The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The religious beliefs and world views of different peoples show awareness of two opposing powers. We also find this in Christianity. This has a little bit to do with the question we want to consider in detail today.

There are indeed powers that cannot be said to be absolutely good nor absolutely evil. Something which in some respect is a good power, may become an evil power in another respect. We only have to think of fire, a natural phenomenon. We owe infinitely much to fire. The discovery of fire started a new epoch in nature and civilization. But it also has terrible effects. Schiller described this beautifully in a long poem about the casting of a bell, speaking of the great benefits fire offers if tamed and guarded by man and the terror it can unleash if unfettered. On the one hand fire is a beneficent power, on the other it brings destruction.

Anyone able to see more deeply into existence will get out of the habit of judging something to be absolutely good or evil. In Christianity the serpent is called the tempter of humanity, and Lucifer's name is uttered with loathing. The view of the luciferic principle has changed, however, though Goethe was right when he said the average Christian's way of expressing his views was to say that nature and spirit are not fit subjects for Christians. It's dangerous talk, something for which atheists go to the stake. Nature is sin, spirit the devil. Between them they cherish doubt, their misshapen hermaphrodite offspring.¹²⁹

This is not the view held in early Christianity but something that came later. For Christian mystics of the first centuries, for the gnostics, the serpent was not in fact a symbol of evil but a symbol for the spiritual guidance of humanity. The wise individual who was the guide was known as ‘the serpent’. That was the name given to someone who guided humanity to insight. The serpent is the symbol of Lucifer.

The changes in the way Lucifer was seen can be followed by studying the changes in the Faust legend. Faust was a medieval figure, half mountebank, half black magician. He used all kinds of arts, but gradually became a distinct type in people's minds. The Faust legend is the direct opposite of the Luther legend, with Luther the man of god who stands up to face evil, Bible in hand, throwing his inkwell at the devil's head. Faust on the other hand put the Bible aside initially and became a medical man who was looking for wisdom rather than mere belief in revelation. Faust was taken by the devil and he perished. The great thing is that in Goethe's work Faust is saved. That is the complete transformation which has come in the views of Faust in recent centuries. Goethe placed the luciferic principle in opposition to Faust in the figure of Mephistopheles. Mephis means liar, tophel spoiler, a Hebrew name that has come down from ancient magic doctrines. Faust is the white magician compared to Mephistopheles who represents the beginnings of black magic. Goethe did not let Faust fall into the clutches of Mephistopheles.

The name Lucifer means ‘bearer of light’. Lux is light, fero, I bear. This cannot be the principle of evil. To really understand this principle we must go back to very early times. To understand the principle of Lucifer we have to think the god principle and the man principle the way they were thought of in early Christianity. When man began to develop, spirits existed who were lower than man and others who were higher than man. The latter were the gods. They also had to go through a long period of evolution to be such. These sublime spirits no longer need to receive the teachings which man has to receive. The idea is that earthly existence was preceded by another planetary existence and there the gods developed who later became creative powers. The gods are ahead of us. They have completed their studies at the school which man is now attending. At a particular point, when they were at the beginning of their evolution, the gods, too, were still human beings.

We have to consider how the different levels of existence relate to one another. Let us begin with the mineral, plant and animals worlds.

When we look at the mineral world we have to ask ourselves how it actually arose. This question takes us to a profound occult truth. Look at a piece of coal. It is a stone today. A few million years earlier in earth evolution the material we use to heat our stoves today was still part of a beautiful forest of ferns. A catastrophe on earth buried those trees and they then went through a process that gradually changed them into coal. We can state that coal is a life form that has grown lifeless. Among the rocks you find elements where one cannot establish this so easily—diamonds, for instance, and rock crystal. These, too, were once part of life forms. If we were to go further back in time we would find plants that later fossilized to become these minerals. Everything dead has come from one and the same life. If all life were to be fossilized one day, the earth would be a rigid body. Our present-day plants are something life has saved and preserved from an earlier general life. Part has become fossilized, but life has saved another part. The ancient fern forests have become fossilized, a new realm came into being, with new life arising from it. There was first a time when there was nothing but life. Then came a new time when part was fossilized and a younger plant world arose. The mineral world does not show itself to be chaotic but beautifully organized. Wisdom lay in this. The whole skeletal structure of the earth was organized in great wisdom. The plant world took life onward.

We are however able to see life itself coming from a realm that was yet higher, so that everything that lives has come from a realm that was even higher, and that is the realm of love. There must have been a spirit originally that had love within it. The realm of life differentiated out from this, and from the realm of life the realm of wisdom. Furthermore, the more recent realm of love also differentiated out from that realm of love. Here the creatures were at the animal level, but love did already show itself. We now come to something even higher. The divine principle is above all those realms. All other realms differentiated out from the divine principle. Now we see that at the beginning of planetary evolution man and god were face to face, just as in the natural worlds mineral and plant were face to face.

In earlier times a plant world existed that had no need of the mineral world. But the more recent plant world needs the mineral world. In the same way the gods needed human beings in the beginning of earth evolution. Without human beings, the gods could no more have thrived than plants would without stones. Now consider the animal and plant worlds. A specific relationship exists between the two. The animal exhales carbon dioxide, the plant oxygen. They are dependent on one another. The lower world, the plant world, shows wonderful love in giving back to the animals what they need. Plants keep the carbon for themselves and return the oxygen. So there is a wonderful continuous toing and froing between the lower and higher worlds. Such interaction also exists between the plant and mineral worlds. Plants are continually taking earth's substances from the mineral world, taking them up into a vital process. This is how the higher world influences the lower one. And that is also how the world of the gods influenced the human world in the beginning of earth evolution. Initially their interaction was like that between plant and mineral and between animal and plant.

The interaction between gods and human beings initially came to expression in what we call love among human beings. When man first appeared on earth, two sexes developed. This power of love, of kinship, was the divine principle coming to expression in the beginning of earth evolution. The gods received the love pulsating in human beings and lived on it, just as an animal lives on the oxygen which the plant prepares for it. The love living in the human race was food for the gods. Initially everything built on this love. Blood kinship formed a bond among human beings. Tribes, hordes, nations and so on were based on it. This love, entwined around the two sexes, is the foundation for all the power the gods had in the beginning of human evolution. Love was there first, before the two sexes evolved. Originally it was a love existing in full conscious awareness. Then, when bisexual man evolved, awareness became obscured. Love became a blind drive, sensuality, no longer filled with limpid clarity but only coming into play as a dark drive. Awareness of love had ascended to the gods. The gods were then enthroned above, in conscious awareness of love, whilst human beings exercised love in a blindly driven way. The gods fed on this blind drive, it became clear light for them.

There is a way of clairvoyance where everything that lives in man by way of blind drives becomes visible. The gods had this vision in the beginning of human evolution, whilst human beings did not have the gift for it. They were filled with passions, with the element that drives the sexes to unite. The gods lived in astral light. They saw those drives, they lived on them. Just as the earlier plant world remained behind in earlier times, rejecting the mineral world, so did an old world of the gods become a new one, with humanity assuming its present condition. For there were also spirits who did not gain full conscious awareness in the astral light. They were between gods and humans when humanity began its existence on this earth. We call these spirits the shadows of Lucifer. Under the influence of the gods who had gained perfection in their earlier evolution, man would have continued without having the astral light, without knowledge. The interest of those gods did not go beyond having human beings living on earth. Lucifer had to catch up on what he had failed to do earlier, however. And he could only do it at this stage by also making use of human nature. Human beings existed in the senses. Lucifer did not exist in the senses. He had to use human bodies for his own progress. He therefore had to give human beings the ability to see what the gods had implanted in them, to see it in the light. The gods had implanted love in them, Lucifer had to induce them to see this love in the light. So we now have the human being, the created form, the wisdom; also Lucifer who gave light to humanity; and the god who let love flow in human beings.

Man - wisdom
Lucifer - light
God - love

Lucifer had a much more intimate relationship to human beings than the gods enthroned in love. Lucifer opened man's eyes. When man opened his eyes and looked out into the world, Lucifer was inside him, looking out into the world. He completed his evolution in man. In so far as man rested in the keeping of the gods he was a child of god. In so far as he sought knowledge, he was Lucifer's friend. This comes to expression in the story of paradise. Jehovah created man. He is the spirit of form. He would have made human beings such that they lived in love but without light. Then came Lucifer, the serpent, and brought the light of knowledge to humanity and thus also the potential for evil doing. Jehovah then told man that love which has united with the knowledge given by Lucifer would bring pain. Jehovah set limits to the activities of the spirit who had implanted knowledge, the light of love, by adding pain to love.¹³⁰

In Cain we see someone who rebelled against anything created out of blood-bound love. He cut the bonds of kinship. He also stood for independence. Passive love combined with active, light-filled work to gain knowledge. Love—gift of Jehovah, knowledge—gift of Lucifer. Love needs to be regulated. The law of Sinai ordered family bonds. In addition to this there is the gaining of knowledge, the light that must come from human beings themselves, its origin being in the light bearer within man. This, too, must be deepened, going through a new phase. This can only happen if there is more than just the law applied from outside. The law brought compulsion to bear from outside. The Christ brought the principle that works from inside. It is the light taken up into love, the law born in the soul itself which Paul called grace. The law, born again out of the inmost nature, was both love and light. It set the beginning for a new evolution on earth. Paul called Christ the inverse Adam.

Man had the god of love above him, and Lucifer, the light, within him. To reach love one must first be light. With the coming of the Christ, this light was transformed into love. Christ Jesus represents the raising of light to love.

In the past, people spoke of Lucifer as the other pole, the one that brought light to humanity. Two powers must be active on earth-Christ, the bearer of love, and Lucifer, the bearer of light. For man, light and love are the two poles. Man now lives under the influence of these two polar opposite powers. The gods, who gave the impulse for love, were light once; the light is meant to be love again. The light can be misused and lead to evil, but it must be there if human beings are to be free.

The early Christians saw Lucifer as something that must certainly be active in human nature. This view only changed later. It is necessary to go through the torment of doubt in order to be firm in our knowledge. In its early days, Christian humanity still had to be protected from the light. But now the time has come where the union between love and wisdom must again be created. This happens if knowledge is born as wisdom in human hearts through love. This knowledge, born in human hearts as wisdom and elevated into love—that is the science of the spirit.

In antiquity, people had the law. Through the Christ, the law has become grace, with the law lifted up out of the individual's own breast. Now knowledge is to be elevated to be love again. Inner Christianity is to be added to the external organization of Christianity. Until now, Christianity has only been able to bring love to realization in its institutions. But now we must take love down into the deepest depths of the human breast. Today each is still enamoured of his own opinions. Love will only rise above opinion when people are able to live in harmony even if their opinions differ greatly. All kinds of different opinions side by side—and above it all, love. Then the individual opinion does not reign on its own but all will unite in a great choir.

• 129. Faust 2: 4897-4902
• 130. Concerning Jehovah, Lucifer and Cain, see also Steiner R. The Temple Legend (GA 93). 20 lectures, Berlin 23 May 1904 - 2 Jan. 1906. Tr. J. Wood. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1985.

We can say that there are two kinds of people on earth. Two great spiritual streams may be seen among human beings. The difference between the two is that one kind seek to see everything in the light of knowledge whilst the other kind want to be guided, in a way. The very way in which the view of the world presented in the science of the spirit is received shows that the desire to look for bright, clear light is not widespread. The majority of people still have not reached the point where they want to know about everything. Many rather like to be befogged; it embarrasses them to be given complete clarity with regard to something. It will, however, be necessary to let go of anything that may cause the mind to be befogged. This also applies to the whole way we lead our lives. We need to be restrained also in feeding ourselves and avoid anything that will cloud consciousness, such as alcohol, for instance. Countless other things also prevent the clarity that is needed. Doing without such things will also make us more practical in everyday life. Belief in authority also puts us in darkness. We should let ourselves be stimulated by authority but not build on it.

Clarity, as it is meant here, has least to do with a subordinate way of seeing the higher worlds. Such a subordinate way is in fact connected with soul mists clouding the conscious mind. In earlier stages of human history this was widespread. In Atlantean times the human mind was much less clear than it is today. Today even the most savage tribes have gone far beyond the Atlanteans' state of mind. Going further and further back in human evolution we come to conditions where human beings had inner vision but did not grasp things with the rational mind. Rationality first began to dawn in the Atlantean race. At one time the Atlanteans lived in the place where Ireland is today. When another individual was approaching, astral images would arise in the Atlantean's mind. He was not yet able to reflect. Man was only able to say ‘I’ to himself when the forebrain had developed. Human beings first began to develop self-awareness in the part of Atlantis which is Ireland today. From there they spread through Europe and into Asia. The human bones found in the Neander valley came from the descendants of Atlanteans; these still had sloping foreheads. From then on, man very slowly learned to think rationally and develop self-awareness. When man began to live his life bearing the seed of the spirit in him here on earth he was already well beyond the animals, but as yet unable to speak or to think.

Divine spirits known as devas existed at the time who did not need a physical body but floated in astral space. They had gained the things they needed by being in a physical body on the moon. Other spirits had not completed their evolution on the Moon, had not been able to manage it. These are the luciferic spirits which lagged behind the devas. The gods, or devas, lived on something that had become a characteristic of humans on earth—love between two sexes. Love between human beings is the air, or the food, which the gods enjoy. In Greek mythology it was called nectar and ambrosia.

The cohorts of Lucifer had no real function in humanity for as long as human beings were still somnambulant. It was only in the fifth root race that they really made man their very own child. Human thinking is not all that old. Ancient wisdom lived among the earliest peoples. This ancient wisdom was revealed from within to the priests. True insight and perception only came a few centuries before the birth of the Christ, in about 600 BC. The power of judgement also only developed later in the world.

This brings us to an important mystery, a fact to be found among early peoples. To grasp this, we must be able to shine a light into the sphere of the soul. In a North American Indian tribe one hears strange terms used for family relationships. Among the Iroquois, first cousins were called ‘brothers and sisters’, but only the children of brothers, not those of sisters. This is a relic of ancient Atlantis. At that early period in human history, the family was all that mattered. A woman would have several husbands and it was impossible to say who was a child's father. All peoples originally had ancestors who would unconcernedly marry close relatives. Close blood bonds were not an obstacle to marriage. It was said that children from closely related parents were the most enlightened; they would be somnambulant. As evolution progressed, it happened more and more that people would marry who were not related by blood. It is a law that the union of individuals who were not so closely related the ether body came loose from its connection with the physical body. With marriages between blood relations the ether bodies of offspring would be firmly lodged. They would be illumined from within. They would still think more with the solar plexus but have no powers of judgement. This grew with distant marriages and showed itself to the degree to which the old marriages between blood relations disappeared. The old somnambulant vision would vanish then, and a new way of seeing things develop, power of judgement. This new period was referred to as the development of the Dionysian principle. Dionysus was cut to pieces, with only the heart preserved. When the Dionysian principle arose, people were cut to pieces and then brought together again through the heart, a meeting of souls, and this brought a complete change in sexual life. The rational mind is the earlier sexuality between relatives transformed.

The earlier developmental stages of humanity are recapitulated in seven-year rhythms in individual human lives. From the first to the seventh year, the child's ether body is still very much in the background. We therefore should not develop children's powers of memory before they reach their seventh year, only their senses. That is the time when we can influence the senses, rousing their inner powers with the help of the senses. We should stimulate those powers by giving children toys that bring their powers of imagination to life, perhaps a block of wood with dots painted on for eyes, and so on, but not dolls that are so complete that the child cannot add anything using his powers of imagination. From the seventh to the fourteenth year it is above all important to get children to develop firm habits that will give them something to hold on to later on in life. These are the years when everything by way of memory must be brought to the human being. It is thus better not to invoke the child's powers of judgement at this period in life. A child should have authority around him at that time but not be an authority himself. Influence him by telling stories, not preaching morals but refer to great examples. For moral development it would be necessary then to develop a feeling for it in the old Pythagorean form. Pythagoras¹³¹ said to his pupils: ‘Do not strike into the fire with your sword’—indicating that one should not do useless things. Another Pythagorean axiom of this kind was: ‘Do not turn back on the road before you have reached the end of it.’ Human beings should only learn to make their own judgements and form their own opinions once they have reached sexual maturity. The ether body loosens at this time, and the astral body will only then be ready to take action in the outside world.

This evolution, today gone through by every individual in seven-year rhythms, was gone through by humanity in the course of its great periods of evolution. Some of the subordinate powers in the human being were raised to a higher level so that the power of judgement could develop. And only then was it possible for Lucifer's cohorts to intervene. This luciferic power comes to expression in people's independent judgement. In those times, when the luciferic principle was intervening, people for the first time did independent work. If you study the past, you can say to yourself: in those early times, all that came about was what was needed to make a family. The individuals who wanted to put a purely spiritual element in the place of blood relationship were working in the name of Lucifer. The Church had developed as a continuation of ancient priestly wisdom. But parallel to it the stream arose where people sought the light, luciferic people such as the Templars, for instance.¹³² They said one had to find one's own light and truth. There was a sect in the middle ages, its members calling themselves Luciferians, who understood this. They would say: ‘Man may be truly blessed indeed, but without the light of knowledge; this is not for us; we want to fight our way through to the light.’¹³³

These are the two streams in humanity. One seeks only to be blessed, the others want the light. Those who are afraid of knowledge consider Lucifer to be evil. But for the others Lucifer is the light-bearer, the bringer of light. This is written in a manuscript kept in the Vatican, but the Church is keeping it a secret, and the people who take this direction in the Church warn people against Lucifer.

Dogma may indeed contain truth. The Pythagorean theorem is dogma for those who do not understand it. But if they do understand it they gain clear, lucid insight. Dogmas are presented as something given by authority. When one understands them they, too, become lucid insight.

At the time when Paul lived, the nature of Christianity was such that it could lead to general love of humanity. A tribal and national religion was to become a world religion. Belief in revelations was connected with the blood-based community. Moses gave established laws. The Christ did not give established laws, and instead of the law there was grace. The inmost human soul was coming alive.

The aims pursued in the Church are a wave that is going down; those of people who want freedom of opinion a wave that is rising. Some brotherhoods, like the Templars for instance, endeavour to seek the light. The race which is striving for the light—those are the children of Lucifer.

At a time when Christianity is beginning to be strictly organized, Edouard Schure¹³⁴ published his play The Children of Lucifer.¹³⁵ This is one stream in the Church, and there is also the other one, the luciferic principle. The children of Lucifer are the children of the inner light, not of belief in revelations. Those who seek to move on into the future must feel related in the spirit. It has been said in the science of the spirit that we must reach the light by our own efforts. Profound, most deeply inward freedom is to develop in the human soul.

The theosophical journal has been called Lucifer for good reason.¹³⁶ It is connected with the inmost nature of the theosophical movement. It needs to be stated for once that the luciferic principle was deliberately cast into the world. When the Roman Catholic Church established the dogma of infallibility,¹³⁷ the emphasis on the luciferic principle provided the counter pole. Conversely we might say that the dogma of infallibility arose in polar relationship to the declaration of spiritual freedom in theosophy, for this was the only way the Church could save itself.

• 131. Pythagoras(C.582–C.507 BC), pre-Socratic Greek philosopher. It has not yet been possible to identify the quotes given here
• 132. See Steiner R. Inner Impulses Working in the Evolution of Mankind (in GA 171). 7 lectures, Dornach 16-18, 23-25 Sept., 1 Oct. 1916. Tr. not known. Manuscript translation R 45, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London; and The Templars (in GA 171). Tr. not known. Lecture given in Dornach on 2 Oct. 1916. Manuscript translation Z 156, Rudolf Steiner House Library, London.
• 133. Followers of Bishop Lucifer von Cagliari (d. 370), existing for a time in Sardinia, Spain, Gaul, Italy and Africa
• 134. Edouard Schur
  é (1841–1929).
• 135. Authorized translation into German by Marie von Sivers and published in Leipzig in 1905. Rudolf Steiner then rewrote it in free rhythms (1909), published in Rudolf Steiner/Edouard Schuré Lucifer. Die Kinder des Lucifer, Dornach 1955.
• 136. See Lucifer-Gnosis. Gesammelte Aufsätze, 1903–1908 (GA 34). See also reference to this in Steiner R. Rudolf Steiner, an Autobiography (GA 28). Tr. R. Stebbing. New York: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1977.
• 137. 1869–70 Vatican Council—infallibility of the pope when he speaks ex cathedra on faith and morals.

Thinking of the tremendous natural events we have heard of—the eruption of Vesuvius and the earthquake in America,¹⁹⁹ it is only to be expected that those who study the science of the spirit ask if there is any connection between the process of cosmic evolution on the one hand and human karma on the other. And it is indeed enormously interesting to investigate and explain these recent events from the occult point of view. To be able to do so, the occultist must not only be schooled in clairvoyance in the usual way, but have gone through initiation in the second degree. It is a known fact in occult circles that the inner earth does not reveal itself to someone with ordinary clairvoyance. It is relatively easy to have clairvoyant awareness at the astral, devachanic level. But it needs another kind of initiation to be able to explore the inner earth.

Let me first of all remind you that present-day people have only managed to penetrate the outer shell of the earth to a very small depth. They have gone scarcely beyond a depth of 2,000 metres. Everything else, everything beyond this, is beyond their limits of penetration. And they would really be utterly surprised, perhaps even confused, if they did succeed in learning more about the deeper layers of this our earth. They would be confused because they would find things there that show only the faintest similarity to those we know on the earth's surface. They would not have words to describe most of them, for the states of matter inside the earth are indeed utterly different from anything we know up here. They would be utterly amazed to find that the metal which corresponds to our silver is liquid like mercury down there. And the same holds true for the other metals and the minerals.

The earth consists of seven distinct layers, and an exploration of those seven layers corresponds to the seven stages of Christian initiation.²⁰⁰ They are 1) the washing of the feet, 2) the scourging, 3) the crowning with thorns, 4) the crucifixion, 5) the mystic death on the cross, 6) the entombment, and 7) the resurrection.

Someone who had passed the first stage of initiation would thus be able to penetrate the outermost layer clairvoyantly and proceed to explore the second, and so on.

In the first place, then, the earth has seven layers. The outermost, on which we live, is called the mineral earth in the language of initiates. This and the other terms I shall give come from a great occult school. The same terms were used by medieval mystics, Rosicrucians, and others.

This mineral earth contains all the minerals we are familiar with. Relatively speaking, it is an extremely thin and delicate layer. Volcanic eruptions bear witness that deeper layers are able to penetrate it.

The mineral earth is followed by what is known as the ‘soft’ earth. It is given that name because here the hardening process has not gone as far as it has in the mineral earth. It also has a quite remarkable property. It has a kind of sentience. It produces symptoms of sentient responses on being touched that are like the dim conscious awareness of some plant species.

The next layer is called the ‘steam’ earth. Just as steam is produced in a boiler, so does this layer come to a form of will-like expression. It is capable of enormous expansion, and the mineral layer is only able to contain it with some effort.

The fourth layer is called the ‘form’ or also the ‘water’ earth. Its special feature is that it has the negative of every form we know of in the mineral layer. Thus a rock crystal would there have the form of its negative, like a plaster cast up here.

The fifth layer is called the ‘fruit’ earth. If it were able to get out into the atmosphere, we would observe form upon form arising from such a piece of fruit earth and disappearing again. It has soul, as it were, the capacities of a soul struggling to gain shape and form.

The sixth layer is the ‘fire’ earth, a most remarkable layer, as we shall see. It is able to feel pleasure and pain, as it were, and is more or less in the condition of a human being who is ‘over the moon’ one moment and ‘down in the dumps’ the next. Human passions have a tremendous effect on it, and as human passions grow, so it gets more and more restless.

The seventh layer is called the ‘earth mirror’, exactly because everything that happens on the outermost layer is reflected here. You have to think of it happening in a different way however. Everything that is passive here is active there and vice versa. So if you were to strike some metal here to make it ring, the metal would ring of its own accord down there.

These seven layers are followed by two others which are of a very peculiar nature. In the School of Pythagoras the eighth layer was called the sphere of numbers because of a particular aspect we shall consider in a moment. Our occult schools call it the shatterer. For if we were to hold a flower against it, trying, as it were, to look at this layer through the flower, we would see the rose multiplied an infinite number of times. If we were to do the same experiment with a stone, there would be no multiplication. It only applies to natural life forms and to things created with artistic feeling. This region is the seat of all that lacks harmony, morals and peace. There everything rushes apart. It is the opposite of love. If a black magician were to succeed in reaching it—and he does have the power to do so—the evil in him would grow tremendously more powerful. It is the particular moral attitude of human beings that has an enormous influence on this level. If humanity gradually succeeds more and more in getting rid of immorality, letting morality take its place, this zone will gradually calm down more and more. And this will in its turn influence the attitudes of human beings.

The ninth and final layer is the dwelling place, as it were, of the spirit of our planet. It has two peculiar features. We might compare it with a human being, for it has an organ resembling a brain. Another organ is similar to a heart. The spirit of our planet is also subject to changes closely connected with human evolution.

Let us now go back to the fire earth. As I said, it has the capacity to feel pleasure and pain, and living people's passions have a powerful influence on it, so that it gets into an even greater state of restlessness and upheaval at times when human beings develop great passions. It then exerts even greater pressure on the fruit earth lying above it. And channels do indeed branch out from this layer to all the layers above it. The mineral earth contains great cavities, though these are at considerable depth. The channels from the fruit earth run to those cavities and force tremendous masses of material into them. These on their part cause earthquakes or seek a way out through the vent of a volcano. Such have also been the causes of those recent disasters.

The Lemurians, the third great root race, still lived on a soft earth. The hardening process in the outer crust had not yet progressed very far and there were just a few harder areas that floated in this soft layer more or less like islands. The last remnants and witness to, that soft earth are the many small islands in the Pacific which rise suddenly above the surface of the ocean and disappear again after a time. The Lemurians, who developed tremendous passions, had such an influence on the fire earth as their evolution progressed and they indulged in their vices, that the fire earth grew rebellious, as it were, came up to the surface with tremendous power and destroyed the race.

We see, therefore, that the Lemurians brought about their own perdition. Realizing this, the occultist reflects that by working on his own perfection he may not only accelerate the process of evolution for his time but also have a considerable influence on earth evolution. This should arouse a feeling of responsibility in both respects, spurring him on to do further work on himself.

Let us now consider two highly important occult facts that are connected with these natural events. On the one hand let us envisage the karma of the people who perished in those disasters. It is only natural for people to wonder about the tremendous karma coming upon countless individuals on such occasions. I can tell you, however, that occult observation has shown these individuals to be the best of spiritualists in their next incarnation. Their violent death came as the final shock, as it were, to strip off the bonds of materialism once and for all.

Another occult observation is that all people born at the time when such an eruption takes place will be materialists in life. This is quite understandable. The disquieting element of the fire earth is influencing them at a time when they seek to reincarnate with all might and gives them materialistic qualities. It does not matter if a soul is born here or in America, for example. Separation in space is without cause in this zone. Many of the readers and writers of materialistic works were born around the year 1822 when Vesuvius erupted again after a long period of quiescence. The fact that Vesuvius remained quiescent for centuries indicates the spiritual nature of the Middle Ages. Since then eruptions have come at relatively short intervals. Evolution has accelerated altogether now. The period from Charlemagne to Frederic the Great corresponds to the period of the 19th century, meaning that all events during the longer period correspond in number and significance to those that now happen within a century. Evolution will go even faster as time goes on.

• 199. In April 1906, the cone at the summit of Vesuvius collapsed. Vapour pressure caused the material, about 100 million cubic metres, to be ejected, with masses of ashes raining down on the surrounding area for days, darkening the skies. Together with the lava flow they caused emormous damage. More than 100 people lost their lives.
  The San Francisco earthquake of 1906, with the fires tliat followed, destroyed almost the whole of the city.
• 200. See the lecture given in Köln (Cologne) on 30 November 1906 (in this volume), and the lecture given on 3 September 1906 in Stuttgart (in At the Gates of Spiritual Science (GA 95). Tr. E. Goddard, C. Davy, London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1986).

It is not by chance that we have a theosophical movement. It has to do with the whole of 19th-century development, with the spread of materialism which came to the fore in the 1840s—more or less, also a little before and after that. Materialism had also spread during the four centuries that went before. To understand this we have to go back to the 5th and 6th centuries. People have a completely wrong idea about the way people's minds went in those days. It is the worst of errors to imagine they thought the way we do today. They had quite different ideas about the stars in the 13th, 14th and 15th centuries, for example. Today people see only material things in them. In medieval times every star was seen to be a spirit. Not only uneducated but also educated people saw a star as a spirit. And so the whole space of heaven was filled with spirit. There is a big difference between assuming the universe to consist of bodies only or thinking that there is also spirit. In those times people felt secure in a spiritual cosmos. We have no need, however, to long for those medieval views to come back.

Copernicus²⁰¹ conquered cosmic space for a materialistic approach. Exploration of the physical world reached its greatest height. Schleiden²⁰² and others discovered the cell. Railways and everything of that kind gave a tremendous boost to materialism. The great guides of humanity then asked themselves what was to be done. How can we make people understand that there is a life of the spirit? People then only had a feeling for material things and would say: ‘If there is a spirit, let it prove itself to be a spirit.’ Spiritualism broke out and people actually attempted this.²⁰³ Initiates always seek to teach people in a way they will understand, and efforts were therefore made to produce manifestations, revelations from the other world.

Now we must first of all consider human destiny after death. When we are asleep, physical body and ether body are united and the astral body is floating above the physical body. When we die, not only does the astral body separate from the physical body, but both the astral and the ether body go away, leaving the physical body behind. The astral and ether bodies remain together for a short time, a review of life follows that takes two or three days. Then they, too, separate, the ether body dissolves to be part of the power of life in general, and the astral body reaches a state known as kamaloka. It is disembodied but still has the habits and inclinations of the physical body. Let me illustrate this. A gourmet still has his food fancies. He no longer has a palate, but the palate's desire remains as a sensation of burning thirst. In kamaloka such habits are shed, with the desires finally consuming themselves. Then the astral body, too, is shed, in so far as it was the vehicle for desires.

There is a way in which such abandoned astral corpses can be galvanized and brought into the world we perceive through the senses. The medium makes his ether body available for this and ‘materializations’, as they are called, are brought about with its help. This was the method used to show materialistic humanity what remains after death, and the initiates had hoped that this would convince people.

Two problems arose, however. In the first place, people who became convinced because of spiritualism did not improve morally with this, that is they did not reach a higher level ethically. In the second place this way of seeing, or of being convinced, actually proved unfavourable—after death. People who had it did not have it easier in kamaloka but harder. For on top of everything else they now also brought the desire with them to see all things of the spirit satisfied in material terms, through the senses, for any such view will appear as a quality in kamaloka. An oppressive, leaden weight lay upon these dead. The initiates therefore said to themselves: ‘This will not do.’ Ah, you'll say, the initiates got things wrong then. But they, too, have to learn from experience, trial and error. It was then the almost unanimous decision in the great community of occultists that as this external means had not proved effective they would take another route, which was the inner route of theosophy. What are its aims? The aim is to get to know the spirit that lives in the human being himself. This spirit is the goal. But it is only possible to get to know the spirit if one is without prejudice. One has to understand the things that humanity has in common.

Egotism had evolved parallel to materialism. Here's just one example. Participation in group travel is contingent on one particular condition, which is that religious subjects must not be brought up in conversation. People are afraid of the egotism of personal opinion, for if you have seven people you'll also have seven opinions. Opinions are thus put above general love for humanity. But brotherhood only begins where love of humanity ranks above opinions.

Theosophy exists so that truth may be sought with personal opinions in balance. People have to be tolerant again, not only as regards the person but also with regard to individual nature. To be tolerant is not just to let others be but in this context to open oneself up to understanding their peculiar nature. Theosophy should thus not be a dogma but an expression of love. We must help our brothers, that is, put love above opinions, and this brings a uniform spirit to human evolution. This is the practical approach which should develop in the theosophical movement.

Answers to questions

Question. What method of training should be chosen instead of yoga training?

Answer. Do not confuse occultism with theosophy. The aim of theosophy is to teach the profound wisdom. It does not in itself exist to make people clairvoyant, though it does also go towards such training.

Occult training is available. Some people think they have to look to India for this, but in this they are greatly mistaken. Training of this kind is also available in Europe. Someone looking for a teacher or guru will find him in the world. Theosophists are wrong to look for this only in India. Chacravarti,²⁰⁴ an Indian of high repute, significantly said at the Chicago congress: ‘My people, too, have gone downhill when it comes to understanding the world in spiritual terms, and theosophy has helped us to rise up again.’

Mrs Blavatsky actually did not only present Indian views, as many people assume. First a European was her guide, and then an Egyptian.²⁰⁵ That was when she wrote Isis Unveiled.

You should not think that the training should be the same for all. The nature of the Indian organism is such that the ether body may be drawn out much more easily. It is at a different level, the first level of the Indian root race, i.e. its first root race, whereas Europeans are at the fifth level of the fifth root race. It is relatively easy to get an Indian to be clairvoyant, drawing out the ether body and putting it into the state known as lethargy, i.e. numbness and lack of sensation. It is as if the body has gone dead. If we were to let a finger die by tying it off, a clairvoyant would see the ether finger hang down beside the tied-off finger. When someone has been hypnotized, the clairvoyant sees the etheric brain hanging down on either side of the head. When the body has thus been deadened, the astral body has to be used, and this imprints anything impressed in it into the ether body. It is extremely difficult for a European to get such astral impressions, or to have them given to him, and a way was sought, therefore, where it was not necessary to draw out the ether body. The Rosicrucians found this from the 14th century onwards, and their method is the best for Europeans. Our bodies have grown denser than Indian bodies; they have gone through a downward development, which is in accord with the necessary process of evolution. On the other hand we enter this state in full conscious awareness, whilst daytime consciousness is suppressed with the Indian method.

Hypnotizing people is not, on the whole, a good thing. Firstly the intervention weakens the subject's will. Secondly it is black magic, with the subject being overcome by the hypnotist. It definitely should not be used with healthy people, though the situation may be a little different in case of sickness.

What does the term ‘downward development’ mean?

Take the materialistic view of things. Here ape, here man—and man is therefore descended from the ape. This is not the case, for ape and man have common ancestors, something modern scientists also accept.²⁰⁶ The truth is that the one must develop at the cost of the other. Thus there was a realm of life forms during the ancient moon period of evolution that were somewhere between animal and plant. Mistletoe is a relict of this. The plant evolved downwards, the animal upwards. The same applies to man. Human beings developed some parts upwards and others downwards. Thus it is a fact, for instance, that humans once had cartilage instead of bones. To put it crudely: they are progressively hardening. On the other hand any loosening or separation of the higher bodies brought about by occult training is an anticipation of general evolutional stages that will be reached in the future.

Why has man been incarnated in his physical body?

Man already had all the potential in those earlier times which he is to develop on earth, but none of it was his own. When man will no longer gain anything from being in this world he will no longer need to incarnate. He will then give his body to the planet.

What is the situation with the Flood?

This Flood was the great event which came when the greater part of Atlantis went down. The actual end of Atlantis covered vast spaces of time. Like everything important told in the Bible and the oldest records—much treasure trove still waits to be found there—the rainbow which came into being in Noah's day²⁰⁷ is something of great significance. We are told it symbolized the covenant between god and humanity. In occult terms it has another meaning as well. On Atlantis, moisture and air were distributed in a very different way. German mythology refers to Niflheim, home of mists. The whole of the air was filled with water then. Human beings of post-Atlantean times were only able to live after the sinking of Atlantis. The rainbow could only develop when both rain and sunshine had become possible on earth.

We read of dirigible airships in records of Atlantis.²⁰⁸ What was the situation there?

The Atlanteans had developed their second body, the ether body with its vital energies, to a high level. The rational mind was only feeble at that time. Memory had to take its place. Thus Atlanteans would not do sums, now knowing the value of figures, but were able to judge quantities from memory. They knew what amount they would have if they added 3 items to 3. Earlier situations they were able to remember helped them to know this. Having fully developed their vital energies they knew how to make use of the vital energies in the whole natural world. They knew the germinative potential of grain seed, for instance, and how to draw it forth and use it. Just think of the power in a seed grain! Think of everything that may come of it. The yogis also know, in a way, how to lure the germinative power out of the seed. The stories of a mango seed being put in the soil and a shoot arising, then the tree, leaves, flowers and finally fruit is not fiction, it is a fact. Atlanteans who were able to use vital energies for a dirigible as well as for other things therefore need not be mere fable.

Is it possible to avoid having to go through devachan after death?

At a particular stage of development the ether body is so firmly put together that it will not dissolve after death. This happens when the astral body has imprinted much spirituality in the ether body. With the ether body able to continue, the pupil need not go into the devachan, which is the place where the new ether body is created.

Does the kind of food we eat really have such great significance for the development of occult powers?

Absolutely. Development is completely impossible if alcohol is taken. And it is strange, but there are deep reasons for this, that the issue of abstinence and temperance is coming alive so much again at this time.

But wine is surely only grape juice, and therefore fruit juice?

Juice obtained from grapes is good for development for as long as it is only fruit juice, though when it has fermented it has a detrimental effect. Look back once more in history. Wine began to be taken 600 years before Christ, when the custom was probably already at its height, for the feasts of Dionysus developed at which homage was paid to the god of wine. But just like everything else, so every fruit, too, has its time, and grapes will vanish from the earth again. Just think of the coming of the vine pest. Everything coming from a living animal serves us for food—milk, eggs—and so does every part of a plant that seeks to reach the light, the sun. Because of this, tree fruits are very good. Tubers growing in the soil, such as potatoes, and roots are not so good. In the past, people ate people, then they ate animals. They will gradually change to a pure vegetable diet and finally end with the minerals. Everything that precipitates should be avoided, salt, for instance. All this has to do with the development of occult powers and not with gaining knowledge of spiritual truths.

• 201. Copernicus, Nicolas (1473–1543). De revolutionibus orbium coelestium, Nürnberg 1543.
• 202. Schleiden, Matthias Jakob (1804–1881), German botanist. Beiträge zur Phylogenesis, in Archiv für Anatomie, Physiologic und wissenschaftliche Medizin vol. 5, 1838.
• 203. See Rudolf Steiner's public lecture on the history of spiritualism in The History of Spiritism and the History of Hypnotism and Somnambulism (in GA 52, Berlin 30 May 1904. Tr. F. E. Dawson. London & New York: Rudolf Steiner Publishing Co. & Anthroposophic Press 1943; also lectures of 10 and 11 October 1915 in The Occult Movement in the Nineteenth Century (GA 254). Tr. D. Osmond. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1973.
• 204. Chakravarti, Prof F. N. spoke for Hinduism at the World Religious Congress in Chicago and also for theosophy, being a theosophist himself.
• 205. Nothing further is known about these two guides. See Olcott HS Old Diary Leaves 1895.
• 206. See Poppelbaum H. Man and Animal, chapter on origins
• 207. Genesis 9: 13-17.
• 208. E.g. in W. Scott-Elliot's The Story of Atlantis, preface by A. P. Sinnet

Today we'll consider the functions ascribed to some spiritual entities known as luciferic spirits. We'll find that they have some strange connections with humanity. Our starting point shall be the fact that the science of thinking, of reflection, goes back no further than 800 or 900 years before Christ. Anyone who studies the history of philosophy knows that it began with Thales,¹³⁸ who lived in about 600 BC and once predicted a solar eclipse on the basis of his nature studies. This was something highly unusual at the time. The philosophy of western logic only came with Aristotle. Before that no doctrine existed about thinking, for thinking itself, abstract rational thinking, only began to dawn in 600 - 800 BC. Seeds of it were already there in the Atlantean race. We do, of course, know that the Chaldeans, ancient Egyptians and other Orientals knew astronomy, but this came from the deeper roots of clairvoyance.

The rational mind thus only developed half a millennium before Christ, and this had to do with changes in the form of relationships and marriage. These used to be very different from the way they are today. Scientists have established that even among the savage tribes of America the relationship between cousins is much more complex than it is with us. Thus the Iroquois call cousins on their father's side brothers and sisters but not those on their mother's side, the reason being that men who are of the same age in a family could have all women of the same age for their wives. One would thus know exactly who a child's mother was, but not its father. The Iroquois still see family relationships in this way today. It needs occult knowledge to give the right explanation for this. We know that things happened in 800 - 900 BC which indicate that marriage among blood relations changed to become marriage outside the family. Before, the head of a family was the father of the tribe. These ways still survived among the ancient Germans at a much later time, when people in Africa and in Mediterranean countries were already marrying outside the family. In medieval times the transition to marrying outside the family was glorified in legends such as the Gudrunlied¹³⁹ In his Germania, Tacitus wrote of ancient German tribes having one ancestor. Later this custom ceased, and in the Gudrunlied kings go to distant countries to look for wives. In the Siegfried legend¹⁴⁰ we have a description of the way the new order rose in opposition to marriage between blood relations. The marriage of Siegmund and Sieglinde was rejected by the goddess Frigg, wife of Odin. Odin established the principle of marriage outside the tribe. This was introduced at different times among different peoples, but there is a strange connection between the transition to this principle and the emergence of rational thinking. An occult thesis is that marriage outside the tribe kills part of the ether body—the forebrain comes to life, whilst the ancient clairvoyance, which was enhanced by intermarriage, dies away. People began to take a rational view of things. Today humanity has adapted to marriage outside family and tribe, just as in earlier times it was adapted to intermarriage. The latter has a harmful effect on the mental faculties of the children, and above all on the sense organ connected with the development of intellectual faculties, the eye. This is why intermarriage often results in blindness. Mental faculties only improve with marriage outside the family.

This physiological fact is closely linked with human evolution. It was necessary to prepare for the coming of the Christ. Could this have come about under different conditions? It brought love of one soul for another, with one soul influencing the other. Love among blood relations had to be overcome first. Nations will altogether only be ripe to receive Christianity once they have overcome love among blood relations. The initiates of ancient Egypt always came from the same family, for many generations. The earlier wisdom was intuitive by nature, which becomes all the more evident the further one goes back in human evolution. Reflection based on the intellect is connected with the basis of Christianity.

Let us now consider how the gods related to human beings. As evolution progresses, human beings will be gods, and the gods have also gone through a form of human evolution, different from our own, on other planets, but certainly something similar. Those who are at a higher level evolve on the basis of those who are at a lower level—man and animal live on the plant, this in turn on the mineral. There could be no gods if it were not for human beings. The relationship between them is of the same kind. What do the gods need of us? They feed on our love. The division into two sexes developed. The true meaning of nectar and ambrosia, food for the gods, is the love between man and woman. This reflects an occult truth.

Between the gods and human beings are spirits who did not complete their evolution at the same time as the gods, remaining behind, as it were, in the school of evolution. These are the luciferic spirits. They have fanned a higher level of spiritual independence into life in human beings. They taught them to rise against the gods, developing the part in them that does not feed the gods. Lucifer therefore appears as the serpent in the story of paradise, and Jehovah's punishment is that human beings shall bear their children in pain.¹⁴¹ The cohorts of Lucifer continued to influence intellectual development. Anything they did not achieve earlier, they made up for when marriage outside the family became the custom. The old law established order among human beings. Lucifer was set free 800 or 900 years before Christ, and the inner powers of the soul then began to unfold. The Christ came as the representative of the new order. The external law was given on Sinai, the inner law, grace, is given to those who have been set free by the Christ. That is how humanity progresses—the luciferic principle had to develop more and more in them.

Outer science is to be made free through theosophy, with knowledge deepened to become wisdom. The name Lucifer suggests the principle of independence. This is why Mrs Blavatsky¹⁴² gave that name to her first journal, and we have done the same, to make the principle known. Differences between nations will wear off more and more, and the first sentence in the principles of the Theosophical Society will come into force: to be the core for human brotherhood.¹⁴³ Love among blood relations will be progressively overcome and people will look more for soul relationships. Souls will find one another across vast distances. The further development and transformation of the rational mind will bring a new form of clairvoyance in future. Overcoming sexual love will at first mean isolation. The chela has to be uprooted—the great overcoming of all feelings of relationship—that is the function of the luciferic principle.

Questions and answers

(Questions not recorded)

The Indian caste system is based on knowledge of karma. The clairvoyant guides of the Indian nation foresaw the destined caste of an individual so that each was born into the appropriate caste. As the intellect develops with people marrying outside the family, conscious clairvoyance will develop and by the end of the sixth sub-race people will be organized in moral castes. With the next sub-race, all love between blood relations will vanish. The gods will be deprived of food and withdraw progressively from humanity, moving on to higher stages of evolution. Human beings will be guided by their masters, who have risen from the ranks of humanity, as it were, but have consciously evolved more quickly. These divine guides do not need human love to feed them, and sexual love will thus come to an end.

If the luciferic principle had not come into effect, the earth would gradually have become a cinder, like the moon, dead and desolate. This should not happen, and man himself will prevent it, reshaping the earth. When human beings first appeared, the earth was not as it is today. In Lemuria there were no dead, rigid metals and rocks; everything was flowing, rivers of metals flowed through the mountains, which we can still see quite clearly today. The miners who are in intimate touch with the inner earth know this, which makes them the best spiritualists. Many plants were still animals then, and milk, the food for man, flowed freely. In our infancy we go through this stage again unconsciously. We must, however, return to this form of taking nourishment in a conscious way. This is why it was said: ‘Unless you become as little children.’¹⁴⁴ Milk and a plant-based diet call up occult powers of healing, and future physicians will have to feed themselves in this way, that is, eat all the things that reach out for the sun. Indian physicians immunize themselves against snakebite by letting snakes bite them. They are then able to heal snakebite in others. Our food will be mineral by nature. Physiological initiates already live on a mineral diet. There are different kinds of initiates—those who teach wisdom, and among others those who work on improving the blood of humanity, the physiological initiates. They need not be specially clever in other directions, but their feeling for physiology is highly developed. We should only eat the parts of plants and animals that do not contain their vital energies—not their roots, therefore, nor meat, but fruit and milk and leaves. Anything that grows above ground, thriving in the sun and eaten by cows, is the right food. Minerals that form deposits should not be eaten, that is, no salts, only water. Physiological occultists watch over the blood transition to the next race.

In the last century, since Frederic the Great, we have developed ten times as fast as in the thousand years from Charlemagne to Frederic the Great, and evolution will continue to speed up in this way. The sixth sub-race is developing in Russia. Non-belief is a great obstacle to development.

Mercury is the body of some great spirits, one of which incarnated in Gautama Buddha.¹⁴⁵

In the course of evolution, man will govern his body from the outside, carry it with him like a snail its shell, in a way, work on it and transform it. This is something he is already doing in his sleep today.

• 138. Thales ... Aristotle, see Steiner R. The Riddles of Philosophy (GA 18). Tr. F. C. A. Kölln. New York: Anthroposophic Press 1973.
• 139. Middle high German epic.
• 140. Siegfried (Sigurd), folk hero of early and medieval German mythology. His legend provided the source material for several epics, among them the Vblsungasaga and the Nibelungenlied.
• 141. Genesis 3: 16
• 142. Blavatsky, Helena Petrovna, née Hahn (1831–91), Russian theosophist. Founded the Theosophical Society with Henry Steel Olcott in New York in 1875. Her journal Lucifer first appeared in 1887
• 143. First objective of the Theosophical Society: 4To form a nucleus of the universal brotherhood ofhumanity, without distinction of race, creed, sex, caste or colour? Proceedings of 2nd Annual Congress of the Federation of European Sections of the Theosophical Society, p. 5.
• 144. Mark 10: 14; Matthew 18: 17.
• 145. Steiner R. The Spiritual Beings in the Heavenly Bodies and in the Kingdoms of Nature (GA 136), lecture given in Helsingfors on 13 April 1912. Tr. unknown. Vancouver: Steiner Book Centre 1981.

There are some occult and spiritual-scientific truths I want to consider in connection with Richard Wagner's Parsifal.¹⁸⁵A strange, deep link exists between the phenomenon of the great artist Richard Wagner and the spiritual movement called Theosophy today. People are gradually beginning to realize that Richard Wagner and his works represent a great sum of occult power. But something else will also emerge in future, and that is that there is much more to the Richard Wagner phenomenon than he himself could possibly know. It is a mystery connected with many important figures, particularly artists, that a power lives in them of which they themselves have no knowledge.

If on the one hand we understand that there was much more to Richard Wagner than he himself was aware of, we must not forget, on the other hand, that he was not able to reach the ultimate level of wisdom, and that Richard Wagner's art therefore shows itself in quite a peculiar light to the occultist. When it comes to his works, one has to say to oneself that there is much more to them, something mysterious which lies behind it all.

It is indeed interesting to see the deeper currents in the background. Richard Strauss¹⁸⁶ said on one occasion that it was possible to see much more in Richard Wagner than people usually do. He put it more or less like this: ‘People who insist one should not look beyond Richard Wagner's work seem to me to be like people who also do not want to go beyond the flower they see. They will never know the secret of the flower. And is much the same with people who cannot think of anything further in the case of a great artist.’

Richard Wagner tackled subjects of tremendous significance. You keep finding names in his works that relate to very ancient sacred traditions. In Parsifal he achieved something that is closely bound up with the power that had such a strange influence in the last third of the 19th century.

To understand his figures and themes we must first cast an eye on profound secrets of human evolution, going back a few thousand years in history. All his life Richard Wagner made profound studies of human affairs and the secret of the human soul. In his youth he sought to explore the secret of reincarnation. The draft of a play he was working on in 1856 shows this. It was called The Victors.¹⁸⁷ Wagner stopped work on it later on, for he could not find a musical solution to the problem of the ‘victors’. A dramatic solution would have been perfectly possible. The story of the play was as follows. A young man in far distance India, Ananda by name, a Brahmin by caste, was loved by a girl called Prakriti who belonged to the lowest caste. Ananda became a pupil of the Buddha. He did not return Prakriti's love, which cast her into deep sorrow. Ananda withdrew from the world to dedicate himself to the religious life. A Brahman then told the girl why her fate was the way it was. In an earlier life she, a member of the Brahman caste, had rejected the love of this same young man, who was then of the lowest caste. Hearing this she, too, turned to the Buddha, and both of them were then pupils of the same teacher.

Wagner had intended to work on this theme in 1856. A year later the subject he had failed to deal with came to him in another way. He conceived the great idea of his Parsifal in 1857. It is a strange story of how the whole mystery of Parsifal came to Richard Wagner at one particular moment.¹⁸⁸ It was on Good Friday 1857 in the Wesendonk Villa on the Lake of Zurich. He saw nature outside growing, shooting and sprouting. And at that moment he understood the connection between nature coming to new life and Christ's death on the cross. That is the secret of the holy grail. From that moment, Richard Wagner lived with the idea of presenting the secret of the holy grail to the world in music.

To understand this unusual experience we must go back a few thousand years in history. Richard Wagner put down his beautiful thoughts on human evolution in writing under the title ‘Heroism and Christianity’.¹⁸⁹ Let us first of all consider the kind of teaching given in occult societies in the 16th or 17th century. There have been mystery centres at all times. The knowledge taught there was at the same time religion, a religion that was also wisdom. It is not possible to really understand the mysteries unless one understands that there is a world of the spirit.

The different realms of nature lie spread out around us—minerals, plants, animals and human beings. We consider the human realm to be the highest of the four. Just as there are realms around man that are lower than he is, so there are higher spirits above him, at many levels. The different levels of spirits that are above man have always been called ‘gods’. Wisdom was taught in the mystery centres in a way that made human beings able to commune with the gods at a conscious level. Such people would always and wherever mystery centres existed be called ‘initiates’. They were not merely given words of wisdom but experienced realities within those mysteries. Today's mystery centres are of a different kind than those of antiquity and medieval times.

An important mystery centre existed in a region of northern Spain at the time when the crusades began and a little before that. The mysteries of those times were called ‘late Gothic mysteries’. Their initiates were called Tempelisen or Tempeleisen or Knights of the Holy Grail. Lohengrin was one of them. The community of these Knights of the Grail was rather different from another knightly community. This had its seat in Britain, in Wales. All the stories of King Arthur and his Round Table have to do with this other initiate community.

In very early times, long before Christianity, a large population moved from west to east on this earth. This was a very long time ago. There was a time when Atlantis existed in a region that is now part of the Atlantic Ocean. Our far distant ancestors, the Atlanteans, lived there. The whole population of Europe and Asia, all the way to India, were descendants of the Atlanteans. Conditions of life on Atlantis were very different from those in which people lived later on. Atlanteans lived in a completely hierarchic system guided by such initiates. All government and rule came from the initiates in those times. One famous initiate school was in the north of present-day Russia. Its initiates were called trotts. Other schools were in western Europe, their initiates known as druids. All social institutions to control the masses of humanity came from these initiates.

Let us take a look at those very early schools. What kind of secret was taught in them? It is only the form of the teaching that changes with time. It is truly remarkable that the mystery which Richard Wagner experienced inwardly was taken to its highest development in those schools. It is the connection between nature coming alive in spring and the mystery of the cross.

The first thing pupils had to understand was that all power of bringing forth that lies outside the animal and human realms may also be seen in the plant world. In spring, the divine power of creation sprouts forth from Mother Earth. It had to be understood that there is a connection between the power that comes forth when the earth covers itself with a green carpet and the power of divine creation. The pupils would be told: ‘Out there you see a power in the flowers as they open that condenses in the seed. Countless seeds will come from the chalice of the flower, and put in the soil they will bring forth something new. One can now feel with the whole of one's being that the events that happen out there in nature are nothing else but the processes that also happen in the human and animal worlds, but in the plant this happens without desire and is wholly chaste.’

The infinite innocence and chastity slumbering in the flower chalices of plants had to live in the hearts of the pupils. They were then told: ‘The sunbeam opens the flowers. It brings forth the power from those flowers. Two things come together—the opening flower and the sunbeam. Other realms—the animal and human worlds—are between the plant world and the divine realm. All these realms are only the transition from the plant world to the divine realm. In the divine realm we see once again a realm of innocence and chastity, as in the plant world. In the animal and human worlds we see a realm of desire.’

And then the teachers would speak of the future: ‘The time will come when all lusts and desires shall vanish. Then the chalice will open from up above, just as the chalice of a flower opens, and it will look down on the human being. Just as the sunbeam enters into the plant, so will man's own purified power unite with this divine chalice.’

We can invert the flower chalice in our minds, letting it bend down from above, from heaven, and we can invert the sunbeam, so that it rises from the human being to the heavens. This inverted flower chalice was shown to be a reality in the mysteries and called the holy grail. The real chalice of a plant is the inverted holy grail. Everyone who gains occult knowledge comes to know that the sunbeam represents something known as the ‘magic wand’. The magic wand is a superstitious version of a symbol that represents a spiritual reality. In the mysteries this magic wand was known as the bloodstained lance. We are shown the origin of the grail on the one hand and of the blood-stained lance on the other, the original magic wand known to true occultists.

I am just touching on things of great profundity, significant truths that took place in that belt in northern and western Europe. Richard Wagner sensed a great deal of all this, as did his friend the Comte de Gobineau,¹⁹⁰ a deep thinker.

To say what lies at the base of the mysteries of which I have been speaking, it was knowledge of the fluid that streams in animal and human veins. Quite rightly, Goethe wrote ‘Blood is a sap of very special kind’ in his Faust.¹⁹¹ Many things are connected with the blood. We shall understand what blood signifies if we grasp and understand the tremendous revolution that has occurred in the mysteries. In earlier times, it was known among the European people that important things depend on the way people are related by blood. Because of this, progress and development was never left to chance in those times. All these things were arranged out of occult wisdom. It was known that if the development of small tribal communities was limited to that community, with no one coming in from outside, individuals born within that community would have special powers. The consequences of letting different kinds of blood come together were known in the mysteries. They also knew exactly which tribe was right for a particular area. They knew that common blood was the source of specific human powers.

When the ancient bonds of blood relationship were broken, something also happened in the mysteries. Purposes which before had been achieved by means of blood relationship were now replaced with two specific spiritual preparations in the great mysteries. The lesser mysteries had the outward symbols of these—bread and wine. The two preparations were substances which had an effect in the spirit that was similar to the physical effect of the blood in our veins. When the ancient clairvoyance had gone, these two preparations took its place. Having learned all of theosophical wisdom, initiates would then be given these symbols from the chalice of Ceridwen.¹⁹² The purified blood could then be given to human beings from the chalice opening up from above. This is the true mystery, which at the time remained with a very small body of people.

In other parts of Europe the mysteries fell into decline and were then made profane in a disgusting, repulsive manner. Their symbol of the offering was a dish in which a bleeding head was placed. It was thought that something might be aroused in a human being on seeing this head. It was black magic that was being performed, the opposite of the mystery of the holy grail.

It was known at that time that the element which streams upwards in the chalice of the flower also lived in the human blood. It had to become pure and chaste again, like the sap of a flower. In the degenerate mysteries this was given a crude, materialistic form. In the north, people needed the sublimated blood as a symbol, and in the Eleusinian Mysteries the wine of Dionysus and the bread of Demeter. The cup of the grail made into something abhorrent, with the bleeding head, may be found again in the story of Herodias and the head of John. She was laughing at the mystery made profane.

The true secret of the great mysteries went to the Tempeleisen in northern Spain, guardians of the Grail. King Arthur's knights were more concerned with worldly affairs, but it was possible to prepare the Tempeleisen to receive an even more sublime secret, the great secret of Golgotha, the mystery of world history.

Christianity had its origin in the most mixed of nations, the Galileans, who were wholly alien to and outside all blood community. The redeemer founded his kingdom entirely outside the old blood community, beyond all blood bonds. The sublimated blood, purified blood, sprouts from the sacrificial death, the purification process. The blood that gives rise to wishes and desires must flow, it has to be sacrificed, it must run.

The sacred vessel with the purified blood was taken to Spain, to the Tempeleisen on Montsalvatch. Titurel, the ancestor, received the grail; before, it had been longed for. Now the overcoming of the blood had happened. The purely physical nature of the blood had been overcome by the spirit.

You can only understand what happened on Golgotha if, unlike a materialist, you know blood to be composed not only of material elements. It is indeed highly remarkable that Richard Wagner was only able to find the sacred mood for his Parsifal because he knew that it was not only a matter of the Redeemer's death but of the blood which had been purified and was a little bit different from ordinary blood. He himself spoke of the connection between the Redeemer's blood and the whole of humanity: ‘Having seen that the blood of what is known as the “white race” had a special capacity for conscious suffering and pain, we must now recognize the saviour's blood as the essence of suffering consciously willed, divine compassion that flows for the whole human race as its source and origin.’¹⁹³

Richard Wagner also wrote: ‘The blood in the redeemer's veins must thus have flowed forth as the result of the utmost endeavour of the will, a divine sublimate of the human race itself to save that race which in its noblest parts was falling into decline.’

It was because the redeemer had come from the greatest mix of nations that his blood was the sublimate of all human blood, human blood in its purified form.

Richard Wagner approached the great original mystery in a way hardly anyone else had dared to do. It is the very vigour he brought to this that made him a great artist. He should not be taken for an ordinary musician but someone with profound insight who sought to recreate the deep secrets of the holy grail for modern humanity. Before Richard Wagner wrote his Parsifal, people in Germany knew little about the mysteries and the figures which Richard Wagner then presented.

The initiation into the mysteries was in three stages, through which the individual had to go. The first stage was known as ‘dumbness’, the second ‘doubt’, the third ‘godliness’. In the first stage the human being would be taken away from all prejudice in the world, and told of the power in his own soul, his own power of love, so that he might see the inner light shine out. The second stage was that of doubt. This state of doubting everything came at the second stage of initiation. At a higher level it was then elevated to become inner godliness. In this third stage the initiand was guided to be consciously with the gods.

Perceval—pass through the vale—that was the name given to such initiands in medieval times.¹⁹⁴ Parsifal had to learn all this from experience. Richard Wagner's strange genius made him feel this on that Good Friday in 1857, feel the thread that had to run through the whole of Parsifal's development.

The Tempeleisen represented the inner, the true Christianity as against the Christianity of the Churches. It is evident everywhere in Wolfram von Eschenbach's Parzifal that he wanted to show the spirit of that inner Christianity side by side with the Christianity of the Churches.

Remnants of the old profaned mysteries still existed in the Middle Ages. Everything that comes under this heading was epitomized in the name Klingsor. He was the black magician, in opposition to the white magic of the holy grail. Richard Wagner also showed him in opposition to the Tempeleisen.

Kundry is Herodias brought back to life. She symbolizes the power that brings forth nature, a power that can be both chaste and unchaste, but without direction. Chastity and lack of chastity have the same root, and it is a matter of ‘as the question, so the answer’. The productive power that shows itself in the flower chalice of the plant, going up through the other realms, is the same as in the Holy Grail. It merely has to go through purification in the purest, noblest form of Christianity, as we see it in Parsifal.

Kundry had to remain a black magician until Parsifal redeemed her. The whole confrontation between Parsifal and Kundry has the odour of the most profound wisdom. More than anyone else, Richard Wagner made it possible for people to take this in without knowing it. Richard Wagner was a missionary whose mission it was to give something full of significance to the world, without humanity being aware of this truth.

Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote his Parzifal as a plain and simple epic. That was sufficient in his day. People who had some degree of clairvoyance at that time understood Wolfram von Eschenbach. In the 19th century it was not possible to show the profound significance of the process in dramatic form. But there is a way of helping people's understanding without words, without concepts or ideas. This is through music. Wagner's music holds all the truths contained in Parsifal. The strange music written by Wagner would create quite specific vibrations in the ether bodies of those who listened to it. The ether body is connected with all the profound motions of the blood. Richard Wagner understood the secret of the purified blood. His melodies hold the vibrations that have to be in the human ether body when it becomes purified in the way that is necessary so that the secret of the grail may be received.

The strange way in which Richard Wagner was writing his books can only be understood if one goes into the realities that were behind Wagner. He knew very well that the human will receives a very special illumination from the spirit. He wrote that initially the will was a crude, instinctive element, but it gradually came to be refined. The intellect casts its light on the will and the human being becomes aware of pain and suffering, and this leads to purification. Referring to the ideas of his friend the Comte de Gobineau he wrote: "One cannot fail but realize the unity of the human race when reviewing its parts, and we are justified in saying that at its noblest it is the capacity of bearing pain and suffering in full awareness. In the light of this we ask where the outstanding nature of the white race lies, since we certainly must put it high above the others. With beautiful certainty, Gobineau perceives it to lie not in any exceptional development of its moral quality as such, but in a greater store of the fundamental characteristics from which those qualities arise. It would have to be sought in the fiercer yet also more delicate sensitivity of the will which reveals itself in a rich organization, in conjunction with the more astute intellect this requires; it will then be a matter of whether the intellect, under the impulses of a will that has great need, advances to clairvoyance, casting its own light back on to the will, and in this case subjugate it to become moral drive?

Richard Wagner was here speaking of the actual process in which the intellect casts its reflection on the will, and the human being become clairvoyant in the process.

Richard Wagner's work was to give religious depth to art and ultimately profound understanding of Christianity. He knew that Christianity was best presented through music. By rising to the inmost secrets of the world order we will on the one hand gain knowledge, but on the other also true godliness. There is a way of human development that teaches us the significance of this fact relating to Christianity.

• 185. See Rudolf Steiner's lectures given in Berlin on Richard Wagner and mysticism (in German, in GA 55) and on 22 and 19 March 1906 (in German, in GA 54).
• 186. Strauss, Richard (1864–1949). See Thomas, W. Richard Strauss und seine Zeitgenossen S. 46, 72, 75; München 1964.
• 187. Die Sieger. Entwurf, Zurich, Mai 1956, in Richard Wagner, Sämtliche Schriften und Dichtungen Band 11, Leipzig 1911. Wagner wrote to Mathilde Wesendonk from Paris in early August 1960: 'Only deep-thinking assumption of the transmigration of souls showed me the comforting point where everything finally comes together at one level of redemption, when the different lives lived, running separately but side by side in time have touched one another in understanding. According to the beautiful Buddhist belief the simple explanation of the absolute purity of Lohengrin is that he is a continuation of Parsifal who fought to gain his purity. In the same way Elsa would be at Lohengrin's level when reborn. The scheme for my Sieger has just presented itself to my mind as the final conclusion of Lohengrin. Here Savitri (Elsa) is wholly at Ananda's level. All the terrible tragedy of life would thus lie merely in the separateness of time and space. These, however, live only in our minds and have no reality beyond them. Someone with perfect clairvoyance would thus be able to explain even the greatest most tragic pain as mere error on the part of the individual. I believe this to be so. And in all truth it is wholly a matter of the pure and noble, which in itself is painless? Richard Wagner an Mathilde Wesendonk. Tagebuchblätter und Briefe 1853–1871. 36. Auflage S. 242. Berlin 1909.
• 188. ‘Lovely spring weather came; on Good Friday I woke up for the first time in this house to full sunshine. The small garden had grown green, the birds were singing, and I was finally able to sit on the parapet of the little house and enjoy the much longed-for quiet that held such promise. With my heart full of this, I suddenly said to myself that it was Good Friday and recalled the significance this reminder had held for me once before, in Wolfram's Parsifal. I had never taken the poem up again since that time in Marienbad when I developed the ideas for Meistersinger and Lohengrin. Now its ideal content came to me overwhelmingly, and with the Good Friday idea in mind I rapidly produced the outline for a whole dramatic piece, in three acts, and immediately made a few quick notes of it.' Wagner R. Mein Leben III. Band S. 133f Miünchen 1915.
• 189. Wagner R. Gesammelte Schriften und Dichtungen in 10 Banden, hersg. W. Golther. 10. Bd S. 275ff: ‘Ausfiihrungen zu Religion und Kunsf, 2. 'Heldentum und Christentum’. Leipzig o. J.
• 190. Gobineau, Joseph Arthur, Comte de (1816–82), considered the 'intellectual father, of Nietzsche and the actual inventor of ‘super-man’ and ‘supermorality’. His Essai sur l'inégalité des races humaines, 4 vols, was published in 1853–55; translated in 1915 and published in English as The Inequality of Human Races.
• 191. Faust 1, verse 1740.
• 192. Ch. W. Heckethom wrote in Geheime Gesellschqften, Geheimbilnde und Geheimlehren S. 60 (Leipzig 1900): Druid culture encompassed all religious and philosophical study known in those lands at the time. The principal deities may be said to have been male and female, the great father and the great mother Hu and Ceridwen, in every respect the same as Osiris and Isis or Bacchus and Ceres, etc. See Rudolf Steiner's public lecture given in Berlin on 6 May 1909, ‘The European mysteries and their initiates’ (GA 57) (Anthroposophical Quarterly 1964: 9:1).
• 193. See ref. 189, 10. Bd S. 282.
• 194. Wolfram von Eschenbach (c. 1170–1220) interpreted the name he gave to the hero of his epic poem V. 140.16 f. in this way.

When one gives a lecture on a Christian theme at a public gathering, it is not possible to speak about the worldwide theosophical movement in the intimate way which is possible in the present case, in a smaller, closed group. The lecture will give an outline of the three ways of initiation.

Many of you will no doubt have been involved with theosophy in all kinds of different ways and also know different views presented within the world-wide theosophical movement. Reading, lectures, and your own reflections will have made some of you interested in finding out more about things that go beyond the sphere of the senses, things eternal, beyond time and mortality.

The science of the spirit has made it its special mission to give instruction on the deeper nature of man and his relationship to the world as a whole, also to try and discover what is the eternal, lasting principle in man, what are the causes of illness, of bad and evil things in the world and in individual human beings, what are the ultimate goals and purposes of the world and of man, and, finally, how the world has come into existence.

Today, however, our theme will mainly be the ways in which insight may be gained into those higher problems.

Human morality is the greatest goal man can set for himself. General brotherhood among people has been the ideal of all great, noble people through the ages. The theosophical association wants this, too. It definitely does not aim to create a sect based on Buddhist views, nor does it seek to abolish or replace Christianity. It also does not want to present anything unscientific. Apart from this it is also important to distinguish between the doctrine of theosophy, its view of the world, and its aims, which are to achieve the general brotherhood of man.

Both are important, the theory and the practice of theosophy. The teaching should serve to make us aware of the higher and highest principles. For we are doing some work on our souls when we follow such theoretical thinking. We prepare it, as it were, for the practice of human love and brotherhood. The theoretical aims are to reach a point where we understand the essential nature of human beings, so that we meet one another with real understanding, judging and treating one another accordingly. Different opinions, occupations, environments and so on drive people apart in life. Deeper insight and knowledge should be the means of creating peace and love among people in spite of many different opinions. That is the theosophical view of the world. It has originally come from individuals who have made efforts to deepen and develop their dormant inner faculties so that they might gain greater insight into the world than is possible by means of our ordinary senses or ordinary human understanding. Such people are called initiates. Different degrees of initiation are known. The great founders of religions were great initiates, among them Hermes, teacher of the priests in ancient Egypt, Zarathustra, Moses, Plato, Jesus Christ. All of them had more highly developed souls. They were able to see into the world of the spirit which is around us in a similar way to the physical world.

For as long as someone does not seek himself to take the path of initiation, there is only one way to look into those worlds of spirit, and that is by using the rational human mind. The world grows clear and lucid if penetrated by the rational mind.

The view of the world gained in the science of the spirit makes insight into the world clearer and deeper than other philosophies do. The rational mind is the judge, accepting or rejecting such teachings about humanity. Human beings have a real need for these, which is also why they are presented to them.

We will now take a closer look at how one may develop one's soul so that it will be able to perceive the sublime realm that lies beyond the senses. There is, of course, no compulsion or obligation about this. Not everyone needs to follow such a path. Those who are able will receive the necessary suggestions and be able to take the right steps in accord with them.

Methods of acquiring such higher faculties have existed at all times. But until a few decades ago they were only known to a few chosen occult teachers and occult pupils. Someone who is called may also find the right path of development for himself. All it needs is serious resolve and one's own free will.

This lecture shall therefore also have no bias towards propaganda nor seek to push people towards such a path. All that will be done is to show the ways that might be followed. Initiation is the goal of such a path of development, that is, gaining the faculties needed for insight into higher worlds.

Unfortunately it is still widely, and wrongly, believed that theosophy is something that comes from the East, really from India, and a kind of neo-Buddhism that is to be pushed on to us Westerners as a new religion. To say this is to do a great injustice to theosophy, for it has existed in Europe from the beginning, and had grown deep roots in many places, especially in recent centuries. It has to be admitted, however, that it was always met with greater understanding in the East. East and West also have quite different ways of initiation, which is in accord with the more deep down nature of individual nations. For us, the European way is of course more important, and it is more appropriate for us to follow this. All these ways lead to one and the same goal, however, for the truth is the same both here and there, today and yesterday and in all eternity.

To begin with, a brief description will be given of the three most important forms of initiation—first the Indian yoga initiation, secondly the Christian and gnostic way, which people would also do well to follow today, and thirdly the Rosicrucian way. This is the most suitable for people today who cannot find what they seek in mere faith and need to enter into the achievements of civilization and technology. Deep down this is also a Christian way, as is evident, apart from anything else, in the fact that someone who has developed by taking the Rosicrucian way learns to understand the wisdom taught in Christianity in the best and deepest way.

Firstly, the Eastern yoga way. The human soul is able to develop to the point where it becomes like an eye that has direct vision of the spirit, of the eternal which is beyond time. The way taken by people of the East for this development differs from the way of the European because their natural disposition and organization are different. A Hindu differs from a European not only in external appearance, for his brain and soul are also built differently. It is evident, therefore, that if they are truly to reach the goal, Hindus must take a different way from that of Europeans. It actually goes so far that a European may possibly ruin himself both morally and physically by taking the Eastern path of development. The isolation and withdrawal of the soul required for the yoga way is practically impossible in our European civilization. One would have to step completely aside from ordinary life here, and indeed from our whole civilization, devoting oneself entirely to one's personal inner development.

Someone who follows this route needs a spiritual guide or guru who pilots him safely through all the chaos. Without such a guru it is impossible to follow this way. It also needs a complete transformation of human nature, a transformation laid down for one by the guru. Such a guru altogether has unlimited power over his pupil. It then is no longer of no concern what the individual does in his life in other respects. It is no longer enough to be a decent, good person of the ordinary kind, simply the kind of person society tends to consider an example.

It has to be possible to keep soul and body quite distinct and separate, they must no longer interpenetrate the way they did before. Passions and animal instincts should no longer have a place in the human soul, for the soul is inhibited and prevented by them from penetrating the mists of the physical world and looking into the higher world of the spirit. However, when soul and body are cleanly separated, the latter may well bring its passions and drives into play at the same time as the soul is in that higher life. It is therefore possible for the soul to develop to a higher level and gain vision in the spirit, whilst the body falls subject to all kinds of bad qualities and perhaps becomes corrupted because its passions and drives are no longer guided towards better things by the soul's insight, which had been possible when soul and body were still interpenetrating. This shows the tremendous importance of proper guidance on this difficult path. One must in that case strictly obey the guru, even if it goes against the grain. The guru is permitted to involve himself in the pupil's most intimate affairs of the heart and give him rules on how to conduct his life. Certain relationships may be forbidden as being an impediment to the development that is in progress. Preconditions for this way of development are firstly the ability to prevent the lower drives to good effect, then regular practice of certain ways of doing things, firmly establishing particular qualities and developing additional faculties that still lie dormant or do not yet exist.

Such preparations for development are: firstly to get out of the habit of letting one's thoughts dart about. This would seem to be an easy condition, but it is in fact difficult. We are driven and put under pressure by external impressions. For at least five minutes a day the individual should have complete control of the way his thoughts run. One exercise one might try, for instance, is to concentrate the mind on a single idea. Nothing else should be linked with this idea, however many things want to come in of their own accord, only the thoughts I myself connect with it, freely deciding to do so. Such exercises should be done with a variety of objects. After some time, the individuaPs thinking will be controlled and this is outwardly apparent in a more precise choice of words, among other things.

Secondly, taking initiative in one's actions. Some people are quite incapable of this, for they may have been forced into an occupation from early on, and this occupies most of their active life. Most of the things we do are dictated from outside. Someone seeking to gain initiation should therefore be deeply concerned to do something regularly, always at the same time of the day, something they have decided on themselves, even if it is something quite insignificant.

Thirdly, the pupil should overcome mood swings, being on top of the world one minute and down in the dumps the next. It means we should not give ourselves without will to pleasure and pain but keep our inner equilibrium even in the bitterest pain and greatest pleasures. This certainly will not make us insensitive and lacking in response; quite the contrary, our inner responses become all the more subtle and intensive.

Fourthly, a Persian legend about Christ Jesus should live in the pupil's heart. It is this. One day Jesus walked in the countryside with his disciples. A half decomposed dog lay by the wayside, a horrible sight. The disciples turned away, feeling shocked. Christ Jesus looked at the cadaver with loving eyes, however, commenting: ‘Look what beautiful teeth this dead animal has!’ The quintessence of this is to find hidden beauty even in ugly things, and altogether always look for the positive aspect, for something to which one can say yes. The life of even the worst of evildoers has moments of light and we can meet these with understanding.

Fifthly, we must seek to gain complete freedom from prejudice, The past should never determine the way we judge the present. We should not reject something new just because we have not come across it before. New insights should be taken in an unbiased way if one wants to be an initiate.

Sixth, developing harmony of soul. This will really arise from all the other things, as if of its own accord.

These qualities are absolutely essential preconditions for anyone who is to be initiated the yoga way.

The actual yoga way involves a number of stages that must be kept clearly distinct.

Firstly the yoga pupil must not kill, lie, steal, live to excess or be covetous. The more one ceases to live at the cost of others, the closer does one come to what is meant by the requirement that one should not steal. For this is not, of course, the stealing that is a punishable crime, but more subtle forms of it. As to the other requirements, each individual will immediately know what they involve.

Secondly it is highly desirable to acknowledge certain symbolic acts for one's own. One must have a feeling for it and come to understand that a rite is really just giving symbolic expression to something much more profound.

Thirdly the assumption of specific body positions, for the position into which one brings the body for the exercises to gain higher wisdom is far from immaterial. As far as possible it should be placed in the direction in which the spiritual streams move in the world.

Fourthly, pranayama, the regulation of one's breathing, is of great importance. It has to do with the requirement not to kill, for man's breath is capable of killing many things in the world around him. Yoga breathing aims gradually to free the breath from its deadly effect on other life forms. Above all, yoga pupils should no longer release so much deadly carbon dioxide. This is possible, for we know that individuals who have been deeply initiated can spend decades in caves where the air is stale and this does not ruin them physically.

The fifth stage relates to suppressing the evolution of certain sensual ideals. We must no longer let every sensual idea influence us but need to take individual ones and concentrate all our attention on them. The rest of our thoughts should also be made to progress in a specific, regulated way.

The sixth stage is that as he progresses the pupil must concentrate on, say, an impression of light, or, put in a better way, to concentrate on the image such an impression has left in the soul. This is an even higher stage. Even more valuable is meditation based on an idea that is no longer part of the world we perceive through the senses. It is essential for the human being to give himself to the contemplation of such ideas if he is to progress.

The seventh stage is very hard. It consists in the individual banishing every idea of any kind from his conscious mind whilst remaining wholly awake. He then comes closer to the state of intuitive conception. Now at last the soil is prepared and the contents of a world that has been unknown to us so far can come to us.

A guru is absolutely essential during the whole of this preparation for the yoga way. It is solely and exclusively due to him that these inner developments take the right course and benefit the pupil.

This has, of course, been only a rough and ready outline of the yoga way. It is certainly not a set of instructions for following it. Let me repeat: the guidance given by the guru from time to time is absolutely essential, and it is given from person to person.

The second way is the Christian gnostic one. The main difference here, compared to the one that went before, is that it is not necessary for every individual pupil to have his own guru. This is no longer required because of the existence of a great, sublime individual, Christ Jesus, who is there to be the pupil's goal and to point the way. The way that has to be followed is given in detail in holy writ, in the Bible, above all in the gospel of John. Deep down this does indeed give direct instructions for training as a mystic.

Along this way, the guide is there more to advise than to be an authoritative guru in the usual sense. The guidance concerning initiation is of the highest authority, that of Jesus Christ. John's gospel gives such guidance. It is not a book for study but a book for life in the true sense of the word. The first few sentences of the gospel have special mystic powers and are tremendously important for setting out on this path of initiation. A pupil of the Christian mysteries needs to take a meditative approach to those few sentences, for instance letting them and nothing else live in his soul at a particular time every morning. After some time the profound meaning of these sentences will be clear to him intuitively, and it is only then that the moment has come when one can begin further study of John's gospel so that it will truly bear fruit.

In the course of one's study, the images of the gospel will gradually slip quietly into our dreams, so that we have real inner experience of the events described. This inner experience then continues through all further stages of development which I am not going to describe in detail here and now.

When the pupil has progressed to the washing of the feet, a symbolic act in which one humbly confesses one's dependence and the fact that one has grown and developed on the basis of something lower, at a lower level than our own, certain symptoms will show themselves also externally—a strange feeling of water running by one's feet. The inner symptom relating to this is an imaginative vision of the washing of the feet. In Christian mystic development, the washing of the feet marks the first stage.

The second station is the scourging, which is also something one enters into in one's feelings. It means that in spite of the great and frequent pair and troubles we have to bear in life we will always stand up straight and not grow faint-hearted. Again we have both an outer and an inner symptoms—a strange physical stabbing sensation and the mental image of our own scourging.

Stage three is the crown of thorns. This means that though it is painful to have our most sacred feelings and convictions derided and have scorn poured on them, we must not lose our inner firmness, our equilibrium. Symptoms are headaches, and vision of one's own person wearing the crown of thorns.

Fourthly bearing the cross (crucifixion). Here the pupil is to gain living experience that the body is really an indifferent object compared to the soul and its importance. When we are truly aware of this we'll also be able to use the body merely as an instrument for higher things, and weUl truly control it. Symptoms are the Christ's stigmata appearing as reddened areas on hands and feet. This blood trial only occurs for brief moments during the meditation, however. Inner vision of being crucified oneself.

Fifth, the mystic death. Here the pupil has a strange experience. It is as if the whole world around him is covered by a veil, and he senses the essence that lies behind the veil. When he feels himself thus to be in utter darkness, the veil will suddenly tear and he looks through it into a new, wondrous world. He now learns to judge the depths of the human soul by a completely different standard. This mystic death is like a descent into hell.

The pupil is now someone who has been awakened and can progress to the sixth stage, the entombment. Here he feels the whole outer environment to be his body. His individual nature expands, encompassing the whole world. The body feels itself to be one with the earth, and individual consciousness expands to become earth consciousness.

The seventh stage cannot be described to any degree, for it is beyond all powers of imagination based on the senses. Individuals who have finally come free of this world by unceasing practice may just be able to grasp it in their thoughts. This stage involves entering into perfect divinity and glory, and we do not have the words to describe it.

This Christian way is difficult, for it demands great inner humility and giving up of self. Anyone who has gone through it, however, will have achieved man's goal and dignity. True Christianity will have come to life in him in a very real way.

The third way is the Rosicrucian one. It is really just a modification of the other two. It developed in the 14th century, when the adepts were able to foresee that civilization would become very different in the centuries ahead.

This is the most suitable way for modern people. It is also the most appropriate for Europeans. This does not mean to say that one of the other ways will not also lead to the goal. But the Rosicrucian system is compatible with our whole civilization and culture. It has not so far been laid down in books or manuscripts, but has been passed from generation to generation by oral tradition. A more detailed description is given in Lucifer-Gnosis under the title ‘How to gain knowledge of the higher worlds’.¹⁴⁶

This is a very different view of the role of a guru. He is no longer absolute authority for the pupil but more a friend and adviser. The only authority lies in the individual's own free decision.

Evolution is in seven stages: 1) study, 2) imagination, 3) insight into occult scripture, 4) making life rhythmic, 5) looking for relationships between macrocosm and microcosm, 6) contemplation, 7) experiencing godliness.

Study is thus required as a first step, though this is not the scholarly type of study but working with thoughts relating to the world and to human life, the origin of the heavenly bodies, and so on, and other ways of training one's thinking. Thinking is able to give us new living experiences—I am referring to logical thinking with a definite goal. It provides secure guidance througJi all worlds, for thinking has to be equally consistent in all of them.

Secondly we have to gain the faculty of imagination. This is a matter of relating to the world around us not only in theory and in our thoughts but in moral terms. We must learn to discover the aspect of every thing that gives its moral background. To develop this kind of imagination we may, for instance, put the image of a plant clearly before our mind's eye. Or we may have a small seed grain before us and develop images of how it gradually sprouts, producing a stem and finally a complete plant with its fruit. After some practice one can really see how a plant emerges and grows from such a seed. This does, however, call for considerable occult powers. With lesser means it is possible to perceive the astral body of the plant as a small flame emerging from the seed.

Thirdly to learn occult script. This means to learn signs that have to do with the cosmic process.

Step 4 is to make life rhythmical. Our breathing needs to be regulated, changing the relative proportions of exhaled carbon dioxide and inhaled oxygen in a specific way. It is altogether most necessary to bring rhythm into life in our restless age. All processes follow one another in a great rhythm, and as far as possible this should also be made part of one's life. Thus we should arrange to have a meditation process at a given hour, or to review our past life at the same time every night. This releases great powers in the soul.

Step 5 is to look for correspondences between microcosm and macrocosm. Goethe put this most beautifully in the following verse:

Were not the eye like to the sun,
The sun it never could behold;
Were not in us the god's own power,
How could we take delight in things divine?¹⁴⁷

Entering intensely into our organs teaches us about the parts of the macrocosm that relate to them. Thus study of the eye teaches us about light, exploration of the lung about the composition of the air, and so on. Using a similar way we should finally also gain self knowledge.

Entering into the small world within us we thus gradually also have the great world revealed to us. Such comparative studies will ultimately lead to the state of godliness, the result of all the work that has gone before and above all of the deep, calm contemplation that is the sixth stage.

With all this, the individual must be imbued with specific good qualities, these being self confidence, self control and being present in mind and spirit.

The pupil has to work unceasingly on this inner development. For although the divine principle is indeed latent in us, it does not reveal itself without work and the right kind of development. To follow this way one does not have to leave one's human and social environment to devote oneself to personal development in solitude. Nor does it ask that we despise matter, merely that we grow beyond it, overcoming it to reach something higher.

Our guiding principle should be that self knowledge is world knowledge.

The three ways I have described take the individual to being a pupil at a higher level. It is only from this that a true initiate can then give us the key to the secret of the world, so that we may gain insight into the deeper connections in the life of the world and in human life. That highest level then means one is able to receive intuitions from higher worlds. It is a state of lucidity in spirit and of divine light.

• 146. Steiner R. Geisteswissenschaft und soziale Frage. Lucifer-Gnosis—Grundlegende AufsStze zur Anthroposophie und Berichte (GA 34) . Originally in Luzifer-Gnosis Nos. 13–28, Berlin, 1904–1905.
• 147. Goethe, Zahme Xenien III.

Initiation makes it possible for a person to gain insight into higher worlds. It is a process of development in the inmost soul. Different people take different paths, but the truth is the same for all of them. Having reached the summit of a mountain you have an open view in all directions. But it would be quite nonsensical not to take the path to the top that is nearest to the point where we actually are. And it is the same with initiation. Once we have reached our goal and truly gained an open view, the insight gained will be the same for all.

It is not good, however, for someone to take a route other than the one that suits his nature. There should really be a separate path for every individual. All of them do, however, fall into one of three types—the yoga path, gnostic and Rosicrucian Christian initiation. One of these three different routes may be taken. They differ because there are three kinds of human beings. Only few Europeans can take the Oriental yoga route. It therefore is not right, as a rule, for a European to take that route. People live in an entirely different climate in the Orient, where the light of the sun is completely different. The anatomical differences between Orientals and Europeans are not easily demonstrable, but the difference in soul and spirit is profound, and this must be taken into account, for inner development intervenes deeply in the soul and spirit nature of a person. Anatomists cannot perceive the finer structure of the Hindu brain. But if you were to ask of a European the things that can be asked of an Indian, you would destroy him. An Indian may be asked to do certain things which serve no purpose at all for a European and may even be bad for him. Above all the yoga path makes one basic demand on pupils that has to be met if the path is to be taken at all. It demands the strict authority of a teacher, who is called a guru. To take that path one must accept the guru's directions in every detail of life. Quite apart from that, the Indian yoga route can hardly be taken unless one tears oneself away from the external conditions of life. It is necessary, you see, to make all kinds of external arrangements that will support the exercises one is given. If you experience things that make a deep impression on your feeling life, this will have a profound influence on you as you are going through occult inner development. The Oriental yoga pupil must therefore ask his guru about every detail of his life. To make any change whatsoever in his life, he must first ask the guru for direction. The yoga path therefore requires absolute subjection to a guru. You have to learn to see things through the guru's eyes, and to feel the way he does. It is impossible to follow this path unless there is profound trust, perfect love, combined with utter trust and an unconditional surrender that has precedence over everything else.

For the gnostic Christian path there is only one great teacher, the central guru. What is needed is belief in Christ Jesus himself not only his teachings. A gnostic Christian pupil must be able to believe that the one and only sublime divine individual spirit was incarnated in Christ Jesus, an individual spirit that cannot be compared with any other, not even the highest. All other individuals started at a lower level on earth and then ascended, examples being Buddha, Hermes, Zoroaster and Pythagoras, and their spiritual stature is the result of many earlier incarnations. This is not the case with Christ Jesus. He cannot be compared with any other individual, with anything else on earth. It would be impossible to follow the gnostic Christian path unless one believes this.

A third path is the Rosicrucian Christian one. There the teacher is the counsellor who essentially limits his counsel to the actual measures taken for spiritual development. This spiritual development must be organized in such a way that it has a deep-reaching influence on the life of the individual. A teacher must always be present for initiation. There is no serious initiation without a teacher. Anyone who wants to say there is, would be saying something as silly as someone who thought it was possible for a child to be bom without the two sexes playing a role. Initiation is a spiritual fertilization process which would in fact be harmful if it were not brought about in such a dual relationship between teacher and pupil.

The Indian yoga path is in seven stages. The sequence is not always the same, however. Different stages may be combined, in a way. It is not necessary to go through stages 1 to 7 in that order. It may happen that one is asked to take something from somewhere in the sequence earlier on, and an exercise may be given that relates to another stage. It depends on the individual concerned. A pupil may do this in a few years, or even a few months. Asked how long initiation takes, Subba Row¹⁴⁸ said it may be 70 incarnations or 7, some need 7 years, others may need 7 months, or 7 days, or indeed 7 hours. It depends entirely on the spiritual maturity of the person. Spiritual maturity shows itself sooner in some and needs longer in others. This is a matter of karma. We may well ask why someone may not be outstanding in this respect though he may have reached a very high level of spirituality in an earlier existence. There may be obstacles in his physical or soul nature. The teacher's task is above all to remove such obstacles. The physiognomy of a person in ordinary life has nothing to do with it. An earlier incarnation may lie hidden deep down in the soul and be unable to emerge because of some kind of obstacle or other.

Yama is the first stage of Indian yoga training. It signifies ‘restraint’; or ‘forbearance’. To an Indian this means not to lie, not to kill, not to steal, no dissoluteness, no desires. To enter more deeply into what this means to an Indian, we must consider it in its whole context. Thus we may be vegetarians, but we still have not got out of the habit of killing things. Our life is in fact impossible without this. We actually kill as we breathe, for we exhale carbon dioxide. If the earth's green plant cover did not continually take up the carbon dioxide and give off oxygen, humans and animals would be unable to live. It is part of the yoga exercises to get out of the killing habit. Indians take this very seriously. Many of the connections we have in our life would also come under the heading of stealing for them. Each of us must accept money in some way. Many conditions are involved in our getting this money. When we buy a coat we have no way of knowing if human blood has not been shed for it. People do not give much thought to the fact that they are in a social context and partly responsible for what they do. If we take these things seriously, we must feel responsible for the things that happen because of us.

You help other people most by having few wants. Someone who reduces his wants helps others more than a philanthropist does. Thus if we do not write unnecessary letters this may save some people the effort of having to climb stairs. It is quite wrong to think that you help people by making more demands, thus providing more work. You do not in the least add to the things people need by making work for them. In Europe the situation is so complex nowadays that it is getting more and more difficult to meet the requirements of the Eastern yoga path. This can of course be followed in the proper, strict way in a country where there are no banks and where the cultural situation is clearly apparent.

The 2nd stage is niyana, observance of ritual. The Indian yoga way certainly demands ritual, so that the teachings may be linked with religious rites. It is strictly required that everyone taking the yoga way observes a ritual. Things should be enacted before their eyes. Just as in the case of art it matters that it comes to real expression in objects, so in the case of initiation it is important to have things presented in rituals.

The 3rd stage is asana, body positions assumed to be in accord with specific currents in the cosmos. When people still had a feeling for such things, they would always put the main altar at the eastern end of their religious buildings. Indians are so subtly organized that it matters in which direction they face. The current that goes from north to south is indeed different from the one that goes from east to west. Body positions are important for yoga initiation because the Oriental body is much softer, and taking a particular position leaves much more of an imprint. A European wanting to take the Oriental yoga way would have to do all these things as well.

The 4th is pranayama, bringing rhythm into the breathing process. We can best understand this if we consider that under present-day conditions, the human breath kills things. The teacher instructs the pupil to regulate his breathing according to certain rules he gives him, at least for a time. If we were to examine the breath we would find that the air exhaled by a yoga pupil has quite a different composition, quite a different carbon dioxide content, than the breath of ordinary people. It is therefore true that by regulating the breath the pupil influences the future evolution of the earth. Constant dropping wears the stone. You don't see results from one day to the next. But it all adds up and will have definite significance over long periods of time.

At a particular time, Rosicrucian teachers also get their pupils to bring rhythm into their breathing. What does the breathing process bring about? The physical human being cannot be thought of without the plants. We inhale oxygen which combines with carbon in the lung, and we exhale carbon dioxide. The plant does exactly the opposite. There is a continuous cycle between human beings on the one hand and plants on the other. In far distant times human beings will develop an organ of their own which will take care of the function plants perform today. They will be able to process the carbon dioxide in themselves. Human beings will have an organ able to separate the carbon from the oxygen and make it part of themselves. The principles we take in with our food today to build up our bodies will then be something we consciously do within ourselves. We'll thus change carbon dioxide into oxygen again. This process is indeed helped by making the breathing process rhythmical. This was taught extensively in 14th century Rosicrucian schools. Some of these secrets were betrayed, so that they appeared in the popular literature. In an 18th century work reference is made to the philosopher's stone.¹⁴⁹ The statement is literally true. The author himself probably did not know what this was really about. The whole human being must change if he is to achieve what the plant does for him now. His physical body will then be carbon, but not black coal, nor hard diamond, which after all is only a symbol for the philosopher's stone. The philosopher's stone is meant to be a body which is transparent, with the other organs integrated within it. It will consist of a mass of gel-like carbon, rather like the white of an egg. Man is following a course where he will one day develop into this marvellous glory. The rhythmic breathing which leads to this is called ‘alchemy’. The philosopher's stone is the lapis philosophorum. The man who wrote this did not actually know what it was he was writing.

The 5th stage on the yoga path is pratyahara. It consists in being able to suppress external sensory impressions. We have to know the things that are truly our soul world and leave aside everything that has come to us from outside. Most of the things people think have come to them from outside. When someone is able to give himself up consciously to his inner thoughts and make himself blind and deaf to the world around him, though he is inwardly awake; if he is able to have a thought without reflecting on external things, his sleep will be filled with dreams and he'll be practising pratyahara.

At the 6th stage one needs not only to blot out completely anything the eyes see and the ears hear but also suppress inner ideas rising from the soul itself. Having removed everything from the soul that has come to it from life, one then holds one idea, which the guru has given, in one's inner soul. These may be ideas like those given in the first four rules in Light on the Path. The best soul contents are those a special teacher is able to give us.

Such a soul content is allowed to act for some time before one lets go of it, without losing conscious awareness. One then has the function of the life in mind and spirit, without the thinking content. When this 7th stage has been reached the world of the spirit enters into us. This condition is called samadhi.

The path of Christian gnosis is also in seven stages. This method is designed for a somewhat less subtle body and above all for the world of sentience and feeling. The Christian teacher has to guide the pupil's world of sentience and feeling. The seven stages of Christian initiation are 1) the washing of the feet, 2) the scourging, 3) the crown of thorns, 4) the crucifixion, 5) the mystic death on the cross, 6) the entombment, 7) the ascension to heaven.

It is best to consider these 7 stages by describing the way the teacher works with the pupil. The teacher will say, for instance: ‘Look at the plant. It roots and grows in the world of minerals. Addressing itself to the mineral world it would have to say: “It is to you that I owe my existence, and I am only able to live because of you. Thank you!”’ In the same way the animal should say to the plant world: ‘I owe my existence to you and am only able to live thanks to you.’ Looking at the natural world around him and at the human beings who are at a lower level, a similar feeling should live in his soul. It is never possible to develop and reach a higher level unless there are also lower levels. Because of this, people who are socially at a higher level must also go down to those who are below them and give thanks to them. Christ Jesus suggested this when at the washing of the feet he bent down to his disciples and washed their feet. Someone who is at the first stage of Christian initiation must fill his heart and mind with such a feeling of gratitude to all that is below him. Two symptoms will indicate what he has achieved. He will have an astral vision where he sees himself in the washing of the feet situation. This happens to everyone who goes through this in the right way. Secondly he will have a feeling as if water were washing around his feet.

At the 2nd stage the pupil must learn to bear all the pain and suffering that life brings and which is always present all around him. He must stand up straight, even when he has to suffer the greatest pain. The symptoms will be an astral vision where he sees himself being scourged and he will feel something like needle pricks in different places on his body.

At the 3rd stage the pupil gains the ability to bear it when scorn and derision are poured on things that are most sacred to us. The teacher says to the pupil: ‘If you are able to bear mockery and derision of what is most sacred to you and stand up for it nevertheless, you will be able to wear the crown of thorns.’ The pupil will experience a particular kind of headache when he has reached this level.

At the 4th stage he must learn to consider the body as something wholly external to himself carrying it around the way we carry around an instrument, a hammer or some other tool. In some schools the pupils learn to speak of their body like this: ‘My body goes through the door’—and the like. In his astral vision the pupil then sees himself nailed to the cross. He has Christ's stigmata on his hands and feet and on the right side of the body. Red stigmata appear at the moment of meditation and concentration.

The 5th stage is the mystic death. Here the individual feels as if a veil was placed between him and the rest of the world, like a black curtain. He then comes to know inwardly all the badness there can be in the world. Descent into hell—that is the mystic death. A vision will then show the curtain being torn apart.

At the 6th stage one has a feeling as if everything else were one's own body. You are united with the earth. That is the entombment.

The 7th stage, resurrection, cannot be put into words. Someone who goes through those feelings in his soul gains insight into the world of the spirit.

The third kind of initiation is the Rosicrucian way. It has been known in Europe from the 14th century. It is above all concerned to strengthen and empower the inner will. Where the Oriental school puts the emphasis on thinking, and the Christian school on feeling, the Rosicrucian way aims to develop the will. The stages of this way are 1) study, 2) Imagination, 3) learning the occult script, 4) bringing rhythm into life, 5) coming to understand the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm, 6) contemplation of or entering into the macrocosm, 7) godliness.

For study, the pupil must have the patience to gain certain ideas concerning the world. He must first of all accept the teaching he is given. Thus he must, for example, devotedly study the teachings of elementary theosophy. He must try and enter as deeply into these as he can. Patient acquisition of ideas is essential for anyone who wants to reach higher levels. This calls for a specific way of training one's thinking, getting used to living and being active in the pure thinking element. Books such as The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Knowledge¹⁵⁰ have been written for those who want to achieve Rosicrucian initiation and train their minds. It is a matter of overcoming the difficulties, which many find insurmountable, of following one's thoughts and perceiving how one thought of necessity arises from another. Oriental training required strict submission to the guru. For gnostic Christian training the pupil must put the Christ at the centre of all endeavour. In Rosicrucian Christian training the teacher is by his side, his friend and counsellor.

We are more apt to take a tumble when we come to the higher regions. It is therefore important to gain inner certainty. In everyday situations life itself puts us right. It will sometimes correct our errors in terrible ways. Such correction is not given when we ascend to the higher worlds. This is why in Oriental training one must see with one's guru's eyes and feel through him. The European teacher is a counsellor. One needs the guidance of another when ascending into the higher worlds. In the astral world, perceptions are entirely different from those we have in the physical world; and in the devachanic world, too, a new world of perceptions opens up for us. The three worlds differ completely in the impressions to be gained. But one thing is the same for all of them, and that is logical thinking. This can be a reliable guide on the astral and devachanic planes. When study has taught us to think logically, we can also manage on the astral and devachanic planes. The logic of the physical plan no longer applies on the buddhi plan, however.

The 2nd stage of Rosicrucian training is Imagination. European pupils should take their time over this, for it is easy to take a tumble. Man must learn to develop a moral relationship to things. All that is transient should be seen as a simile for something that is eternal. If we look at the natural world in this way, the autumn crocus, for instance, becomes the image for us of a solitary spirit seeking to rise upwards in a melancholy way. The violet will be a symbol of something that has its existence in undemanding, calm beauty. Every stone makes us think—it is a simile for something that lies behind it. Our world thus grows richer. Things tells us of their inmost nature. One flower will then be the tear through which the earth gives expression to its pain, another the expression of joy. Looking at a grain of rice, for example, we may observe a small flame arising from it. The small flame becomes an image of what will later be the haulm growing from the grain.

At the 3rd stage a whole world of the spirit arises from all that is. The spiritual reality, the spiritual content of all things floats above them. The whole astral world becomes visible. You then find yourself as if in the waves of the ocean, feeling as if you were floating in the sea. You see the colour of a tulip lifted out of it, as it were, and realize that this is the garment of a spiritual entity. At this third stage the pupil learns the occult script. We must learn this if we truly want to live in the astral world. Thus many things are based on a spiral in this world (Fig. 4).

We see such a spiral in the Orion nebula and in the configuration of life forms. Human and animal embryos are spiral in form at an early stage. One part is an image of the physical aspect, the other part, which winds into it, of the astral. The beginning of a new stage in human history is also symbolized by a double spiral. It is the sign of Cancer in the zodiac. When ancient Atlantis had perished and the post-Atlantean period began, with the ancient Indian race, the sun rose in the sign of Cancer at the beginning of spring. Learning the occult script we gain our orientation in the astral world.

The 4th stage consists in learning the rhythm of life. The pupil is instructed to regulate his breathing in a particular way. In nature, everything goes in rhythms. Every plant will rhythmically flower at the same time. Rhythm may also be seen in the animal world. Thus an animal is only fertile at certain times of the year. In man, however, rhythm becomes chaos. Man must create a new rhythm for his life. Many people only have rhythms that are imposed on them. Generally speaking, people do not have rhythms chosen of their own free will. The Rosicrucian must see to it that his life becomes rhythmical. Rhythm is given to the breathing process according to special instructions given by the teacher.

The 5th stage is getting to know the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. A bond exists between human beings and all things around them in this world. Ordinarily this only shows itself as love between the two sexes, the feeling that the one person finds in the other exactly what is familiar and related to him, what belongs to him. Many things are due to this mysterious relationship between world and man. An example is Paracelsus' discovery of the relationships that exist between certain plants and man. Having this ability he also came to know how other substances relate to man.¹⁵¹ He called someone suffering from cholera an Arsenicus, because arsenic will evoke exactly the symptoms in a healthy person which one also sees in a case of cholera.¹⁵² One can have a personal relationship, a loving relationship with all things, one that is wholly of the spirit. This must be practised. You achieve it by following specific directions. If you think of the point that lies between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose in relation to a particular word, insight into a quite specific process in the world will come to you after some time. Thinking of the inner eye you gain knowledge of the sun's nature, of the processes that occurred when sun and earth were still one heavenly body. Another exercise makes it possible to know the moon in its spiritual aspect, or the condition of the earth 18 million years ago.

You then enter deeply into the correspondence between microcosm and macrocosm. Concentration on the point between the eyebrows and above the root of the nose you are able to penetrate into the time when the I entered into the human being. The human being then grows into the macrocosm in his conscious mind. He has to practise this for some time, growing into all things, be they far or near.

The 7th stage is that of godliness, when one grows beyond the limited bodily shell and is able to live with the macrocosm.

Pupils are instructed according to their occult status. When a pupil has gone through these stages as a real experience, he has reached the summit of insight into higher worlds.

• 148. Subba Row (Rao) (1856–1890), Indian scholar. Esoteric Writings, 2nd edition, Adyar 1931.
• 149. Karl Arnold Kortüm (1745–1828) published a treatise on the philosopher's stone in a paper called the Reichsanzeiger on 8 October 1976. Those able to read German may also see Kleeberg L. Wege und Worte 2. Aufl., Fussnote auf Seite 131. Stuttgart 1961.
• 150. Steiner R. The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity. A Philosophy of Freedom (GA 4). Tr. R. Stebbing. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1989. Steiner R. Truth and Knowledge (GA 3). Tr. R. Stebbing. West Nyack NY: Rudolf Steiner Publications 1963.
• 151. Theophrastus Bombastus von Hohenheim, called Paracelsus (1493–1541), son of a Swiss physician. Studied alchemy and chemistry at Basel, the properties of metals and minerals in mines. Later town physician at Basel, moving to Salzburg in 1541. Revolutionized old medical methods, basing himself on empiricism.
• 152. ‘It arises from this that you shall not say “that is cholera”, “that is melancholia”, but “that is Arsenicus, that is Aluminosum”; and thus also "he is of Saturn, he is of Mars”, not “he is of melancholia, he is of cholera”. Then one part is of the heavens, one part of the earth, mingled together like fire and wood, so that each may lose its name; then they are two things in one.’ From Paragranum, collected medical works in German, edited by K. Sudhoff vol. 8 p. 74. Munich 1922–23.

The secret behind the mystery of Golgotha is one of the most profound secrets in world evolution. We will need to go back through millennia in earth evolution and let occult wisdom illumine it. It is true that the things Christ Jesus has done should be understood by ordinary people, this does not go against delving more deeply into the mystery of Golgotha. For complete understanding of this, the greatest phenomenon on earth, we must, however, enter into the depths of mystery wisdom.

In this session we'll therefore be concerned with going deeply into mystery wisdom so that we may understand how such a thing as the mystery of Golgotha could happen. We need to remember that when the Christ appeared on earth something happened that truly brought a major change in human history. We'll understand this most easily if we consider the question as to who Christ Jesus really was. For the occultist, this question has two parts. We have to distinguish between the individual who lived in Palestine at that time and lived to the age of 30, and what then became of this individual.

Jesus became the Christ in his thirtieth year. In ordinary people, only small parts of the astral body, ether body and physical body have become manas, buddhi and atman,⁷¹ or spirit self, life spirit and spirit human being. Jesus of Nazareth was a third-degree chela. His bodies were thus at a high level of purification. Complete cleansing, sanctification and purification had been achieved in his astral body, ether body and physical body. When a chela has gone through these three purification stages in his three bodies he is able at a given time in his life to give up his I. In the thirtieth year, the I of Jesus left the three bodies and went over into the astral world, leaving three sanctified bodies on earth that had been hollowed out by the I, as it were, so that there was room in them for a higher spirit. The I of Jesus of Nazareth thus made the great sacrifice in his thirtieth year of offering his purified bodies to the Christ spirit. The Christ filled those three bodies. After this time we refer to him as Christ Jesus, who walked on this earth for three years and did great things in the body of Jesus.

To understand who the Christ was we must go back a long way in the evolution of the earth and of humanity. Before it became earth, the earth was the ancient Moon. This is not the same as our present moon, which is just a piece of earth that has split off. Before the earth became Moon it was Sun, and before that, Saturn. We thus have to understand that milliards of years ago a body existed in cosmic space that was ancient Saturn. A planet evolves through a number of incarnations. Before our earth was earth, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon. Let us first of all go the Sun. There the ‘fire spirits’ were at the level which human beings have reached on earth today. They did not look the way present-day human beings look, however. Those sublime spirits went through their human stage on the Sun under completely different conditions than people do on earth today. On the Moon, another group of spirits went through the human stage—the lunar pitris, Moon spirits, who are now at a higher level than human beings. In Christian esotericism they are called angeloi or angels. Man only became ‘man’ on earth. The lunar pitris are one stage higher than man, and the fire spirits above them are at a very high level of evolution.

We now come to the earth, to the condition of the Lemurian race who lived on a continent between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. Physical entities then existed on earth that were higher than today's animals and less developed than today's human beings. They created a kind of housing or case, a dwelling place. They would have grown decadent if they had not been inseminated by higher spirits. It was at that time that souls finally entered into the human physical body. Those souls then prepared what was later to become the human body. The physical housings of human bodies were on earth, and higher spirits let soul substance flow into these from the worlds of spirit. This soul principle was still connected with the worlds of spirit. It was like water, drops of which were poured into a number of vessels. The spirits who poured out the soul principle were those who had completed their human stage on the Moon, the Moon spirits. They were now one level higher than human beings and able to pour part of their essence into humanity, so that this might develop further (Fig. 1).

A relationship existed between all these souls, for they came from a community of spirits. All those who had received a drop each from a communal spirit showed great similarity. In the past, members of a tribe would have souls showing such similarity. Later it was nations, for instance the whole Egyptian, the whole Hebrew nation. They had souls that came from a common source.

The Moon spirits had given human beings the spirit self in man. This made man an I, someone with self-awareness. There was something, however, which the Moon spirits could not give, only a single, communal spirit that was even higher and had completed its human stage on the Sun was able to do this—a fire spirit. Many such fire spirits had developed on the Sun and were sublime spirits on earth. One such fire spirit was called upon to pour out his essence over the whole of humanity. A communal spirit was there for the whole earth, and this was able to pour out the element of the Sun spirits or fire spirits, the buddhi or life spirit, doing so over the whole of humanity with all its members. But in the Lemurian race and in Atlantean times human beings were not yet ripe to receive anything from this Sun spirit. Looking at the akashic record of that time one finds that strangely enough, human beings consisted of physical body, ether body, astral body and spirit self. The spirit self was, however, still very tenuous. The buddhi or life spirit was present around every individual but this could only be seen in astral space. In astral space every individual had such a buddhi surrounding; but this buddhi, being around the outside of the human being, was not yet ripe to enter into him (Fig. 2).

The whole of this fire spirit, the common source spring of all the sparks of spirit for human beings, had entered into the physical body, ether body and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth. That is the Christ, the unique divine spirit that does not exist in any other form on earth. It entered into Jesus of Nazareth so that those who felt connected with Christ Jesus were given the strength to receive the buddhi into themselves. The coming of the Christ meant that the potential began to be there for receiving the buddhi. John called this the divine creator-word. The divine creator-word is the fire spirit who poured his sparks into human beings.

The following then happened. The Moon spirits made it possible for communal tribes to exist among humanity. The Christ was a single spirit for the whole earth, so that people were united in a family that encompassed the whole earth. Before, differences had existed between people in that different Moon spirits poured out their drops over the earth. Now humanity became one through the powers that came from Christ Jesus. The principle that came to the earth with Christ Jesus is one that unites human beings.

When the Christ spoke of the day of judgement, his words were: ‘When the son of man shall come in his glory’—meaning ‘when the drops of the Christ will all have flowed into human beings, when all people have become brothers’—‘he shall say to those on his right hand, Come, you are the blessed of my father, inherit the realm prepared for you from the foundation of the world! For I was hungry and you gave me food; I was thirsty and you gave me to drink.’⁷³ There will then be no difference between people except for good and evil.

He said to his disciples: ‘Inasmuch as you have done it for one of the least of my brothers, you have done it for me.’⁷⁴ This means that Christ Jesus was referring to the time when the drops he had poured will have been received by human beings in such a way that anyone seeing another person knows that the same substance lives in both of them. The strength needed to make it at all possible for the buddhi to be called awake in human beings came from the life of the Christ on earth. We must therefore see the Christ as the spirit of community here on earth.

If we were able to look down on the earth from a distant star and do so through millennia, we would discover a moment in time when the Christ was influencing the earth in such a way that all astral matter was penetrated by the Christ. The Christ is the earth spirit, and the earth is his body. Everything that lives, sprouts and grows on earth is the Christ. He is in every grain of seed, in all trees and in everything that grows and sprouts on earth. The Christ therefore had to say, as he pointed to the bread: ‘This is my body’.⁷⁵ And he had to say of the juice of the grape—it was not fermented wine at the last supper—‘This is my blood’.⁷⁶ for the juice of the fruits of this earth is his blood. Because of this human beings also had to appear to him to be walking about on his body. He therefore also said to his disciples after the washing of the feet: ‘He who eats my bread has lifted up his heel against me.’ This must be taken literally, considering that the earth is the body of the Christ. It is exactly because he has made himself the bearer of earth evolution that a distant spirit would be able to see that more and more of his spirit is entering into human beings—the substance of Christ Jesus entering into every individual human being. In the end that spirit would see the whole earth transformed, bearing people who have been godded⁷⁷ through the Christ. Anything that has not taken part in this godding is set aside as evil. It has to wait for a later time when it may develop and become good. Before the coming of the Christ, all nations on earth had mysteries. In the mysteries it was shown what was to happen in future. The pupils went through long preparations to prepare them for entombment. The hierophant would then be able to take the pupil to a higher state of consciousness, a kind of deep sleep. In earlier times, conscious awareness always had to be suppressed if the divine was to appear in the human being. The soul would be taken through the regions of the spiritual world, and after three days the individual would be restored to life by the hierophant. He then felt himself to be a new person. He would be given a new name. He would be called a son of God.

In the mystery of Golgotha this whole process happened outwardly on the physical plane. Before, the pupils would be enlivened with a spark of the Christ spirit, and they would be told: one day there will be one who will make it possible for all human beings to be christed. That one will truly be the word become flesh. You can only know this for three days, when you'll be walking through the realms of the heavens. But there will be one who always walks through the heavenly realms, and he will take the realms of heaven with him into the physical world.

The experience which an initiate had on the astral plane was to be presented on the physical plane by the Christ. It was the experience that the divine word had been there from the beginning, pouring its drops out over human beings, though the I-people were not yet able to take it in. This is what John tells us, John who proclaimed the I-human being, who was christed, who had taken the Christ into himself. That is the meaning of the ‘word’ in John's gospel. He spoke of the word that was on the earth from the very beginning:

In the beginning was the word, and the word was with God, and the word was a god.

This was with God in the beginning.

All that exists has come into being through it, and nothing that has come into existence has done so except through it. In it was life, and life was the light of mankind. And the light shone into the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There came to be a man, sent by God, and his name was John. He came to witness, that he bear witness of the light, that all might believe through him.

He was not the light, but a witness of the light.

For the true light, that illumines all men, was to come into the world.

It was in the world, and the world came into being through it, but the world did not know it.

It came into individual human beings (it came to the I-people); but the individual human beings (the I-people) did not receive it.

Those who did receive it were able through this to reveal themselves to be children of God.

Those who believed in his name were born not of the blood, nor the will of the flesh, nor the human will, but were born of God.

And the word has become flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching of the son at one with the father, full of devotion and truth.

The word ‘devotion’ in verse 14 meant the same to John as ‘buddhi’; truth is ‘manas’, wisdom, the ‘spirit self’.

John bears witness to him, saying clearly: This was the one of whom I said: after me will come the one who was before me, for he has preceded me.

Out of his fullness we all received grace upon grace. For the law has been given through Moses, but grace and truth entered into existence through Jesus Christ.

No one has ever had sight of God. The once-born son who was within the father of the world, he has come to be the leader in this beholding.

Every initiation into the mysteries of the spirit pointed to this coming of the Christ. This initiation was given in the yoga sleep, the Orphic sleep, the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke again in his body, when he was able to hear and speak again, using physical senses, he said the words which in Hebrew were ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ meaning 'my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!'

That was the initiation known in ancient Judaism. The initiate would be in the higher worlds for three days and experience the whole progress of future human evolution, what was to come for him in human evolution. In the perceptions he had during the three days, the future stages for humanity were not as a rule seen in abstract form but every stage was represented by an individual. The initiate would perceive twelve people. They represented the twelve stages of inner development. Powers of soul thus appeared before him in the form of human individuals. At a given moment the initiate would see a particular scene. He would see his own individual nature taken to the stage where the whole of humanity is filled with buddhi, meaning that it will be christed. He would see himself in the God, with the powers of soul ranged behind. Immediately behind him stood John, the final figure who indicates that he had reached completion. He would see himself transfigured in a state he would achieve when he had reached completion; his powers of soul personified, with John the final stage of completion, proclaiming the Christ stage. In the yoga sleep those twelve figures would then make a group, gathering for the "mystic communion, as it was called. This would be as follows. The human being sitting surrounded by the powers of soul would say to himself: these are at one with me; they have taken me through earth evolution. I have walked with the feet of these apostles. The communion meal means that the twelve powers of soul are at one with the human being.

Completion or perfection is reached when the lower soul qualities drop away and only the higher ones remain. Humanity will no longer have those lower powers in time to come, an example being the power of reproduction. John's very power of soul will have brought it about that those powers are then lifted up into the loving heart. Rivers of spiritual love will flow from it. When the Christ is in us, the heart is the organ which is most powerful in us. The lower power of soul will then have been raised from the lower abdomen to the heart. Every initiate experienced this as the mystery of the heart. It came to expression in the words ‘my God, my God, how you have raised me up high!’

With the coming of Christ Jesus, the whole mystery, the whole experience, was brought to realization in the physical plane. Brotherhoods existed in Palestine at that time that had evolved from the old Essene order. They would have such a communion meal as a symbol for the mystic last supper. The term ‘to eat the Easter lamb’ is a general term for what happened at Easter. Jesus sat down at table with the twelve and instituted the communion meal with the words: ‘At the end of earth evolution all people will have received what I have brought to the earth; then this will be true: this is my body, this is my blood.’ He then said: ‘One of you will betray me.’⁷⁸ Egotism, lower desire, is the betrayer. The disciple whom the Lord loved knew this, for he lay against his lap. For as long as this power is there, it will kill—sexual reproduction and death are mutually conditional. This power which now lies in the sexual element ascends higher in the body—to the heart. The disciple shows this in the gospel by moving up to the heart. Just as it is certain that it is lower desire which is the betrayer, so it is certain that the lower power of soul is raised higher. ‘One of the disciples lay in the lap of Jesus—he then lay against the breast of Jesus.’⁷⁹ This signified that all the lower powers, all egotism, had been raised to the heart. Jesus then repeated the words ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’ for his disciples. ‘Now the son of man has been glorified and God glorified in him.’

What happened in the mysteries was the same as what later happened on Golgotha. Under the cross stood the disciple whom the Lord loved, who had lain in his lap at the last supper and has been raised to the breast. The female figures, his mother, his mother's sister Mary and Mary Magdalene, were also there. It does not say in John's gospel that the mother of Jesus was called Mary but that his mother's sister was called Mary. His mother was called Sophia.

John baptized Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove came down from heaven. That was a moment of spiritual insemination. The mother of Jesus who was inseminated here—who is she? The chela Jesus of Nazareth, divesting himself of his I at this moment, the highly developed manas, was inseminated, with the buddhi entering. The highly developed manas which received the buddhi was wisdom, Sophia, the mother, who was inseminated by Jesus' father. The name Mary, the same as Maya, is the name of ‘mother’ in general. In the Bible we read: The angel came to her and said: ‘Hail to you, sweetest one. Behold you will be fruitful and bear a son. The holy spirit shall come upon you and the power of the highest shall overshadow you.’⁸⁰ The holy ghost is the father of Jesus; the dove that flew down inseminated the Sophia who was in Jesus.

The text should thus be read to say: ‘By the cross stood Sophia, the mother of Jesus.’ He spoke to this mother, saying: ‘Woman, this is your son.’ He had himself transferred the Sophia who had been in him to John. He made him the son of Sophia, saying: ‘This is your mother.’ ‘From now on you must acknowledge divine wisdom to be your mother and dedicate yourself solely to her.’ What John has written was this divine wisdom, Sophia, embodied in the gospel of John itself. He received the knowledge from Jesus himself, and was authorized by the Christ to transfer the wisdom to the earth.

The greatest spirit on earth had to be incarnated in a body. This body had to die, to be killed, the blood had to flow. This means something special. Wherever the blood is, there is the self. If all the old self-communities were to end, then selfhood, which has its seat in the blood, had to be sacrificed on one occasion. All individual egotisms flowed away with the blood of Christ on the cross. The blood of tribal communities became the blood of all humanity when the blood of Christ was sacrificed at that time.

Then again something happened which an astral observer would have noted in the astral atmosphere. The earth's whole astral atmosphere changed at the moment when he died, and events were possible that would never have been possible before. Sudden initiation—like that of Paul—would never have been possible before. It has become possible because with the flowing of Christ's blood the whole of humanity became a communal self. At that time the self flowed from the blood of Jesus' wounds. Only the three bodies remained on the cross and were later given new life by the risen Christ. At the moment when the Christ left the body, the three bodies were so strong that they were themselves able to say the words which the transfigured human being would speak after his initiation: ‘Eli, Eli, lama sabachthani!’

Those words would have shown all those who knew something of the mystery wisdom that this was a mystery. A minor change made to the Hebrew text has given us the words we read in the Bible: ‘Eli, Eli, lama asabthani!’ This means: ‘My God, my God, why have you forsaken me’

• 71. These are oriental terms also used in theosophy. Current reference works do not use capital initial letters, and I have followed this, since it feels right to keep capitalization for proper nouns and adjectives derived from them. The reference works also consistently give ‘atman’ rather than ‘atma’, which may be similar to the problem we have with 'mantra' and ‘mantram’. Main reference works consulted: Microsoft Bookshelf 1995; The Cambridge Encylopedia, Cambridge University Press 1990; G. de Purucker, Occult Glossary, Pasadena CA: Theosophical University Press 1972. Translator.
• 72. See Steiner R. The God of the Alpha and the God of the Omega (in GA 109), lecture given in Berlin on 25 May 1909. Tr. D. Osmond. Anthroposophical Quarterly 1962. The term ‘the last of the Zarathustras’ means, according to Rudolf Steiner, that this was the last of a number of incarnations for an individual who always bore the name Zarathustra.
• 73. Matthew 25: 31, 34-5.
• 74. Matthew 25: 40.
• 75. Matthew 26: 26.
• 76. Matthew 26: 28.
• 77. Word creations by Rudolf Steiner.—Translator
• 78. John 13: 21
• 79. John 13: 23, 35. The Luther translation uses ‘on the breast’ in both verses, the King James version has ‘bosom’ in verse 23, and 'breast' in verse 25. The Greek original has ‘ἐν τῷ κόλπῳ’ in verse 23 and ‘ἀναπεσὼν ἐκεῖνος οὕτως ἐπὶ τὸ στῆθος τοῦ Ἰησοῦ’.
  Translator's comment. The Greek κόλπῳ (kolpōs) has a number of meanings, including ‘gulf, bay’, and basically refers to something that bulges out into something else. We know from Homer's Greek that it referred to a fold of the overgarment people wore that would hang over the belt, being thus between chest and belt. It was widely used as a kind of pouch in which to keep things. One can thus see how confusion may arise. Ref. Bauers Wörterbuch zum Neuen Testament.
• 80. Luke 1:28,31,35

We can see that the world we encounter, the world in which we live, has three aspects—firstly the way it shows itself to us outwardly, secondly the way we inwardly experience it, and thirdly the way it is inside itself.

Our sense organs convey to us the aspect in which the world shows itself to us outwardly, the world of shapes and forms in inorganic nature, the mineral world; in living nature, the plant world; in sentient nature, the animal world, and in thinking nature, the human world. It comes to us from outside as a world of sensory perceptions, and we take in this world of phenomena, of perceptions, through our sense organs. Our sense organs are the gates through which the outside world with its forms has access to us. If we did not have our sense organs, the world of forms would be forever a secret to us, something hidden; it would not exist for us. People might tell us of it, giving descriptions that we could at least partly understand. But for as long as we would lack sense organs, we would never be able to have a true idea of the outside world with its shapes and forms. All the things we now take in by seeing, hearing, touching, tasting and smelling them would not exist for us in that case. The outside world would remain shrouded in darkness for us and we could only have a dim notion of it, getting an approximate but never a true picture of it from the descriptions given by those who knew it. This world of forms would have remained forever hidden to human beings if their senses had not opened up to take it in. The senses had to open up so that human beings might have access to this outside world.

Awareness of the world perceptible to the senses is an evolutional stage humanity did not know before. There was a time when human sense organs had not yet opened up to the outside world. Human beings were then unable to perceive the world of shape and form; they were unable to perceive anything outside; they still lived entirely within themselves, closed off from the world. The inner life they knew then is something we still have as our life of inner responses today.

In this inner life we now find the second aspect of the world. Inner responses arise to anything the senses perceive of the forms in the outside world. Just as we perceive the outside world through the senses, so we respond in our souls to the impressions that world makes on us. This inner world of our own will come to conscious awareness to the degree in which the soul and its organs have developed. The more highly developed a person is, the more does he also feel this outside world to be an inner world in his soul; the more he has developed the organs of his soul, the richer will be the images of it that arise within him, and the greater will be the order and harmony in which they exist within him. To make the outside world wholly his own, a human being must have a strong soul that is differentiated and configured to be harmonious, a fully developed soul organism. The more rich and varied the inner life someone has developed, the more will the outside world appear in it in many different images, full of variety. The greater the harmony in his soul, the more beautiful will be the way the outside world is reflected in his soul. The outside world then enters wholly into the soul, to be a beautiful, harmonious whole full of life and variety.

In their waking consciousness, human beings concentrate mainly on the outside world, and the responses they feel inwardly are chaotic to begin with. They must learn to bring order into these chaotic responses and regulate them, establish a conscious relationship to the outside world and make them into a harmonious whole. They must learn to gain control of this inner world, for only then will it become their very own world in which they are able to live consciously and according to their own will. Human beings enter into this inner world of theirs in their dreams. They are then removed from the world perceived by the senses and given over to the chaotic whirl of the inner responses that arise in images before the mind's eye. Those dream images become more regular and meaningful as they are able to bring order into their inner responses.

This inner world which has arisen in their souls is the aspect of the outside world as they feel it to be. It differs from the aspect in which the outside world presents itself to their senses.

There is however yet another aspect, and that is the aspect of the world as it really is. It is the aspect of the full reality of the world, as it is inwardly. Human beings gain this aspect if they continue on the road on which they have set out. When clear sensory perceptions have met with inner responses, and these responses have been brought into harmonious order and a beautiful rhythm, these will take human beings out into the world again. They build a bridge between their souls and the world, and as the world pours into them through the senses, so do then their souls pour out into the world because they are thinking about the world. They pour their inner responses into their thoughts, and those thoughts enter into the outside world. This completes the link between world and man and between man and world.

The world is outside, the response inside the human being; the thought is in both. In their thinking, human beings become wholly at one with the world. For the world's thinking and their own thinking are a whole. Human beings thus root in outward existence perceived through the senses. They grow by receiving impressions from the world of the senses which become inner responses, images in the soul, gain rhythms and go through transformations in their inner life. They flower when they read, when they sense the world's thought in those images, and this thought lets new flowers arise in every thinking human being.

Human beings all root in one and the same soil of the physical worlds of forms perceived through the senses. It is the same world for all of them, the same soil in which they all grow. And every single human individual draws the energies he needs to develop in his own way from that soil. Individual human beings are many trunks of different kinds that grow from the one soil and take up the energies they need from that one soil to work with them in their own inner life. But up above, where the thoughts come into flower, in the world of thought, all are one great whole, a marvellous swaying, rippling sea of flowers, each flower reflecting the great world-thinking that is one and the same, and each complementing the other, taking its place as a link in the chain, a jewel in a crown of jewels, a wave in the world ocean of thought.

Below, a whole—the physical world. Above, a whole—the world of the spirit. Between them transformation of the lower into the upper in many individuals―the soul world.

The physical world out there is a reflection of the world of the spirit because it is one. The world of the human soul is a reflection of the world of the spirit because it is rich and varied. The whole great world out there becomes a special small world in every human soul, and in emerging from all human souls in thought it once again becomes a great whole. That is how the road goes from the cosmos through the microcosm, to arise as a new, perfected cosmos out of the totality of microcosms.