral entities. The forces of nature are based on astral beings. There are beings walking on the astral plane, and here they express themselves as natural forces. Natural forces are nothing more than actions on the physical plane of beings that live on the astral plane!

Therefore, anyone who approaches nature with their entire sensitivity will be able to perceive such beings from the natural forces.

Take a highly sensitive person who approaches such forces. He will not only be able to say when the iron is there and is attracted: magnetic force is present here, but his eye will see the magnetic forces - and that is the same as the consciousness of the animal on the astral plane. These magnetic forces have their body on the astral plane, and this can be seen by the sensitive person in question.

A piece of sulfur is not only a piece of sulfur, but it is also a force, and this force corresponds to an astral being on the astral plane. This is a being, an organism on the astral plane.

From this you can see that we are actually constantly dealing with entities that have their being on the astral plane, as with the forces of nature. A person can find one plant lovely and another one repulsive. The clairvoyant can see that the reason for this is that one plant has forces that express themselves in a beautiful astral body, while the other has forces that express themselves in a hideous astral body. The smell that the physical human being can smell, the astral human being can perceive, you can see in an astral form. When you begin to really develop the powers to see what is not perceptible to the physical senses, you will be surrounded by light effects in the plant. We have two entities in the plant, one inside the other, belonging together. The plant sprouts from the ground. It has its consciousness on the mental plane and its physical body down here. Another entity is placed in it, which has its body on the astral plane and its consciousness down here.

Follow with me the path that the animal takes through its life. When the animal is alive, when it is born, the astral body of the animal arises first, then the etheric body, and then they clothe themselves with physical matter. The animal gets the physical body, the astral lives in the physical body. Now take this animal's life. It can only exist as long as there is oxygen in the air. The moment the air does not have enough oxygen, the animal dies. The moment you bury the animal alive, it also dies because it does not have enough oxygen. So you see that the mere physical body cannot hold the animal's astral body unless the appropriate air of life is present. If you cover the whole animal with earth, then that animal cannot live.

You can do something similar with the astral beings I have been talking about. Suppose you have the astral body of an entity that accompanies a plant that belongs to it; you are now confronting this entity. When you confront it, it is often the case for such an entity as if you were planting a bean in the ground. You offer it the opportunity to root, to grow and to flourish through your own spirit. It takes on an outwardly visible form. This is a very important process. You stand in front of a plant, it begins to be surrounded by fire sparks; a being is formed that is connected to the plant; this being's body is formed.

Now you begin to think about this being. When you think, it is really like a kind of soil in which the being is sunk. But as beneficial as the soil is for the plant when it envelops part of its organs in the right way, it is as pernicious for it when you cover the whole plant. And just as the soil kills the plant when you cover the whole plant with soil, so does the soil of thought act on such entities. If you completely cover them with thought material, it has a killing effect. They lack the air of life. This is why the elemental spirits of nature die when their life air is taken from them through thoughts.

This is one reason why caustic thinkers, people who spin out everything and want to surround everything with their thoughts, actually kill the delicate beings that surround us. This will explain to you what it means for such beings to 'die'; they actually die many times over in people. Just as a landslide buries all the plants below and causes them to die, so human thinking, by spreading, kills a whole series of nature entities.

Myth and legend have expressed this beautifully in symbolic language; you can find it expressed in the myth of the brownies: in the past, when man did not think so much, they were there. Then came the time when man began to think; then the nature spirits withdrew. This is expressed symbolically, but corresponds to a hidden reality. Just as man, in his physical body, is consigned to the earth when he dies, so these nature spirits, in their elemental bodies, are sunk into the mental earth in the upper worlds, and there they die. Man dies in the physical earth, the nature spirit dies in the “earth of the spiritual world”! There they have their grave, and it is prepared for them by the megalomaniac, clever thinking of men.

To those who have not yet been initiated into these things, the matter will seem fantastic. The one who approaches the spiritual world with doubting thoughts will not find this spiritual world. He behaves as if he were walking through a swarm of mosquitoes with a flame of fire when he passes through the spiritual world. Such is the case with a thinker who has no sensitivity. Many slain [spiritual] entities indicate the trace of such thinkers. Therefore, man is often a destroyer of elemental spirits. He is something that wants to develop higher, and these entities, which are in a reverse development, are often destroyed by people. Here you have another practical example that makes a real teaching of occultism seem understandable: that you yourself must offer the spiritual entities that which allows them to appear, which allows them to be there. Hence the ever-recurring demand: one should not think caustically, should not criticize, but should devotedly abandon oneself to one's surroundings. Then the bright spiritual elemental beings emerge from their darkness. These things are all connected with the profound laws of spiritual existence.

Now another example from which you can see how the immediate life becomes explicable through such insights that belong to the hidden worlds. Suppose a person lies to another. If I tell the truth, it means something quite different in the spiritual world than if I lie. When I tell the truth, I create a thought-form. Every thought I express is a form in the supersensible world. Now the fact that I want to communicate also corresponds to something in the spiritual world. Every fact in the external, sensory space also corresponds to something in the spiritual world. The moment I speak the truth, the thought form I have formed connects with what corresponds to the fact in the spiritual world. But if I say or think a lie that does not correspond to the fact, then my thought form will immediately rebound on me when I try to unite it with the spiritual counterpart that corresponds to the fact, and it will stick to me. Those who habitually tell lies are constantly having their lies rebound on them, and they surround themselves with a whole armor of lies. Now imagine such a person, enclosed in such an armor of lies. The forces that could develop him cannot enter, and the result is that he lags behind. Those who lie exclude themselves from the power that they must let flow in and out, and as a result they lag behind. Therefore, everything that is untruthful, that does not correspond to the facts, is an obstacle to development. All truth connects with the facts themselves, and it allows man to enter into the whole stream of facts. If you take this into consideration, you will understand what it means to be a 'truthful person'. To be a truthful person means to make yourself capable of progressing, of going further and further. Only truthful people will progress. On the physical plane, a lie can perhaps be hidden, but on the astral plane, a lie cannot be hidden. Liars are surrounded by thick crusts on the astral plane. Therefore, they cannot develop. For this reason, the biggest stumbling block in the world is the existing lie. 'Lie' in Hebrew is 'Tophel'. And if you imagine the 'spirit of lies' in the world, which wanted to make it its business to put as many obstacles as possible in the way of the world, then it would have to be a 'spirit of lies'. He would have to lie in such a way that a crust would form around all of humanity; he would be the corrupter of humanity. Corrupter is called 'Mephiz' in Hebrew. So you can call such a spirit of lies 'Mephistophel', 'spirit of lies'. His name is chosen because he is the 'father of all obstacles'. Goethe also calls him that.

So here you have something from which you can see that you can only understand the poet by looking at him from the point of view of occultism. You will find exactly the same with most really great poets. You will never find that the great world poets created out of a random fantasy, but out of the occult facts, out of the occult connections!

Now another example, which has been mentioned before. We are in the fifth root race, and within this, in the fifth sub-race. Three sub-races had a priestly culture. In the fourth cultural period, the Semitic peoples came up. From the priestly cultures, a culture developed that was quite different, that was not based on inspiration from above; namely, the priestly culture was based on that. The culture of the fourth sub-race was based on cleverness. The emergence of Greek culture thus means overcoming priestly wisdom through cunning. This is presented to us by a Greek poet and a Greek sculptor. The poet Homer presents this to us in Odysseus, who overcomes the Trojans through cunning by making a wooden horse. The sculptor has the old Trojan priest Laocoön crushed by the snake, the symbol of wisdom and prudence. Real poets have always drawn from the occult. The others are not poets, because nothing in their poetry corresponds to reality. Poetry can only flourish among spiritual peoples. The truth is handed down to people in different ways. The poets were not merely entertainers of mankind; they were seers who wanted to shine beyond our physical reality into the higher worlds. Homer is therefore the “blind seer” because he created his works from the hidden, not from the world of the senses. So you see that true great poetry can only be understood if we look at it on the basis of occult facts. Life and the creation of man only become clear to us when we look at them from the occult point of view. Consider what this means! One can rail against occultism and regard it as something that makes people fantasize. But you see: in truth, occultism leads deeper and deeper into the world. It makes the outer context of the world truly understandable. There is, as Goethe already said, no outside and no inside. “Nature has neither core nor shell, it is all at once.” Apparently the secrets are revealed when people open their minds.

This brings me to something that may seem hard to believe at first, but which is really true, namely the benefit of having an external exoteric, theosophical movement alongside the occult schools. Only those who want to live an occult life should be initiated. “What is the purpose of having a Theosophical Society?” you might ask. Those who approach this matter only with intellectual knowledge will hardly find a satisfactory answer. But those who delve into this spiritual world would have more success. It may take a long time, but what comes of it is a real insight into the world. People do not sit together for nothing. Depending on their karma, it takes longer for some and shorter for others. What one hears there awakens one's powers, leading one into the spiritual world oneself, the beginning of initiation. This must be borne in mind if one is to understand the true purpose and the true reason for the Theosophical movement. The true reason for the Theosophical movement is not only to speak in the broadest circles about the higher worlds, but also, through our words, to awaken in people the gift and ability to live in the higher worlds themselves, by infusing them with the power of the higher worlds. This is absolutely necessary. Indeed, someone who understood everything, who could grasp with his pure conceptual material everything that can be told about the higher worlds, and who approached the matter with impartiality, would have only a fine membrane to break, and the gift of clairvoyance would arise without further ado. There may be individuals who have an abbreviated process. There must always be those who develop a little further than the rest. But all of humanity can be helped in our time. What is taught today can, without fail, produce powers of vision in time, in the following way:

Today people think they are terribly clever in their critical thoughts. To what do they owe this? Suppose you are sitting in a meeting. In front of you stands a speaker who, as they say, proclaims the truth. If such a person had spoken to them in their previous incarnation, they would not have understood him. Not a bit of it! Suppose everyone sitting in such a gathering had been on earth fifteen hundred years ago or more. But then they were told fairy tales by their priests. They were not taught in the way we are today, in an intellectual way, but they were told fairy tales. And these souls embody themselves again: the power with which they have accepted the fairy tales is now coming into its own in that they can show understanding for intellectual speech. And through the understanding that has now been developed, a higher understanding will come about. It will no longer be a matter of understanding with the intellect, but of clairvoyance.

So you can see that the theosophical movement opens up a great perspective. It works in the same way as the priests of centuries ago worked into the supersensible world with their fairy tales. Just as they have sunk something into the soul that is coming forth today, so today's intellectual education will, in the next embodiment, produce the ability to penetrate the world with clairvoyant powers. That is the world mission of the Theosophical Society. That is what it wants to be and what it should be. If you look at it that way, you will realize that you cannot have that in occultist associations. There are many movements that have ethical or other purposes. But movements in which there is talk of the transcendental worlds in order to awaken the spiritual, the spirit, do not exist as popular movements outside of the theosophical movement today. That is the reason why such a current was brought into being by the theosophical movement. The theosophical movement is not something that teaches us dull theories, but leads us directly into life, giving us guidance to look around at the world with open eyes.

Throughout the world, there is a kind of blindness in those who should be taking the initiative in the outside world. Last Thursday, I tried to make this clear in the social sphere. In all areas where a knowledge of the forces should prevail, we see that blindness is actually the hallmark of those who should be awakening. Theosophy wants to bring out the underlying forces.

Man is often an enemy of the elemental beings that surround us constantly. But he becomes their friend when he recognizes them and becomes familiar with them and works in their sense. We become friends with those beings that always surround us in the spiritual world when we enter into the hidden sides of nature; then they work with us, not against us. Everything that occurs in the world and hinders progress and causes much bloodshed in the world has its reason in nothing other than in the awakened elemental beings in the world. They are enemies of man as long as man wants to work without knowing them. They transform into friends when he wants to get to know them, when he wants to face them with familiarity. Externally, physically speaking, it means: Man stands in the world, works and works, and around him things happen that arise from his actions. He sees nothing. He sees absolutely nothing. Then suddenly revolutionary movements break in because he has seen nothing, because he has not seen the hidden things that were there long before they discharged the external hostile storm. If man would see them, he would not be so careless of them as to let them degenerate into revolutionary currents. He would work with them. From this you can see that not recognizing the course of the laws, the spiritual elemental beings, destruction, turmoil and revolutions in the world, and that the more we get to know the forces around us, the more we will see what we call the calm development of people. Thus, on a large scale, knowledge of the elemental nature, knowledge of the spiritual world around us, has great practical value. It allows us to penetrate deeper into our environment and understand it.

Next time, we want to talk about a problem that can affect people very deeply. We have already heard a lot about the forces that work around people. And so we want to ask ourselves: Is a human being a being that can be said to have freedom or not? Are they on a tight rein from the elemental beings or not? These are the questions that we want to address next time.

At first it might seem as if the strict lawfulness in the The [...]M[...] is incompatible. You know that this problem [...]

Is man free or not free? Is he subject to ironclad necessity, or are his actions subject to his will? Initially, this question is not asked, and a lot depends on asking questions correctly. As man stands today, he is neither one nor the other, neither free nor bound, but both one and the other. In relation to certain actions, he is free; in relation to others, he is subject to ironclad necessity. Freedom is something we are always approaching; we become freer the more we develop. In the beginning, we are very constrained, dependent on everything our instinctive mat[...] has predisposed us to.

But the more we develop, the freer we become. How does this relate to the laws of karma? Theosophy deals with laws that operate in the future. If we specify laws so firmly, how can we speak of a development towards freedom? If we delve into certain investigations into the human soul in this field, we will make progress. Above all, we must ask ourselves: What is freedom? Can it be a creation out of nothing? Is it a specific nature? Is man predisposed to freedom at the stage of existence at which he now stands? - At the moment when man raises such a question, he is a being that has developed to a certain point.

The fact that my hand moves is a result of infinitely complicated laws. Now it is not a question of whether I can get rid of these laws, but whether I can make a free decision within these laws in which I have become; whether a being that is born according to certain [laws] and moves within these laws can ascribe freedom to itself or not. These laws belong to our becoming in the past and extend into the future. Imagine someone demands to be trained as an athlete. He must train himself in a very specific direction, follow laws, bring himself to a certain point of view; when he has done that, he can become an athlete. Freedom does not consist in our changing the laws by which we have become, but in acting within those laws.

You have heard that [the] human being walks either the left or right path. Yes, so it is not up to him; he must walk one or the other. If he has a guru, he must follow laws, strive for a goal – can there be any talk of freedom? In truth, there is no such goal that we should strive for. Occult development has no such purpose, but it does have the purpose and intention of developing abilities in people and using laws to bring them to a certain level. When they have reached this level, they are then able to set themselves a goal.

The animal cannot act out of freedom, only according to instincts; no act of instinct or passion is free, it is internally forced. To be free, one must above all have the ability to decide freely; not feel any compulsion within oneself to do this or that.

This is a step to be taken. And all occultism is about developing the abilities we need to make free decisions. Suppose a person acquires the ability to see into the supersensible world. At first, the person acts out of instinctive drives. What is the inner compulsion? The first task is to put the person in relation to the outside world. Instinctive drives initially guide his life, making him unfree. When a person begins to look into the supersensible world, the first step is to see the connection between the drives and the world's interconnections. He knows how an instinct works as a cause in the world. He moves on to the realization of the connection between himself and the external world. Occultism provides him with the guidance for this.

You have come to know this lawful mechanism of the world better and better and see how freedom develops from it. The fact that you bring oxygen and hydrogen together is an act of your freedom. If we know nothing of the law, we cannot foresee what will happen and must submit to a compulsion. The fact that we have recognized the lawful consequences makes us free. The more we understand the higher laws, the more we can adhere to them in order to reach our goals. What we learn to recognize are the means by which we achieve the specific goals we then set for ourselves. The master does not give the chela instructions about where to steer; he should learn to move in the direction of the goal. A goal presents itself to us when we truly look at the world without prejudice. The goal that a person sets for himself out of the abundance of world phenomena can only be a free goal. Then he is truly a liberated man.

The three most important elements of the soul's life are activity, wisdom, and will. Actions must be determined by our wisdom and our will, and are therefore not free. Wisdom is partly free and partly not.

In the idea for my house, I am free; my knowledge of the laws leads me to shape the house the way I want it. And the better I know them, the better I will be able to realize this idea.

Free is he who is able to shape out of thought in a self-creative way.

The will determined by free thought is what truly liberates man. Man thus ceases to be determined from behind by the past and is determined from in front by his goals.

Pearl in shell as an example.

A person is unfree as long as we find in him the reason for setting himself the goal; when the law lies in the goal, then he is free, then he can refrain from the action. He acts selflessly in devotion to the goal. The opposite of inner compulsion is determination by the object, love of the object.

Only a god is truly free; but man is on the path to becoming divine.

Through objectification, through transformation into knowledge, what was previously coercion is transformed into freedom.

Therefore, man is on the path to freedom because he is capable of setting aside what lives in him as a goal. Objectification is the path to freedom.

The Sermon on the Mount is usually not appreciated in its full depth because many people understand it to be a sermon that the Lord is said to have preached to the people. But in reality it is not addressed to the people, but “spoken on the mountain”. This means: in the intimate sanctuary, where the secrets of religion are shared.

With the people, Jesus speaks in parables, but when he is alone with his disciples, he explains many things to them. “On the mountain means in the mystery”. The most important teaching “on the mountain is that which is called the ‘transfiguration’. There Jesus talks to his disciples about reincarnation. He tells them: John the Baptist is Elijah, they just did not recognize him. There on the mount of transfiguration, time and space were overcome for the disciples James, Peter and John; they saw beings who were no longer incarnated: Moses and Elijah. “Eb means the goal, the path. ”Moses means the truth; in the middle is Christ - the life. So the disciples saw before them: the path, the truth and the life.

When reading this scene, we find that the disciples speak a significant word. In the path of discipleship, three stages are distinguished. The first stage is that of the homeless man, the second stage is that on which man builds “huts” in the spiritual world. The disciples were at this stage at that time, so they said: “Here let us build huts.

Jesus had taken the three disciples, who were on the second level of fellowship, with him into the mystery. Everything that is spoken “on the mountain” means that we are dealing with an intimate revelation to the disciples. It says:

When Jesus saw the crowds, he went up the mountain, and his disciples came to him. [Matt. 5:1]

Even if we understand this sentence only literally, we can see that it is not a sermon to the people. He went away with his disciples. We are therefore dealing with an intimate teaching that is only to be spoken before the familiar disciples. These are then in turn to teach the others who are outside.

The Sermon on the Mount speaks of two worlds. From this we can learn how the sensual and the supersensual relate to each other. Man must first slowly and carefully get used to judging things when entering other worlds. In the astral world, everything appears as a mirror image, even with numbers. For example, 364 is 463 in the astral world. What happens in a certain direction here in the world appears in the astral world as a mirror image. People who develop clairvoyance through pathological conditions tell of terrible animals that pounce on them. These are the lower passions of man; they appear in the astral world in the mirror image. What comes from man comes back to him in the astral. The passions come towards him as figures from outside. This is an example of how the inner self appears in the mirror image when we perceive it in the higher world. Every thing, everything here in the sensual world, has a real mirror image in the supersensible world. The very first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount points this out. We must bear in mind that language is more spiritual than we think.

The word 'blessed' is related to the word 'soul'. This is also the case in Greek. 'To be blessed' means to bring the soul to full development. Just as 'holy' is related to the words 'whole', 'healthy' and 'pure'. The Holy Spirit is the healthy Spirit, who is completely pure. Blessed is he who has developed his soul, who has ascended to the supersensible. Bit by bit, the Lord explains to his disciples how they become blessed, how they ascend.

The first Beatitude says:

Blessed are they that mourn, and weep, and make themselves clean; they shall have joy of God. [Matthew 5, 3]

That means that the Kingdom of Heaven is within themselves. This is the profound connection between the material and supersensible worlds. Those who long for the spirit will find the reflection of their striving within themselves, the Kingdoms of Heaven. This is the natural connection between our striving and the reflection, the Kingdoms of Heaven. Nothing can happen in the sensual world that does not have its counterpart in the supersensible world. If we disdain the spirit, the spirit flees. If we strive for the spirit, the reflection flows towards us. Thus Christ always explains the connections to his disciples.

Blessed are they that mourn: for they shall be comforted [Matthew 5:4]

Blessed are the meek: for they shall inherit the earth [Matthew 5:5]

Those who have not developed within themselves what is called meekness, who are irascible, cannot have the necessary counter-image, namely the kingdom of the earth, for themselves. One should not try to enter the kingdom of heaven without first having redeemed the kingdom of the earth and then bringing it with one into the kingdom of heaven. We are here on earth to redeem and deify everything that is on earth. Just as the bee flies over the fields, collecting honey from the flowers and carrying it into the beehive, so the soul flies over the world to gather experiences and bring them into the realm of heaven. We must learn to let the world come to us and let it work in us. If we absorb everything, if we show gentleness and full fertility to the earth, it will also bring us something.

Blessed are those who hunger for righteousness, for they will find satisfaction within themselves.

[Blessed are the merciful, for they shall obtain mercy. [Matt. 5:7]]

Just as the north and south poles necessarily belong together, so the one link of the sensual world and the other in the supersensible world necessarily belong together.

Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God.

God reveals Himself only to pure hearts. A person who is incapable of purifying his heart from all the impressions flowing to him from the sense world cannot experience the counter-image in his heart. When the heart is pure of sensual and memory material, then it can see God. But that which is full of sensual and memory material excludes the Godhead. There is the image and the counter-image: the pure heart – the Godhead.

Blessed are the peacemakers, for they shall be children of God by themselves.

When Jesus wanted to explain this to his disciples, he said: There are children of God and children of men. The children of God want to remain children of God; the children of men want to become children of God. The children of God are also called the descendants of Abel, the children of men the descendants of Cain. The descendants of Abel did not descend to the greatest human labor and toil; they accept what comes from God, even blood, and bring it to God as a sacrifice.

The children of men have descended lower. They must sacrifice from what they themselves have gained through their labor. Therein lies a profound contrast in the spiritual life of man. The children of Abel were generally priests who want to draw from the trancelike inspiration that takes what God gives and sacrifices it to him. God has ignited in us the trance-like, unconscious inspiration. On the other hand, there is a fully conscious wisdom that man acquires during his journey on this earth. Cain's children are the people who conquer this wisdom. If people had remained Abel's children, they would have been led by the hand of divine naturalness; but God wanted to let them be free. They have to become Cain's children. This initially led to a lack of peace. This led to Cain killing his brother. The children of Cain must develop peaceableness within themselves again, and then they will become children of God through themselves again. This is a sentence that, above all, refutes the basic view of those who believed that the old Abel principle should be revived. They say: People are not meant to be able to become children of Abel again once they have been children of Cain. That is why the Jesuit order wants to keep humanity in its dullness with the divinity. He wants to fight evil by not giving people the opportunity to become free. The Jesuit order almost contradicts this sentence that people can become children of God again through themselves, and believes, however, that they are acting in the spirit of Jesus. Ignatius of Loyola said: We do not want to let people descend so low. The good should be preserved at the expense of the light.

Blessed are those who are persecuted for righteousness' sake, for theirs is the kingdom of heaven.

Here we see the opposite of what is said in the first sentence. Begging for the spirit comes from the person themselves. Here we find that which works from the outside; there the mirror image is formed within, which works against it. It becomes ever clearer to us that this basic tendency lies in the Sermon on the Mount. We thereby gain a deeper understanding of what Christ gives to his disciples “on the mountain, in the mystery.”

If we look at the seemingly radical sentences from this point of view, we can understand this. In the sensual world, we are separate from each other. In the moment when we feel ourselves in the supersensible world, we are one. Only in the sensual world are we many. We believe that our physical skin is a boundary. However, we are not separated from each other by it. That is an illusion. We go beyond that and are connected to each other. In truth, we are intertwined. When we intuitively grasp this on an emotional level, we will come to a different understanding of our fellow human beings. We will feel when our fellow human being directs his anger at us, when in truth it is we ourselves who are directing the anger at us. If we imagine a bond between soul and soul, we feel that the separation ceases to exist and we feel that we have no right to perceive the intention of another person as if it did not belong to us.

Jesus wanted to make it clear to his disciples that external justice is not what matters, but empathy for the soul of the other person. He says:

You have heard that it was said: “An eye for an eye and a tooth for a tooth.” But I say to you, do not resist an evildoer. [Matt 5:38-39]

But I say unto you: Love your enemies, so that you may understand that you are one. [Matt. 5:44-45]

So it should not be “an eye for an eye, a tooth for a tooth”, but I must feel responsible for what the other person does. This is where thinking in the supersensible should come into play.

If anyone demands my coat and I feel at one with him, I will not hesitate to give him everything. If my coat is his coat, then my cloak is also his cloak. I will not go one mile with him, but two. That it is I who live completely in the other, that is what Christ expresses here. We must think supernaturally, completely free from sensuality.

But if your right eye causes you to sin, gouge it out and throw it away. [Matthew 5:29]

Man has desires; he can satisfy them only through the physical organs. The possibility of satisfying these desires depends on the physical organs. Kamaloka arises from the fact that when a person dies, he still has desires for what only the physical organs can offer him. He must first get used to no longer using sensual organs. We should use our senses here in this world in such a way that we draw the spiritual out of things with the help of our senses. As we behold the sensual, we should continually lift ourselves up to the spiritual. To the same extent we prepare ourselves for devachan. This is what Christ means when He says:

And if thy right eye offend thee, pluck it out, and cast it from thee: for it is expedient for thee that one of thy members should perish, rather than that thy whole body be cast into hell. [Matt. 5:29-30]

If the right eye tempts you to remain in the sensual, then free yourself from what the eye clings to. Of course, this does not mean physically plucking it out.

Every sentence of the Sermon on the Mount implies a profound mystery wisdom about how the sensual and the supersensible are connected. Here Jesus explains the essence of Kamaloka to his disciples, and further teaches them: Man should never abuse the supersensible for sensual purposes. The Godhead should never be forced to do something that is not within the cosmic laws themselves. We should not bring down the supersensible sphere, but rise to the supersensible world. There is a great temptation, for example in spiritualism, to want to see the manifestations of the spiritual world. Man wants to bring down the spiritual world instead of developing upwards. The truth of spiritualism cannot be denied, but the method is attacked. We do not want to interfere with the transcendental sphere through our sensual sphere.

Christ emphasizes the perniciousness of the oath, because one should not interfere with the transcendental; one should not pull down heaven to confirm earthly matters.

Do not swear at all, either by heaven, for it is God's throne; or by the earth, for it is His footstool.

If you want to have the supernatural, you should rise to the supernatural. No one should touch the supernatural laws. Not my will, but yours be done.

We should not have the rights that the tax collectors have. We should know that the great unity reigns between “mine” and “yours”.

For if you love those who love you, what reward will you have? Do not even the tax collectors [...]? [Mt 5,46]

You shall be perfect, even as your Father in heaven is perfect.

You shall act consciously, out of the supersensible world.

The conclusion of the speech also contains profound occult aspects. Many believe that they have come to the truth through all kinds of arts. However, it is not only a matter of acquiring the higher powers, but also of putting them at the service of humanity. It is not so easy to preserve that which must be preserved when man rises to higher powers. One can make very definite observations in the case of people who develop their higher powers and do not at the same time also raise their character to higher levels. They then easily become more imperfect than before.

Let us suppose that one has a solution of two substances, for example a red and a blue liquid mixed together; it would be a mixed color. In the same way, in everyday life, man is a mixture of his lower and higher nature. As man usually is, the higher nature prevents his lower nature from coming to evil, radical excesses. By interweaving the higher and lower soul, we are protected from such radical excesses in ordinary life.

Higher development means the withdrawal of the higher soul from the lower. Thus the higher soul is revealed; but the lower soul is then left to its own devices. In occult higher development, we have the higher nature, but also the lower nature – each on its own. That is why the lower nature comes out completely in people who develop occultly. Therefore, it is necessary to develop character, morality, and full self-control alongside occult development. The morality prevailing on earth is the solid rock floor on which we must rest. If we do not build on it, we build on sand. Jesus says:

Many will say to me, 'Lord, Lord, did we not acquire the higher ability of prophesying?' [Matthew 7:22]

It would be strange if Christ wanted to call all those who have acquired this ability “evildoers.” He is speaking here of those who, along with higher abilities, have not also acquired higher morals.

Whoever hears my words...

– by this he means his teachings, which he gave them; one should absorb them with the supersensible consciousness – at the end it says:

The people were horrified at his teaching.

When Jesus had finished his teaching, a commotion was heard in the innermost part of the temple, in the Holy of Holies, signaling that a revolt had broken out among the people outside. This took place outside the temple. The people had not heard the Sermon on the Mount; the last sentence has no relation to the others. Christ-Jesus delivered the Sermon on the Mount only for his disciples, in order to express the entire character of the supersensible world to his disciples. They were to become his apostles through his communicating his most intimate intentions to them in the holy of holies. Through this knowledge their words, which they spoke before the world, were inspired.

All the knowledge that is brought to people in theosophical literature naturally comes from one source. To the question “How do you get it?”, the answer must be: Yoga is the path to higher knowledge, and to participation in the higher worlds in general. “Yoga” means union with the divine source of existence, with the spiritual sources of the world. The one who practises yoga is called a yogi, that is a person who seeks to develop within himself the abilities and powers to penetrate into the spiritual worlds.

There is a great difference between the man who has grasped the idea of Yoga and he who seeks to acquire knowledge today. The latter seeks to bring as much of the outer world as possible into his own mind. The yogi, on the other hand, seeks out all the sources of knowledge that come from spiritual life itself. He starts from the fact that there is development, that man's development, as it is now, is a stage, and that there are forces and abilities slumbering within him that still have to come out, and that if we bring them out, we can truly enter into higher worlds. If you want to become a yogi, you must acquire an unconditional belief in the upward development of the human being, not a blind faith, but the active belief that you can move upwards, that you can develop forces that have not yet been expressed. But this cannot happen overnight. Yoga is a path that consists in many ways of renunciation, and it must be sought with patience and perseverance. It is very difficult for people in today's cultural life to achieve yoga. That is why the theosophical movement was necessary. When Subba Rao was asked how long it takes to achieve initiation, he said: “It can take seventy incarnations, sometimes only seven, for some it takes seventy years, for some seven years, and there may be people who achieve it in seven days, and some even in seven hours.

Of course, it depends on the level of maturity of a person. A person may be further along than he or she realizes. Internally, a person can already be empowered to exercise his or her will and mind in the spiritual world. It may be that someone in a previous incarnation was much further along than he has come today. Perhaps in this incarnation, due to the conditions of the physical body, what was already within him could not come out; now the previously attained powers must be brought out through the powers of the present life. For example, someone might have been a wise priest with magical abilities. This would now have to be brought out in the later incarnation through the powers of that incarnation. Perhaps the brain development in the later incarnation is not so far advanced as to make this possible. It could also be that other forces are missing, perhaps love and kindness; then the earlier forces cannot be brought out again. That is why it takes less time for one person and more time for another to reach initiation. It is a matter of exploring what is already within us by creating the most intimate inner life possible.

The concept of yoga must be removed more and more from everything external and tumultuous, and it must be realized that yoga will happen in the seclusion of the innermost life. Above all, it should be kept in mind that higher spiritual qualities should never be developed without strengthening the character at the same time. Imagine a yellow and a blue liquid mixed together, then a green liquid would result. Just as the yellow and blue liquids, when mixed, produce a green one, so the spiritual and physical powers of man are united. When the spiritual nature is extracted, the physical nature remains behind, so to speak, as a sediment. Much depends on the two natures being mixed [correctly]. It is because the higher nature is connected with the lower nature that man is a particular man. In yoga training, the higher nature is drawn out, and all those qualities that are bad in man come to the fore if absolute character development does not go hand in hand with it. If you aspire to yoga, you have to be prepared for the strangest things to happen in your life. These are the temptations of Saint Anthony. If you seriously begin with yoga exercises, then you have to be prepared for all sorts of things to come out of the lower nature. Some people who were truthful before start lying, cheating, becoming unreliable in character. This happens when the strictest sense of yoga training is not required of students to constantly strengthen their character. Opportunities for wrongdoing then arise as if by magic. That is why all genuine yoga schools first look at the development of morality. Annie Besant repeatedly says to Westerners: spiritual training without moral elevation of character can only lead to wrong paths.

Yoga consists of raising certain things that a person otherwise does unconsciously into consciousness. A person usually performs the breathing process unconsciously; the yogi raises it from the subconscious into consciousness. The yoga training that places the greatest emphasis on the breathing process from the outset, the Hatha Yoga training, only leads to a certain point of development; then it breaks off. It does not go further than the realization of the astral. From the very beginning, one should not follow the Hatha Yoga path, but the Raja Yoga path. This path regards a process such as the breathing process as part of a larger whole. It also involves bringing the things that we previously performed unconsciously into consciousness. We pay no attention to a large part of our thought processes. We have to learn to follow our inner thought process with attention. We can do this by bringing about complete calm within us in relation to the outside world. Then we have to bring thoughts into this calm ourselves and focus our attention on a particular

thought. It is best to devote ourselves to thoughts that contain a force. This conscious immersion in a thought is called meditation. What matters is to live intimately with a thought. You can meditate with a specific valuable thought content. You have to rest completely on it in all silence. You could also do it with an everyday thought, for example with the thought “table” and realize what that is. Most people do not realize what a table is, namely that a weight mass is distributed over several legs. You can search to understand the concept of the table in a contemplative way.

Look at certain pictures by great painters [...]. With some, you feel satisfied when you see floating figures, but with others you feel no satisfaction at all. With some pictures, you feel that the painter literally lived within the figures, while with others you feel that he only saw the figures from the outside.

A European man of culture will find it very difficult to immerse himself in such a concept for a long time. But the real yogi must immerse himself more and more in the concept. As we live inwards, forces develop in our soul that were not there before. When we rest in a concept with the soul, then these forces come out. You have to have the reins in your hand and look at your soul life in such a way that you always have the reins in your hand. A good preparation for this is this quiet resting in thought. The thoughts of life call the inner soul to the most diverse affects. You have to learn not to be led by the soul forces, but to lead them. You have to learn to strengthen your inner self more and more so that you can hold back an outburst of anger, so that you can hold back hatred. We have to get all our affects and passions under control so that nothing gets out of hand with us. We have to achieve complete mastery and restraint of our inner self. This is achieved through quiet devotion to the thought.

To meditate, it is necessary: first, to fix a thought in itself; second, to identify with the thought; third, to remain within it for a while. You have to enter into a thought, for example, the concept of the table, and identify the will with it. Then Samadhi occurs, which is immersion in the object.

The regulation of the breathing process is connected with such training of thought. If this alone is tackled from the beginning, it is Hatha Yoga. If it forms part of the other training, it is Raja Yoga. The yogi must observe certain times for breathing, and then he enters into a rhythmic life. The seven degrees of the Persian initiation are based on this: Ravens, Occult, Strugglers, Lions, Persians, Sun-runners, Fathers. Those who had come so far as to make their lives completely rhythmic were called Sun-runners. In this way, the human being integrates himself into the whole rhythm of nature. The sun returns to the same point every year. Everything happens rhythmically with it. Everything in life is based on rhythms. If a person wants to achieve something, he must bring rhythm into his life. The plants and animals are connected to the seasons in a very specific way. In the human being, everything is initially subject to the arbitrariness of the astral body, and this makes his life unrhythmic. This brings disorder into his life. He must now make it rhythmic again.

If I meditate every day at a certain hour, for example at seven o'clock in the morning, I bring rhythm into my life. But if I meditate at ten o'clock or at some other time instead of at seven o'clock, then the rhythm is disturbed. Even if a person decides to say a prayer every day at seven o'clock in the morning, again at noon and before going to bed, then these are three fixed points that bring rhythm into our lives. Part of the rhythmization of life is also the rhythmization of the breathing process. This is connected with very deep things that exist between man and the universe. Plants and humans belong together in a certain way. The human being inhales oxygen and exhales carbon dioxide; the plant does it the other way around. Throughout evolution, there is a connection between the nature of plants and that of human beings. The plant grows rhythmically according to natural laws. It is still completely chaste because it does not yet have the astral life within it. On the one hand, it is higher than the human being, but on the other hand, it is lower. As an ideal, it stands before man. Man must become similar to it by rhythmizing the breathing process. When one inhales and holds the breath longer, one develops carbonic acid in oneself, and thus approaches the nature of plants.

When the yogi gradually begins to consciously live in what he had previously done unconsciously, then new worlds open up around him. He then experiences new worlds. If we were asleep, we would not hear the most glorious music. So, at first, man is a sleeper in relation to the spiritual worlds. And just as waking up is like waking up to melodies, there is a waking up in the spiritual world through the breathing process. When you consciously enter into the breathing process, imaginative knowledge begins. Ordinary seeing is material knowledge. Imaginative knowledge consists in our ability to evoke images that are not mere visions, but that are grounded in the very basis of existence. Even when you look at the ordinary world, you basically only have images. Everything in the external world is an image. The images of the external world correspond to material knowledge. The images that arise through the yoga process are stimulated internally, stimulated in the right way.

What matters in this whole world, which then arises in us, is that it is inwardly true. That is the difficulty in the yoga training. As long as a person has personal desires, he cannot easily distinguish truth from untruth in this world. Hence the need to become selfless. In the Pythagorean schools, people were made to understand: You can only learn about life after death when you are completely indifferent to whether you live after death or not. All personal aspiration is eliminated in relation to this one question. When personal desire is eliminated, where imagination is needed, then truth is expressed in imagination.

The third stage is the stage of rational will. Here you also learn how the truth is made, the will by which something is willed. The fourth stage is the stage of intuition. The yoga training is about reining in everything that is in us: desire, urge, craving and passion. As long as we do not control this, truth makes us illusory. Above all, absolute inner calm, patience, endurance and steadfastness are required in the practice of yoga.

Certain character traits are essential. We must never lose our harmony with our surroundings, otherwise our progress will be at an end. If the smartest person fell asleep and then woke up on Mars, he would be unable to use his abilities on Mars. He would be considered insane there. All madness is a lack of harmony with the environment; then you can't get ahead if that happens. Not a drunken person should you become, as Plato says, but a sober person, and in no way neglect your everyday duties. This is absolutely necessary for the practice of yoga.

Then it is important to develop humility. Only under the influence of the highest humility can one speak correctly of the experiences in the higher worlds. A very high degree of humility must go hand in hand with the yoga training. The oriental disciple can easily gain a sense of respect and appreciation for the teacher. In this case, it is very important. The deepest trust in the teacher is necessary for the yoga training because one must have a fixed point. In a sense, the yoga student leaves the whole rest of the world. His relationship to the world changes. All things then take on a new meaning.

He becomes alien to his surroundings. He must transform all things. A certain spiritual alchemy takes place with him. He must now do everything out of an inner sense of duty. He treats everything from a new point of view. The way he relates to things changes completely. In a sense, the person becomes estranged from his surroundings. If he does not develop full strength of character, he can easily lose touch with his environment.

The fixed point for the yoga student was always the teacher, who was a point of reference for him, whom he calls his guru, whom he regards as the embodiment of the deity in man. In reality, divine beings do exist in higher human natures. It seems obvious to the Oriental that a higher being lives in the guru. This is not the case in the West. If someone seeks a yoga training in the West, then he will also find the opportunity to reach his goal in the West.

The greatest evil in yoga training would be impatience. But you overcome that when you recognize reincarnation and karma as realities. We must live with the feeling that we actually see this present life between birth and death as one among many.

In a transcript by Anna Rebmann, the following table is attached:

The legends of the gods and heroes of the Nordic peoples are based on profound occult facts. Even within Europe, there were occult lodges of the white brotherhood in ancient times. From Scotland up to northern Russia. They were called “Trotten Lodges” or “Druid Lodges.” The development of the spiritual life of the ancient peoples was entrusted to these lodges. Druid comes from Drus [...]. The legend that Boniface cut down the oak when he brought Christianity is a beautiful parable for the fact that the old highly religious Druid religion was overcome by Christianity. Six to seven hundred years before the birth of Christ, the old religion began to decline. The last part moved south. The ancient Truscans, from whom the Etruscans later emerged, settled in Italy; further east, another branch moved to ancient Greece. If we take the matter of the northern population as a whole, we find a deep connection in the spiritual realm, between the west and the east.

Let us take a look at Buddhism. This highly spiritual religion hardly found any lasting place in its native country India; it was soon absorbed by Brahmanism; on the other hand, it took root in the peoples descended from the Atlanteans, the Mongols.

The ancient Germans also descend from Atlantis. The similarity of the religions is evident from the names. The Nordic god “Wotan” is equivalent to “Buddha”. The ancient religion comes from Atlantis. It was well aware of the lost continent. The last echoes of the old Druid religion died out under the reign of Queen Elizabeth; the last Druid lodges were abolished.

The old teaching knew two traditions. In the south, the tradition of the Lemurian race that perished in the fire was alive, in the north, the memory of Atlantis that perished in the water. The former was symbolized in the saga by “Muspelheim”, the warm sunny land, and the second by “Nifelheim”, the land of fog. It is also very interesting to trace the relationship between the ancient Egyptians and the Nordic peoples. We can follow it in the religions. Osiris is dismembered by his brother and the pieces scattered, from which the earth then arises. In Egypt you find many Osiris graves, where the pieces of the Osiris body were buried, as it were. In the Book of the Dead, Osiris - the higher self - is addressed directly: “The Osiris and so forth. The task of the priesthood was to awaken the dead Osiris in man.

In the North, we have the giant Ymir. He is slain, and from his parts the earth is created. His hair makes the forests, his bones the rocks, his blood the rivers, and so on, all his limbs are divided. We recognize that this myth has been drawn from the same source as the worship of Osiris.

The Edda is an echo of the immigration of Atlantis. “Edda” and “Veda” are the same word. Thus we recognize the connection between all ancient and old religions.

The entire history of Europe is preserved in the heroic sagas. All the sagas can be traced back to the great Nordic initiate “Sig”, who was initiated for Europe. Siegfried, Sieglinde, Sigurd are all names that point back to him. In terms of depth, the Nordic tradition surpasses even that which comes from India. What strikes us about all the sagas is the prophetic and tragic element that runs through everything. Everything points to what is to come. We see this in the Twilight of the Gods. It was known that the gods they worshipped would not find lasting worship. They said to them: “You are there for the north, but another will come after you who is higher than you.

The story of Siegfried clearly shows what is meant by initiation. He killed the lindworm, bathed in its blood, became invulnerable – all things that symbolize initiation. The initiate is invulnerable – only one spot between the shoulder blades was vulnerable, and that is the spot where Christ carried his cross and thus also made this spot invulnerable. Siegfried had to be replaced by Christ. This is depicted in the Nibelungen. We see the transition of the two currents in the Middle Ages, which finally merged: the old pagan current and the new Christian current. The old pagan current leads directly back to the downfall of Atlantis. It was replaced by the Franks and led over into the Christian current. The Nibelungs come from the Land of the Fogs, the land surrounded by water and fog. The hoard of the Nibelungs is sunk into the Rhine. For the peoples, the Rhine belonged to the great waters that had engulfed Atlantis with the golden city and all its treasures.

Then we see King Arthur's Round Table. It represents the 'White Lodge of ancient paganism'. The contrasts in the Middle Ages become more and more pronounced, in the form of the 'Ghibellines' = Nibelungs - the imperial party - and the 'Wibelungen' = Welfs, the party of the Pope, of Christianity.

What came to Europe from Christianity did not come only from Christian monks, but also from Oriental brotherhoods. The great spiritual brotherhood of the 'White Lodge', the 'Gral Lodge', brought the deepest part of Christianity. Barbarossa wants to get the Grail. He does not reach his goal, but drowns on the way. He was far ahead of his time and therefore could not yet fulfill his task. Now he waits in the Kyffhäuser until the spirit of his people has progressed so far that he can lead them further. Development had not yet reached its low point. There are those who cannot go down as deeply, they have to wait until the others have come through the depths to their point of view, then they can move on with them. So Barbarossa sits and waits. The ravens are to bring him word when the time has come. The ravens are the initiates of the first degree; they are scouts, they bring tidings from the world of the spirit.

The emperor – the warriors – have not found the initiation. Who is suited to seek it? This type is represented by a great, noble, inward-looking mind. The pure fool: Parzival. The Holy Grail did come to the land in the time of Barbarossa, but it was only sensed in dullness. Parzival sees it, but out of ignorance, out of misunderstanding the prohibition of questioning, he misses the question. Now he must go through all the degrees of initiation. He must prove himself as a child of his time, in the worldly knighthood. He goes through doubt: [“Is doubt the birth of hearts?”] Finally, after going through everything, he comes to the Grail. There the entire initiation is symbolically represented. His successor was Lohengrin.

In the history of the Middle Ages, we saw the flourishing of a great cultural movement. Thriving cities emerged, and in them the creative, industrious, but more self-contained bourgeoisie. From Scotland to Novgorod, a circle of flourishing cities emerged. This represents a great step forward in the development of the world. This development of the bourgeoisie corresponds to the female side of man. The masculine seeks its own in the outside world, represented by [gap in the transcript]

The inner being of man is feminine and must be fertilized by the great “White Lodge”. This is presented to us in the Lohengrin saga. The blossoming city-being is represented by Elsa of Brabant. She calls on Lohengrin, the knight of the Holy Grail, for her protection, marries him and loses him again because she asks about his origin.

There is a sacred law among the initiates that one must not ask about their physical origin.

Lohengrin's messenger is the swan. This is the third degree of chelaship, which is designated as follows: They know the name of all things.

Wolfram von Eschenbach, who died in 1225 and to whom we owe the Parzival saga, could neither read nor write. And Jacob Boehme, the poor cobbler, will not have occupied himself with reading books either; but that is no reason why he should not have left us such spiritual truth and wisdom. Walter von der Vogelweide boasted that he was something very special because he could read and write [...]; in the Middle Ages, that was a very rare skill.

All these northern sagas of gods and heroes contain the basis of occultism, which the great initiate Sig proclaimed. “Wotan” underwent four initiations to prepare the fifth sub-race of the fifth root race, which had the task of merging the Greek and Celtic races. The fourth sub-race found its greatness in the south. Here in the north, a corresponding countermeasure was taken. Four stages had to be gone through here first, while high culture was already developing down in the south. From the south came Christianity. In the north, four elementary classes of “Wotan” were gone through so that one would be able to receive Christianity.

“Wotan”, “Wille”, “We” – the trinity.

Creative power, will and we – the power of the mind was developed, the tragic trait that runs through everything.

What did the ancient Germans learn from the Druids? One example: imagine yourself on the moon. There, the lower three kingdoms were not what they are now on Earth. The mineral kingdom had not yet solidified, it was still alive, mobile, best compared to a spinach mass or rather to peat than to rock. There were no stones back then. Life had not yet escaped from it. The same applied to the plant kingdom. The plants of that time could only grow on living things. So living things grew on living things. Now some beings have not achieved the goal that was set on the moon. There are still plants that are unable to sustain their life from dead soil; they can only grow on living things; they are called parasite plants. These include, among others, mistletoe, which can only grow on trees; it is a moon plant. Mistletoe juice is antagonistic to the earth, which is why it is or was used as a poison in medicine.

From the above, we see that on the moon the three kingdoms were not yet completely separated from each other. The mineral kingdom was plant-like, and the plant kingdom was between the plant and animal kingdoms. When certain plants were touched, they produced sounds.

The earth sun is

All these things can only be recognized by those who are familiar with the conditions on earth. At the time of the ancient Druids, these things were told to us as fairy tales by the Druid priests. This is how we have been prepared to understand Theosophy today.

The initiates speak to the souls, not to the respective people.

Thus, today's theosophy prepares us again for the reality of later ages.

Various things, presumably from a question and answer [with comments by the transcriber]

Richard Wagner intuitively grasped the great realities and reflected them in his great operas. Various attempts have been made by the spiritual currents to bring these realities to the attention of mankind today. Just as Richard Wagner was inspired as an artist, so the attempt has been made to make the truth clear to the consciousness of the mind. Nietzsche was chosen as the tool for this. His brain did not hold up. He had to atone for the attempt with death. [...] The European race was too thick-skinned. None of it was of any use until Helena Petrovna Blavatsky got it through. - We were dealing with Kali Yuga, the dark age. We are in the middle of the fifth root race and have passed the low point. Jesus Christ: When Christianity emerged, Jesus of Nazareth was a highly developed chela, third degree, the swan. For him, the whole world is what the human ego is for the ordinary person, that is, he knows the true divine in every thing. He knows the whole world inwardly. Every thing tells him its true name.

[In response to a request for further clarification, Dr. Steiner tried to make it clear to us:] As I speak to you, I move the air, the sound waves reach your ear and you absorb the words in your soul. The air is in perpetual motion, the auditory nerves catch the sound. Now imagine the air with its different vibrations, because each word produces different vibrations [...]. Now imagine that from the beginning, when a thing was created, a word was spoken for every thing, and that the air waves that formed this word were made firm, made rigid. Imagine that my words were made rigid, then they would fall visibly on the floor here. That was indeed the case with creation.

Christ can be found in the astral world. Master Jesus teaches how to find Christ. Christ will come again as a spiritual man when he will incarnate again in the sixth root race.

He will have a forerunner, John the Baptist. The sun was in Aries in the spring at the time of Christ, hence Christ = the Lamb. But it is slowly moving forward. It used to be in the sign of Taurus, hence the service of Taurus; even earlier in Gemini, Perse - Ormuzd and Ahriman. A solar period lasts two thousand six hundred years. Now it is coming to Pisces. In the Middle Ages, reference was made to the Age of Pisces. An element, a sea of spiritual life was to come. Later comes Aquarius, after two thousand six hundred years. The Templars taught that John would return - John the Baptist