The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede, Third Degree

The reason why it is so difficult to penetrate into the spiritual world is that our love for our personality is so great. Through the esoteric life, this love for the personality undergoes a transformation, so that a greater self-knowledge comes about. We begin to realize that we are very imperfect and very limited in our abilities. We feel that we cannot go beyond certain limits of our nature and that we have to be satisfied with ourselves as we present ourselves in this incarnation. In doing so, we release ourselves more and divert attention from ourselves more, which is an absolute necessity if we want to enter the spiritual world. We should strive to look at ourselves as we do when we enter Kamaloka after death and experience our life on earth as a memory.

In Devachan, we actually start putting together the possibilities for our next incarnation. We choose the body, the parents, the people where we want to spend the next incarnation. Yes, we even work from there on the composition of our future head, trunk and limbs, and the brain is formed in advance in such a way that it will determine whether we become a man or a woman. If we want to become a truly feminine person, then we shape our brain to be larger than the usual size; if we have a smaller brain, then we become a woman associated with masculine qualities. So we come into life with certain possibilities, and one feels that one can change little during life.

It has been said many times that we are now repeating the Egyptian-Chaldean age. The people of that time could not experience everything that today's people feel within themselves. Everything they did in their daily lives happened more through their feelings. They instinctively felt what they had to do; they would not have been able to think about it. For him, thinking was not something within himself, but he perceived what the gods were thinking for him. In the starry sky, they read like living thoughts, like characters, what was revealed to them through the constellations. The gods separated something of their own being so that people would be able to absorb and understand it. The stars in the sky were something material; hence it is said of the stars that they are dead or dying bodies of gods. There were certain times when one could feel something of the starry world, and especially when the stars were just beginning to appear, they became a meaningful script for the Egyptians. In this way, the ancient Egyptians were in touch with the spiritual world.

Today we have sunk even deeper into the material world, and the starry sky no longer has any meaning for us. Today we think a great deal. But where do all these thoughts come from, as if bubbling up from the depths of our being? They are memories of what the stars revealed to people in those ancient Egyptian times, which now arise chaotically within us and flow into our consciousness. What used to be outside of man as thinking and was reflected in the starry sky is now within us. Everything, even the most complicated invention, is a result of that ancient time when man did not yet think but performed his work on earth as the wasp does now. Wonderful buildings were also erected in those days, and what is being built now or is being delivered by science as knowledge is only a shadow of those ancient times. But everything that comes about in the material world has no significance, nothing lasting for the future, cannot be brought over to Jupiter; and the only way we can transcend this is to study spiritual science.

In ancient Persia, people did not need to be reminded of the gods by means of the starry sky; they only needed to be pointed to the spiritual behind the sun. They could still see the spiritual beings with clairvoyance, especially in the intermediate states between sleeping and waking.

The fourth period, the Greco-Latin period, stands alone; it does not merge into the fifth as in the third, but this self-contained period was such that its second part was reflected out of the first part. The people who were embodied in that second part of the fourth post-Atlantean period still had a memory from their life in the first part, so that Homer could describe himself as the previously incarnated Odysseus. In that time, which existed in itself, the souls incarnated in rapid succession and still brought their previous earthly lives with them as memories.

The second period will be reflected in the sixth and also the first in the seventh. But those people who do not now accept the Christ impulse, which alone can awaken the true memory of the spiritual existence, will experience an inner fear in the sixth period, an oppressive feeling of something that is there but which they cannot grasp. And in the seventh period, this will cause a complete destruction in the life of thought and feeling, which will manifest itself in the physical structure of the body.

Recordings B by Alice Kinkel

It is said that Christ died; then about Kepler, Odysseus, Homer, and also about the impact of first impressions in the spiritual world. Odysseus and Homer are the same individuality. He tells, in the second period of the fourth period, that is, as Homer, what he experienced as Odysseus in the first period of the second period.

During these periods, man was still in contact with the gods day and night and was surrounded by the living gods. The first period, of which we have spoken, will then reappear in the seventh period; the wisdom of the ancient Rishis.

But the masses of people who reject the spiritual life will dig the great grave for everything spiritual in this last period, and over the great field of corpses will then stride the small group that must save the spiritual life into a new culture. But the other people will be like automatons; such bodies will walk on earth; then comes the new time. Five thousand years must have passed beforehand.

A tremendous depression, that is the first impression one has in the spiritual world when one is outside of one's body. One now sees, when the body is discarded, all the weaknesses that one has and all the possibilities for changing what one has done in life and what one has not done in the body. And it becomes difficult for the person to understand that all this must now remain so until the next incarnation; because between death and a new birth we can no longer change anything, we can only recognize the mistakes.

And that is the meaning of the ritual of the third degree.

Notes from the estate, presumably by Gertrud von Tschirschky.

Today marks the beginning of a new period of work in which we have reunited after a long break to work together. This work of ours is twofold: firstly, to find the path to the spiritual worlds, that is, to find knowledge; and then secondly, to live with the world forces, in the principles by which the world is shaped, the co-forces.

Gaining knowledge is difficult. Let us take for example a very simple object, a piece of chalk, to understand what Maja is. The sentence could be coined that sounds so simple: to gain knowledge, one must seek out the relationships between events.

This can be explained by means of a small but characteristic feature of our time. A newspaper cutting arrived from Bern these days, containing an advertisement that a lecture would be given in Bern on “The dangers of spiritualism and Dr. Steiner's theosophy” in the same hall where my lectures have been held. If you approach it rationally, you can say all sorts of things in response to such a fact. For example, you can point out that our movement is young and could easily be misunderstood, and so on. You can also say that someone might be driven by the best of intentions when they feel compelled to draw attention to the dangers.

But the actual facts of the matter are as follows – and anyone who is unaware of them, and they cannot be known without being explained, will never be able to deduce them with the help of their intellect. So here is the series of events: I was in Frankfurt and was on the square in front of the hotel for some reason; the bellhop came up behind me and said I should come to the hotel as quickly as possible, they were telephoning for me; I said that there was still time for that until I came back anyway. Then a gentleman asked when he could speak to me, the hour was agreed, the gentleman came; there was a lot of talking now; what was most striking about his manner was his folly.

Here, where we are aware that we do not want to criticize, that sympathies and antipathies do not have a say, something like this can be said because it is true. The Lord was (... long hair – unfortunately I have forgotten this nuance G.v.T.) of great folly. Those of our sisters and brothers who know how we work will know that anyone who comes seeking help and explanations will receive both, regardless of the qualities they possess. But here we had one of those cases that really do occur only rarely and only when the good of the movement demands it: the gentleman had to be turned away energetically. He said that he had been following me for so long and so often, always wanting to talk to me, and now he wanted all kinds of help from me.

The first thing that came to life in this gentleman when he was rejected, of course, was wounded vanity, tremendous wounded vanity, which naturally led him to turn against our movement. What is happening now in Bern is the result of wounded vanity; the matter in Frankfurt is not that long ago.

You can see from this that the reasons for the current action lie in a series of events that one would never come to if one wanted to judge the events in Bern rationally and critically. It is not important today to explain; only facts should be told to awaken a feeling for how to approach the events of life.

The impulse that flowed down from the spiritual world for this hour today was to create an atmosphere for what is to happen in the work this winter, an atmosphere for approaching the events of life. Think of something that has already been mentioned, at least for some of the brothers and sisters: The enormous amount of fish sperm, of which so few achieve their goal of developing into a new creature; enormous amounts perish in the sea. Likewise, a cornfield; a tiny part of the new grains will become ears of corn again, all the others enter lower, non-living forms of existence, become flour, bread. One must really be able to feel this, this failure to achieve the assessed goal for the vast majority. But bread becomes food for higher living beings, which could not exist without it.

And what is chalk? In what was the element of the earth in primeval times, lower creatures lived, which secreted vast amounts of seed; little of this seed fulfilled its actual purpose, the quantities precipitated and over time became what we now have as chalk. Only because of the abundance of seed from these lower creatures does the earth owe what it now has as chalk substance. (Bones!)

Here too we should feel that our intellect cannot enlighten us. We should learn to feel the workings in the divine-spiritual. That it is precisely spiritual forces that need what apparently does not reach its goal, what apparently perishes, as an external expression, and whose meaning and purpose remain hidden from the human mind at first.

I have already related the following in the Architect's House. A daughter was born to a couple. The mother died that same day; the father learned that his ship had sunk at sea and that his fortune was lost; he was struck down. So the child was alone and poor at the earliest age. A benefactress took her in and bequeathed enough to her in her will to ensure that she had sufficient maintenance. When the girl was seventeen, the carer died. There was a technicality in the will, it was contested, and the girl was left with nothing. So, for the second time in her young life, she was robbed of the goods of fortune that had presented themselves to her. She had to hire herself out as a servant. She met a man who fell deeply in love with her. She returned his love and agreed to marry him in order to escape from this desperate situation. It turned out that the marriage was impossible because the times were different then and the man belonged to a different faith. But he did not want to let go of her, but persuaded his father to give him permission to be baptized. The father did not want to agree, but he was already old; they waited for his death, which occurred. While the man was traveling to see his father, the girl became ill, died and was buried. After that, the man returned to marry her. He was so attached to her that he wanted to give her corpse as a gift. He had the grave opened and it was recognized from the position of the body that the girl had been buried in a state of suspended animation.

So a completely crushed life! This is how it appears to the observer. But the fact of the matter was that the girl had not taken enough possession of her bodies in this life. So the apparent death could also take place. A strong soul, but one that, after previous incarnations, was now going through a life that was always and always again a crushed one. And the purpose of this crushed life was to help her to take hold of her covers much more powerfully in a later, third life than in the life before the crushed one. It is precisely in this crushing that the source of strength for the next life lies. This must be felt and understood, how - that is, in what way - forces physically express themselves in the divine-spiritual work.

Do not approach the events of world evolution with a human mind, but acquire a feeling, a mood that can be used to absorb knowledge about the true causes, the true reasons that give rise to external forms. Just as that girl underwent a crushed life in order to gain strength for later, so we have to look behind the seeds, the grains that do not achieve their actual purpose, for ruling and working spiritual forces that express themselves in matter precisely in this way. We have to develop an intuitive sense for the spiritual underpinnings of phenomena, to acquire a feeling for them...

Notes by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

The physical body of Christ Jesus was given to the Earth and became one with the Earth.

The etheric body of Christ Jesus, parts of which were transferred to the people who were to be guides in a certain way.

Likewise, the images of the astral body of Christ Jesus were transferred to those people who had a special task in humanity.

There was no actual ego with this being, because the ego of Jesus of Nazareth left the three covers during John's baptism in the Jordan, but the fact that the Christ lived in the covers for three years has created something like a thin membrane, a kind of ego cover, which is incorporated into those who have a good understanding of the Christ being today.

When the seer looks into the spiritual worlds, he sees that the Christ has always been surrounded by the mystery of Golgotha and has lived in an etheric body that he has built up, surrounded by radiant life forces. The physical body was taken from the Christ forever by the mystery of Golgotha...

Materialism is something that manifests itself in the spiritual world. The materialists there present a terrible sight in the spiritual world. Through them, the Christ has suffered a second death in the spiritual world. As a consequence of this, the cross now appears in the spiritual world, growing out of the earth like a green bush, seized by flames of fire, charred and entwined with seven red roses. The cross with the body of the Lord is the symbol of the Mystery of Golgotha (the death of the physical body).

The Rose Cross is the symbol for the second death of the Christ in the nineteenth century, for the death of the etheric body at the hands of the materialists. The consequence of this is that the Christ can now be seen in the twentieth century as I have often told you, namely in the etheric body.

One can now see the cross growing out of the earth, black, charred by the fire of the materialists, and then the seven roses, red roses, shining on it. This is how the seer experiences the imagination.

By proclaiming this spiritual fact, you have now become confidants of a great mystery. Such secrets impose special obligations.

You have to be especially careful and watchful against those who have fallen away from us, so that nothing comes to their ears, because they hate us (Sonklar, Ostermann, Hübbe-Schleiden). What does all the hatred and enmity against us mean? It is because they hate us as the recognizers of the second death of Christ as the second sacrifice for humanity. This second death took place in the etheric sphere of the earth.

The “Temple Legend” and the “Dawn” are discussed. Those who let them sink in may say to themselves: I have tried hard, but now I have been a little absent-minded, my memory is fading. That is not a bad sign, because every person in the present has parts of himself that are dead, and materialists have the most of such inclusions. In the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, a large number of materialists were in the life between death and a new birth; they formed a kind of sect in the spiritual world, hating everything spiritual, everything of a spiritual nature, even though they are in the spiritual world.

We have spoken of those who have fallen away; in order to prevent them from interfering with our work here with their thoughts, it is necessary to change the ritual.

(From here on, probably M.E. instead of F. M.)

Notes B from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

When the esoteric practitioner regularly performs his exercises and delves into the temple legend or the great cosmic images given to us in theosophy, or into Jakob Böhme's “Morgenröte” and the other symbols as given in this temple, he will notice that it may (is) as if his brain at a certain moment were unable to think further, as if a limit were set to his thinking.

The esotericist should feel and inwardly experience something like this. The ordinary person sometimes has the same feelings that his brain is failing him, but he does not come to experience and become aware of this fact. People actually oversleep their whole lives; not only by sleeping at night, but also during the day they oversleep the most important events because they are completely absorbed in the impressions they receive from the senses. All those who, in an important time such as our own, have turned against what they could have attained as a spiritual current, however clever they were in and of themselves, but refused to take in the spiritual, and devoted themselves entirely to materialism, have turned against everything spiritual after their death as well and developed a certain hatred there, which they then, as a force (or forces), projected back into the physical world. Basically, this has always been the case since the sixteenth century, and these feelings of hatred make themselves felt in the physical world and have their effect there. The worlds are not separate from each other, they permeate each other.

We have also spoken of how, at the death of Christ Jesus at Golgotha, the physical body penetrated into the physical substances of the earth and how, from this, strength arose for individuals to undergo martyrdom in the first post-Christian times. In his time, the etheric body of Christ also dissolved into the earth as an etheric substance, and this opened up the possibility for individual personalities to absorb this etheric substance, and thus certain tasks could be accomplished by these individual personalities here on earth.

The astral body of Christ also entered the astral substance (aura) of the earth at a certain time, and with that, human astral shells could also be clothed, which produced certain events on earth.

And now the I-substance can be imparted to people. For even if Jesus of Nazareth also left his three veils at the baptism, still a part of the I-substance remained with the veils, and so this power was also added to the earth.

The new thing that is now gradually being revealed (communicated) to people is a reminder or repetition of what Paul experienced near Damascus. He saw the etheric form of Christ. But the fact that this is now to become visible to us is due to the fact that a new mystery of Golgotha has taken place in the etheric world, as it were. What took place here in the physical world at the crucifixion as a result of the hatred of people who did not understand, has now been repeated on the etheric plane through the hatred of people who, as materialists, entered the etheric world after death.

Consider once more how, in the Mystery of Golgotha, a cross was erected from dead wood, on which the body of Christ hung. And then we see that wood of the cross in the etheric world as sprouting, sprouting wood, green, living wood, charred by the flames of hatred, with only the seven blooming roses appearing on it, representing the sevenfold nature of Christ; then we have the image of the second “mystery of Golgotha”, which has now taken place in the etheric world. And through this dying, this second dying of Christ, it has become possible for us to behold that etheric body. The denser, dead part of the etheric body of Christ Jesus will be seen by people.

This is one of the greatest mysteries that is now to be revealed to the esotericist and about which nothing more can be said at present. Everyone should reflect on it and incorporate it into their meditation.

What has already been said, how hatred against our movement will grow ever greater, should be repeated and particularly emphasized. This hatred will not only come from materialists, but also from pseudo-spiritualists, even from pseudo-theosophists, who will create their own concept of Christ so that the truth about the Christ will not be known.

So it will be more necessary than ever that we stand together and feel united against this attack of hatred. It has even already been possible to betray these (F.M.) mysteries by people entering with too little seriousness and dignity.

Therefore, everyone should be reminded of the seriousness and dignity of such sacred things as are spoken of in our temple. Because of this betrayal, it has become necessary to change our ritual and to transform it so that, while the meaning remains essentially the same, the rituals will be different than before, so that they will not resonate with those of others.

Record C by Alice Kinkel Third Degree

What do we walk on in our world? On a corpse! — The mountains of the earth, what are they? The solidified thoughts of the gods! - The dying of the earth was a slow process that began in the fourth period of the Atlantean era, and the death rattle of the earth falls into the pre-Persian era, the Zarathustra era.

Leonardo da Vinci was an emissary of Rosicrucianism; he did not write in mirror writing for nothing. He worked for sixteen years on the painting of the “Last Supper”, and just as long on the statue of Franz Sforza. For the Last Supper, he could not find a model for the two main figures; Christ and Judas; Christ, from whose face the inner light should shine, and Judas, from whom the inner blackness should look out. The shadow on Judas' face cannot be explained technically either. Only a fragment of the painting remains, but it still gives some idea of the wonderful distribution of light and shadow in the painting and of its overall powerful beauty.

There is another picture that is truly moving, a picture in which the master Lionardo stands before his completed painting, the “Last Supper”, and is dissatisfied by it, because one cannot paint Christ in our age.

The statue, the other great work of Lionardo, was destroyed, that is, the model of it, when it was to serve as the centerpiece at a festival.

What we do and think as human beings here and the movements we make are what the gods did in the past to bring this world into being.

The seeds of the future are to be sown through the work and ritual in our M.E. lodges. Magic is not something that performs arbitrary actions or strange customs, but magic is what prepares the future of humanity and the world.

Berlin, February 10, 1913

Notes by Alice Kinkel Fourth Degree

A.o.L.o.L.A.

The human being is connected to the self in thirty-three ways. We have to overcome this self through our I. This self is anchored in the human body in the 33 currents in the spinal cord.

The shearer sees how currents emanate from the etheric and astral bodies, which can then be expressed in the movements of the limbs, which are half held back in the speech organs, in the larynx, where the sound is formed, and then held rigidly in the human head, brain and skull, brain lobes. The brain, the symbols for it in the lodge...

Starting with the left hand: I - an outward striving. The sound I - direct the right eye into the indefinite.

Stretching = A - both eyes into infinity.

Embrace = O - Look firmly at a specific point. Cross = E - Place your right hand over your left hand, and your feet in the same way, crossing your right foot over your left - just as the optic nerves are crossed in the human head.

Cupped hand = AO - Bend the body in a semicircle. Fist or clench = U

You should not carry out the movements, but inhibit the movement, press the limbs firmly against the body, but feel the same as if you were carrying out the movements.

We are the lost word of creation. The holy word is to be used only in the sign.

Where are we? In the sign of four.

Name the four: earth, water, air, fire.

The Cassiazweig has been discussed.

You are all half human; you are to develop the other half that belongs to you through the exercises that have been given to you, gradually. That is the task.

The [Pillars of] Hercules.

The task is this: for six to eight to ten weeks or more of the year, completely switch off the ego in words and thoughts. Only when you have accomplished this will you understand all of this.

Be The following also belongs to the explanations about the four:

The four can also be understood in terms of the four sentences that are always spoken in the lodge and that we know: 1913

Learn silence and you will have power.

Give up power and you will have will. Give up will and you will have feeling. Give up feeling and you will have knowledge.

The four is complemented to the seven: salt, sulfur, mercury.

Now the holy word is broken down again into the four;

earth, water, air, fire

gnomes, sylphs, salamanders

One column is the sun, the other the moon; both make up the earth.

Cologne, May 11, 1913

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

If we look back at the way in which souls celebrated the summer solstice festival before the Mystery of Golgotha – what we now call around St. John's Day – and at how they felt and experienced that time, we arrive at very different feelings from those which the souls of the present experience at this moment of the year. In the past, the souls – and these are, after all, our own souls – lived with nature as a reality. The falling of snowflakes, the whispering of the wind in the forest, the light that flashes from lightning, the rolling of thunder, the patter of rain, all this was the speech of the gods for the souls of that time; and they understood that language and lived the life of the gods. When the sun barely showed itself during the winter around Christmas time, it also became lonely and dark inside them, and with the falling snowflakes they felt how they were cut off from the activities of the gods. And when spring came and everything began to sprout and sprout, the souls themselves came to life again, and it became warm in the souls. And in proportion as the sun sent its rays to the earth, they could again listen to the conversation of the gods; then they felt at one with nature and with everything that spoke from it. But the same souls can no longer hear the same, no longer experience it. The gods are becoming more and more silent, and we see the seasons changing without feeling more connected to them. Why is that?

This is because, after the mystery of Golgotha, everything had to change. That which used to affect people from the outside is now supposed to work within the person themselves. All those forces that once worked directly on people in nature are still working, but now they work on people from within. With our inner soul forces, which are to become stronger through the descent of the I into us, we must find the forces within ourselves that once spoke to us from outside in thunder and lightning, in rain and wind. Now they speak to us in our knowledge, now they bring forth moral strength and wisdom in us, now they warm us inwardly and enable us to understand all people, to speak from person to person and to establish the love that shall bind all souls together, so that humanity will rediscover itself as one great unity, since the whole of humanity lies spread out in each person's heart.

The festivals that people now celebrate with the changing seasons are no longer external festivals, where people cheered or became silent together with nature, but have now become internal celebrations. And the hope arises that one day, in full realization, we will fully experience them. When the young green sprouts up and all spring shoots awaken, then the feeling awakens within us that the slumbering seed of the spirit will awaken in us, and we celebrate Easter in this warming hope. And when we approach the Feast of Pentecost and thus the high point of the year, we expect that this spirit, as the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Truth, will come into us and bring us knowledge and wisdom. Those people who set the dates of the holidays in the post-Christian era did so out of the deepest wisdom and intuition.

The Luciferic spirits wanted to give man that which they already had on the old moon, the spirit self or the fifth principle, before man was quite ready with the development of the fourth principle or the I. Thus, man received the fifth principle in an immature state. The true form of the fourth principle is shown to us by Christ, and this is indicated to us in the forty days, or four times a small cycle of ten days, which elapse between the resurrection and the ascension. Only then can the fifth principle come to people in the right way. And that is indicated in the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, which in turn comes ten days later - or as a fifth cycle - after the Ascension.

We know that the Elohim want to give us the powers of the ego on earth, through which we can absorb spiritual wisdom into our minds. However, this can only happen slowly and gradually, and all further development will be available for this purpose. The Luciferic spirits, who had already absorbed the powers of the I in the ancient world and were therefore far ahead of man, now want to give man the fifth principle. They do this by directing attention to the possibilities of the earth that can be fully grasped by the intellect. All arrogant natural science comes from Lucifer's will. He wants to permeate man with the fifth principle, bypassing the fourth. The ego-powers are used to sharpen the intellect for earthly purposes; they lead it further and further away from contact with the gods, who want to impart their wisdom to us, just as it now flows down from the occult world in the theosophical teachings. If we absorb the teachings that are issued from this temple, then the wisdom that they contain will gradually be able to be processed by our minds and the powers of our ego will grow, so that we will increase in inner moral strength, which will bring us true freedom, which is determined from within the human being.

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

We live in a transitional age in which greater changes will take place than in any other transitional period. Things have happened in the supersensible world that the supersensible beings expect at least some people on earth to grasp and to build on in their work.

Man has not five but twelve senses. In addition to the five senses usually enumerated, there are seven more that do not open outwards but are situated internally; these are:

1. the sense of speech, by which we grasp the spoken word;
2. the sense of thought, by which we can connect concepts and thoughts with what we have heard;
3. the sense of self, by which we know that other people are also endowed with a self. We only experience our self internally, not with the help of that sense organ. These senses are located in the soft parts of the brain;
4. a sense of balance, by which we can consciously stand upright - in contrast to mechanical objects;
5. a sense of mobility, by which we perceive our movements, such as walking and so on;
6. the sense of life, by which we feel well or unwell, fresh or depressed;
7. the actual sense of touch, that is, the distinction between hard and soft and so on. This is not an external sense organ, because you only find the resistance that you have to overcome when touching the object. What is usually called the sense of touch also includes the sense of warmth, which is one of the external senses. This has its organ in the skin; the sense of hardness, however, has only an internal organ, not an external one like the skin.

Of the twelve senses, therefore, only five are turned outwards; these are hearing, sight, smell, taste and warmth. The twelve senses are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Just as the Sun is something quite different - when viewed occultly - when it is in a different constellation, so man is quite different depending on whether he is connected to one or other sense organ. When he sees, he is all color; when he hears, he is all sound, and so on. But just as the sun is ultimately something other than the signs of the zodiac, so man is inwardly something other than his senses.

The division of the senses into seven and five is like the division of the starry sky when the sun rises in Aries and seven constellations are above the horizon and five are hidden below the horizon. And just as two of these seven stand at the boundary points, half on and half below the horizon, namely Aries and Libra, so among the seven inner senses there are also two that stand on the boundary between the inner and the outer, namely the sense of balance and the sense of self, which nevertheless already relate our inner being to something else that is outside us.

The fact that there are five senses that are open to the outside world comes from Lucifer, from the Luciferic influence. Originally, all the senses were inner senses. That is why it is also said in the Bible: “Your eyes” - ears and so on - “will be opened.” Originally, the eyes were only intended to reflect that which was perceived spiritually in images that one would have seen inwardly. The ears were also intended only to inwardly transform sounds into what one would have heard as spiritual sounds.

This is how the Elohim wanted to make the human senses; and what we still have now as light generation in the eye itself - for example, through pressure on the eye or through imagination - these are the last remnants of what the Elohim wanted to make out of the eye. But when Lucifer opened human eyes, man would still have been unable to perceive the physical if Ahriman had not transformed the external world so that people could perceive the physical. He wove darkness into the light, creating colors that humans can now perceive, but only that, because humans cannot see light itself. He, Ahriman, placed sound in the air, so that one hears only a faint echo of the real sound through the vibrations in the air.

Now Lucifer and Ahriman are powerful spirits, but they now have under them hosts of less powerful beings, down to the smallest elemental beings, who work in a grain of sand. Among these are also the hosts of Mammon, against whom Michael has been fighting for eons. The Mammonite spirits work to attain all knowledge only through the senses and to register it with the mind that is bound to the brain. Since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, they have been active in modern natural science, and the fact that such spirits as Huxley, Darwin and Haeckel are materialists is because, before their last birth, they passed through a sphere in which the still unconquered hosts of Mammon exercised their influence. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, however, they have been defeated by Michael, who is working there as an emissary of Christ. He has pushed them out of heaven and thrown them down to earth.

That is what happened in the transcendental world and the transcendental beings expect that man will continue their work. For these mammonitic spirits are now on earth, and they are now fighting to gain control on earth after being defeated in heaven. When a person like Maack writes about xenology (the doctrine of the foreign) or allonomy (the doctrine of the other) and at the same time says that this “foreign” or “other” cannot be recognized - when he proposes to build a transcendental mechanics (which is the same as saying that in Cologne you want to eat with a spoon what is on a plate in Paris) is nothing more than the effect of these hosts of Mammon. From xenology to the Turkish war, there is a straight line.

Therefore, we are called upon to continue the work of Michael and not to let these spirits rule on earth.

Those who allow what has been said to sink in may gradually see small flames of realization. We no longer have the right to expect a great spiritual outpouring like the one at Pentecost, but we may consider ourselves in full humility as small flames in which the light is reflected. If it has been said of a certain Adyar event that it can only be compared to the Pentecostal outpouring, then that seems to us to be blasphemy. But we may hope that what once descended as the Holy Spirit will awaken in us the little flame that has been placed in us and will bring us the knowledge of the truth.

Notes by Alice Kinkel For all degrees

The macrocosmic and microcosmic zodiac.
The macrocosmic and microcosmic planetary system.
The macrocosmic and microcosmic relationship between the sun, moon and earth.
The sun alone, macrocosmically and microcosmically.
The content of the lesson culminates in the drawing.
The signs of the zodiac act on the physical body, on our twelve senses.
We have seven upper or light senses and five lower or dark senses; these latter extend from hearing to smelling.
The planets act on the etheric body.
The relationship between the sun, moon and earth acts on the astral body. The sun alone acts on the ego.

The seven upper or light senses and the five lower or dark senses:

Sense of language
Sense of thought (mind)
Sense of self
Sense of touch
Sense of life
Sense of motion
Sense of balance
Sense of smell
Sense of taste
Sense of sight
Sense of warmth
Sense of hearing

Sun Willing
Moon Feeling
Earth Thinking

Breathing
warming
nutrition
Transformation or secretion
Continuation or processing
Growth
Reproduction

Notes B from the estate of Elisabteh Vreede first degree

We should become more and more aware that we are the complete image of the macrocosm in our essence, that we are a small world, a microcosm. The wise masters of the East have again given the task of making this truth clear. (The five and the twelve senses are explained again, as they were on May 12 in Cologne.) The five are the dark senses, because through these - the senses usually so-called - man completely steps out of his soul-spiritual. All these senses have flowed into man from the macrocosm, and that from the twelve signs of the zodiac, mediated by the influence of the sun on each of the different signs. One can make this clear by means of a drawing.

The sense of self corresponds to Gemini because in this sense one has to take a twofold approach. One has to step out of one's own self and into another self. The sense of touch corresponds to Cancer because, with this sense, one turns inward, as it were. The sense of touch serves to perceive the resistance that objects exert on us. The objects themselves are neither heavy nor light, but the pressure that we have to overcome causes us to perceive them as heavy or light. The sense of life corresponds to Leo, under whose influence it is completely. When the Sun combines with the forces of Leo, we feel a sense of vitality. (Sense of movement – Virgo has been omitted.) The sense of balance is associated with Libra; this sense definitely determines the ability to find the right position in three-dimensional space. The sense of smell (Scorpio) is the most dangerous sense when we try to relate it to spiritual entities, because it immediately brings us into the realm of black magicians. (The sense of taste – Sagittarius was ignored.) The sense of warmth (Aquarius) is like flowing water that rises and falls in waves and fills everything. We feel the warmth rising up and permeating everything within us. The sense of hearing is connected with the sign of Pisces, and the occultists of earlier times gave this sign the name of Pisces also for the reason that Pisces are deaf and everything must be represented in reverse on the physical plane. - Sense of speech - Aries; sense of thought - Taurus.

When man was created, the powers came from the twelve signs, and we were connected to these powers. They were also the tools of the gods, who could hear, see and so on with the help of these powers. Now man has wrested himself from these powers, and he now stands on his own. This means that he can go arbitrarily from one sign to another, while the sun, which has not wrested itself free, has to go through the signs one after the other. If the gods on earth want to give or hear, they have to work through these powers.

Just as the twelve signs of the zodiac have brought about our twelve senses through the sun, so have the seven planets, as they relate to the signs of the zodiac and the sun, helped to create living human beings by giving us that which flows into our etheric body. If we had not moved away from the planets, we would now feel these forces at work within us. They are drawn here within a loop for the reason that in reality the course of the planets is not as astronomy has conceived it, as a great circle around the sun. Only later will astronomy come up with the more correct movements.

Besides the twelve and the seven, we also have a trinity in our astral body, which is indicated by the relationship between the sun, moon and earth. That we are human beings with intellect, feeling and will stems from this. The power of thought comes from the sun, the power of feeling from the moon and that of will from the earth. Only earthly people can have mind, feeling and will in such a way, arising from the mutual state of these three bodies. In their narrow-mindedness, scientists may talk about Martians as if they were similar to humans; only on Earth can these three forces be found in the way they are through the relationship of the Earth to the Sun and Moon.

And our ego finds itself in the sun, in unity; the certain independence that the sun has from the other planets is brought about by our ego.

If we learn to combine all this in meditation, so that we connect with all these forces that work in us, it can mean a powerful jolt in our esoteric life.

Notes by Alice Kinkel for all degrees.

The bull symbolizes the purely maternal in man. If this were the only thing at work, then bulls would be the result. Therefore, during the time when she is carrying the new life within her, the mother must expend all her strength (unconsciously) to overcome the nature of the bull. The popular expression “mooncalf” in the sense of a deformity points to this origin of the bull's nature. Here again we can see how these popular expressions hold deep secrets. “Mooncalf”, the origin of the bull is to be found in the old moon.

The lion has its origin in the sun; it expresses the purely paternal.

The human being or the angel is that in the human being that passes from incarnation to incarnation.

The eagle is the superhuman, the divine in the human being. As an organ for this we have in the physical body the liver, the liver and the gray brain. ... The liver is also called the inner Jupiter; lightning and thunder power reside in it. From a clairvoyant point of view, this organ looks like clouds in which lightning and thunder flash. Man is clumsy compared to the superhuman, which is why the organ is like an unskillful lump. Now we may understand something of why it is said that the vulture feeds on the liver. This Prometheus saga is deeply significant.

Notes from the estate of Margareta Morgenstern

Our culture will increasingly sink into confusion. Lawyers, for example, will have a hard time finding their way out of the resulting chaos. People will become gaunt in body and soul and bald at thirty, thirty-three; they will become more and more desolate inside. The method of general time-saving comes over from America. No more thought is given to the work because the machine takes over all the manual labor, for example, in passing on bricks and so on, and so on.

Consider the shepherds in the fields in earlier times, when they slept in the open, whether in a hut or in an open field. They had the starry sky above them, and they still knew something of the cosmic connections. They saw not only this or that constellation, as people do today, but they still saw spiritual beings there. They knew they were united with them when they slept. They interacted with them from the cosmos. Matter is not an obstacle for spiritual beings to penetrate. Therefore, it is nonsense when it is said that the lodge rooms should not be aired, “because otherwise demons could enter.” A young member once asked: “Well, can't they just as easily come through closed doors and windows?”

When we sleep, we are still in the same situation as the shepherds in the fields of old, only we are usually unaware of it: spiritual beings work within us.

Some of us old folk, when we were young, met a real farmer and got into conversation with him. Of course, not every farmer felt this influence, and it was not easy for one who knew about it to open up to another. But when it happened, and in those days it could happen quite often, then such a farmer would say: “I have to rub the sleep out of my eyes so that the sun can enter me, so that I can wake up, otherwise I won't wake up.” When evening came, the sun went down and vespers were rung first, then they became sleepy, tired.

And the seasons, their change was felt quite differently in the past than it is today. People lived with the sun because they were still aware that we owe our ego powers to the sun. If we do not have these ego powers, then we fall asleep.

But more and more, people should free themselves from such bondage.

The Copernican system of the world. Just as if you were walking along the street to this room, and someone comes and asks you, “Are you walking?” - and you answer, “I don't know, I first have to observe whether I come to other houses.” - and you compare the time and the rows of houses and check whether you are walking or not. The same applies to the Copernican system of the world; it seeks a point of support in the universe.

After a hundred years many of you sitting here, even if not embodied, will become helpers for those confused souls who today no longer believe in a spiritual world and its workings.

... That is why it is said, because I want to give you the best I have to say from the spiritual worlds in these hours. We should draw strength for our outer life from these gatherings. Just the thought of it should give us strength for our outer life, strength for our thinking, purification for our feeling, strength for our will.

No matter what people do in the present, when they are reborn they will have a strong inclination and longing for their previous incarnation. They will experience something of this, want to know something, regardless of whether they are now striving spiritually or materialistically. We are currently at such a turning point in history, which leads people from an incarnation in which they want to know as little as possible about reincarnation and karma, to an incarnation in which they will have the most vivid sense of this: the whole life I am living now is hanging in the balance for me if I cannot know anything about my last incarnation.

And the people who now most of all rail against reincarnation and karma will writhe in agony in the next life because they cannot explain to themselves how the life they are now living could have come about. Theosophy is not practiced in order to acquire a certain longing for the previous life, but to awaken understanding for what will one day happen to all of humanity when the people who are alive today will be there again. The people who are theosophists today will share the tendency with the others to want to remember again; but they will have other insights and thus inner harmony in relation to their soul life. Those who today reject Theosophy will want to know about it and will feel something like an inner torment for something they do not understand. However, they will not grasp anything of what torments them; they will be at a loss, inwardly disharmonious. And it will have to be said to them in the next life: 'You will only learn to recognize what causes the torment when you imagine that you might actually have wanted this torment.

Of course, no one would wish for this torment, to go through it. But those who are materialists today will begin to understand their bleakness, their inner contrition, their torment in the next life when they follow the advice of the knowing ones, who will tell them: Imagine that this life, which you would now like to flee, is what you would have wanted yourself. Because you used to think that belief in an afterlife is futile, nonsensical, it has become futile, nonsensical and agonizing. You have planted the very thought in yourselves that makes this new life so bleak and so empty for you. Thus materialism will have a karmic effect in the next life. Thoughts that deny re-embodiment today are transformed into inner emptiness in the next life.

Notes A from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

When we are in our sacred space, we have to practice self-reflection. And we have to feel very strongly the karma that has brought us to the gates of this temple.

The human soul passes through the different ages and takes something with it from each one. From epoch to epoch, the soul's life changes, even if people do not notice it.

If we did not experience our own body, we could not immediately know whether we were walking or standing still; we would then have to perceive from the trees or telegraph poles whether we were walking or not. On a train, it may occasionally happen that you really don't know.

Today's astronomy is based on this point of view; it has to perceive from the movements of the stars and so on that the earth moves and that the whole solar system moves. In ancient times, it was quite different. In the time of the ancient Persians, for example, people still lived with their soul the life of the earth; through this they knew how the earth moves through space, and if they had recorded it, they would have drawn it like this - which later became the staff of Mercury.

This ability faded in later times. It was a freeing of the human being from the macrocosm, so that he can no longer feel this movement.

Only among the farmers did one still find this connection to the macrocosm some time ago. They went to bed when the sun went down and got up when the sun rose. If we were still like the ancients, we would not be able to have evening meetings; everyone would feel an insurmountable need for sleep.

It was the good gods who detached man from the macrocosm because, as a result of the temptation of paradise, man was connected to the creation of Lucifer and Ahriman. Therefore, after the Fall, Yahweh said to Lucifer: You wanted to give people the freedom within themselves so that they would become like the gods, distinguishing good from evil, but now they should also be freed from my creation so that they will follow it later in freedom and accept it.

As a result, man has become lonely in his soul on earth. And when we feel completely at home in our occult movement and in our meditation we are overcome by a great sense of loneliness, then that is a good sign of progress. Only through this feeling of loneliness can the higher worlds reach us.

At present, man is so far advanced that he has absolutely no eye for what is immediately around him. For example, Nietzsche once had a conversation with his friend from high school, Deussen, who was a Schopenhauerian, while Nietzsche wanted to go beyond Schopenhauer. Deussen defended the “negation of the will to live,” and when Nietzsche wanted to object to it, Deussen said that this could only happen if one had not yet understood what this negation really means.

But where is this negation of life really present? In the drunkards and gluttons; they are the ones who deny the divine creative powers; in all those who live in sensual passions or affects.

Everywhere a “bark culture” develops, which we must admire, but which we must immediately recognize as such. We have to cultivate the “marrow culture” alongside the “bark culture”. This outer culture is particularly flourishing in America. For example, the “scientific operating system” has developed there. This is of the same kind as, for example, “scientific pedagogy”, which also originated in America and is beginning to spread here as the “last word in wisdom”. Large numbers of children are observed to find out how long they can focus their attention on something and so on; then “fatigue coefficients” are established and the like. In this way, the work of laborers was also studied, for example, in laying stone; they examined how people could be used in such a way that, without having to think about it, the stones could be transported and laid in the fastest possible way. Man is made into a machine. This will get worse and worse in the future.

Everything will be mechanized; there will be no more handwriting, but children will immediately learn to type. Mechanization of life will dominate the future. It began with the discovery of the steam engine, and in the future people will look back on this discovery - or invention - as on a victory of Ahriman, just as we look back on the Fall of Man as on a victory of Lucifer. For when the steam engine was discovered at the end of the eighteenth century, the gods handed over the material development of the earth to Ahriman. The rest of the development of the earth, with its machines and the mechanization of life, belongs to Ahriman. The gods left it to him. This is what should hit our souls like a bomb.

But we should not try to remove the weight from the bowl that is being pressed down, but through our development we should put the weight of spiritual life on the other bowl. The Mystery of Golgotha was precisely that, the center of gravity of earthly development, and we have to take care of establishing balance.

Soon the terrible consequences of things like the “scientific operating system” (Taylor system) will arise. As a result, human souls will no longer be able to find their way on earth after living in the body for thirty or thirty-three years; they will experience themselves as dead and barren in soul. Then it will be up to those of us who have prepared ourselves for it and who will then live between death and a new birth in the spiritual world, to warm and sun the souls from there, so that they will feel: At first I was dead inside, but now something is beginning to live in me like an inspiration from higher worlds, something that makes me fully alive and warm again; now spiritual life is beginning to come into me again!

That is what must be said as a result of a conversation with the leading spirit of our development. And if one should ask: How can I know that what has been said here is really the result of such a conversation? - then the only answer that can be given is: What has been said today must be said, and it will have fulfilled its task when it strikes like a bomb in your hearts.

(This last part was first given in Kristiania, October 1913, during the cycle “The Fifth Gospel”)

Notes B by Unknown

The hours we spend between the three altars and our three lights are to be used for self-reflection. We are to learn to understand the world correctly. People today rely on external documents and, compared to earlier periods, say: How we have come so gloriously far! — Thus they stand under Ahriman and Lucifer.

Let us assume that man is so organized that he does not know whether he is walking or standing. In this situation, man finds himself in relation to the earth. Only by observing the stars does science calculate and recognize that the earth moves and how. It was not always so.

We go from incarnation to incarnation. The soul life is always different: when our souls were incarnated in Persian culture, people felt much more connected to the earth. They felt the movements of the earth in the cosmos. When this consciousness was lost, people deduced from the stars that the earth moves. Copernicus' theory is not correct. The Earth moves approximately in the lines of a Mercury staff. Man has thus lost a great ability. (Only the ability to perceive the Earth's movement inwardly also makes possible an understanding of the teaching and figure of Zarathustra.) But because of this he has become freer. Man has been set aside from the spiritual world on to the Earth, and he does not even know whether it moves. When Lucifer once approached man temptingly and said, 'I will make you free; you will see for yourselves what is good and what is bad,' the stern voice of Jahve was heard behind him saying, 'You lead man on to the earth, you must also lead him on it to his own independence.

Our whole culture would not be possible if man had not achieved this independence. Because man would also be bound to the great macrocosmic conditions: tiredness in the evening; the life of the farmer with nature. Progress must be recognized, for example, the ingenuity that has been used to build a (machine), even if that machine has no good purpose. Machine culture.

The Earth is handed over to the rule of Ahriman in order to mechanize it. This is what the archangeloi teach. As a counterweight, they teach people to develop spirituality, wisdom, virtue and moral strength (wisdom, beauty, strength). - From America, the land of bark culture, a management science is now coming over. Man becomes completely a machine (Taylor system). Experiments on children because of fatigue. Work should be done entirely mechanically to save time. Children will learn to write with a machine, not by hand. Free time should be used to enjoy beauty. Blindest of the blind. The beauties will not be there. Things belong together...

From the age of thirty, souls will no longer be able to cope with themselves. Our work and our task is to help them. This is the right aspiration if we strive not for ourselves but for the service of humanity. These proclamations should hit our spiritual life like bombs.