The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When we speak of prayer in the Christian sense we have to understand above all that prayer is really nothing else but to enter deeply, giving oneself up, into the divine. In the great religions where people seek to achieve this giving up of self more by entering into deep thought, people speak of meditation; in religions where the devotion comes from the heart more than the head, more from the personal sphere, it is called prayer. In the Christian religion this devotion has gained personal character; in the old religions it was more unconscious and impersonal. People knew thousands of years ago that there is an eternal, divine principle. Example of slave who said to himself: One life of many. People of those times therefore had hope in life, courage, strength and certainty. It was a kind of looking out from life in time to life eternal. A time had to come, however, when the human being looked up to his god in a personal way. Exoteric Christian teaching is that a tremendous amount depends on the individual person who went from birth to death. This is also why meditation assumed the more personal aspect of prayer. But we should not forget that in the Christian faith there is an exemplary prayer: ‘Father, if it can be done, let this cup pass away from me, but not my will but your will be done.’¹⁰³

If you develop this mood, you have a Christian prayer. A prayer in which someone asks things for himself his personal affairs, is not a Christian prayer. You may have two armies about to do battle, with both praying for victory. Two farmers, one asking for rain, the other for sunshine. What is the god supposed to do? True Christian prayer has nothing to do with such personal wishes and desires. The personal prayer, the true prayer, may also include personal petitions, but the guiding principle must be: Not my will but your will be done. This exemplary Christian prayer of Christ Jesus, the Lord, thus gives the mood which prayer should have. There are many Christian prayers, but the Lord's Prayer, the prayer of prayers, is the one of which we can say that there is hardly anything else in the world that contains so much and such important things as this Lord's Prayer. And we then remember how Christ Jesus introduced this prayer. ‘Go into seclusion to say your prayers’, he said.¹⁰⁴

Everywhere, in all religions, you have formulas for meditation and magic formulas. Such magic formulas are of the same significance for meditation as actual meditations. People sought to give themselves up to their god in meditation with them, and they also wanted to give themselves up to their god by practising magic. Christ Jesus warned, however: ‘Do not pray for the things that happen in the streets; go deep down into your innermost being when you pray.’ Something of the divine nature lives in human beings, a drop of the divine spirit, and it is the same in substance as the godhead. The ocean as a whole and the drop of water are also the same in substance.

And so let us consider the universe and man in the way in which it was customary in the earliest esoteric schools. We'll go back to the time when the human bodies that were in the process of preparation were waiting, as it were, for the divine seed, the human soul coming down from the godhead. At that time the world was populated by plants and other things, including animal-human bodies. Man as he is today did not yet exist. The souls were gradually preparing the present-day body for themselves. A spiritual fluid was all around the earth. And now imagine someone taking a hundred tiny sponges and taking up a drop of the fluid in each. You now have a drop of the divine in each. Before, souls had been in the ocean of the godhead, now they were incarnated drops. Those souls were still very imperfect when they thus incarnated for the first time, but they already held the potential for man's higher nature—atman, buddhi, manas—which was to unfold and develop in life on earth. The animal-human being already had the four lower members at the time, but it needed the soul to transform them so that atman, buddhi and manas might arise.

Let us now consider this process of evolution esoterically, taking two points of view. Firstly, man grows increasingly more divine in atman, buddhi and manas; secondly, the drop of godhead is in him.

Let us first of all consider higher man in his divine aspect. In the Christian schools it was taught that one should first consider the highest aspect of the divine spirit; man would have risen to this when he came to the end of his evolution. Atman, the will, is this highest principle, will-like by nature. When man has reached perfection, his will shall be his greatest power. The will must then flow out from him. Every resolution made in the will shall immediately become action. Our atman is will-like by nature. In atman, the godhead first of all let its will flow into us. The divine will lives in us and in all things.

The second higher principle in us is the buddhi. Streaming down into man, the godhead goes from atman to buddhi. How does the divine will work? We can only gain understanding by considering the concept of offering or sacrifice. Imagine you are looking into a mirror. You see your own figure. This figure is similar to you. Now imagine a creative will in you. You would then have given everything you have, all of your life, all of your essential being to the image. You would then live in this image. This is how you may think of the creative sacrifice of the divine will. The divine will is not merely reflected in things, in the images, but sacrifices everything, putting it into them, and you so have the sacrificed divine will in the whole of cosmic space. A Christian thus sees a mirror image of the godhead, the divine will, in everything that exists in this world. You have the sacrificed godhead in the cosmic space, and this mirror image of the godhead was called the ‘kingdom’ in esoteric Christian terminology. The divine will multiplied millions of times and reflected again―that is what the ‘kingdom’ was to them. The creative atman, the buddhi living in us, the creative spirit in the world—that was the ‘kingdom’.

Look up now to see the part of the godhead that lives in the cosmos in its mirror image. This is able to identify the individual entity by its ‘name’ which is the manas, the spirit self, in us, it is our ‘name’. Manas is the name in us and in every single thing outside us. The name of every single thing was thus hallowed to man. And the pupil would be told: ‘You must clearly understand that when you eat a bite of bread that this, too, is something in which the godhead lies and it shall therefore be hallowed to you.’

In so far as our name is in God, it is manas, the name. Our buddhi thus is the kingdom. In our atman lives the divine will. These three are the divine elements in man. Man received these divine elements as part of his essential being, and in the world outside they are called name, kingdom and will.

And now, you see, the Christ wanted to teach his disciples by saying to them: the godhead was called the father, and the divine principle heaven. Union with the divine was only possible in that this divine principle now gave itself up to the three higher elements in man.

What does a Christian have to say, to bring this to expression?

Our father, who are in the heavens,
hallowed be your name,
your kingdom come,
your will be done on earth
as it is in the heavens.

The first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer thus speak in a quite specific way of man's three higher principles. These first three petitions have arisen from the higher spiritual nature of man.

Let us now consider the four lower members of man in esoteric terms—physical body, ether body, astral body and I.

The physical body is the one man has in common with all minerals, with physical matter and forces going in and out day by day. To develop his physical body, man must plead to be given the physical matter which is out there in the physical world. We have our ether body in common with all the people around us. The astral body is something more personal.

In the ether body we have things that are held in common in every family, in every nation. You belong more to a genus, a species, because you have an ether body. You are more of an individual because you have an astral body. You are a problem to the ether bodies around you if you are not in harmony with them, and this was called ‘trespass’ or ‘fault’ something we do to others with our ether body. But we also suffered harm ourselves because of this. Trespass is thus connected with the ether or life body. You commit a fault against someone near to you by injuring or damaging his ether body or life body. Take care not to do this, for only then will your own faults be forgiven.

What makes the astral body thrive? When the individual deviates from the true way he falls into temptation. The astral body is subject to temptation. Every way in which the individual sins is temptation.

The I is the fount of human independence but also of egotism, of selfishness. In this respect the I is the ‘evil’, which is the symbol for this. Malum is Latin for both ‘apple’ and ‘evil’. The Fall is the evil, the failing that arises from egotism.

When a Christian wants to ask that his four lower members may make good progress he will say, speaking for these entities:

Give us today our daily bread
and forgive us our trespasses
as we forgive those who trespass against us,
and lead us not into temptation
but deliver us from evil.

These are the other four petitions in the Lord's Prayer.

These were the petitions Christians were instructed in the esoteric schools to ask, they are the four formulas for the four lower members of the human being. Consider the last four petitions in the Lord's Prayer with reference to man's lower nature, and you find you have four petitions for the lower members, just as you have the first three petitions for the higher principles of man. The seven petitions in the Lord's Prayer thus contain the doctrine of the sevenfold nature of man, as taught in the science of the spirit.

In all the great religions there is not a prayer, a formula that has not been taken from the whole profound world wisdom. These prayers have their profound effect for the very reason that they have been born from this. It is thanks to the original wisdom of the world that the great religions have had an influence through thousands of years.

The father stands for the original essence of the world. It cannot be put more beautifully than it has been put in the Lord's Prayer. Because of this the Lord's Prayer touches human hearts and has great strength. You can't say simple people know nothing of this wisdom. They gain just as much from it. It is the same as when they take delight in flowers, having no idea of the wisdom that has created them. And so their souls may take delight in the Lord's Prayer without grasping its wisdom. The knowledge that lives in the prayer may not be grasped, but it can give people this strength. Those who gave the prayers to humanity, took them out of the most profound wisdom; hence the power of the great cosmic prayer. It is the secret of these prayers that they were taken from original wisdom by initiates and the founders of religions.

Now the time has come when people must know the deeper meaning of these prayers. We should say the Lord's Prayer daily. Everything we need to know about the nature of man is in that prayer. And by doing so, a person would receive what theosophical wisdom has to say about the nature of man.

The esotericism of the school created by Paul the Apostle was profound. Outside, Christianity was presented in an exoteric way. Dionysius the Areopagite was asked by Paul to take care of this esoteric wisdom. And so the realm of the spirit was envisaged with the dominions, principalities and powers, and people said to themselves: if we live the way the Lord's Prayer demands, we rise through dominions, principalities and powers all the way to the cherubim and seraphim and to the godhead itself in the Lord's Prayer.

This gives you the three stages: ‘For yours is the kingdom and the power and the glory’, three stages in the realm of the spirit.

It is difficult to speak particularly about the Amen. All I can say is that it is an ancient formula that has become a bit mutilated.

We have seen, therefore, in how far the Lord's Prayer with the powerful effect it has on the human soul represents the doctrine of the sevenfold nature of man. This makes it the most effective prayer. This rhythm which is touched on in the soul came to the awareness of people who had the esoteric knowledge that a Christian who has said the Lord's Prayer has prayed human theosophy, has lived in the prayer. This theosophy is nothing new; it is something that lives in all hearts and is grasped in the spirit so that the light of understanding may extend to the divine realm. If this happens in human hearts and souls, people will find the way to the greatest heights of the spirit which they are capable of reaching.

• 103. Matthew 26: 39.
• 104. Matthew 6: 6.

The spiritual science movement has not developed in our time as the wilful action of an individual or of someone or other. It has to do with the whole of human evolution and as such must be considered to be one of the most important cultural impulses. To gain insight into this mission of the spiritual science movement we need to enter into the past and future life of humanity. Individuals have gone through a process of evolution from the time when they first came down out of the keeping of the godhead and became individual souls, and humanity as a whole has also gone through a process of evolution.

Just consider the differences, the changes and development to be seen in the earth's surface through the millennia—how thoroughly everything has changed. ‘Humanity’, as we are wont to call it, is only the outcome of the ‘fifth root race’, as it is called. A different, earlier humanity preceding it was the fourth root race whose continent, Atlantis, lay somewhere between present-day Europe and America. Our forebears on Atlantis looked very different. They also had a completely different civilization. The ancient Atlanteans did not have a fully developed rational mind and way of thinking but were instead provided with subtle, somnambulant clairvoyant powers. Logic, rational thinking capable of making connections, science and art as we know them today did not exist in ancient Atlantis, for human beings then had a very different way of forming ideas, thinking and feeling. They would not have been able to make connections, calculate, count or read the way we do today. But somnambulant clairvoyant powers of the spirit lived in them. They were able to understand the language of nature, what God said to them in the lapping of the waves, what the woods were murmuring, and what the subtle scents of flowers brought to expression. They understood this language of nature and were in harmony with all nature. No legislation, no jurisdiction then served to make neighbour communicate with neighbour. No, the Atlanteans would go outside and listen to the sounds of the trees and the wind and they would tell them what they should do.

The memory of ancient Atlantis or Niflheim [home of mists] has survived most beautifully in folk legends such as the Nibelungenlied¹⁰⁵ which have never been works of fiction produced at random. The word Nibel or Nifl indicates that the Rhine and all the rivers in the area are waters remaining from the masses of mists in ancient Atlantis. The wisdom that has survived from Atlantis is referred to as the treasure that lies hidden in the waters. We must also look for the nursery of the ancient adepts in that continent. Individuals went there who had the abilities needed to become pupils of the great minds we now call the ‘masters of wisdom and of the harmony of inner feelings’.¹⁰⁶

The location of the adept school, which had its flowering during the fourth sub-race on ancient Atlantis, must be sought in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. Pupils were taught in a very different way there than they are today. It was then possible to have a tremendous influence go from one human being to the other with the power that still lay in words at that time. Today, a little bit of feeling for the inner, spiritual, occult power of words still survives among the people. You simply cannot compare the power words have today with the power they had at that time. It was something quite tremendous. The word in itself would awaken powers in the pupil's soul. A mantra such as we have it today does not have anything like the power which words had at that time, when they were not so full of thoughts. Powers of soul would arise in the pupil under the influence of those words. We might call it human initiation through the language of nature, with tremendous power. A definite language was then also spoken by burning substances such as incense.

The connection between the teacher's and the pupil's soul was much more direct in that place. Any written signs existing at the adept school of ancient Atlantis imitated natural processes. They were drawn in the air with the hand, and had an effect, also a lasting effect, on the mind and spirit of the people at that time. They would awaken powers in the soul.

Every race thus has its mission in human evolution. The mission of our own, the fifth main or root race, is to bring the manas element into the four elements of human nature, that is to awaken insight and understanding by means of concepts and ideas. Every race has its mission. The mission of the Atlantean race was to develop the I. Our own, the fifth root race of the post- Atlantean period, has to develop manas, the spirit self.

The achievements of Atlantis did not perish with it. The most important elements of everything that existed in the adepts' nursery was kept by a small core group of people when they left. This small group, guided by Manu, went into the area where the Gobi desert is today. There they recreated the earlier civilization and teaching, but now more for the thinking mind. The earlier powers of spirit were transformed into thoughts and signs. From there, from this centre, the different lines of civilization then went out like radii, like rays. First of all the wonderful, most ancient pre-Vedic civilization, where the wisdom that came streaming in was for the first time transformed into thoughts.

The second civilization to arise from the ancient adept school was the most ancient Persian civilization. The third was the Chaldean and Babylonian civilization with its wonderful star wisdom, the magnificent knowledge its priests had. The fourth civilization to come into flower was the Graeco-Latin with its personal colouring, and finally our own developed as the fifth. We are moving towards the sixth and seventh. I have thus identified our mission in human evolution. It is to transform into thoughts, to bring right down to the physical plane, the cosmic wisdom which has existed as such until now.

When an ancient Atlantean listened for the note that lay between the sounds he could hear around him, he would hear the name of something he had perceived to be the divine: Tao. In the Egyptian mysteries this note was transformed into thoughts, writings, signs—the Tao sign, the Tao books. Everything that exists as knowledge, writings, thought only came into the world in post-Atlantean times. It could not have been written down before, for it would have been beyond human understanding. We are now in the middle of manas development. Our race works to take cultivation of the intellect, and at the same time also of egotism, to its extremes. We may certainly say, even if it does sound grotesque: ‘There has never been so much power of understanding and so little inner vision in the world as there is now.’ Thought is furthest away from the inner essence of things, far removed from inner spiritual vision.

When a priest on Atlantis wrote signs in the air, the effect of this would above all be an inner experience in the pupil's soul. In the fourth, the GraecoLatin period, the personal aspect was more to the fore. The Greeks developed personal art. In Rome, the personal element came into government affairs and so on. In our time we live with egotism, a dry personal element, a dry intellect. It is, however, our mission to grasp the occult in the purest thought element. Grasping the spiritual in this, the finest distillate of the brain, is the true mission of our age. To make this thought so powerful that it will have something of an occult power—that is the task we have been given so that we may do what is needed for the future.

Massive fires destroyed ancient Lemuria, massive floods ancient Atlantis. Our own civilization will also perish, and this will be through the war of all against all—this lies before us. Our fifth root race will perish because of egotism taken to its extreme. But a small group of people will out of the power of thought develop the power of buddhi, life spirit, and take it on into the new civilization. Everything that is productive in the human being will grow and grow until his individual nature has risen far enough to reach the summit of freedom. Every individual will have to find a kind of guiding spirit in his inmost soul in our time, buddhi, the power of the life spirit. If we were to go into the future being able to take in civilization impulses only the way it has been done in earlier times, we would move towards humanity shattering into fragments.

What is it that we have in our present age? Each wants to be his own master. Egotism, selfishness is going to extremes. A time is coming when no authority will be accepted other than authority people are able to accept of their own free will, so that its power will base on freely given trust. The mysteries based on the power of the spirit are called ‘mysteries of the spirit’. The future mysteries built on a basis of trust, on the power of trust, are called ‘mysteries of the father’. We bring our civilization to its conclusion with them. This new impulse, the power of trust, must come, otherwise we shall shatter into fragments and shall have a general ego-based and egotistical civilization.

In the times of the mystery of the spirit, based on a power, authority and might of the spirit that did have its justification, individual great sages had wisdom in their possession. They could only initiate people who had gone through severe trials. We are now moving towards a future that will hold the mysteries of the father and have to make every effort to see that every individual is wise. Will this help against egotism and being shattered? Yes! For human beings can only be united if they gain the greatest wisdom, a wisdom in which there are no personal vagaries, opinions or standpoints but one common view. If people were to continue in the way of being different, having points of view, and so on, they would again and again go their separate ways. The most sublime wisdom, however, always creates the same view for all people. True wisdom is one wisdom that brings all people together again in the greatest possible freedom, with no coercion or authority. As the members of the great white brotherhood¹⁰⁷ are always in harmony among themselves and with humanity, so will all human beings be united in this wisdom at a future time. This wisdom alone will create the true idea of brotherhood. The mission of the science of the spirit therefore need be no more than to guide humanity towards this idea, now in the unfolding of the spirit self, later of the life spirit. The great goal of the spiritual science movement is to make it possible for human beings to be free and truly wise. Its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into human beings.

In the modern movement for a science of the spirit, one began with the most elementary teaching. Much that is important has been unveiled in the years since the movement started, and even more important things will be gradually unveiled. The work of the movement is therefore to let the wisdom of the great white brotherhood that had its origin in Atlantis flow out gradually. Such work has always been preceded by a long period of preparation. The great and unique event of the coming of Christ Jesus was thus prepared for by all the work of the founders of religions—Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras. All their teaching had the same goal—to let wisdom come to human beings, though always in the form most appropriate for the people concerned. And it is not what the Christ said that was really new. The really new thing that came with the coming and teaching of Christ Jesus was that Christ Jesus had the power to bring to life everything which until then had only been teaching.

Through Christianity, humanity has gained the power that all may be united in acknowledging the authority of Christ Jesus and yet be utterly individual, and that human beings can unite and be brothers in their faith in Christ Jesus, his coming, his divinity. Between the mysteries of the spirit and those of the father we thus have the mysteries of the son, with the school of St Paul its planting site, the school put in the care of Dionysius the Areopagite. The school had its flowering under him, for Dionysius taught those mysteries in a very special way, whilst Paul spread the teaching exoterically.

Let us now provide an explanation from another direction, so that we may understand what it means to say: the mysteries of the father are coming. The teachers of the ancient Atlantean adept school were not human beings but spirits higher than man. They had completed their development on earlier planets. And these teachers, coming from ancient planetary evolutions, taught the mysteries of the spirit to a small select band. In the mysteries of the son, Christ Jesus himself would appear as the teacher on special occasions. He, too, was a teacher who was not human but a god. It will not be until we have the mysteries of the father that the teachers will be humans. Individuals who have developed faster than the rest of humanity will be the true masters of wisdom and of harmony. They will be called the fathers. In the mysteries of the father, therefore, the guidance of humanity will be no longer in the hands of spirits who have come down from other worlds, but in the hands of human beings themselves. This is the important point.

To prepare people to be a core group for this goal, to prepare them for a common wisdom, for authority based on trust, and to develop understanding, initially for a small core group of people—that is the mission of the science of the spirit. The evolution of material civilization reached its high point in the 19th century. This was the time when the science of the spirit first came into the world. A counter impulse to materialism, going in the opposite direction, toward the spirit, was created by this means and therefore existed. The science of the spirit is nothing new, nor the spiritual scientific movement—it merely continues what was there before. Materialism, egotism cause humanity to shatter into fragments, with individuals seeing only their own interests. Wisdom must bring human beings together again who have been separated by this. In utter freedom, with no coercion, people are brought together in wisdom. That is the mission of the spiritual scientific movement in our time. We must clearly understand that we need to gain wisdom in very real terms. We all know the story of the stove whose mission it is to get the room warm. We may present this to the stove in the most moving words, asking it to get the room warm, but it will not do so. It is only if we turn it on that it can fulfil its mission. And so there is little point in just talking about brotherhood and love of one another. Insight alone will take us closer to our goal. For every individual and for humanity as a whole, the road to wisdom, to brotherhood, can only be found through insight.

We have now considered this road, going through three kinds of mysteries. Science of the spirit must make it possible for a small core group of people to understand what has been said, so that understanding may come alive in the masses in the sixth race. This is the mission which the science of the spirit must accomplish. A small part of the fifth root race will anticipate evolution; it will spiritualize manas and unfold the spirit self. The greater part, however, will reach the summit of selfishness. The core group which develops the spirit self will be the seed for the sixth root race, and the ones who are most advanced among them, the masters who have come from the ranks of humanity, as we call them, will then guide the human race. This is the goal of the movement for spiritual insight.

• 105. Middle High German epic poem from the early 13th century, based on the legends of Siegfried and the Burgundian kings.
• 106. Rudolf Steiner was referring to highly evolved individuals who are of the greatest possible importance to humanity. 'These sublime entities have already followed the path which the rest of humanity still has before it. They now work as the great 'teachers of wisdom and of the harmony of man's inner feelings/ (From a letter to a member, Berlin 2 January 1905). See also Rudolf Steiner/Marie von Sivers Correspondence and Documents 1901–1925 (GA 262). Tr. C. von Arnim. London and New York: AP & RSP 1988.
• 107. In one set of lecture notes it says ‘of the white lodge’.

The truths of religious documents come from the depths of wisdom. Many people will say, however: ‘You give us something complicated; we want the gospel to be simple and naive. Great truths should not be complicated.’ In a way they are right, but not only simple but also wisdom-filled thinking must be able to find the most sublime truths. The point of view from which we consider these things cannot be high enough. In future we must let go more and more of the desire for ease and enter into the most profound insights with great seriousness.

Today we want to gain understanding of the promised spirit of truth. These words concern a secret initiation.

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments,’ the Christ said. ‘Love’ here refers to the trust that exists between teacher and pupils in an esoteric relationship. The most profound secrets of the soul are passed from one individual to another, in a most intimate way. The words of the Bible we want to consider today are:

‘Do not let your hearts be troubled! You believe in god, you also believe in me. There are many rooms in my father's house ...’

‘If you love me, you will keep my commandments. And I will ask this father and he will give you another counsellor to be with you in all eternity—the spirit of truth whom the world has not the power to receive; for it does not see him and does not recognize him. You, however, recognize him; for he remains with you and shall be in you.’

‘He who has my commandments and keeps them is the one who loves me. And someone who loves me shall be loved by my father, and I shall love him and make myself apparent to him. Judas, not Iscariot, said to him: Lord, what has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world? Jesus answered and said to him: Someone who loves me will keep my word; and my father shall love him, and we shall go to him and make our abode with him.’¹⁰⁸

‘Father’—that is the inmost power of soul. It is to be revealed to the close disciples. Judas asked: ‘What has happened, that you will reveal yourself to us and not to the world?’ Judas thus said openly that something was to be revealed to the close disciples.

Jesus said: ‘We shall make our abode with the father.’ This was the most important part of the pouring out of the spirit that began with the words: ‘Do not let your hearts be troubled!’ The Christ was going to prepare the abode for his close disciples: In my father's house there are many dwelling places.’

Let us gain insight into these words. The degree of conscious awareness which man has gained will never be lost again. One has to get out of the habit of any other idea. ‘Giving oneself up to the cosmic mind’ often means people wallowing in this, believing this to be redemption. There is no such cosmic mind and there never will be. The ability to say ‘I’ is now achieved by man. The the more he says ‘I’ and works out of the I to purify his three lower bodies—the astral body, ether body and physical body—the more strongly will he develop his I and develop into the future. A human being can thus become consciously selfless, because he wills it. The time will come when all human beings will have reached the summit of I-development. And yet they can selflessly take up the spirit of the community. We are sitting in this room together, and the common spirit in it is like a point from which everything radiates out together. But this common spirit may also radiate freely from every individual heart and move through this room. Let us remember how the godhead is reflected in the world. It has made the sacrifice and poured all its life into its mirror image. Let us now imagine that we, too, can pour our life into countless mirror images, so that each individual mirror image would say: I and my origin are one. That is how all human beings once came forth from the keeping of the godhead like mirror images of the godhead. They finally become empty ‘I’s, with astral body, ether body and physical body transformed, and they enter into the world of the spirit and utter the deepest secret of their being: ‘I and my father are one!’¹⁰⁹ The animal-humans of Lemurian times could never become spiritual by themselves, but only by taking up the divine droplets. At the end of their evolution, cleansed and purified, they will be able to say: ‘I and my father are one.’

We are gazing back into far distant times. There was still a great deal of volcanic activity on earth in Lemurian times. The creatures that lived then were very different. That was the time when man first received the element he was to develop as soul. Going back even further we see soul nature above and bodily nature below still as one nature. The two were united in god's keeping. Then the physical stream down below was left to itself and developed into the animal-man ofLemurian times. The upper developed in soul and spirit. The body had to be prepared first down below, so that it might receive the soul coming from above.

The spirit that prevailed in the common origin of both souls and bodies is the father spirit; that is the father.

The spirit that prevailed down below in the physical realm, whilst the spiritual went its separate ways up above, is the son spirit; that is the son.

And the spirit that prevailed up above in the soul sphere until it was able to descend into the physical realm, that is the holy spirit.

In Lemurian times, when the soul first incarnated, there was a pouring out of the spirit: ‘And god breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, and man became a living soul.’¹¹⁰ That was the first outpouring of the spirit, an unconscious outpouring. Man was to live in a dream for a long time yet. It was only in the second half of the Atlantean period that he gained the ability to calculate, to think logically, and to observe the world outside correctly in its relationships. In the first half of the Atlantean period, a human being would see another human being as a coloured cloud. The cloud would be reddish brown if the other individual was not sympathetic, was an enemy. A violet reddish cloud indicated a sympathetic individual, a friend. Other things would also be perceived like this. If a golden yellow cloud rose like a kind of misty form between the astral and the physical, this indicated that a useful metal was to be found here. A dull, bluish red cloud with strange lines to delimit it, of the kind which only a mineral can have, indicated a useless metal. Human beings gradually separated out more and more; limiting their feelings by having a skin, and external, physical sensory perception developed. In earliest Atlantean times, human beings had perceptions like those a fish or a snail has today—not a turtle or a crocodile. The new sensory perception developed when man began to breathe with a lung. The production of blood and inner I-activity were also connected with this.

A residual effect of the I on the blood can still be seen today if we go pale with fear or red with shame. This still shows direct I-activity. It is something that has remained from a time when the I had a powerful influence on the blood. Today the inner power of the I only shows itself in gestures, in going red or turning pale. Today people can gesticulate with their hands in their enthusiasm; then the blood was able to create organs out of the body under the I-impulse. The fingers developed in this way, for example. By the end of the Atlantean period, the human beings of that time were beginning to be similar to the human beings of today.

Blood bonds were stronger in the past than they are now. The bond between blood relatives was much stronger. An example would be the following. Two modern authors have given an excellent picture of the rural population, but in different ways. Anzengruber's¹¹¹ figures are clear-cut, almost as if cut in stone. Rosegger¹¹² takes many individual outward traits and combines them in a whole. He would make notes as he observed people and use these in his writing. Rosegger was wondering how Anzengruber was able to write about country people, seeing that he had never lived among them and observed them. Anzengruber told him the very reason that he was able to present the people so well was that he did not know them. All his forebears had been farming people, and so the ways of fanners were in his blood. He wrote about farmers his forebears had known, and he did so out of the blood.¹¹³

In earlier times, humanity consisted of many small groups. Reading Tacitus' Germania.¹¹⁴ one finds numerous small tribes listed who were related by blood and to whom the blood relationship meant something special. In the days of the Old Testament patriarchs, marriage was always within the tribe, with the same blood in everyone's veins. The memory of the descendants would then go right back to the times of their ancestors. The descendant would remember his ancestors the way we remember our own childhood. 900 years after Adam his descendants still remembered the events of his life. This explains why people are said to have lived to such great ages in the Bible.¹¹⁵ For as far back as a person could then remember, the I that went through generations would be called ‘Adam’ for example. A common I lived in the tribe, and it lived in the blood. Because of this the shedding of blood called for blood revenge. And the whole tribe would revenge itself for the blood of a single member by means of blood revenge.

Close marriage gradually changed and finally became distant marriage. The tribes became international. The principle of pure humanity gained the upper hand.

The son principle was active in the physical realm, in the love among relations that was based on blood. But the soul became progressively more individual, so that the blood was moving in wider and wider groups, getting further away from the tribal community.

All the ancient systems of government were based on the principle of blood relationship. The ten commandments of the Jews are tribal laws. Something connected with the Jewish people was not yet connected with the whole of mankind. Then the son spirit came to earth in the Christ and his blood flowed. Blood which until then had only created close bonds was poured out. This brought it about that all close bonds flowed out into a brotherhood for all humanity. The narrowly limited feeling of self where it was not yet possible to say: ‘Anyone who does not leave father and mother, wife, children, brother and sister and also his personal life cannot be my disciple’—such self-seeking had to run out from the redeemer's wounds. The capacity for love was gained as the blood of the Christ flowed, overcoming blood-brotherhood, tribe and nation. If we had been able to collect drops of blood by the cross, we would in all truth and reality have had the substance that thus transforms human beings. The goal is for human beings to find their relationship to all human beings, with love not only between brother and sister, but between human being and human being. The physical blood that flowed from the wounds of the Christ is the embodiment of the redeemer principle. This blood is a significant redemption symbol.

Humanity is to find the spirit again, fully and wholly. They had it once, but only dimly so, in a nebulous way. Later it assumed the form in which human beings see the world today. But they only see this world, only one side of things. With this view, man is cut off from the life of the spirit as if by a veil. He now needs to be taken beyond individual conscious awareness, which has made him an I, and gain awareness of the whole world again. This is why the blood of Christ was scattered—from narrow tribe to the wide world. The cross made it possible to achieve this. From the cross, the blood flowed into the whole of humanity. At the same time, however, the cross made the I grow more and more narrow and individual. All this has come to us through Christianity.

But when people are thus left to their own resources, with no tribe to give them context and with self-awareness enhanced, egotism must also increase. Christ Jesus foresaw this. He saw the coming of materialism, and made Christianity a bulwark against it.

In antiquity, everything rested on blood-brotherhood. This is clear from ancestor worship. Many legends were based on the figure of an ancestral hero such as Theseus¹¹⁶ or Cadmus.¹¹⁷ The principle governed both laws and commandments. Then, however, external institutions began to determine the life of the community. This only developed with the spread of Christianity, however. What do people see in the international idea today? A principle that is more powerful than the power of the state. The great powers that rule the world today are international. They are called money, transport, industry, and so on. Nothing to do with the blood-brotherhood of old any more. The other side of the coin is materialism. Egotistical thinking lives in a machine. How different were the ways in which ancient Greeks saw their god Zeus, remembering that the father principle lay at the base of all. Where do we find anything divine in public life today? Machines, railways and so on all serve egotistical aims. This will come to play a special role in the future. In the war of all against all it will go to extremes.

The Christ did create the bond that will unite all humanity, but something else has to come together with this act of redemption. Inner responses from person to person live in people who feel drawn to the Christ. His deed is the great bond that can unite the spirit again with the physical. Today people still control the physical world to serve their egotism. One day they must use it to serve the spirit. The spirit must unite with the son so that the two, united, become one with the father.

The Christ said: ‘No one comes to the father except through me.’¹¹⁸ Each should say: ‘I am as the branch on the vine.’¹¹⁹ Then the Christ overcomes the egotism in human organisms. The father spirit, the spirit of common origin, must enter into our individual selves, and then the I works on the father principle. Every I then builds its own house, and yet they are all united in the Christ principle. ‘There are many rooms in my father's house’,¹⁰⁸ said the Christ. These are the dwellings which human I-natures build for themselves. The Christ must, however, prepare the place, the dwelling place. And for this it is necessary for the spirit to come that unites human beings—the spirit of truth.

It is the purpose of theosophy to teach human beings the things they have in common; it is to bring the higher wisdom, the spirit of truth. People differ in their opinions for as long as they do not yet have the highest knowledge. The gnostics called mysticism ‘mathesis’, for in mathematics none can say he differs from someone else in his opinions. Two scientists can never disagree over a mathematical axiom. There it is not a matter of human wishes. For the great wisdom we must first rid ourselves of our wishes. Only those who seek to study the spirit of truth, wholly free from personal wishes, will be ripe to receive it. The highest knowledge unites human beings, there is no opinion or notion. The spirit of truth must shine upon people. Then they may indeed be dispersed through different dwelling places, but the spirit of truth will unite them. The common spirit must govern the truth held by individual I-natures if the house which the I builds for itself is to fit in with the spiritual principle. The Christ promised his disciples the spirit of truth at Pentecost. Then the disciples spoke in different tongues, then all nations learned to understand one another. Egotism may indeed wax more and more, but every human I will have the spirit of community if it partakes in the spirit of truth. Those who wish to achieve this must live in the spirit of John's gospel. That is true theosophy. Just as all plants turn to the sun as they grow, wherever they may be, so all I-natures will turn to the sun of the spirit, the spiritual light of truth.

• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.
• 109. John 10: 30.
• 110. Genesis 2: 7.
• 111. Anzengruber, Ludwig (1839–1889), Austrian playwright and novelist. Rudolf Steiner wrote an obituary on him, published in Steiner R. Gesammelte Aufsätze zur Literatur, 1884–1902. (GA 32) S. 16 ff..
• 112. Rosegger, Peter (1843–1918), Austrian poet and novelist
• 113. ‘Went for a walk with Anzengruber on another occasion ... We talked about writing and the subjects one had for writing. I said he must have lived in Upper Bavaria himself or at least had a great deal to do with the fanning people there. His figures were very reminiscent of this type of people. He put his pince-nez on his sharply curved nose and said: “Upper Bavaria? No, I have never really met those country people. At least not enough to know them.” Realizing that this surprised me: “I don't need that. Just need to see one of them from a distance, hear a few everyday words, observe perhaps one of his gestures—and I know that fellow inside out!”—“Strange!”—“My dear fellow,” he said, “you know it yourself. All outer occasions and situations are just the midwives. The writer must give birth himself. Farmers—ha! I'm a city man myself! But if as you say, I write better about country people than about city people, this is probably in the blood. Or in some bone or other, like inherited gout. My forefathers on my father's side were farmers in Upper Austria. And well, such things are still lurking about.”’ Gesammelte Werke von Peter Rosegger, Leipzig 1914–1916, 36. Band, Gute Kameraden—Persönliche Erinnerungen an berühmte und eigenartige Zeitgenossen, Seite 145 f
• 114. Tacitus, Cornelius (c. 55–166), greatest Roman historian. The second part of his work De origine et situ Germanorum, chapters 28-46, gives descriptions of the individual Germanic tribes.
• 115. E.g. Genesis, Chapter 5.
• 116. King ofThebes, hero who killed the Minotaur.
• 117. A Phoenician prince who killed a dragon and sowed its teeth. An army grew from them who fought one another until only five survived. Cadmus founded the city of Thebes with them.
• 118. John 14: 6.
• 119. John 15: 5 (variant).
• 108. Bible quotes from John 14: 1-2, 15-17, 21-23.

Today²¹³ we'll be considering the question as to whether other creatures have souls, as human beings do, and above all whether animals have some form of soul. Someone who tends to gloss over things may consider this a waste of time, but great people have also given thought to the matter in the past. Descartes, the philosopher who brought philosophy, which had died away in medieval times, alive again at the beginning of the 17th century raised the question. He did, of course, consider animals to be like machines, creatures one could not say had real souls but were reflex machines.²¹⁴ Anyone observing animal life and giving some thought to it will hardly be able to share his views. We merely have to consider the way some animals in the world around us do things, also making relationships among themselves that one would hardly think possible without a soul. The faithfulness of a dog is an example. It would be hard to think that there isn't something in that dog which is similar to what lives in a human being.

When we observe certain things animals do, can we say they do no involve higher mental activity? Consider a beaver's lodge, for instance. A human being would have to use considerable mental effort and skills to produce such a structure. Profound wisdom is evident in the way certain beams are placed exactly, at absolutely the proper angle, to meet the fall of the river and the given situation.

Look at ants! In every ant heap you see something that would be wise government among humans, actually going beyond anything present-day humanity knows. Ants are divided into three groups—workers, males and females. It can be shown that the workers are very clever, the females less clever and the males quite stupid. Everything in the heap is skilfully organized—the way they transport the things needed for their building and to breed their young, go on forays, and so on. If all such things call for soul activity in human state affairs, we cannot say animals lack soul. People have always thought it was enough to speak of instinct, but they never try to think what instinct really is.

We must now also consider the other side and not fail to realize that there is a fundamental difference between the things an animal achieves by its powers of soul and the things a human being achieves by them. A definite fact, which may serve us as an example. Travellers would often find that when they had lit a fire to ward off the cold and then went away, apes would come to warm themselves by the fire. No ape was ever seen to gather more wood to keep the fire going, however. It does not make this connection, and this is of eminent significance. It cannot add something new by using its own mental faculties, such as stoking a fire, and so on.

To understand the animal soul we must make this difference from the human soul our starting point. Another difference between the animal and the human soul is that you can write a biography of every human being but not of every animal. This is most important. If you consider your own interest in the different life forms, you will find that the interest you have in an individual human being is the same as for a whole group of animals of the same species. If you think of a lion, your feelings for the lion grandfather, father, son and grandson are exactly the same. Such an approach would seem absolutely frivolous if applied to human beings. Yes, the owner of a dog may say he can write a biography of his dog, but this means nothing. You can also write the biography of a steel nib or about differences in the life of a darning needle and a sewing needle. That is merely a transfer of ideas. Just as one whole animal species differs from another, so does a single human being differ from others. A common soul lives in the whole group of animals. Just as your ten fingers are part of your hands, so are all wolves part of the wolf group soul.

Now we also need to consider the human soul more closely. It was not as individual in earlier times as it is today. There was a point in human evolution when man was much closer to a group soul. A hundred years after Christ, Tacitus gave a description of individual German tribes in his Germania. All members of a group felt they belonged together, though there were, of course, differences, everything happening by degrees in human evolution. All who belonged to a group saw themselves to be the same. Markedly individual facial features are a sign that the individual soul is more removed from the group soul. You still see more or less the same facial features among savages. We have to remember the fact that marked facial features prove that the individual nature is influencing the bodily configuration. This will be increasingly the case as human beings continue to evolve. A time will come when national characteristics disappear completely. With a soul incarnating now in one nation, now in another, national differences will vanish, with everyone immediately always looking just like himself the more his individual nature has come through. In earlier times, when people still married within the tribe, its members would hold together like the fingers on a hand, with one avenging the dishonour done to another as though it had been done to him. This cohesion is gradually disappearing, and the greater the union, the more general the unity of human beings, the more individual will souls and characters be. So you do not get a mishmash but the more the differences fall away, the greater the individuality.

Where do human group souls differ from animal group souls? We have to go back a long way in evolution. In Lemurian times human beings did not yet have different bodies enveloping a spiritual core. The highest form of life was a kind of human-animal with physical body, ether body, astral body and the potential for an I, but not yet the I as such. They were able to receive the divine seed. The soul which now lives inside man had not yet left the keeping of the godhead and still lived in a soul spirit stratum. Think of a container holding a thousand water droplets that merge into one another, forming a single whole. Take a thousand small sponges, each able to absorb one drop, and put them in, so that each contains one drop. This makes them individual and independent. Now imagine that to begin with the soul did not came to dwell in every individual but that one soul was shared by many bodies, a group soul. At that time, the soul which today dwells in every individual dwelt in a whole tribe.

And here you have to accept a new idea. Such a group soul also does not die. The beautiful, significant aspect of death is something specific, something given to the individual human soul. When one unit which is part of a group soul dies, it is replaced immediately, just like the process when you cut off a polyp. And so the group soul, which does not come down on to die physical plan, is sentient of death as the loss of a part, and birth as a new one growing in its place. It does not have the special quality that comes with death. It is only when a sentient entity says: ‘It is I’ that death begins to intervene in individual life. Man gains a higher life by facing death. If death were not overcome, he could not go through death into a higher life.

On the astral plan we find the souls of animals that are linked by a thread to each individual in the group. To understand the origin of animal group souls you have to know what makes man the kind of physical being he is.

When the divine seeds came down, they found very different vessels to contain them. Some were specially developed to be fighters, others were similar, but more developed for work, for patience, and so on. The various bodies thus became different in their development and also in their external form. The lower animals of today insects and others, had branched off during an earlier stage in earth evolution and become something separate.

We'll now only consider animals from the fishes upwards. Mammals did not yet exist when the descent came into the waiting body which externally, not inwardly, was more or less at the level of a fish's body. The human being of that time had to move around half by swimming and half by floating, and had fin-like organs for that purpose. What happened to his body on earth happened because of the human soul that dwelt in it. It took long periods of evolution to transform it into the god-like body of today. Much came to a standstill along that long route. But because the earth continued to go through its transformation, coming to a standstill became bodily regression. Take two siblings, for an example. One changes at every stage of life, the other remains at childhood level. He will no longer look like a child when he's 60, however. That is how the fishes of today have regressed, looking different from the way they did before.

Humanity continued to evolve, configuring everything, finally also the mammalian body. All the time some would come to a standstill, human bodies grown decadent. If you really enter into it you will realize that all animals have aged at their juvenile stage, prematurely, assuming fixed forms which they should have gone beyond. They have crystallized, as it were, in the whole of their development.

Further evolution did, however, put man in a peculiar position where some of his qualities are concerned. He lost his certainty. Apes kept imprisoned will soon develop tuberculosis and other diseases. Animals do not tolerate the human way of life. They also have some degree of certainty where the choice of foods is concerned. A cow walking across a pasture knows exactly which herb is good for it. Man no longer has this. He needs uncertainty in order to determine his free choice. Present-day uncertainty is necessary so that certainty may be gained at a higher level. Man adapts to the higher level. Growing uncertain thus guarantees his independence. Certainty has remained where development has not gone so far that the I is at work in the individual entity. We should not be surprised at the wisdom we see in the animal world any more than at the wisdom of our own hand. An individual beaver is just the group soul's unskilled worker on the physical plan. The ant is at a very different level from the beaver and much further removed from us, for it separated off at a much earlier planetary existence of the earth. In taking just a single route it has gone further than man. For human beings, thinking, feeling and doing are firmly connected. If I see something I like, I reach out for it. The idea leads to the action. Without this firm connection people would be very unsure of themselves. Spiritual training tears will, idea and feeling apart, separating them completely. This will only come true for the whole of humanity at the Jupiter stage of earth evolution. But before he experiences this, the pupil meets the guardian of the threshold who gives him clarity concerning the whole of his life so far.

Some animal group souls went prematurely through this separation of soul functions into three. It is a fact that some parts in the brain of a spiritual pupil are differentiated like the ants in an ant heap. The ant did this prematurely and continues to be immature but clever like a child. The beaver group soul will have to catch up on things it has missed, the ant soul has thrown away its opportunity, going in a completely different direction. Animal souls are human souls that have grown one-sided. Oken said the tongue was a cuttlefish. This should not be taken literally, of course, but the creature in whom tongue properties came too much to the fore has remained stationary at that point. Paracelsus said the profound words: ‘Looking at nature, we see individual letters, together they create the word that is the human being.’ All the different qualities you find combined in man can be thought of as distributed among different bodies, each belonging to an animal group soul. Animals are human beings who have come to a standstill in developing their particular qualities. Man became inventive because he lost his certainty. The first element he learned to make serve him was fire. With this he climbed the first step towards civilization and became productive. He is an encyclopaedia of the different animal souls.

Another thing you must clearly understand is that when you go to the lower animals you will find that they are not able to give direct expression to pleasure and pain in sound. Insects produce noises, but those are boa noises. In occult science, clear stages are established between animals that sound and those that do not. But it is only in man that the inner sound becomes word, becomes speech. Even the more highly developed animals have only one-sidedly developed sounds. At a later time animal group souls, not individual animals, will become human beings, but their constitution will differ greatly from that of present-day humans.

Goethe was aware of this and put it most beautifully in his Metamorphosis of Animals,²¹⁵ saying that they were like a human being separated into his individual parts. The whole animal world, he said, looked at us in the human form. And in looking at the whole of animal creation, the human being thus says: ‘All this brought together in one, that is you.’

Questions and answers

Will more of creation split off as human evolution continues?

Yes, and this is what theosophists call ‘going through the crisis’.²¹⁶ We are now in the 5th epoch; the 6th epoch will see a completely different race, noble and beautiful compared to the split-off decadent race of revoltingly ugly, bestial, sensual people who have many vices, arousing much greater revulsion than is possible with present-day humanity, because there will have been downward development. And you can see it clearly stated in the Book of Revelation, in what is called The Last Judgement. Anyone who is completely selfless may be ripe now for the 6th epoch. He may still incarnate a number of times, but only in order to help others. Some may find that the Last Judgement sounds harsh, but they do, after all, have the choice. Please do not misunderstand me. I mean not concerning reincarnation but concerning the 6th epoch.

Why do old people grow weak-minded, seeing that the soul remains unchanged?

The soul does not change. It never descends from the level it has reached, but its instrument has grown weak. It is like a great pianist who cannot play as well as before if the instrument is poor.

You will say the soul no longer knows its own level. Yes, for it cannot see itself for as long as it is in a physical body. There you altogether have only the reflection of the soul, the mirror reflection. When the mirror grows dim or breaks, it can no longer give a reflection. It is only the occult student who is truly able to perceive his soul.

• 213. See also lectures given in Berlin on 10 November 1910 (in GA 60—Engl, as The human spirit and animal spirit. The human soul and the animal soul. Typescript Z-55 at Rudolf Steiner House Library, London).
• 214. Descartes, Rene (1596–1650). Creator of the mechanistic view of the universe. According to Descartes, basic laws of mechanics govern the objects not only of physics and astronomy but also of physiology and psychology, the exception being 'thinking substance\ See his philosophical works.
• 215. See Goethean Science (GA la) (Rudolf Steiner's lectures on the first three chapters of the draft for a general introduction to comparative anatomy, with osteology as the starting point, 1796). Tr. W. Lindemann. Spring Valley: Mercury Press 1988.
• 216. See Steiner R. Karmic Relationships of the Anthroposophical Movement (GA 237), lecture of 3 August 1924. Tr. G. Adams, D. Osmond. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1977.

To consider just two ideas that are part of the Christian view—sinning against the holy spirit¹²⁰ and the idea of grace—and let them be illuminated for us from their depths, we have to know a little about the basic issues and movements of Christianity. You know from other lectures that behind the usual teaching about Christianity lies an esoteric Christianity. You also know that the gospels themselves give hints of such a Christianity, simply in the words: ‘When the Lord was speaking to the people he would speak in parables, but when he and the disciples were among themselves he would expound those parables to them.’¹²¹ There simply was the teaching given to people who were not yet able to understand so much, so that one could only hint at things, being unable as yet to go deeper with them, and the teaching that was meant for initiates. Paul, the great disseminator of Christianity, taught like this speaking to the people, as we know from his epistles. Apart from the teaching he gave for the people, in an external way, Paul also taught esoterically. External history does not know that Paul founded the esoteric school in Athens that was under the guidance of Dionysius. In this esoteric school of Christianity, intimate pupils were given the occult knowledge you are now getting to know through the science of the spirit.

Scholars do not know much about the teaching Paul's esoteric companions gave to intimate pupils in Athens at that time. People even speak of a false Dionysius, saying that it cannot be proved that anything he taught was ever written down. The individual who taught these things in the 6th century was therefore called pseudo-Dionysius. Only people who do not know how such intimate teachings were handled in those times can say such things. In our day and age everyone rushes things into print. In the old days, the most sacred truth would be preserved from publication. Teachers would first take a look at the individual to whom they would tell it. It was taught person to person, and to people who were truly able to know its value. The teachings of esoteric Christianity were thus also passed from one individual to another, with some written down later, in the 6th century. It was customary for the leader of such a school to bear the name Dionysius, and so the leader also had that name in the 6th century, which was the name of his great predecessor in Athens, who was Paul's friend.

Let us consider the two concepts—sinning against the holy spirit, or really blaspheming against the holy spirit, and the concept of grace—as they were truly taught in Athens.

To get to the original meaning of Christianity we must go far back in the history of human evolution and understand that the coming of Christ Jesus brought something completely new in the evolution of the human mind and spirit. Paul's own initiation shows this most clearly. The situation where someone like Saul had a sudden enlightenment and became completely convinced of the truth of Christianity would not have been possible before the coming of the Christ. We have spoken of the nature of initiation here on earth before the coming of the Christ on previous occasions. Let us do it again, so that we may know what the spirit of truth truly is in Christian terms. To understand what went on in the ancient initiation centres we must briefly call to mind the nature of the human being.

You know about man having seven aspects. The physical body is made of the same materials as the lifeless matter in the physical world. The ether body calls these powers to life, and at every moment in our lives actively counters the decomposition of the physical body. It is only at death that the ether or life body leaves the physical body. A crystal holds its substance together of its own accord; the living body decomposes as soon as it is left to itself. There truly is a fighter against death in him at all times. Death comes when he ceases to fight. The third member is the astral body, the conscious awareness body. The fourth is the I, and through it man is the crowning glory of creation. In all occult teachings the human being was seen to have these four members. In the Pythagorean school every pupil first had to be taught this, and he could only be introduced to the higher wisdom once it had become inner conviction. He thus had to make this vow: ‘I vow by all that has been deeply imprinted in our hearts—the sacred fourfoldness, the spiritually sublime symbol, the source and origin of all creativeness in nature and in spirit.’

Even the most undeveloped human being has these four members. Human beings evolve through different incarnations, becoming more and more perfect because the I works on these three members of human nature. In the astral body it first of all works on everything that advances civilization, all logical, scientific learning that serves to take us beyond the animal level. That is the work of the I in the astral body. In every human being who has developed, whose I has been working on the astral body, that body divides in two—the part that is given and the part which has only been made by the I. This latter part, which grows larger and larger as the human being advances, is called manas or spirit self. In Christian esotericism this part is called the holy spirit, in contrast to the spirit that is the unpurified and unhallowed part of the astral body. This, then, is the fifth principle.

The I can also work into the denser ether body. This also happens in the ordinary way, but unconsciously. It has been said on a number of occasions that distinction must be made between work on the astral body and the ether body. With regard to their rate of progress, the astral body may be said to be like the movement of the minute hand compared to the ether body's hour hand. When a person opens up to the impression of a sublime work of art, this will transform both the life body and the conscious awareness body. Every great impulse in the arts has this effect. The most powerful effect comes from the religious impulses which the founders of religions have given to the world; they give the I its orientation towards the eternal. The clairvoyant eye can see it when the ether body of a human being becomes increasingly more beautiful and pure.

The part of the human ether body made spiritual by the I is called the buddhi or life spirit; it is transformed life body. In Christian esoteric teaching this part, which has been transformed by the I, is called the Christos. The fifth principle of essential human nature is the holy spirit, the sixth principle the Christ, the inner Christos.

Reference has already been made to the fact that occult training has always been available and that people could become initiates and then gain direct insight into the world of the spirit. This results from a higher transformation of the ether or life body. You therefore also need to understand that higher training is not just a matter of taking in concepts and things that are taught. Occult training means to transform the qualities of the life body. Someone who has transformed his temperament has done a great deal more than he would have done by taking in an infinite amount of knowledge.

An even higher transformation comes only with advanced training. Here the individual purifies and cleanses his physical body. What do we know of the human physical body? Dissection in an anatomical institute does not reveal the laws that govern it, the inner control of it. There is, however, a way to look into oneself and understand the movements of nerve strands, of pulse beat and the flow of respiration, so that one can consciously influence them. When someone is also able to transform his physical body in occult training, as it is called, the transformed dense body is called atman, for one begins by regulating the breathing process.¹²² The seventh principle of essential human nature is atman, called the father in Christian esoteric teaching.

This is how one first comes to the holy spirit, which is the transformed astral body, then through the holy spirit to the Christ, which is conscious awareness of the ether body, and through the Christ to the father, conscious awareness of the physical body.

Once you have understood how these seven aspects of human nature are related, you will also understand the nature of initiation in early times, before the Christ, and how it was after Christ Jesus had come to earth. When a person is asleep, only the physical and the ether body lie in the bed, the astral body is outside. When a person dies, he leaves behind his physical body, and the part of the physical body he has already transformed is lifted out—powers, not matter. It is very little indeed which he takes with him, but it is the element which will serve to shape the new physical body when the individual incarnates again. Materialism calls this the ‘permanent atom’.¹²³ First of all the part of the physical body which the individual has transformed departs, the ether body departs, the conscious awareness body departs and the I. After some time the part of the ether on which the individual has not yet been working separates off. The human being then goes into kamaloka, the place of purification. After some time the part of the astral body on which the I has not yet been working also separates off. A time comes when the human being only retains the parts of the three bodies which the I itself has worked through. This goes through the realm of the spirit. It is the core of man's eternal essence, which will grow all the more the I has been working on the bodies.

The holy spirit is the eternal spirit in man. The Christ is the eternal part of the life body, the father the eternal aspect of the physical body. These three go with the human being through all time, being the part of him that is eternal.

Before Christian times, initiation was such that the pupil would first be prepared for everything occult science was able to offer, up to the point where he was familiar with all the concepts and ideas, all the habits and feelings that are needed for living in the higher worlds and be able to have perceptions in them. Then came the ‘resurrection’, as it was called, taking three and a half days and three nights. For this the temple priest used his arts to put the individual artificially into a death-like sleep for three and a half days. Normally the physical and the ether body remain connected in sleep, but the art of the priest who performed the initiation caused the ether body of the initiand to be lifted out of the physical body for this period, leaving only a loose connection between the physical body and the other bodies. It was a deep trance sleep. The initiand's I lived in the higher worlds during this time. The pupil knew his way about there because he had been given knowledge of the higher world. The priest would guide him. To begin with, the priest had to free the ether body of the lethargic physical body so that he might guide the pupil into the worlds of spirit. Human beings would not have been able to rise into those higher worlds in a fully conscious state. They had to be lifted out of that state.

The initiand would experience magnificent, tremendous things there, but he would be entirely in the hands of the priest. Another person had control over him, and that was the price that had to be paid for entering into the higher worlds. You can imagine what he would be afterwards, if you remember that he was able to know his eternal principle on this occasion. He was rid of the part of his finite nature, of his physical body, which was of no use to him when he wanted to move in higher worlds. Such an individual would be a ‘knower’ after this, able to bear witness from personal vision of life's victory over death. Those were the initiates who could bear witness. The ether body had to be lifted out of the physical body to meet the Christos in the human being. Those initiates were able to say: ‘I know from personal experience that there is a part of the human being that is eternal, continuing through all incarnations. I know this; I have had living experience of this eternal core of my self.’ To gain this prize, they had to enter into three days of total dream sleep.

Something else was connected with this. This form of initiation also involved something else. The further back we go, the more are we able to see it. I characterized it before by saying that in very early times they had close marriage compared to our distant marriage. In all nations there were small communities that were interrelated. People would marry within their community, and it was considered immoral to go outside your small community. Marriages were always between blood relations. Close marriage only changed gradually to become distant marriage. Special measures were actually needed for initiations, with a careful selection made on the basis of previous incarnations to get the best possible blood mixture. Out of such a tribe would be born the one who was able to go through high-level initiations. With blood relations it is particularly easy to lift the ether body out of the physical body. It is not at all easy with distant marriages. Whole generations of priests saw to it that the blood was preserved in a quite specific way.

Human life is complicated and does not always follow a straight path. We need to enter more deeply into the riddles of existence. The principle of close marriage was abandoned more and more, with the tribe gradually expanding to be a nation. With the Israelites we can see how the tribal principle was taken up completely and raised to become the community of a nation. The Christ opened up this prospect further, into a distant future: ‘Anyone who does not leave father and mother, wife, children, brother and sister and also his personal life cannot be my disciple.’

Harsh but true, these words indicate the way Christianity was going. Within a national community one would say: ‘That is my brother, born within this nation.’ In the brotherhood of humanity, which encompasses the whole of humanity, we say: ‘You are a human being, therefore you are my brother.’ That is the most profound principle of Christianity. All the narrow-mindedness of the other kind of relationship must be torn apart, with a common bond bringing together one human being with another. This also tore apart the ancient initiation principle which had been based on blood relationship.

The new initiation principle, which was no longer tied up with any physical property, can be seen in the case of Paul himself. He was initiated in the light, not in temple darkness. This could not have happened at an earlier time. If we consider this we can see the tremendous change that came with Christ Jesus. It had been prepared for by Moses, Zarathustra, Buddha and Pythagoras and was brought by Christ Jesus.

We thus see the principle applied for the first time also in Christian initiation schools that the human being was taken into higher worlds not by withdrawing him from the physical body but in full conscious awareness and in his physical body. This was the case in the Christian esoteric schools. Among the ancients, on the other hand, the strict authority of the initiating temple priest had to be accepted by the initiand. It was only possible to rise to those worlds by submitting wholly to the power of such an initiator.

The principle of compulsive authority also came to expression in the general social life. The priests were the rulers. All rules of government, all authority structures came from those who had the power to initiate. This was possible when community was blood-based in both tribe and nation. The ending of the old initiation principle meant the beginning of a completely different authority—independent authority based only on trust. ‘You must believe the one whom you trust’ is the highest Christian idea to which one rises, with each being a brother to the other, and someone in a higher position given recognition as someone one trusts.

‘Watch and pray’ is the Christian principle. The new initiation takes place in the waking state. ‘You will know the truth, and the truth shall set you free’¹²⁴ are profound Christian words. They signify a prospect opening out into the future of Christianity. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution.

Consider the intense relationship between the teacher who was the initiator in the old temple sleep and his pupil receiving his final initiation in three and a half days. The relationship was one we cannot even imagine today. The relationship between a hypnotist and his subject gives us a faint idea of the way in which the initiating temple priest would awaken first the holy spirit and then the Christos. The pupil would mirror the holy spirit and the Christos of the teacher; they had merged, a clairvoyant could observe the process. For those three days, teacher and pupil were identified with one another. The teacher's I lived on in all his pupils, deeply fused during those three days. Consider the social pyramid, with the people below, above them the initiates, above them the teachers of the initiates. One spirit flowed down through all levels. Much lives on in people who were initiated in this way, also alien things.

With the principle of Christianity, individual nature gained validity. Hence the principle of Christian initiation that pupils must never fuse with the teacher in this way. They must not become one person in the initiation process. The holy spirit must arise, be awakened, in the I of each individual. This has become the principle of Christian initiation. It is also shown in symbolic form in the miracle of Pentecost in the Acts of the Apostles.¹²⁵ The possibility for initiation was given in that they all began to speak in different tongues. The teacher respects the individual nature of the other; he enters into the pupi's heart but does not take it out of his physical body.

Remember how it is above all important for present-day humanity that the holy spirit and the Christos are developed independently. There you can see that this human individual nature only came to be considered to be independent with this principle of Christianity. It was Christianity which finally and truly freed the human individual, and because of this, Christianity means that our relationship to truth and wisdom must be entirely different now.

In earlier times, the spirit of wisdom ruled because it was centralized. With humanity shattering it became decentralized, but egotism also arose. The more the principle of distant marriage came to apply, the greater had to be the power of the element that would bring human beings, who were now independent, together again. What is this element? Consider the things we learn today in the elementary parts of our science of the spirit and then go back in history, and you will find that this knowledge was possessed only by small groups, finally only the very summit, which then ruled on the principle of compulsive authority. We are approaching a time when wisdom will be more and more among the people. It will be a means of creating the great brotherhood of humanity.

Two individuals investigating the realm of the spirit will never have different opinions about one and the same thing. If they do, one opinion will be wrong. Wisdom is a single whole, and there can be no difference. The more individual people grow, the more must they be given wisdom; this will bring them together. Today we are in a state of transition. The principle of the point of view comes to an end as wisdom progressively develops. The more individual humanity becomes, the wiser must it grow. That is the spirit of wisdom which Christ Jesus promised to his people. The sun of wisdom draws all individual points of view to itself, as the sun does all plants.

The spirit that will make human beings free is the holy spirit. A Christian must never sin against it. Those who do, sin against Christianity itself, against the promised spirit who alone can bring individual human beings together.

In the gospels we read of Christ Jesus driving out demons.¹²⁶ Demons will only exist for as long as man is unfree, so long as he has not taken up this spirit of wisdom. Man is literally loaded with all kinds of spirits that flow in and out of his lower members. We call them apparitions, spectres, ghosts, demons.¹²⁷ To make a rather commonplace comparison—it is like maggots moving in and out of a cheese. When he stood there as the spirit who drives out demons, Christ Jesus showed himself to be the spirit of freedom. You can only drive out demons by pitting one spirit against another, the spirit of freedom against all other spirits.

Now let us briefly think of those earlier communities of tribe and nation. How could those people be brought together, not having become free individuals? Imagine everyone sitting in this room has become free, with the spirit of truth living in all of them. Will we ever be in dispute, ever be in discord? No, for when only the spirit unites us there are no points of view. In earlier times external laws had to prevail to keep people together. Two people who know the spirit of truth will feel drawn to one another of their own accord. And so we have the law at the beginning of human evolution, and in the end, peaceful, harmonious collaboration that comes from inside. In Christian esoteric teaching this is called ‘grace’, the opposite of ‘law’. Nothing but the ability to feel with another individual, being completely at peace in doing so—that is the most profound concept of Christianity.

The astral body filled with the holy spirit is the same for all. The spirit of truth is the same in all. Think of this spirit in an individual in whom the Christos has also been awakened, the principle active in the life body as life spirit. When every human being lets his ether body be filled with this feeling, every heart will have a feeling for the unified spirit, for individuals brought together in common wisdom. And what you then feel inside you is caritas, grace.

It was brought by the one who at the beginning of our era had the whole Christos in himself in the individual, the Christos who was the first to fulfil the whole principle of humanity. Christ Jesus made himself the principle that is to live in every single human being. Through him the spirit has come into the world that is freedom, independence, and peaceful cooperation. ‘Come to life again in Christ; let the spirit of discord die!’ Paul said.¹²⁸ Man may sin against everything that is not in this very spirit. If he were to sin against this spirit of common humanity, if he were to deny it, he would no longer be a Christian.

Man must progress to the point where he has conscious knowledge of the spirit. As he develops more and more, his conscious awareness body is transformed into the holy spirit. Because of this, sinning against the holy spirit is unforgivable.

The transformation of the ether body occurs unconsciously in the uninitiated. For as long as a human being is not initiated, he can only commit the sin that cannot be forgiven in his astral body. The initiate also must not sin against the physical and the ether body. These sins may be forgiven those who are not initiated. This is done with the help of those who guide the human race.

• 120. Matthew 13: 13 & 32; Mark 3: 28 & 29; Luke 12: 10.
• 121. Matthew 13: 10-13, 34-36; Mark 4: 33 & 34.
• 122. The German for breathing is Atmen. Translator
• 123. A theory established by the theosophist Charles Webster Leadbeater. See Annie Besant and C. W. Leadbeater's Occult Chemistry.
• 124. John 8: 32
• 125. Acts 2: 4.
• 126. E.g. Luke 4: 33 & 34.
• 127. See Steiner R. Theosophy of the Rosicrucian (GA 99). 22 May–6 June 1907. Tr. M. Cotterell, D. Osmond. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1981.
• 128. Paraphrase. See Ephesians 2:4-6; 4:3.

This English edition is based on the 1998 edition of the German edition of GA 97.

The lectures given in 1906 and 1907, notes and records of which are collected in this volume, were given at the same time as the lectures given in Berlin and published in the volume Original impulses for the science of the spirit (GA 96), and may thus be said to complement them. All these lectures were given for members of the then German Section of the Theosophical Society. The lecture on Wagner's Parsifal in Landin was given because Rudolf Steiner, Marie Steiner-von Sivers and some friends had been at Eugenie von Bredow's country estate for a short holiday and then seen Parsifal performed in Bayreuth at the invitation of Sophie Stinde and Pauline von Kalkreuth, the two leaders of the Munich branch.

Rather than follow the usual chronological order, the lectures have been organized under four major themes in this volume. In 13 lectures, Rudolf Steiner considered the spiritual content of the truths to be found in the Christian revelation; 3 lectures are on the nature and mission of the luciferic spirits, 5 on the Rosicrucian way of initiation and its specific nature compared to earlier ways. The fourth group are lectures, some of which were given to central anthroposophical insights, others in their application in different spheres of life.

The terms ‘theosophy’ and ‘theosophical’. At the time when he gave these lectures, Rudolf Steiner's anthroposophical spirit of the science was still within the context of the Theosophical Society and he would generally use the terminology familiar to its members. Yet from the very beginning he used the terms ‘theosophy’ and ‘theosophical’ with reference to his own independent spiritual researches. Taking up a suggestion he made at a later date, the terms have been replaced with ‘science of the spirit’ and ‘anthroposophy’ in these lectures except where they refer specifically to H. P. Blavatsky's theosophical stream. This is the case in the lectures given in Dusseldorf on 4 April 1906 and in Leipzig on 25 April 1906 and 12 January 1907.

For a glossary of repeatedly used Indian theosophical terms, see next chapter.

Sources. The lecture notes were made by members of the audience, some being better, others less good. Only 3 lectures (Basel, 19 September 1906; Karlsruhe, 4 February 1907, and Vienna, 22 February 1907) were taken down verbatim. All others are based on brief notes or summaries. The extremely brief record of the Parsifal lecture given in Landin has been extended by using Marie Steiner's notes. Although the sources were on the whole not very satisfactory, the lectures notes have been included in Rudolf Steiner's collected works because they give an idea of his lecturing activities at that time. They often complement each other, also with regard to important details.

For the 1998 German edition, the notes were revised and an index of names added. Text revision by Maria Balastèr and Ulla Trapp.

The volume was given its title by the editor of the first edition. The titles given to individual lectures are not by Rudolf Steiner.

Previously published lecture from this volume: The Structure of the Lords Prayer (Karlsruhe 4 February 1907. Tr. A. H. Parker. London: Rudolf Steiner Press 1971.

Also known as: The Secret of the Grail in the Works of Richard Wagner, Parsifal, Arthur Lecture 27 of 37 from the lecture series: Christian Mystery.

I want to speak to you today about the truths of occultism and of theosophy, relating what I have to say with Richard Wagner's Parsifal. For there is a deep connection between the artistic work of Wagner and the spiritual movement of the present day that is known as Theosophy. That there is in Wagner and in his works a very large measure of occult power, is something that mankind is gradually learning to realize. And in the future something further will also become clear to us; namely, that there lived in Wagner a great deal more than he himself could have knowledge of. This is, in truth, the secret of many a work of art, that a force and a power live in it of which its creator knows nothing.

When this has come home to us; namely, that more—much more—was living in Wagner than he himself was conscious of, we must at the same time not forget that Wagner was never able to reach the last stages of wisdom. On this account the art of Richard Wagner has for the occultist quite a unique character; for while he knows that something more, something of deep mystery, is hidden behind it, he knows on the other hand that one can be in danger of looking in Wagner for something that is not there. The fact that a great deal more is to be found in Wagner than is generally perceived was well expressed by Richard Strauss, who said somewhat as follows:

When I hear people perpetually declaring that we ought not to add anything from our own thought to what Wagner has created, it seems to me we might just as well say we should refrain from adding anything from our own thought when we contemplate a flower! We would certainly never discover the secret of the flower that way; and it will surely be the same with those who are unwilling to allow themselves to add anything from their own thought to the works of a great artist.”

Richard Wagner concerned himself with themes of sublime significance. Always in his works you will find names that are connected with ancient, holy traditions. What he achieved in “Parsifal” is intimately connected with the spiritual power that has been active in such a striking manner in and since the last third of the Nineteenth Century.

In order to understand the figures and motifs that we meet with in Wagner, we need to probe into deep mysteries of the evolution of mankind. Wagner made an intensive study of man and his place in the great world, and of the mystery of the human soul. As a young man he tried research into the mysteries of reincarnation. We have evidence of this in his draft for a drama called “Die Sieger” (“The Victorious,” or, “The Conquerors.”) He abandoned the attempt, because the music for the drama proved to be an insoluble problem. As drama alone he could have succeeded with it. The story is as follows. A youth in the Far East, in India, Ananda by name, belonging to the Brahman caste, is beloved by a Chandala maiden of the very lowest caste, who is called Prakriti. Ananda is a pupil of Buddha. He does not respond to Prakriti's love. She is accordingly thrown into the utmost distress and sorrow. Ananda withdraws from the world and devotes himself to the religious life. An explanation of her destiny is then given to the Chandala maiden by another Brahman. She had, he told her, in an earlier life been a Brahman and had rejected the love of this very youth who was at that time in the Chandala caste. Deeply impressed with the teaching conveyed in this explanation, the girl then attaches herself also to the Buddha, and the two become followers together of the same teacher.

This theme was sketched out by Wagner in 1855, with the intention of elaborating it. He did not succeed, but a year later the same impulse presented itself to him in a new way. In 1857 the great ideal contained in Parsifal suddenly entered into Wagner's soul. It happened on Good Friday, 1857, in Villa Wesendonk on the shores of the Lake of Zurich. Wagner was gazing out upon the world of nature, with all its fresh young life in the full beauty of springtime. And in that moment he saw with perfect clarity the connection between the upspringing of all the budding new life of nature and the death of Christ on the Cross. This connection is the secret of the Holy Grail. And from that moment onward Richard Wagner knew in his soul that he must send forth into the world this secret of the Holy Grail, he must send it out into the world of music.

If we would really understand this remarkable and unique experience that Richard Wagner underwent, we shall have to go back a few thousand years in the evolution of Europe. (His own noble and exalted thoughts on the evolution of man Wagner has put forward in his work entitled Heathendom and Christianity). What was the nature of the teaching that was given long ago in the so-called Mystery Fellowships or Mystery Brotherhoods? Let us consider for a little this teaching as it was to be met with in Europe right up to the Sixteenth or Seventeenth Centuries; let us see what form it took in these times.

Mysteries have existed in all ages. In the mysteries, man received a knowledge that was at the same time religion, and he received a religion that was at the same time wisdom.

It is impossible to have a correct conception of a mystery if one has no conception of a spiritual world. We are surrounded here by the various kingdoms of nature; minerals, plants, animals and human beings. We regard the human kingdom as the highest of the four. But now just as man has thus around him kingdoms that are lower than himself, so has he above him higher beings in many stages. The beings that stand at different stages higher than man have from time immemorial been designated as “Gods.” The kind of wisdom imparted to man in the mysteries enabled him to hold conscious intercourse with the Gods. He was then called an initiate. Such an initiate possessed no mere wisdom of words; he had, in the mysteries, experienced facts. Even still today there are mysteries, although they are of another kind than those of olden or medieval times.

At the time when the Crusades were beginning, and even a little before, we find in a district in the North of Spain an important mystery. The mysteries that were still extant in that time have generally been known as the later Gothic Mysteries. Those who were initiated were called the Templars, or the Knights of the Holy Grail. Lohengrin was one of these. The Order of the Knights of the Grail had a different significance from another order or brotherhood which had its location in England and Wales; all the stories that are told of King Arthur and his Round Table relate to this other order of initiation.

In ages long ago, long before Christianity, a migration took place from West to East. Very long ago, there was land in the region of the Atlantic Ocean—the so-called land of Atlantis, where dwelt the Atlanteans, our ancient ancestors. All the people who lived later on in Europe and also in Asia as far East as India, were descendants of the Atlanteans. The Atlanteans lived under entirely different conditions from those that prevailed in later times. Life was hierarchically ordered. All control and rule was in the hands of the initiates.

In the North of what is today Russia a famous school of initiation existed in earlier times. The initiates of this school were known as “Trotten.” In the West of Europe were other initiation schools, and in them the Druids were the initiates. The whole social life of the people was still even then ordered and regulated by these initiates.

When we look back to these ancient schools of initiation, what sort of a teaching do we find there? What was the Mystery that was taught in them? It is after all only the forms of the teaching that change with the passage of time. Astonishing as it may seem, we actually find that in these very ancient schools of initiation the secret, the mystery that Parsifal discovered, is brought to its highest development—the secret; namely, of how the new budding life of nature in Springtime is connected with the Mystery of the Cross. We have to understand it in the following way.

The power of reproduction which we recognize in the animal and human kingdoms is also to be seen in the plant kingdom. In the springtime of the year the divine active power of creation shoots up out of Mother Earth. For we have to recognize that a deep connection exists between the power that manifests when the Earth clothes herself with her robe of green, and the divine creative power. The pupils in the initiation school were taught as follows: “All around you in nature you see the opening flower buds, and within them a power at work which is then later concentrated in the small grains of seed. Countless seeds will come forth from the flowers—seeds which, if laid into the earth, will be capable of bringing forth new plants. And now receive what I am about to say into your heart; take it deeply into your soul. The process that is taking place out there in nature is the very same as takes place in human beings and in the animal kingdom, only in nature it takes place without desire or passion. It goes forward in perfect purity and chastity. The boundless and chaste innocence that sleeps in the flower buds of the plants—this, it was felt, must enter right into the soul of the pupils.

And then they were told further: “It is the sun that opens the blossoms. The ray of the sun calls forth the power that rests in them. Two things meet—the opening flower and the ray from the sun. Between the plant kingdom and the divine kingdom stand the two other kingdoms—the animal kingdom and the human. These latter are really no more than a kind of pathway leading from the plant kingdom to the divine kingdom. In the divine kingdom we have again a kingdom of innocence and chastity, as in the plant kingdom. In the animal and human kingdom we have kingdoms of desire and passion.” But then it was told to the pupils that in the future “all passion and desire will at length disappear. The chalice will then open (even as the chalice of the flower opens)—will open from above downwards and look down to man. And as the ray from the sun goes right down into the plant, so will man's now purified power unite itself with this divine chalice. It can actually come about that the chalice of the blossom is spiritually reversed so that it inclines downwards from heaven, and the sun's ray, too, is reversed so that it lifts itself up from man to heaven.” And this reversed flower chalice which was told of in the mysteries as an actual fact was called the Holy Grail. The flower chalice of the plant that we have before us in material reality is the reversed Holy Grail. And the ray from the sun—all who have true occult knowledge learn to recognize it in the “magic wand.” For the magic wand is a symbol, in the language of superstition, for a spiritual reality. In the mysteries it was called the “bloody lance.” So here we have before us, on the one hand, the origin of the Grail and on the other hand the original “magic wand” of the genuine occultist.

I have given you here slight indications of profound truths, deeply significant truths that played a part in men's lives in the North and West of Europe.

Richard Wagner had a deep intuitive feeling for these truths, and so had his friend Graf Gobineau.

If one wanted to express what was behind the mysteries of which we have been speaking, one could say it was the knowledge of what flows in the veins of animal and man. True indeed are the words that are so often quoted from Goethe's “Faust”: “Blood is a very special fluid.” We shall come to perceive what blood really signifies when we learn to understand a great revolutionary change that took place once in the mysteries.

In the olden times of the European peoples it was known how much depends in human life on blood relationships. On this account the continuance of humanity was never left to chance. All such matters were in those times regulated out of an occult wisdom. It was known that when further evolution was restricted within small racial communities and no other blood was allowed to come in from outside these communities, then the human beings who were born within them would possess certain higher powers. In the mysteries it was understood what effect the mingling of different kinds of blood would have. The initiates had quite exact knowledge, also, of which family or clan would be rightly suited for a certain region of the earth. And they knew that where a union of common blood takes place, there certain powers are bestowed on the human being that is born.

When the ancient blood relationships began to be broken, a significant event took place in the mysteries. Something else was substituted in place of the parents having common blood in their veins.

In the high mysteries, blood relationship was replaced by the partaking of two spiritual “preparations.” In the lower mysteries outward symbols were used instead of these; and the outward symbols were Bread and Wine. In the two spiritual preparations was a substance that was like blood. They were substances that worked spiritually in a somewhat similar way to the way blood works physically in the veins. As the old clairvoyance gradually disappeared, men began instead to partake of these spiritual preparations. When they had learned all that is contained in the whole wisdom of theosophy, they received these symbols out of Ceridwen's Cup. That was the purified blood that could be given to man from the chalice that opened down to him from above. This Mystery in this true essence passed into the care of a very small community. In other parts of Europe the mysteries became decadent and were horribly profaned. For we find on every hand as the symbol of sacrifice a dish on which a bleeding head has to be laid. It was thought that something can be awakened in man by the spectacle of this bleeding head. What was at work there was nothing but black magic. It was the downright opposite of the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.

It was known in the Mysteries that what streams upwards in the Chalice of the Flower lives also in the blood of man. The blood needs, however, to be made clean and pure again, it must be as chaste as the sap that flows in the blossom. And in these Mysteries that had become depraved, this was brought to expression in a gross and materialistic manner. (In Northern Europe sublimated blood was used as a symbol, and in the Eleusinian mysteries were the wine of Dionysus and the blood of Demeter.) The Vessel of the Grail turned into an abomination by being made to hold within it the bleeding head—this we find again in the story of Herodias who uses for the head of John the Baptist, making mock in this way of the Mysteries. The essential secret of the high mysteries passed into the hands of Templars in Northern Spain, the Guardians of the Grail.

While the Knights of King Arthur concerned themselves rather with the events and affairs of this world, The Templars were able to be prepared to receive a still more sublime Mystery—even to understand the Great Mystery of Golgotha, which is the secret of the history of the world.

Christianity had its beginning among the people of Galilee—a mixture of strikingly different races, thus a people who stand entirely outside all blood relationship. The Saviour is One who does not base His kingdom in the very least on blood relationships; He founds a kingdom that is quite remote from any such bond. The blood that has been sublimated, the blood that has been purified, gushes forth from the sacrificial death—for that is the cleansing process. The blood that gives rise to sensual desires has to be shed, has to be sacrificed, has to flow right away.

The Holy Vessel with the purified blood was brought to Europe to the Templars on Monsalvatsch. The venerable patriarch Titurel received the Grail; he had been chosen for this beforehand. The victory had now been won. The spiritual in the blood had overcome that which was merely physical.

As long as we regard blood merely as a substance that is built up of various chemical component parts, we cannot understand what took place on Golgotha. How was it that Wagner was able to find the right mood for his Parsifal? It is most important for us to recognize that Wagner was able to do this because he knew that what happened on Golgotha had especially to do with the blood, he knew that we had to see there not only the death of the Saviour but we had to see what took place there with the blood, how the blood was purified on Golgotha and became something quite different from ordinary blood. Wagner has spoken of the connection of the Saviour's blood with the whole of mankind. In his book “Paganism and Christianity” we read these words: “Having found that the capacity for conscious suffering is a capacity peculiar to the blood of the so-called white race, we must now go on to recognize in the blood of the Saviour the very epitome, as it were, of voluntary conscious suffering that pours itself out as divine compassion for the whole human race.”

And in another place Wagner says: “Because His will to save was so tremendously strong, the blood in the wine of the Saviour was able to be poured out for the redemption of all mankind when even the noblest races among men were falling into decay—poured out for their salvation, as divine sublimation, the blood that is associated with family or species.” The Saviour having come from a mingling of many different peoples, His blood was the symbol of compassion and blood in purified form.

Hardly has anyone even come so near to this mystery as Wagner did. It is indeed the power with which he approaches this mystery that constitutes his greatness as an artist. We must not think of him merely as a musician, but as one who possesses deep knowledge and understanding and whose desire it is to resuscitate for the people of modern times the mysteries of the Holy Grail. Before Wagner wrote his Parsifal little was known in Germany of the mysteries and of the characters of whom he tells.

When men were brought into the mysteries, there were three distinct stages through which they had to pass:

The first was stupidity, simple-mindedness.

The second was doubt.

The third was blessedness.

The first was the stage when man was led right away from every prejudice that prevails in the world, and was made to depend upon the power he had in his own soul, made to depend upon his own power of love, so that he might be able to behold the inner light, to see it light up within him.

The second stage was that of doubt. This doubt comes to all when they are at the second stage of initiation, and is then resolved and raised up to a higher stage, even to the inner brightness and splendor known as “Saelde” or blessedness. That was the third stage where man was brought—consciously—together with the Gods.

Parsifal (“through the vale”) was the name given in medieval times to all such candidates for initiation, and “Parsifal” had to undergo these three stages in inner experience. With the insight of a genius, Wagner saw on that Good Friday, 1857, the guiding thread that must run through the whole development of Parsifal.

The Templars were those who stood for true Christianity as distinguished from Church Christianity. In the Middle Ages remnants were still left of the old degenerate mysteries. All that belongs to those is grouped together under the name of Klingsor. He is the black magician in contrast to the white magic of the Holy Grail. Wagner places him in opposition to the Templars.

Kundry is the modern version of Herodias, the symbol of the force of reproduction in nature, the force that can be chaste or unchaste, but is uncontrolled. Beneath chastity and unchastity lies a fundamental unity; everything depends on the way of approach. The force of reproduction that shows itself in the plants, within the chalice of the blossom, and right up through the other kingdoms of nature, is the same as in the Holy Grail. Only, it has to undergo purification in that noblest and purest form of Christianity which manifests in Parsifal.

Kundry has to remain a black enchantress until Parsifal releases and redeems her. In the polarity of Parsifal and Kundry we can sense the working of deepest wisdom. Wagner, more than anyone else, took care that men should be able to receive what he had to give without knowing that they were doing so. He was a missionary who had a most significant message to deliver—to deliver, however, in such a way that mankind was not aware of receiving it.

Wolfram von Eschenbach wrote an epic on “Parsifal.” It was inartistic, but it sufficed for his time; for there were in those days men who had a measure of clairvoyance and could accordingly understand Wolfram. In the Nineteenth Century it was not possible to make clear to man the deep meaning of that great process of initiation in a drama. There is, however, a medium through which man's understanding can be reached, even without words, without concepts or ideas. This medium is music. Wagner's music holds within it all the truths that are contained in the Parsifal story. His music is of such a unique character that those who listen to it receive in their ether body quite special vibrations. Therein lies the secret of Wagner's music. One does not need to understand it—not in the least! One receives in one's ether body the benign and healthful effect of the music. And man's ether body is intimately connected with all the movements and throbbings of the blood. Wagner understood the mystery of the purified blood. In his melodies are rhythms and vibrations that must needs beat in the ether body of man if he is to be cleansed and purified so as to be ready to receive the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.

We can only arrive at a full understanding of the quite individual way in which Wagner expresses himself in his writings when we look carefully into what lies behind it. Wagner was convinced that the human will receives a special illumination from the spirit. He said that the will is—to begin with—rude, clumsy, and instinctive; then it grows gradually more and more refined, the intellect begins to cast its light upon it, and man becomes conscious of suffering and through his becoming conscious of suffering, a purification is able to come about.

(Dr. Steiner here quotes a passage from Wagner where he is writing of his friend Gobineau, who held that this consciousness of suffering was the distinctive mark of the white race, and that man was able thereby to rise to clairvoyance and to a higher moral life.)

(Dr. Steiner continues:)

Wagner is here describing the process that consists in the reflection of the intellect upon the will, and of how man becomes thereby clairvoyant.

Wagner's creative work consists, in its essence, of a religious deepening of art; ultimately it is concerned with the deepening of man's understanding of Christianity. Wagner knew that Christianity can be shown forth to the world, best of all in music.

Through raising himself up to the contemplation of the inner mysteries of the world order, man can attain on the one hand knowledge and on the other hand also true piety. A path of development stands open for him, which will teach him to know the meaning of the fact of Christianity.

The Mystery of Golgotha is one of the profoundest secrets of the evolution of the world. In order to understand it, we must shed light upon the occult wisdom of thousands of years ago, on the remote past of the world's development. It is not a plausible argument against a more penetrating knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha to say that the life and work of Christ Jesus should be accessible to the simplest mind. This is indeed the case. But a full, encompassing comprehension of this greatest event on earth must be drawn out of the depths of Mystery-wisdom.

In this lecture we shall penetrate into the depths of Mystery-wisdom in order to understand how an event such as the Mystery of Golgotha could take place. In this connection we should bear in mind that with the appearance of Christ Jesus upon the earth something occurred which divided mankind into two parts. We can grasp this best of all by seeking an answer to the question: Who was Christ Jesus?

For the occultist this question is a double one: For we must distinguish between the personality who lived at that time in Palestine and reached the age of thirty, and what became of him afterwards. In the 30th year of his life Jesus became Christ.

In the case of ordinary people, only insignificant portions of the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body are transformed into Manas, Buddhi and Atma, or into Spirit Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. Jesus of Nazareth was a Chela of the third degree, and his bodies were therefore in a state of high purification.

When a Chela has absolved the purification of his three bodies, then he acquires at a certain moment of his life the capacity to sacrifice himself. In his 30th year, the Ego of Jesus left his three bodies and passed over into the astral world, so that the three sanctified bodies remained behind on earth, emptied as it were of their Ego, so that room was made for a higher individuality. In the 30th year of his life, the Ego of Jesus of Nazareth made the great sacrifice of placing his purified bodies at the disposal of the individuality of Christ. Christ filled out these bodies. And from that time onwards we speak of Christ-Jesus who lived upon the earth for three years and fulfilled all his great deeds within the body of Jesus.

In order to understand the true being of Christ, we must go far back into the history of the development of the earth and of mankind. Before the earth became Earth, it was the old Moon, and the present moon is only a fragment of the old Moon. Before the Earth was Moon, it was Sun, and at a still earlier stage it was Saturn. We should bear in mind that milliards of years ago there existed in the cosmic spaces a heavenly body, Saturn. Also planets develop through different incarnations: Before the Earth was EARTH, it existed as Saturn, Sun and Moon.

Let us now transfer ourselves upon the Sun. There, the so-called Fire-Spirits had the same rank which human beings now have upon the earth. Of course, they did not have the same appearance, they did not look like men of to-day; these high individualities passed through the human stage upon the Sun under conditions which were quite different from the present human conditions. Also upon the Moon a host of Beings passed through the stage of humanity, and they came down to the Earth as higher Beings, as Lunar Pitris or Moon-Spirits, that had reached a higher stage than that of man upon the Earth. In Christian esotericism they are called Angeloi = Angels. Only upon the Earth the human being became MAN. The Lunar Pitris are Beings one degree higher than man, and above them stand the Fire-Spirits, who are one degree higher than the Lunar Pitris. The Fire-Spirits have reached a very high stage of development.

Now we come to the Earth, to the Lemurian race which lived upon a continent situated between present-day Asia, Africa and Australia. There, man took on his present form through the fact that below, upon the physical earth, there lived highly developed beings, but physical beings, higher than the present animals and less developed than present-day man. These physical beings formed a kind of shell, a dwelling-place and they would have been condemned to decadence had they not been fructified by higher Beings. Only at that time the human souls entered the physical human bodies, and then began to shape the Subsequent form of the human body. In the past, the human soul was an integral part of higher Spiritual Beings. The physical shells of human bodies were upon the earth, and into these streamed the souls of higher Beings coming from above, from the spiritual worlds. In the spiritual worlds the souls were connected like drops of water in a sea, which were then poured into a number of vessels.

The beings who poured out the souls from above were those who had passed through their human stage upon the Moon, the Moon-Spirits, whose stage of development was one degree higher than that of Man so that they could pour one part of their being into mankind, thus enabling it to develop further, Man could then transform his organism more and more. He could lift himself up from the earth and stand upright, he learned to walk, to speak and to become independent.

There was a certain relationship between all these souls, for they came from a common spiritual chorus. All those who had received a drop from the same being, greatly resembled each other. Members, of the same tribe first had such related souls, then the members of a race or nation, for example, the whole Egyptian or the whole Jewish nation. They had souls that had come from a common source. From the Moon-Spirits man had received the Spirit-Self and this enabled him to become an independent being, an Ego.

But something which man could not obtain from the Moon Spirits, could only be given to him by a still higher Being, common to all men, who had already completed its humanity upon the Sun: a Fire-Spirit. Many Fire-spirits had developed upon the Sun and exercised their influence upon the Earth, for they were high spirits. One of these Fire-Spirits was called upon to pour out his being upon the whole of mankind. A Spirit who belonged to the whole Earth was able to pour out over the whole of mankind, into each one of its parts, the element of the Sun or Fire-Spirits, the Buddhi, or the Spirit of Life. But in the Lemurian and in the Atlantean age the human beings were not ripe enough to receive this from the Sun-Spirit.

When we read the Akasha Chronicle (See Rudolf Steiner's bookThe Akasha Chronicle) we find that something very strange took place at that time: The human beings consisted of physical body, etheric body, astral body and Spirit Self, but this only lived in them in a very weak form. The Buddhi or Life-Spirit soared above every human being—it could be perceived in the Akasha spaces. In the astral space every human being was surrounded by Buddhi, but it remained outside and was not strong enough to enter man. This Buddhi was a part of the great Fire Spirit who had poured out his drops on the human beings, but these drops could not enter the human beings.

Christ's deeds on earth gave man the capacity to absorb into his Manas what we designate as Buddhi.

What Christ fulfilled upon the earth, was prepared by other great teachers who had preceded him, by Buddha, by the last Zarathustra, by Pythagoras, who all lived about 600 years before Christ, and who were men who had already absorbed a great deal of what lived in the surroundings of man. They had absorbed the spark of Christ. Also Moses belongs to them. But the Ego of the other people had not yet absorbed this spark.

Into the physical, etheric and astral body of Jesus of Nazareth had entered the whole Fire-Spirit, the one source of all the different sparks that lived in the human beings. This Fire-Spirit is the Christ, the only divine Being who lived on earth in this form. He entered the body of Jesus of Nazareth and as a result, all those who feel united with Christ Jesus are able to absorb Buddhi. The possibility to absorb and take in the Buddhi begins with the appearance of Christ Jesus. St. John the Evangelist designates it as the Divine Creative Word. The Fire-Spirit that poured his sparks into men is this Divine Creative Word.

As a result, the following took place: Whereas the Moon-Spirits could create differentiated tribes among men by sending down their drops, Christ was a uniting Spirit for the whole earth, and the human beings were thus united into a family all over the world. Whereas the differentiations among men were brought about by the drops poured out by the different Moon-Spirits, the unity among men was brought about by the Spirit poured out by Christ Jesus. What unites men came down to the earth through Christ Jesus.

When speaking of the last Judgement, Christ says in his prophecy: “When the Son of Man shall Come in his glory” (he means by this: when the drops of Christ shall all have entered into the human beings, when all shall have become brothers) “he shall say unto them on his right hand: Come, ye blessed of my Father, inherit the kingdom prepared for you from the foundation of the world: For I was hungred and ye gave me meat: I was thirsty and ye gave me drink.” (St. Matthew 25, 35) Then the only difference among men will be that between good and evil.

Christ says to His disciples: “What ye have done unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done unto me.” This signifies: Christ Jesus indicates the time when the drops poured out by Him will all be absorbed, so that when one man faces another, this drop of Christ within him will face the drop of Christ in the other. The power whereby the Buddhi could be called into life in man, this power went out from the life of Christ upon the earth. We should therefore look upon Christ as the uniting Spirit of the Earth.

If we could look down upon the earth from a distant star, through an epoch of many thousands of years, we would find a moment when Christ was active on the earth, so that the whole astral substance of the earth was permeated by Christ. Christ is the Spirit of the Earth, and the Earth is His Body. Everything that grows upon the earth is Christ. He lives in every seed, in every tree, all that grows upon the earth. That is why Christ indicated the bread and said: “This is my Body.” And of the juice of the grapes (at the LAST SUPPER the juice of grapes was passed round, not fermented wine) he had to say: “This is my Blood,” for the juice of the fruits of the earth is his blood. Consequently mankind must appear to him like beings who walk about upon his body. That is why he told his disciples after having washed their feet: “He that eateth bread with me, lifts up his heel against me.” (Treads on me). This must be taken literally, in the meaning that the earth is the body of Christ Jesus. Because he took upon himself the evolution of the earth, a distant spiritual being might see that more and more of Christ's spirit flows into the human beings; the single drops of Christ Jesus penetrate into the individual human beings. Finally the whole earth will be peopled by transformed, Christianised men, by men who have become divine through Christ. Only those who do not participate in this, will be put aside as evil; they must wait for a later time in order to follow a course of development leading to goodness.

All the different nations had Mysteries, before Christ appeared on earth. The Mysteries revealed what was to take place in the future. After a long training, the pupils had to undergo a preparation which consisted in a sepulchre. The hierophant was thus able to transfer the pupil into a higher state of consciousness which made his body lie inert in a kind of deep slumber. In ancient times, the consciousness always had to be abated in order that the divine essence might enter man. In this lowered state of consciousness, the soul was led through the spheres of the spiritual world and after three days the hierophant called the pupil back into life. Through this experience he felt that he had become a new man and he obtained a new name. He was called Son of God. The whole process took place upon the physical plane, when Christ appeared and passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. In the ancient initiations the life-drops of Christ's spirit first called the pupils back into life and they were told: “He who will Christianize all men, will appear one day. And He will truly be the Incarnated Word. You can only experience this for three days, when you travel through the kingdoms of heaven; but One will come, Who will bring the Kingdoms of Heaven down to the physical world.”

The Initiate experienced upon the astral plane what Christ lived through upon the physical plane, namely that from the very beginning there existed a Divine Word that poured out its drops over the human beings; but the Ego-men could not absorb these drops. St. John, the herald of the Christianized Ego-man who has taken in the Christ, or the Word, reveals this. St. John speaks of the Word that existed upon the earth from the very beginning:

In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God.

The same was in the beginning with God.

All things were made by him and without him was not anything made that was made.

In him was life and the life was the light of men.

And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness comprehendeth it not.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John.

The same came for a witness, to bear witness of the light, that all men through him might believe.

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

For the true Light that lighteth every man was to come into the world.

He was in the world and the world was made by him and the world knew him not.

He came to each man (to the individual Ego-man) but the individual men (the Ego-men) received him not.

But as many as received him, to them he gave power to manifest themselves as children of God.

Those who believe in his name, are born not of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.

And the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us and we have heard his teaching, the teaching of the only begotten of the Father full of grace and truth.

The word “grace” in verse 14 has for St. John the same meaning as Buddhi; “truth” is Manas, the Spirit-Self.

John bare witness of him and cried saying: This was he of whom I spoke. After me cometh one who existed before me. For he is my predecessor.

And of his fullness have we all received grace upon grace.

For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.

No man hath at any time seen God with eyes. The only begotten Son who lived in the bosom of the Cosmic Father hath become our guide in this vision.

[Dr.Rudolf Steiner's rendering of the text.]

All initiations into the Mystery of the Spirit pointed to the coming of Christ Jesus. This initiation was attained in the Yoga sleep, in the Orphic sleep, in the Hermes sleep. When the initiate woke up again and returned into his body, so that he could again hear and speak with his physical senses, he uttered the words which are rendered as follows in the Hebrew language: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani.” The pupil of the Mysteries woke up with the words: “My God, My God, how thou hast raised me!”

This was the initiation during the ancient Jewish epoch. During his three days' sojourn in the higher worlds, the initiate experienced the whole course of mankind's future development, all that awaited him in the future development of humanity. As a rule, these future stages of human development were not perceived abstractly in his vision.. Each stage was represented by a personality. The seer saw twelve individualities. They represented twelve stages of soul-development. The soul-forces thus appeared in the external form of twelve persons. At a certain moment, the initiate saw a certain scene: His own individuality became transfigured—the stage which the whole of humanity will reach when it shall be filled by Buddhi, when it shall be Christianized. He identified himself with God and behind him he saw the twelve soul-forces. John was immediately behind, he was the last of the twelve who announced his fulfilment. And he saw himself transfigured, he saw the stage which he would reach when perfection will be attained; he saw his soul-forces in the external form of persons, and perceived St. John, the herald of the Christ-stage of development. During the Yoga-sleep, these twelve figures grouped themselves around him, and the scene arose which was designated as the Mystical Supper. This image had the following meaning: When the initiate sits there surrounded by his soul-forces, he says to himself: These are one with me; they have led me through the development of the earth; the feet of this apostle enabled me to walk on along my path, the hands of that apostle gave me the power to work. ... The Holy Supper is the expression of man's fellowship with the twelve soul-forces.

Human perfection consists in the falling away of the lower soul-forces, so that only the higher forces remain behind; in future, man will no longer have the lower forces; he will, for example, no longer have the forces of procreation. John's soul-power above all will raise those lower forces to the loving heart. It will send out streams of spiritual love. The heart is the most powerful organ, when Christ lives in man. The lower soul-forces are then raised from the abdominal regions to the heart.

Every initiate experienced this in the Mysteries of the heart. It re-echoed in the words: “My God, my God, how thou hast raised me!” With the appearance of Christ Jesus, the whole Mystery, the whole experience, became reality upon the physical plane. At that time there were brotherhoods in Palestine which had developed out of the old order of the Essenes. Among their institutions, they also had a meal symbolizing the mystical Holy Supper. “To eat the Easter Lamb” is a general expression for something which took place at Easter. Jesus sat down with the Twelve and inaugurated the Holy Supper with the words: “At the end of the evolution of the earth, all men will have absorbed what I brought down to the earth, and the words, ‘This is my Body, This is my Blood,’ will then be true.” Afterwards he said: “There is one among you who will betray me.” This is brought about by the power of egoism. But as surely as this power of egoism is the source of treason, so surely will this lower soul-force be raised to a higher stage. One of the disciples rested upon Jesus' bosom, he rested upon Jesus' heart. This means that all the lower forces, every form of egoism, will be raised to the heart. At this point Jesus repeated to his Disciples the words: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani”—“Now the Son of Man is glorified, and God is glorified in Him!”

The same event which took place upon Golgotha took place in the ancient Mysteries. Under the Cross stood the Disciple “whom the Lord loved,” the Disciple who had rested upon his bosom and had been raised to his heart. Also the women are there under the Cross: the mother of Jesus, his mother's sister Mary, and Mary Magdalene. John does not say that the mother of Jesus was called “Mary,” but that this was the name of his mother's sister. His mother's name was “Sophia.”

John baptises Jesus in the river Jordan. A dove descends from heaven. At this moment a spiritual act of conception takes place. But who is the mother of Jesus who conceives at this moment.

The Chela, Jesus of Nazareth, at this moment divests himself of his Ego, his highly developed Manas is fructified and the Buddhi enters into it. The highly developed Manas that received the Buddhi is Wisdom—Sophia, the Mother who is fructified by the Father of Jesus. Maria, which is the same as Maya, has the general meaning of “Mother name.” The Gospel records: “The Angel came in unto her and said: Hail thou that art highly favoured,—behold thou shalt conceive in thy womb and bring forth a son—the Holy Ghost shall come upon thee and the power of the Highest shall overshadow thee.” The Holy Ghost is Jesus' father: the descending dove fructifies the Sophia that lives in Jesus.

The Gospel should therefore be read as follows: “Under the Cross stood the mother of Jesus, Sophia.” To this mother Jesus says: “Woman, behold thy son.” He himself had transferred the Sophia that lived within him to the Disciple John; he transformed him into a son of Sophia and said: “Behold, thy mother.” “Henceforth you should recognise the divine wisdom as your mother and dedicate yourself to her alone.” John had recorded this divine wisdom; Sophia is embodied in the Gospel of St. John. Jesus had given him this wisdom, and he was authorized by Christ to transmit it to the world.

The highest Spirit of the Earth had to incarnate in a physical body; this body had to die, it had to be killed and its blood had to flow. A special meaning is attached to this. Wherever there is blood, there is Self. The Self rooted in the blood had to be sacrificed in order that the old communities based on Self might come to an end. All individual forms of egoism flow away with the blued of the Crucified Christ. The blood of racial communities changes into a blood which is common to the whole of mankind, because the blood of Christ was sacrificed at the moment when he hung upon the Cross.

Here too something took place which might have been observed by an astral observer in the astral atmosphere. When Christ died upon the Cross, the whole astral atmosphere changed, so that events could take place which could never have taken place before. This has become possible because by shedding His blood, Christ gave the whole of mankind a Self that is common to all. The blood that streamed out of the wounds of Christ Jesus gave to the whole of humanity a Self which is shared by all. His three bodies remained hanging upon the Cross and were then revived by the Risen Christ. When Christ abandoned his physical frame, the three bodies were so strong that they could utter the words of initiation which follow the transfiguration: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!”

To all who know something of the Mystery-truths, these words must have revealed that a Mystery had been enacted. A small correction in the Hebrew text therefore gave rise to the words contained in the Gospel: “Eli, Eli, lama sabathani!” “My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!”

The original text is included in the volume of the Complete Edition of the works of Rudolf Steiner, entitled: Dar christliche Mysterium. (No. 97 in the Bibliographical Survey, 1961). This volume contains the texts and notes of thirty-one lectures, also of answers to questions, given by Rudolf Steiner in different places between 9th February, 1906 and 17th March, 1907.

All the formulae of a devotional or petitionary character, wise saws, aphorism and the like will be found at all times to contain much that touches upon the hidden mysteries of existence. But we must realize that all the different religions practiced prayer, but differed in one particular aspect in that some practiced prayer more in the form of so-called meditation, whilst Christianity and a few other religions practiced true prayer in the sense we know it to-day. On the whole, meditation is characteristic of the oriental religions. Meditation implies identification with some specific spiritual theme or object so that the meditator finds union with the divine Ground through this spiritual theme or object with which he is identified. Let us be quite clear that there are religions which, for example, prescribe for their members exercises in meditation, definite formulae of a devotional character on which they concentrate their mind, and as they concentrate upon these formulae they feel that divine spiritual life permeates their soul and that the individual, at this moment, is merged with the divine Ground. These formulae, however, belong to the mental realm. Fundamentally Christian prayer is no different except that its content is associated more with the emotional nature and feeling part of man. The Christian merges with the all-pervasive divine Being more through his emotions and feelings.

One should not imagine however that Christian prayer was always understood in this sense, nor indeed should it be understood in the manner in which it is frequently understood to-day. Now there exists an original, archetypal Christian prayer in which Christ Jesus Himself has indicated in the clearest possible way what attitude of mind the Christian should adopt towards prayer. And the injunction of this original prayer is simply this: “Oh my Father, if it be possible let this cup pass from me; nevertheless, not as I will, but as Thou willt.” Now let us look closely at these final words. We are first of all faced with a definite request—Christ asks to be spared the cup of suffering; but at the same time we are asked to surrender to the Divine Will: “Not as I will but as Thou willt.” This frame of mind which, when we pray, allows the Divine Will to pervade us, wills nothing for itself, but allows the Godhead to will in us, this frame of mind, this attitude of surrender must form the undercurrent, the key-note of prayer, if prayer is to reflect the Christian spirit.

So long as this spirit of humility prevails it is clear that it is impossible to practice petitionary prayer. And there are additional reasons why it is impossible to pray to God for the gratification of one's desires: one person would pray for rain, another for sunshine and both would be motivated by self interest. Or take the case where two armies are facing each other. Before the battle is joined each side prays for victory. But it is obviously impossible to grant both requests. But if the spirit in which one asks is, “Not my will but Thine be done”, then the petition is irrelevant—one surrenders to the divine Will. If I wish to make a particular request I leave it to the divine Being to decide whether my request should be granted or not.

This is the predominant spirit of Christian prayer and it is this spirit that gave birth to that universal, all-embracing prayer of Christian tradition, the Lord's Prayer, which according to Christian tradition was taught by Christ Himself. This prayer must, in fact, be reckoned amongst the most profound of all prayers. To-day we cannot really measure the full depth and dimensions of the Lord's Prayer as revealed by the original language in which it was taught. But the thought-content is so powerful that it could lose nothing of its effectiveness in translation into any language.

When we turn to the prayers of other peoples, we find, wherever religions have reached their high-point, prayers such as I have described to you. But when the various religions declined, these prayers inevitably lost something of their true character. They have become magical formulae, instruments of idolatry, and in the epoch when Christ Jesus taught His followers to pray, many of these magic formulae—all of which had their particular significance in their place of origin—were in common use. These magic formulae were always associated with worldly desires, with personal demands of a self-interested nature. Jesus taught that petitionary prayer, asking for oneself, was contrary to the Christian idea of prayer. Such prayers were secular in intention. When the Christian prays he should withdraw into his inner chamber, into the inner recesses of the soul where he can unite with the divine, spiritual Being. We must realize that in each of us dwells a spark of the Divine, that we partake of the Divine nature. But it would be wrong to assume that the creature is therefore commensurate with the Creator. When we say that man partakes of the Divine this does not imply that man himself is divine. A drop of water from the ocean is of the same element as the ocean, but is certainly not the ocean. So too the human soul is a drop from the ocean of the Godhead, but it is not God. Just as the drop can unite with its own element when returned to the ocean, so, as a drop from the Godhead, the soul unites spiritually in prayer or meditation with its God. This union of the soul with its God is called by Christ entering into the inner chamber.

Now that we have described the nature of Christian prayer and what is demanded of the Christian in prayer we shall be able to turn our attention to the content of the Lord's Prayer itself. I stated that the Lord's Prayer is the most all-embracing prayer. Therefore, in order to understand the Lord's Prayer, it is necessary to begin by widening the scope of our enquiries; we shall need to make many a detour in order to grasp its full meaning. We must study the being of man from a certain angle. As you know, we follow the traditional method which spiritual investigation has practiced over thousands of years. Let us briefly recall the nature of man's being.

First there is the physical body. Its substances and forces are identical with the mineral kingdom and the whole of inorganic nature. This physical body however is not, as the materialist imagines, simply an object in space, but it is also the lowest member of the human being. The next member is the etheric or life-body which man shares in common with the plants and animals, for every plant, animal or human being must call upon the chemical and physical substances so that they are galvanized into life, since of themselves they would remain inert. The third member is the astral body, the bearer of joy and sorrow, of impulses, desires and passions and the normal impressions of daily life. All these are the province of the astral body. Man shares this astral body only with the animal kingdom for the animal also is subject to joy and sorrow, impulses, desires and passions. To sum up, therefore: man shares the physical body in common with inorganic nature, the etheric with all that grows and propagates, with the entire plant kingdom, and the astral body with the animal kingdom. In addition there is a fourth member of his being which raises him above these kingdoms of nature and makes him the crown of Creation.

Such is the conclusion we arrive at after a little reflection. Now there is a name which differs from all others, the “ I ”, which can only refer to oneself. To everyone else I am a “thou”, and everyone else is a “thou” to me. As a name for the identity of the individual, the “ I ” can only arise within the soul itself; it cannot be experienced from without. The great religions have always been aware of this and therefore they said: when the soul recognizes itself as an “ I ”, then the God in man begins to speak, the God who speaks through the soul. The name “ I ” cannot be experienced from without, it must be experienced within the soul itself. This is the fourth principle or member of the human being.

The occult science of the Hebrews called this “ I ” the ineffable name of God. “Jahve” signifies simply “I am”. Wherever interpretations may be given by external scholarship, it really meant “I am”, namely, the fourth principle of the human being. Man consists of these four principles and we call them the four principles of man's lower nature.

Now if we wish to understand the being of man as a whole, we must look back into the history of human evolution. We can trace in retrospect the many and diverse peoples who precede us: the old Teutonic and Central European civilization, the Greco-Latin and Chaldean peoples, the Egyptians, Assyrians, Babylonians and Hebrews, the Persian peoples, even as far back as the Indian people from whom our present civilization stemmed. And in their turn the Indian people could look back to their forebears who dwelt in Atlantis, the continent which now forms the ocean-bed between Europe and America. Atlantis was destroyed by a series of deluges and vanished beneath the waters. The memory of this catastrophe has survived in the myths and legends of all peoples as the story of the Flood.

But even this civilization is not the oldest on earth. We can look back to still earlier times when man inhabited a continent that was situated approximately between the present Indo-China, Australia and Africa—ancient Lemuria, a continent of immemorial antiquity where totally different conditions from those of to-day prevailed. Usually we are not sufficiently aware of the vast and sweeping changes on earth in the course of human evolution. Now at this time the lower principles in man were already in eminence, and this continent was inhabited by beings consisting of the four principles, physical body, etheric body, astral body and the ego-nature. These beings were more highly organized than the highest animals of to-day, but had not reached the human stage. They were animal-men, yet different from the existing animals of our time. The latter are degenerate descendants which have evolved from these animal-men as a result of retardation and degeneration. The Lemurian beings, therefore, living at that time underwent a quite specific modification.

At that time they were ready to receive a certain force, the force of our higher soul to-day. There took place what we may describe as the union of the lower human nature with the human soul. Up to this time this human soul rested in the bosom of the Godhead, was an integral part of the Godhead Himself. Above therefore, in the realm of the spiritual, we have the divine-spiritual Being; below, the human envelopes consisting of four principles which had evolved so far that they were able to receive “drops” of this Godhead. We can illustrate what took place at that time by the following analogy. Picture a glass full of water. Let us imagine a number of sponges each containing a drop of this water. The drops which had previously formed an integral part of the water are now distributed amongst the sponges. This is a simple illustration which serves to show how the process of ensoulment took place at that time. Hitherto the soul had been one with the divine First Cause, just as the drop had been one with the water. These physical human envelopes behaved exactly as the sponges. These spiritual “drops”, separated from the common divine substance, became individualized. When they became souls they were like drops within the envelopes and from that moment actively began to fashion man as a physical and spiritual being such as he is to-day. These souls incarnated for the first time in the Lemurian epoch, then passed through innumerable incarnations and developed their physical body to its present stage. Thus parts of the Godhead were united with the lower principles of man's being. With each embodiment these souls progressively evolved, with each embodiment they became more perfect in order to attain a higher stage of being in the future.

This part of the higher nature which at that time was united with the lower nature and transformed it, and in the process of this transformation raised itself to a higher level, we call the higher principle of man's being: Spirit Self (Manas), Life Spirit (Buddhi), and Spirit Man (Atma). These are the aspects of the divine Essence by means of which man transforms in gradual stages his lower nature into the higher nature. By means of the force working within Manas he transforms his astral body, through the force of Buddhi he transforms his etheric body and through that of Atma the physical body. Therefore in order to attain the goal of his evolution he must transfigure and spiritualize these three bodies. Formerly, man consisted of the four lower principles—physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, to which was added at that time the germ of higher development which in reality is an emanation of the highest spiritual principle, namely the higher Triad, the divine Essence, the spiritual potentiality of man. Now we can look at this higher aspect of human nature from two standpoints: on the one hand as the higher nature of man which he is to evolve in the course of evolution, or on the other, as an aspect of the divine Being from which he has emerged, as the Divine aspect in man. Christ takes the second point of view first. We shall follow the same course and enquire into the nature of these higher forces in human nature. We shall start from the highest principle, the force of Atma working within man.

I would now like to characterize for you the true nature and essence of this higher principle of human nature rather than to offer you some kind of superficial definition. That which becomes the force of Atma is, in so far as it is a force emanating from the Godhead, of a volitional nature. If you pause to reflect upon your own power of volition, upon your will power, then you have a pale copy, a pale reflection of that which proceeds from the force of Atma, from the Godhead. Will is the power or force which is least developed to-day. The will, however, has the potentiality to grow increasingly in strength until a time will come when it reaches its maximum potentiality, when it will be able to attain its goal, which the religions call the “Great Sacrifice”.

Now imagine you are looking into a mirror. Your reflection is a faithful copy of your physiognomy, imitates your every gesture, resembles you in every respect, but it is a lifeless image of yourself. You stand before the mirror as a living being and are faced with your lifeless image, which resembles you in every detail, but is without the living reality, the essential self. Imagine that your will had developed to the point when it was able to make the decision to sacrifice your own existence, your own being, or to surrender it to your reflected image. You would then be in a position to sacrifice yourself wholly in order to endow your reflected image with your own life. Of such a will we say: it emanates, it pours out its own nature. What Christianity terms “the divine Will of the Father” is the highest expression of the will.

Today, therefore, the human will is the least developed member of the soul forces. It is however in the process of developing such strength that it is able to consummate the “Great Sacrifice”. Volitional nature, in so far as it is an outpouring of Divinity, is the true nature of that which can develop as the power of Atma.

Let us now consider from the Christian standpoint the second principle of man's higher nature, Buddhi or Life Spirit, as an outpouring of the Godhead. You will have no difficulty in understanding this if you do not concentrate on the force radiating from itself in order to lend life to the reflected image, but upon the reflected image itself. The reflected image is an exact repetition of the original entity. It is the same—and yet not the same—when you apply this idea to the entire universe, showing how the divine Will as a center is reflected in all directions.

Imagine a hollow globe whose inner walls are reflecting surfaces. A center of illumination inside this globe is reflected in myriad sequins on the walls: everywhere the universal Will in endless multiplicity, everywhere reflected images, single aspects of the Godhead.

Consider the Cosmos in this way—the Universe as a reflection of the infinite Divine Will. The Divine Will is not present in any single being, but expresses itself in infinite diversity. The reflection of the Godhead—where the Godhead occupies the central position and yet at the same time by virtue of the “Great Sacrifice” pours life into every reflected image of Himself—is called in Christian terminology “the Kingdom”. And this expression, “the Kingdom”, is identical with the Buddhi in man. When we contemplate the creative and productive principle in the Universe, the principle that issues from the Divine First Cause, then the next higher principle associated with Atma is Buddhi, a vital spark of this creative principle. In the form of “Kingdom”, Buddhi is universal and cosmic.

Let us now turn our attention to the individual aspects of the “Kingdom”. So far we have only considered it as a whole. Let us now look into the separate entities. How do we distinguish between them? By what is called in Christian terminology “the Name”. Each separate entity is invested with a name and thus we distinguish respectively the manifold, and the particular. By “the Name” the Christian understands what is often called the “representation”, that which is characteristic of an object. Just as the individual is distinguished from his neighbor by the name, so too the name is felt to reflect at the same time a part of the divine Being. The Christian responds to this name in the right way when he realizes that every member of “the Kingdom” is an outpouring of the Divine, that every morsel of bread he consumes is an outpouring, a mirror and a part of the Godhead. The Christian must realize that this is true of the smallest things. In human nature man owes it to the individual Spirit Self that he becomes an individual over against the others. What in “the Kingdom” is “the Name”, man possesses in his individual Spirit Self or Manas through the fact that he is a special part of the Godhead, that he has his own particular name, the name which in the individual passes from incarnation to incarnation.

Thus this threefold nature is seen to be a manifestation of the Supreme Being and from this point of view Atma is “the Will” of the Godhead, Buddhi or Life Spirit “the Kingdom”, and Manas or Spirit Self “the Name”.

Let us now look at the four lower principles of human nature, starting from the lowest, the physical body. This body is composed of the same substance and forces as external nature, substances and forces which the body continually transforms. It is only through the processes of anabolism and catabolism in the physical organism of man that life is maintained. He can only continue to exist because he is continually renewed by the transformation of these physical substances. He is an integral part of the whole of physical nature. A finger cannot preserve its identity if severed—it withers the moment it is separated from the body; it keeps its identity because it is an integral part of the whole organism; in the same way the physical body cannot preserve its identity if detached from the Earth. Thus man only preserves his identity when he is intimately related to the elements of the Earth. It is only through the metabolic processes that his fundamental being is maintained. Such is the nature of the physical body.

The second principle is the etheric or life-body. We must realize that it is this body which activates the physical substances and forces. It is not only the bearer of growth and propagation and of biological phenomena in general, but also of all those qualities in man which are of a more permanent nature than the transient impulses, desires and passions. In what respect does it differ from the astral body? If you wish to understand wherein this difference lies then you need only look back to the time when you were only eight years old. Think of all that you have learnt since that time, of the vast store of concepts, ideas and lessons won from those experiences which have enriched your life. Then think how painfully slow are the changes in your etheric body. Think how choleric you were as a child and ask yourself if you are not still prone to fits of anger on frequent occasions. Think of how your tendencies or your temperament have largely remained unchanged. They have not changed so much as your personal experiences. All that we experience, all that we learn from experience can be compared to the minute hand of a clock and the changes in character, temperament and habits to the hour hand. This difference then is explained by the fact that the astral body is the bearer of the former, whilst the etheric body is the bearer of the latter. A change in your habits implies a change in your etheric body. The lessons learned from experience imply a change in the astral body.

The training of the student in true occultism does not depend on what he outwardly learns; all spiritual training modifies the etheric body. Therefore you have done more for your real occult development if you have succeeded in transforming a single deep-rooted trait than if you have acquired unlimited external knowledge. Accordingly we distinguish exoterically, that for which the etheric body is the vehicle, and esoterically, what the etheric body needs. The etheric body is also the vehicle of the faculty of memory, but not of memory as conscious recollection. Any strengthening of the memory, for example, is associated with a transformation of the etheric body; any weakening of the memory implies a change in the etheric body, a change in the power to remember. And there is an additional factor of vital importance. Man lives to-day on two levels. He is a member of a family, of a clan, a nation and so on, and he also possesses certain characteristics which he shares in common with others and which bind him to that relationship. The characteristics of the Frenchman are quite different from those of the German and these again are different from those of the Englishman. They all share certain characteristics of their descent. At the same time every man has his own individual characteristics through which he transcends the limitations of his nation and through which he establishes his particular identity. One is a member of a community by virtue of certain qualities or characteristics of the etheric body. It is these characteristics which determine one's membership of a nation, a race and especially of a community. That which makes it possible to transcend the limitations of this community originates in the astral body. The astral body determines man's individual tendencies.

Therefore it is important for man's life in the community that his etheric body should harmonize with the etheric bodies of those with whom he has to associate. If he cannot make this adjustment it is impossible for him to live with them: difficulties arise and he is rejected by the community, he becomes an outcast. The task of man's etheric body therefore is to adjust itself to the etheric bodies of others. The astral body determines man's individual tendencies; it must live in such a way that the individual does not commit personal sins. Personal sins are the consequences of errors on the part of the astral body, are in effect defects of the astral body. Failure to achieve harmony with the community is the consequence of defects of the etheric body. In the esoteric teachings of Christianity the correct term for the defects of the etheric body was “debt”, that which disturbs harmonious relationship with others. A defect of the astral body, a defect which stems from individuation was called in Christian esotericism “succumbing to temptation”. It is the impulses, passions and desires of the astral body which lead man into temptation. The astral body errs through its own inner defects. In this way Christian esotericism distinguished between “debt” and yielding to temptation.

Let us now turn to the fourth principle of the human being, the ego. We have already described the physical body which is continuously recreated by means of metabolic processes, the etheric body which may be burdened with “debt”, and the astral body which may succumb to temptation. The fourth principle, the ego, is the primal source of selfishness, of egoism. It is through the efforts and operation of the ego that what was a unity in the Godhead is now diffused among the many. The defection from the divine unity into individualized existence is the work of the ego. Hence Christian teaching attributed to the ego the real origin of self-seeking and egoism. So long as the separate entities were united in the Godhead, conflict could not exist among them. Conflict could only arise when they became individualized, i.e. separate egos. The mutual development through conflict, which is tantamount to egoism, is called in Christianity the transgression of the ego, and Christian tradition indicates very precisely the moment when this soul became incarnated in the body through the Fall into sin, the eating of the apple in Paradise. The real “sin” or transgression of the ego is designated by the term “evil”. Evil therefore is the defect or transgression of the fourth lower principle. Only the ego can succumb to evil, which arose through the eating of the apple. In Latin, “malum” means both evil and apple.

To sum up: the physical body and the physical elements of the environment are of the same nature. The physical body is sustained by the processes of metabolism, the continuous interchange of forces and substances. The etheric body is that which holds the balance between the different members of the community and may incur “debt”. Finally we have the astral body which must not fall into sin and the ego which must not become the victim of egoism, of evil. This lower Quaternary unites with the higher Triad, the divine Essence,

 ATMA BUDDHI MANAS (Will) (Kingdom) (Name) 

Now think of prayer as a union of man, who has withdrawn into his inner chamber, with the Godhead itself. In the original teaching of Christianity the soul is portrayed as divine, as a drop from the ocean of the Godhead. And the soul in its separateness must pray to be reunited with the immanent and transcendent Godhead. The origin of the divinity in man is given the name of the Father. And the goal of the soul's destiny, where the soul will be united with the Father is Devachan or heaven.

And now let us recall the nature of the primal or archetypal prayer. It is an appeal by the alienated soul to be united with the divine Fatherhood.

The purpose of this prayer was to beseech God for the consummation of the three higher principles, to pray that the Will, the highest manifestation of the Divine may be realized in man; that the second higher principle, the Kingdom, shall take possession of the soul; and that the third higher principle, the Name, shall be felt as holy. This prayer therefore would refer to the three higher principles of the divine in man. In respect of the four lower principles he would ask: may my physical body be granted the substances necessary to sustain it; may the etheric body strike a balance between its own debt and the debt of others; may man live in harmony with his neighbor. May the astral body not fall into temptation and may the ego not succumb to evil, the true outcome of what we ordinarily mean by egoism.

You should pray for union with the Father in the words of a primal or archetypal prayer. And you should pray in such a way that, as you pray, you meditate upon the single principles of your sevenfold being.

“Our Father which art in Heaven.” First you invoke the Father, then you prefer your petitions which are related to the three higher principles:

“Hallowed be Thy Name, Thy Kingdom come. Thy Will be done on earth as it is in heaven.”

Then follow the four petitions which refer to the four lower principles:

“Give us this day our daily bread. Forgive us our trespasses (our debts) as we forgive them that trespass against us (as we forgive our debtors).”

This implies reconciliation with our fellow men.

“Lead us not into temptation”—refers to the astral body, and “Deliver us from evil”, i.e. from all manifestation of egoism or self-interest—to the ego.

Thus the meaning of the evolution of the seven-principled being of man is incorporated in the seven petitions of the Lord's Prayer. The Lord's Prayer as a Christian prayer, is offered to Christians from out of a deep understanding of the being of man and it incorporates the sum of theosophic teaching concerning the nature of man. Prayers that are not of merely transient effect, but which possess the soul and rejoice the heart for thousands of years, are the fruit of deepest wisdom. Such a prayer could never have arisen through an arbitrary collocation of beautiful or sublime words. It is only because these words have been drawn from the deep well of wisdom that they possess the power to influence the soul of man for thousands of years.

To maintain that the simple-minded have no understanding of this wisdom is not a valid objection. They have no need of understanding, for the power of the Lord's Prayer stems from this wisdom and is effective even when there is no understanding of the wisdom content. It is important to have a right understanding of this. When we look at a plant we are captivated by its beauty. And the most simple minded will also be captivated though he may know nothing perhaps of the divine wisdom concealed in the plant. And the same is true of prayers that answer our deepest needs. One need know nothing of the wisdom they embody and yet such prayers possess none the less the power, the wisdom, the exaltation and the sanctity of prayer. If a prayer is born of the highest wisdom, it is not essential that we know of this wisdom. What is of importance is that we experience personally the power of that wisdom.

Only in our present epoch is it possible once more to throw light upon what Christ Jesus contributed to prayer and to discover afresh the power He has infused into it, especially the Lord's Prayer. And because this prayer has issued from the fountain head of wisdom concerning man himself and his sevenfold being it not only exercises a powerful and lasting influence upon the most untutored mind, but is all the more edifying for those who are able to discover its deeper meaning. And at the same time it loses nothing of that power which if has always exercised, a power that overwhelms yet exalts, for the whole of theosophy, of divine wisdom, is found in the Lord's Prayer.

Christ often spoke to the multitude in parables. When He was alone with His disciples He expounded the parables to them. From this wisdom-filled exegesis of the parables the disciples were to derive that power through which they could become His messengers and could learn how Christ Himself had attained that magic power through which His mission is destined to continue acting upon mankind for thousands of years.

In this way we come to understand the meaning of the Lord's Prayer.

The spiritual-scientific movement has arisen in our time not because of the arbitrary act of this or of that individual, of this or of that society, but because it is connected with the whole evolution of humanity and, as such, it should be considered as one of the most important of cultural impulses. If we would penetrate into the mission of the spiritual-scientific movement, we must transfer ourselves into the past and future of mankind.

Just as the individual human beings have evolved, from the moment when they first descended as individual souls from the bosom of the Godhead, so mankind as a whole has also evolved. Consider the differences, the changes and the development which may be observed upon the surface of the earth in the course of thousands of years! Consider how entirely things have changed during that time! Generally speaking, this is difficult to realise and to grasp quite clearly.

We should first explain that what we are accustomed to name “mankind” is only the product of the so-called fifth root-race. This was preceded by another human race, the fourth root-race, which lived on a continent that should be thought of as lying between present-day Europe and America. This continent was Atlantis. Here our ancestors had quite a different form and an entirely different civilisation. The ancient Atlantean did not possess a developed intellect and mind, but he was equipped with fine somnambulistic-clairvoyant forces. Logical power, a combining intellect, science and art, such as they exist now, did not exist in ancient Atlantis, for man's faculties of thought and feeling were quite different. At that time, he could not have combined thoughts, nor could he have reckoned, counted, or read; as men do now; yet certain somnambulistic-clairvoyant spiritual forces lived in him. He could understand the language of Nature and could hear God speak to him in the murmuring waves; he could understand the rolling thunder, the rustling forest, the delicate aromas of the flowers; he could understand this language of Nature and was in the whole of Nature. At that time, no law or jurisprudence were needed to come to an understanding with one's neighbour; the Atlantean just went out and listened to the sounds of the trees and of the wind and these told him what he had to do.

Folk-lore, which never contains anything haphazard or thought-out, has preserved the memory of ancient Atlantis in a beautiful way, when it speaks of “Nibelheim”, for instance, in the Nibelung Poem. In a delightful way it speaks of the Rhine and all these rivers as waters which have remained behind from the mists of ancient Atlantis. And the wisdom of Atlantis is referred to in the treasure which lies buried below their waves, On this continent, which was situated between America and Europe, we must seek the seminary of the ancient adepts, Those who were suited to be the pupils of the great individualities whom we call the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony-Feelings, were trained in these schools.

The seminary which flourished during the fourth Atlantean sub-race, this first school of adepts, would now be in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean. There, the pupils were taught in quite a different way from now. At that time, a powerful, influence could pass from man to man, through the force which still lay in the spoken word.

Simple folks of to-day still possess a fine feeling for the inner, spiritual and occult power of words. But it is impossible to compare the present power of words with that of the past. For in the past, this was something tremendous, and the word alone awakened forces in the soul of the pupil. A mantram of to-day has no longer the force of earlier times, when words were not so permeated by thoughts, as is the case to-day. The influence which went out from these words awakened the soul-forces of the pupil; one might call this a human initiation through the powerful effect of the language of Nature. ... A clear language was also spoken there by the smoke from substances such as incense, etc.

There was then a far more direct connection between the souls of teacher and pupil. The written signs in the Adept-School of ancient Atlantis were imitations of the phenomena of Nature, written by the hand in the air, these signs had their effect and also influenced the spirit of the population, arousing forces in the soul.

Thus every race has its task in the evolution of humanity. The task of our race, the fifth root-race, consists in adding Manas to the four members of the human being. That is to say, the understanding must be awakened through concepts and ideas. Every race has its own task: the Atlantean race had the task of developing the Ego. Our race, the fifth root-race, or the post-Atlantean era, must develop Manas, the Spirit-Self.

But the achievements of Atlantis did not die, when Atlantis was submerged, for the essence of everything that existed in the Atlantean School of Adepts was rescued by a small group of men. Under the guidance of the Manu, this small group journeyed into a region now known as the Desert of Gobi. And this small number of men then prepared copies of the former culture and teachings, but in a more intellectual form; the earlier spiritual forces were transformed into thoughts and signs. The various streams of culture then journeyed out from this centre like rays, or beams. First came the pre-Vedic Indian culture, which transformed for the first time the in-streaming wisdom into thoughts.

The second culture which went out from this ancient School of Adepts was the old Persian culture; the third one, the Chaldean-Babylonian culture with its wonderful star-wisdom, its lofty sacerdotal wisdom. The fourth culture to flourish was the Graeco-Latin one, with its personal colouring, and finally the fifth culture, which is our present one. The sixth and seventh lie in the future.

I have now characterised our task in the evolution of humanity: What once existed in the form of cosmic wisdom, must be transformed into thoughts and brought down to the physical plane.

When the old Atlantean listened, between the tones sounding round him, he could hear the NAME of what he recognised as divine: “TAO”, In the Egyptian Mysteries this sound was transformed into thoughts, script and signs—the Tao-sign, the Tao-books. Everything in the form of knowledge, writing and thought first came into the world during the post-Atlantean age. Before that time, nothing could have been written down, for the understanding for it would not have been there.

Now we are living in the middle of the Manas-development. It is the task of our race to develop intellectual culture, and at the same time to develop egoism in its extremest form. Though it sounds grotesque, we may say that never before was there so much intellectual power in the world, and yet so little capacity of inner vision as at the present time. Thought is at the greatest distance from the inner essence of things; it is far away from inner spiritual vision.

When the Atlantean priest wrote a sign in the air, its chief effect was on the pupil's inner soul-experience.

The personal element came more to the fore during the fourth, the Graeco-Latin epoch. In Greece, the personal element developed in art, and in Rome we find it in the structure of the government, etc. In our time, we experience egoism, the dry personal, intellectual element. But our task to-day is to grasp the occult truths in Manas, in the purest element of thought. The comprehension of the spiritual in this finest distillation of the brain is the true mission of our age. To render thought so forceful that it acquires something of an occult power is the task which has been given us. This task must be fulfilled, so that we may be able to take our place in the future.

Mighty flames of fire destroyed ancient Lemuria, and mighty floods ancient Atlantis. Our civilisation will also perish, through the war of all against all. This is what we must face. Our fifth root-race will perish, because egoism will reach its highest pitch. But at the same time, a small group of men will develop the power of Budhi, of the Life-Spirit, through the force of thought, in order to carry over Budhi into the new civilisation. Everything that is productive in the striving human being will grow stronger and stronger, until his personality reaches the summit of freedom. At present, every individual must discover in himself a kind of guiding spirit in the soul's inner depths:—This is Budhi, the power of the Life spirit. Were we to approach the future by taking up the cultural impulses as in earlier epochs, we should face the disintegration of humanity.

What do we see now at the present time?

Everyone wants to be his own master: Egoism, selfishness have been pushed to the extreme. A time will come when no other authority will be recognised except one which men recognise freely, whose power is based upon free confidence. The Mysteries which were founded upon the power of the spirit, are called the MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRIT; the Mysteries of the future, which will have trust as their foundation, are called the MYSTERIES OF THE FATHER. These will mark the end of our civilisation. The new impulse of the power of confidence must come, otherwise we approach human disintegration, a universal cult of the Ego and of egoism.

In the times of the Mysteries of the Spirit, which were founded upon the rightful power, authority and might of the Spirit, there were certain wise men who possessed wisdom, and only the soul who passed through difficult probations could be initiated by them. In future, we approach the Mysteries of the Father, and we must strive more and more that each single human being should attain wisdom.

Will this counter-act egoism and the threatening disintegration? Yes! For only when we reach the highest wisdom, in which there are no differences, no personal opinion and no personal standpoint, but ONE VIEW only, will men agree. If they were to remain as they are at present, following their different standpoints, they would become more and more disunited. The highest wisdom always produces a unanimous view among all men. Real wisdom is ONE, and it unites men again, whilst leaving them as free as possible, without any coercive authority. Just as the members of the great WHITE Brotherhood are always in harmony with one another and with humanity, so all men will one day be one, through this wisdom. Only this wisdom can establish the true idea of brotherhood. Spiritual science therefore has only one task: to bring this idea to men, by developing now the Spirit-Self and later on the Life-Spirit. The great goal of the spiritual-scientific movement is to make it possible for man to attain freedom and true wisdom; its mission is to let this truth and wisdom flow into men.

The modern movement of spiritual science began with the most elementary teachings. Many important things have been revealed in the years which have passed since the founding of this movement, and much that is even more important will be revealed. The work of the spiritual-scientific movement, is therefore to allow a gradual flowing out of wisdom of the great white brotherhood that had its origin in Atlantis. Such work has always been prepared for through long periods of time. The whole activity of the great founders of religions was a preparation for the ONE great event, for the appearance of Christ-Jesus.

Spiritual science seeks to be the testamentary executor of Christianity. And so it will be. When the Mysteries of the Father have been fulfilled, that is, when the development of Budhi is accomplished in every individual human being, then each one will discover within himself his own deepest being—ATMAN, the Spirit-Man.

The coming of Christ-Jesus was prepared for by the sequence of the founders of religions, by Zarathustra, Hermes, Moses, Orpheus, Pythagoras. All their teachings pursue the same aim: To let wisdom flow into humanity, but in every case, in the form most suited to each people respectively. The essentially new element is not found in what Christ said; the new element in the appearance and teaching of Christ-Jesus is the force that lay in Him to awaken into LIFE all that, formerly was only teaching.

Christianity has brought men the power to be united in free-willed recognition of the authority of Christ-Jesus, whilst maintaining the greatest possible individualisation, so that they are able to join together in brotherly union through faith in Him, in His manifestation and in His divinity.

Between the Mysteries of the SPIRIT and those of the FATHER, stand the MYSTERIES OF THE SON. Their seminary was the School of St. Paul, who had appointed Dionysios as its leader. This school flourished under him, for Dionysios taught these Mysteries in a very special way, whereas St. Paul propagated the teaching exoterically.

Let us now seek an explanation from another side, so as to understand the meaning of the words: The MYSTERIES OF THE FATHER will come. In the old Atlantean schools for adepts the teachers were not men, but beings higher than man, They had completed their development upon earlier planets, and these beings, who had come down to the earth from other planetary developments, instructed a group of chosen men in the MYSTERIES OF THE SPIRIT. In the MYSTERIES OF THE SON, Christ Himself appeared as a teacher in the most solemn celebrations and was therefore also a teacher who was not a man, but God. But in the MYSTERIES OF THE FATHER, those who will become teachers will be men, These men, who develop more quickly than the others, will be the true Masters of Wisdom and of Harmony; they are called “The Fathers”, in the Mysteries of the Father, the guidance of mankind passes from beings who have descended from other worlds into the hands of men themselves. This is significant.

It is the task of spiritual science to prepare men to form a centre for this end, to prepare them for a universal wisdom, for an authority built only on trust and confidence, and to develop an understanding for this, to begin with, in a small nucleus of humanity.

The development of the materialistic civilisation reached its climax in the nineteenth century, and that is why the impulse of spiritual science entered the world at that time. Through spiritual science, something was called into life—and now exists—which counter-acts materialism: It is the counter-movement in the direction of spirituality. Spiritual science is nothing new, and even the spiritual-scientific movement is not new; it is only the continuation of what has already existed.

Materialism and egoism bring disintegration to humanity, for the individual human being only regards his own interests. Wisdom must therefore reunite the human beings who have thus become separated. Wisdom brings them together in fullest freedom and exercises no coercion whatever. This is the task of the spiritual-scientific movement in our time.

We must realise that wisdom must be acquired quite concretely. We all know the example of the stove which was given the task of heating a room. If we explain this to the stove in words as moving as possible, and entreat it to warm the room, it will not obey us unless we heat it; only then will it be able to fulfil its task. Similarly, all talk of brotherhood and of brotherly love is useless; only through KNOWLEDGE we draw nigh to the goal. Individual human beings, and mankind as a whole, can only reach the path of wisdom and of brotherhood through knowledge.

We have now followed this path by considering three kinds of Mysteries. Spiritual science must be able to awaken an understanding for such things in a small nucleus of humanity, so that when the sixth race appears this understanding can be awakened in all men. This is the task which spiritual science must fulfil.

A small part of the fifth root-race will forestall the course of evolution, it will spiritualise Manas and unfold the Spirit-Self. The majority, however, will reach the summit of selfishness. Only this nucleus of humanity, that develops the Spirit-Self, will become the seed of the sixth root-race, and the most advanced of these, the Masters, as we call them, who have grown out of mankind, will then be the leaders of humanity. The movement for spiritual knowledge strives towards this goal.