The Rudolf Steiner Archive

WE have come in our studies to the point where the Earth has passed through its so-called Moon-stage. We have also seen that a kind of sleep-state of the whole system followed the Moon stage of the Earth. One must of course realise that all the beings which inhabit the planet share with it this transitional, intermediate state. During this time they pass through experiences differing from those of the actually external state of evolution. We will try to be clear as to how the beings have undergone various things in this transition between the Moon-stage of the Earth and the actual Earth evolution.

We have seen that three kinds of beings lived on the Moon, physical ancestors, so to say, of our present Nature-kingdoms. There existed a kind of plant-mineral, animal-plant and man-animal; man himself on this Old Moon was in a state of not yet developed ego-consciousness. So far man had not attained to an “I” dwelling within a body.

Now during this transitional period something very important came about in the spiritual part of man—if I may thus express it.

If we form a true picture of the Old Moon sphere, we could describe it as a being which itself possessed a sort of life, somewhat like a tree, upon which all manner of living things exist. The Moon was itself a kind of homogeneous plant-mineral. Its rocks were in fact only a hardening of the plant-mineral like mass, and its animal-plants grew out of the mass, while what we can call the men-animals circled around the Moon. We must at the same time be clear that the Ego-consciousness still lived more or less in the atmosphere of the Moon in the Fire-mist, that it was still a part, a member, of a higher being, in whom existed all the egos which today are to be found in bodies separated by the skin one from another. Thus as yet there were no human beings going about as today, equipped with ego consciousness. On the other hand, however, something else was much more fully developed than on the Earth.

You know that what is called Folk-soul, Race-soul, has become a somewhat abstract idea today. Many think nowadays that the individual soul of man that dwells in his body is the actual reality. And if one speaks of German, French, Russian National-souls, people look on that as more or less an abstraction, as a comprehensive concept, embracing the characteristics which the individual members of these nations possess. To the occultist this is not so at all. What one calls the Folk-soul, as the German, French, Russian Folk-soul, is to him an absolutely independent entity. It is only that in our present Earth-existence the Folk soul is purely a spiritual being, perceptible only to one who can ascend to the astral plane; there you could not deny it, for there it is present as an actual living being. You would encounter the Folk-soul there, as on the physical plane you encounter your friends.

On the Moon it would have still less occurred to you to deny this Group-soul, for at that time it had a still more real existence. It was the Folk-soul, the Race-soul, which guided the bloodstream down into the bodies, into those beings which circled round the Moon. It is the destiny of our age to deny the existence of such beings as possess an actual life on the astral plane, and are not perceptible here on the physical plane. And we are at the very height of this materialistic evolution which prefers to deny such beings as Folk-souls and Race-souls.

Recently among other things a very characteristic book has appeared, which has attracted a good deal of publicity. It is a book which has been praised and considered, with justice, to be a true expression of our abstract objective thinking, since it is written as out of the soul of modern man. Such a book had to be written sooner or later. It denies everything that cannot be seen with the eye or felt with the hands. It is a scandalous book from the standpoint of the occultist, a notable book, however, from the standpoint of present-day methods of thought! I refer to Mauthner's Critique of Language. In his book a clean sweep is made of everything which cannot be grasped with the hand. Our age had to produce such a book as a kind of necessity. That is not meant as criticism, it is only to point out the contrast between the occult mode of thought and the present time. You can find in it the exact opposite of all occult methods of thought, it is the most amazing product of a dying cultural stream of the present day, and from this point of view it is quite excellent.

You will understand that on this Old Moon a more common consciousness prevailed than here on Earth. On Earth a man feels himself as an individual, on the Moon this was not the case. On the Moon the Group-soul was active, which then appeared on the Earth in such an attenuated form as Folk-soul; hence the whole Moon-globe had a common consciousness in a high degree. This common consciousness on the Moon felt itself as feminine. And now you know that the Moon was irradiated by the Sun, and the Sun was experienced as the masculine. This is preserved in the old Egyptian myth, for instance, Moon as feminine-Isis; Sun Osiris, masculine. An ego-consciousness, however, enclosed in the human body was altogether lacking. That was contained in the Moon's atmosphere.

Now during the intermediate state from Moon to the Earth, various beings worked in from the atmosphere of the Moon, and made the human etheric body and human astral body ready to possess an ego-consciousness. Now what happened when the Sun again shone forth in which were still contained the Moon and the Earth? In the environment of this now newly awakened Sun-globe were the beings who today form your souls, and during the intermediate stage they had incorporated the ego consciousness into the astral and etheric bodies. As yet the physical body did not possess it, and this emerged at first as the man-animal as it had been on the Moon. Thus these two parts were no longer in harmony. On the Moon they had still harmonised. What had now descended into the astral and etheric bodies was no longer quite in harmony with what existed below as physical, and the consequence of this was that before a harmony could arise the earlier states of Saturn, Sun and Moon had to be recapitulated. Thus we have three recapitulations before our actual Earth could appear.

To begin with, the Saturn existence came forth with the physical bodies of the animal-men, but in a certain respect no longer as simple as they were on Saturn. At that time the sense organs existed as rudimentary germs; now the glandular and nerve organs were present in addition, but they were incapable of taking in what was above. A short recapitulation of the Saturn existence had to take place. The Spirits of Ego-hood and independence must work once more on the physical bodies, in order to implant in them the power of taking up the Ego. In the same way the Sun-state must be passed through, so that these physical bodies in respect of the organs formed on the Sun were capable of receiving an Ego. And in the same way the Moon condition was repeated in order to make the nervous system fitted for it. Thus there was first a kind of repetition of the Saturn stage. In this the beings who were earlier animal-men now wandered on the Earth like automata or a kind of machine. Then began the time when this repeated Saturn condition went over into the Sun condition; there these human bodies were like sleeping plants. Next entered the repetition of the Moon-state, where the Sun had already released itself. Everything remained behind that had earlier already detached itself as Moon. Once again then the whole Moon-cycle was repeated, except that now the capacity to receive an Ego was implanted into the beings.

This repetition of the Moon-cycle was for the Earth, if one may say so, an evil period of its evolution, for considered spiritually, the ego-hood had been implanted into the human body consisting of physical body, etheric body and astral body, but without the refining power of thought. During the time when the Sun had already withdrawn and the Earth had not yet cast out the Moon, man was in a condition in which his astral body was the bearer of the most savage lusts, for every bad force was implanted in him and there was no counterbalance. After the separation of the Sun there was a globe in which, if one wished to express it today, the human beings were still entirely group-souls, but of the most sensual order with the worst instincts.

During this passage through a veritable hell, and under the influence of the departed pure Sun forces (not only of the physical sun, but also of the Sun-beings, who had withdrawn to the Sun) the recapitulating Moon gradually matured so far that it could throw out the terrible instincts and powers, and retain on the Earth whatever was capable of evolving. With the departure of the present moon all those sensual forces went away; therefore in the present moon you have the remains, in its spiritual significance, of all the evil influences which were at that time present in the human realm; and therefore too the moon is looked upon as having a detrimental influence.

Thus it was everything capable of evolution that remained on the Earth after the separation of the Sun and the Moon.

Let us consider first the animal-men themselves. They were gradually matured far enough for the Ego to be incorporated Thus we now have wandering on the Earth the human being who consisted of four members (physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego). It is now for the first time that the earlier swimming, floating position changes and man begins gradually to arrive at the upright position. His spine, his spinal nerve-cord, became vertical, in contrast to the completely horizontal position which it had during the Moon period, and with this rise into an upright position went parallel the widening out of the mass of the spinal marrow into the brain; and yet another development ran parallel with it. For the floating, swimming motion which man had both in the Moon period and during the repetition of the Moon period when the Fire-mist forces were still present in the environment, he needed a kind of swimming bladder, and this was actually a part of man's composition, as is the case with the fishes of the present day. But now the Fire-mist (we have called it “Ruach”) was precipitated. This took place quite gradually and slowly. The air, to be sure, was still filled with thick vapour, but the worst was precipitated and with this began the time when from a gill-breather man became a lung-breather. The swimming bladder was transformed into lungs. Through this man became capable of receiving into himself the higher spiritual beings, namely, the first rudiments of that which stands above the Ego-Spirit-Self or Manas. This metamorphosis of the swimming bladder into the lungs is expressed in the Bible in the wonderful monumental words: “And God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life and man became a living soul.” Here is expressed what had taken place in the human being during millions of years. And all the beings which we have learnt to know, the plant-animals as well as the animal-men of the Moon and their descendants during the Moon period of the Earth, all of them as yet had not red blood. What they possessed resembled the blood of the present day lower creatures which is not yet red. Blood-like substance flowed in and out of them from above. In order to be able to harbour the red blood in themselves something else was necessary. We shall understand that when we know that until the casting out of the Moon in the evolution of our planet no part had been played by iron. Till then there was no iron on our planet, it received it when the planet Mars passed through our Earth, and so to say, left iron behind. Hence the influence of iron in the red blood is derived from Mars.

Legend has preserved this well by ascribing to Mars the qualities which iron brought to the blood—strong and warlike forces. Thus the influence which came in then with the change in the breathing process, was supported by the introduction of iron into our evolution. This was of the utmost importance in our terrestrial evolution. Under these influences the human organism was perfected to the point of beginning to purify and refine the bodies which it had earlier received on Saturn, Sun and Moon. It began to work first, of course, on the body which had been last received, the astral body, and this purification of the astral body constitutes our present civilisation.

If you could observe that human being, still in process of transforming the lungs and taking the first steps towards the development of red blood, you would find him very dissimilar to the present human form. He was so different that one really hesitates to describe man at that period, for it would appear grotesque to the present day materialistic thinker. He had more or less the development of an amphibian, a reptile, which was just beginning to breathe through lungs, and from the former floating, swimming motion was learning little by little to raise and support himself on the earth. When we say that man in the Lemurian Epoch had a mode of progression that alternated between a hop, scarcely to be called a step, and then a flight into the air, we have the nearest approach to some memory of it in the old Saurians. Nothing remains to be discovered by the geologist as solidification's or fossils, for the body was quite soft, it contained as yet no kind of bony structure.

And now how did the Earth appear, after having freed itself from the Moon? It had formerly been surrounded by fire-mists, as in a seething steaming vessel, and then by degrees the dense watery vapours withdrew. The Earth was now covered by a very thin hardened crust, beneath which lay a bubbling churning sea of fire, the remains of the fire-mist of the former atmosphere,. Then gradually tiny islands emerged, the first beginnings of our present mineral kingdom. Whereas on the Moon a plant-mineral kingdom still existed, there now appeared the earliest foundations of our modern rocks and stones in consequence of the hardening, mineralising of this mass. Earlier still the animal-plant kingdom had developed more or less to our present plant kingdom. And the beings on the Moon who were animal-men had divided into two groups, one of which had kept pace with evolution and taken on the human form. But there were some who had not advanced with evolution; these are the present higher animals, they had stayed behind at an earlier level and since they could not share in the advance, they fell back more and more. All our present mammals are relics of the Moon animal-men who stayed behind. You must therefore never imagine that the human being was ever such an animal as those existing on earth today. The bodies of those animals were not at that time capable of receiving the I, the Ego; they had remained with the group nature of the Moon. The last which had almost achieved the additional principle of the earth, but which nevertheless proved later on too weak to be the vehicle of an individual soul, are the apes, the present Ape species. They too, however, were never actual ancestors of mankind, but beings which had degenerated.

Thus in the old Lemurian Age, the Earth was a kind of fiery mass, in which the modern mineral was for the most part dissolved and fluid, as is iron in an iron-foundry, and out of this developed the first mineral island masses. Upon these there wandered, half hopping, half hovering, the forefathers of man. The Spirit-Self endeavoured little by little to gain possession of this human being.

So we must picture the ancient fiery period of the Earth as a time m which a last echo still lingered of the forces of the Moon, which then gradually disappeared. They were manifested in the mastery which the human will possessed over the substances and forces of nature. On the Moon, of course, man was still fully united with nature and the Group-soul moulded the conditions of human existence. That was now no longer the case, but there still continued a magical connection between human will and the forces of fire. If the human being had a mild character, then, through the will, he acted on the natural element of fire in a calming manner, and in this way more land could be deposited. The passionate man, on the other hand, worked with his will magically in such a way that the fire-masses became fierce and turbulent and tore up the thin earth crust. Now once more the whole savage, passionate power that was peculiar to man on the Moon and during the repetition of the Moon-period on the Earth burst forth in the newly arisen individual human souls. The passions had such an effect on the fiery masses that they became ungovernable; a great part of the land on which the Lemurians dwelt was destroyed, and only a small number of the inhabitants of Lemuria were preserved and could continue the human race.

All of you were living in those times; your souls are the very ones which saved themselves from the raging fiery mass of Lemuria. The portion of humanity which had been saved, migrated into the land which we know as Atlantis, and the main part of which stretched between the present Europe and America; from there the human race multiplied and spread. Gradually the Earth's atmosphere had so changed that every trace of the old “Ruach” had gone, and the air was only saturated by dense masses of vapour. The Germanic legend has preserved the memory of this in the Nivelheim or Nebelheim, a land that was permanently permeated by similar heavy clouds of mist (Nebelmist).

Now what had been working in from outside during the Lemurian Age? At first, in the Saturn period it was the beings which we call Spirits of Egoism, of the sense of independence. During the Sun, it was the Archangels, the Fire-Spirits: during the Moon those beings which were, so to speak, the good spirits of the Moon time, for which the Christian designation is Angel, and which are called in Theosophy “Spirits of Twilight.” We have designated the outstanding Leader of these spirits as the “Holy Spirit” or the “Holy Ghost,” the Regent of the Fire Spirits as the “Christ,” that of Saturn as the “Father God.”

Thus the last Who had been at work with His hosts was the Spirit named in Christianity “the Holy Spirit,” the Regent of the Moon-evolution, the Spirit who was still present during the Earth's repetition of the Moon-period. It was the same Spirit who had formed man from without, and who now sent a ray of his own essence, so to say, into the human being. We have to distinguish two kinds of spirits in the beginning of the Lemurian Age: the spirits who prepare the lower bodily nature, who implant the ego-consciousness, who fashion the human sheaths, and that Spirit who himself drew into man at the moment when the human being learnt to breathe physically.

Now if you think that everything which on Saturn formed a kind of fiery mass surrounded by a finer atmosphere, was gaseous on the Sun, and then on the Moon was surrounded by those masses of fire-mist, then you must regard the evolutionary process of the Earth as one of purification, even as the evolution of humanity itself is a purifying process. What one calls air today only gradually became free of all that filled it as a kind of steam and smoke. We must be clear that what separated itself out from the atmosphere are the substances from which all bodies have built themselves up. The air is the purest of what has remained behind, it is the best corporeal medium for the guiding Spirits of the Moon, whom one calls “Angel” in Christian terminology. Therefore in the purified air, in the air which had been refined, men felt the bodily nature of the new guiding Spirit of the Earth, the Spirit Who now was Leader, Jehovah. In the stirring of the wind men experienced that which led and guided the Earth. And so they lived over into the Atlantean times, on the continent which forms the present bed of the Atlantic Ocean, sensing in the breath which they drew, the bodily nature of the Godhead.

That magical influence which the human beings had upon the Fire-ocean, upon the processes of the Earth, gradually disappeared, but in the early Atlantean Age another connection remained instead. A man still possessed a certain magical power over the growth of plants. If he lifted his hand, which at that time had a quite different form, above a plant, he was able to bring it to rapid growth, through the influence of his will. He stood in intimate relation with the being of Nature. The whole life of the Atlantean was in accordance with Nature.

What today is called the power of synthesis, the intelligence, logical thinking, was not yet in existence. On the other hand man had developed other things to a high degree, memory, for instance, of the marvelous development of which we can nowadays form not the slightest idea. Man could not calculate, not even that 2 x 2 = 4, but he knew it out of his memory; on each occasion he remembered the previous experience. Another memory lingering into Atlantean times was that although a man no longer felt the Folk-soul directly within him as on the Moon yet he experienced the influence of the old Folk Souls, Race-souls. This influence was so strong that it would have been quite impossible in those times for anyone who belonged to one Race or Folk-soul ever to unite with one who belonged to another race. There was a deep antipathy between the peoples of the various Folk-souls, love only existed between those belonging to the same. We may say that the common blood which earlier in the Moon-period had been poured down from the Folk-soul was the basis of this kinship. And men remembered not only in some dim way, but quite clearly, the experiences of their forefathers, they felt members of the chain of ancestors just as you feel your hand to be a member of your organism. This feeling of kinship was a part of evolution inasmuch as in this transitionary period which we have been considering and which took place when the Sun withdrew and the Moon was cast out, another important event took place. It is connected with all that was proceeding on the Earth as a sort of hardening process. The mineral kingdom appeared and at the same time a similar hardening took place in the interior of human nature. Something more solid formed itself by degrees out of the soft mass, and hardened first to cartilage and then to bone. And not until this bony structure was formed did the human being begin to walk.

With the insertion of the skeleton another process ran parallel. In consequence of the advance of human evolution on the casting out of the Moon and the retention of only what was able to develop, two different forces arose in the beings inhabiting the Earth. The Sun and Moon were now outside and their influences affected the Earth from without. From this intermingling of the Sun-forces and the Moon-forces, which had previously been in the body of the Earth, but now streamed in from without, the sex-life made its appearance. For all the forces connected with sex come under the influence of the Sun and Moon.

The still united Sun, Moon and Earth of ancient times could from its activity be looked on as of feminine nature and this was fructified, so to say, by the forces of the Sun itself. The Sun experienced itself as male, the Moon as female. Now the Moon drew out, the forces of the two mingled. In a general way we can describe all the beings which arose up to the departure of the Moon as being of a feminine nature, for all the fructifying forces came from without, from the Sun-force. Only upon an Earth, which had cast out the Moon, so that the Sun shone upon quite a different cosmic body, could the former undifferentiated female divide into male and female. With the solidifying, bone-forming process, therefore, took place the differentiation of the sexes. And with this was given the possibility of perfecting the Ego in the right way.

THE process that I have described to you as the division of the sexes was of such a nature that the two sexes are to be thought of as still united in that animal-man of the Moon and also in his descendants in the Moon recapitulation of the Earth. Then there really took place a kind of cleavage of the human body. This cleavage came about through densification; not until a mineral kingdom had been separated out as it is today could the present human body arise, representing a single sex. The Earth and the human body had first to be solidified to the mineral nature as we know it. In the soft human bodies of the Moon and of the earlier periods of the Earth human beings were of dual-sex, male-female.

Now we must remind ourselves of the fact that Man in a certain respect has preserved a residue of the ancient dual sex inasmuch as in the present man the physical body is masculine, the etheric body feminine, and in the woman it is reversed; for the physical feminine body has a masculine etheric body. These facts open up an interesting insight into the soul life of the sexes; the capacity for sacrifice in the service of love displayed by the woman is connected with the masculinity of the etheric body, whereas the ambition of the man is explained when we realise the feminine nature of his etheric body. I have already said that separation into the human sexes has arisen from the intermingling of the forces sent to us from the sun and the moon. Now you must be clear that in the man the stronger influence on the etheric body emanates from the moon and the stronger influence on the physical body from the sun. In the woman the opposite is the case, the physical body is influenced by the forces of the moon and the etheric body by those of the sun.

The continual change of mineral substances in man's present body could not take place until the mineral realm had taken shape; before this there was quite a different form of nourishment. During the Sun-period of the Earth all plants were permeated by milky juices. Man's nourishment was then actually effected by his imbibing the milk-juices from the plants as today the child draws its nourishment from the mother. The plants which still contain milky juices are the last stragglers from that time when all the plants supplied these juices in abundance. It was not till a later time that nourishment took on its present form.

To understand the significance of the separation of the sexes we must be clear that upon the Moon and during its recapitulation on the Earth all the beings looked very much alike. Just as the cow has the same appearance as her “daughters,” as all other cows, since the Group-soul lies behind, so could men scarcely be distinguished from their forefathers, and this continued till long into the Atlantean Age. Whence arises the fact that human beings no longer resemble each other?

It comes from the rise of the two sexes. From the original dual sex-nature the tendency had continued in the female being to produce similarity in the descendants; in the male the influence worked differently, it tended to call forth variety, individualisation, and with the flowing of the male force into the female, dissimilarity was increasingly created. Thus it was through the male influence that the power of developing individuality came about.

The ancient dual sex had yet another peculiarity. If you had asked one of the old dwellers on the Moon about his experiences, he would have described them as identical with those of his earliest ancestors; everything lived on through the generations. The gradual rise of a consciousness that only extends from birth to death came about by the individualising of the human race, and at the same time arose the possibility of birth and death, as we know them today. For those ancient Moon beings with their floating, swimming motion, were suspended from the environment with which they were united by the “strings” conducting the blood. Thus if a being died it was not a death of the soul, it was only a dying off of a sort of limb, while the consciousness remained above. It was as if your hand, for instance, should wither on your body and a new hand grow in its place. So these human beings with their dim consciousness only experienced dying as a gradual withering of their bodies. These bodies dried up and new ones continually sprang forth; consciousness, however, was preserved through the consciousness of the group-soul, so that really a kind of immortality existed.

Then arose the present blood, which was created in the human body itself, and this went hand in hand with the rise of the two sexes. And with it the necessity of a remarkable process came about. The blood creates a continuous conflict between life and death, and a being who forms red blood within himself becomes the scene of a perpetual struggle, for red blood is continually consumed and changed into blue blood, into a substance of death. Together with man's individual transformation of the blood arose that darkening of the consciousness beyond birth and death. Now, for the first time, with the lighting up of the present consciousness, man lost the ancient dimly sensed immortality, so that the impossibility of looking beyond birth and death is intimately connected with the division of the sexes. And something else too is connected with this.

When man still possessed the Group-soul, existence went on from generation to generation, no interruption was caused through birth and death. Then this interruption appeared and with it the possibility of reincarnation. Earlier, the son was but a direct continuation of the father, the father of the grandfather, consciousness did not break off. Now there came a time when there was darkness beyond birth and death, and a sojourn in Kamaloca and Devachan first became possible. This interchange, this sojourn in higher worlds, could only come about at all after individualisation, after the expulsion of Sun and Moon. Only then appeared what today we call incarnation, and at the same time this intermediate state, which again will one day also come to an end.

Thus we have reached the period in which we have seen the earlier dual-sexed organism, representing a kind of group-soul, divide into a male and a female, so that the similar is reproduced through the female, what is varied and dissimilar through the male. We see in our humanity the feminine to be the principle which still preserves the old conditions of folk and race, and the masculine that which continually breaks through these conditions, splits them up and so individualises mankind. There is actually active in the human being an ancient feminine principle as group-soul and a new masculine principle as individualising element. It will come about that all connections of race and family stock will cease to exist, men will become more and more different from one another, interconnection will no longer depend on the common blood, but on what binds soul to soul. That is the course of human evolution.

In the first Atlantean races there still existed a strong bond of union and the first sub-races grouped themselves according to their colouring. This group-soul element we have still in the races of different colour. These differences will increasingly disappear as the individualising element gains the upper hand. A time will come when there will no longer be races of different colour; the difference between the races will have disappeared, but on the other hand there will be the greatest differences between individuals. The further we go back into ancient times the more we meet with the encroachment of the racial element; the true individualising principle begins as a whole only in later Atlantean times. Among the earlier Atlanteans members of one race actually experienced a deep antipathy for members of another race; the common blood caused the feeling of connection, of love; it was considered against morality to marry a member of another stock.

If, as seer, you wished to examine the connection between the etheric body and the physical body in the old Atlanteans you would make a remarkable discovery. Whereas in the man of today the etheric head is practically covered by the physical part of the head and only protrudes slightly beyond it, in the old Atlantean the etheric head projected far out beyond the physical head; in particular it projected powerfully in the region of the forehead. Now we must think of a point in the physical brain in the place between the eyebrows, only about a centimetre lower, and a second point in the etheric head which would correspond to this. In the Atlantean these two points were still far apart and evolution consisted precisely in the fact that they continually approached each other. In the fifth Atlantean period the point of the etheric head drew in to the physical brain and by reason of these two points coming together there developed what we possess to-day: calculation, counting, the capacity of judging, the power of forming ideas in general, intelligence. Formerly the Atlanteans had only an immensely developed memory, but as yet no logical intellect. Here we have the starting point for the consciousness of the “ego.” A self-reliant independence did not exist in the Atlantean before these two points coincided, on the other hand he could live in much more intimate contact with nature. His dwellings were put together by what was given by nature; he moulded the stones and bound them together with the growing trees. His dwellings were formed out of living nature, were really transformed natural objects. He lived in the little tribes that were still preserved through blood relationship, whilst a powerful authority was exercised by the strongest, who was the chieftain. Everything depended on authority, which however was exercised in a way peculiar to those times.

When man entered on the Atlantean Age, he could as yet utter no articulate speech; this was only developed during that period. A chieftain could not have given commands in speech, but on the other hand these men had the faculty of understanding the language of nature. Present day man has no idea of this, he must learn it again. Picture, for instance, a spring of water which reflects your image to you. As occultist a peculiar feeling emerges in your soul. You say—My image presses towards me out of this spring, to me this is a last token of how on old Saturn everything was reflected out into space. The memory of Saturn arises in the occultist when he beholds his reflection in the spring. And in the echo which the spoken sound gives back arises the recollection of how on Saturn all that resounded into cosmic space, came back as echo. Or you see a Fata Morgana a mirage in the air, in which the air seems to have taken up whatever pictures are imprinted in it and then reflects them again. As occultist you see here a memory of the Sun-period, when the gaseous Sun took in all that came to it from cosmic space, worked it over, and then let it stream back, giving it its own sun-nature at the same time. On the Sun planet you would have seen how things were prepared as Fata Morgana, as a kind of mirage within the gases of the Sun condition. Thus without being a magician one learns to grasp the world from many aspects and that is an important means towards developing into higher worlds. In ancient times man understood nature to a high degree.

There is a great difference between living in an atmosphere like the present and such as it was in Atlantis. The air was then saturated by immense vapour masses; sun and moon were surrounded by a gigantic rainbow halo. There was a time when the mist-masses were so dense that no eye could have seen the stars, when sun and moon were stiff darkened. Only gradually they became visible to man. This coming into sight of sun, moon and stars is magnificently described in records of the Creation. What is described there has really taken place, and much more besides.

The understanding of surrounding nature was still very vividly present in the Atlantean. All that sounds in the rippling of the spring, in the storm of winds, and is an inarticulate sound to you today, was heard by the Atlantean as a speech he understood. There were at that time no commandments, but the Spirit pierced through the vapour-drenched air and spoke to man. The Bible expresses this in the words “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The human being heard the Spirit from surrounding objects; from sun, moon and stars the Spirit spoke to him and you find in those words—in the Bible a plain expression for what took place in man's environment.

Then came the time in which an especially advanced portion of the human race, who lived in a region which today is on the bed of the ocean in the neighbourhood of present Ireland, first experienced that definite union with the etheric body and thus an increase of the intelligence. This portion of humanity began to journey eastwards under the guidance of the most advanced leader while gradually immense volumes of water submerged the continent of Atlantis. The advanced portion of these peoples journeyed right into Asia, and there founded the centre of the civilisation that we call the Post-Atlantean Culture. From this centre civilisation radiated out; it proceeded from the groups of people who later moved farther to the east. There in Central Asia they founded in India the first civilisation, which still had an echo of the culture attained in Atlantis. The ancient Indian had not yet such a consciousness as we have today, but the capacity for it arose when these two points of the brain of which I have spoken coincided. Before this union there still lived a picture-consciousness in the Atlantean, through which he saw Spiritual beings. In the murmuring of the fountain he not only heard a clear language, but the Undine, who has her embodiment in the water, rose for him out of the spring: in the currents of air he saw Sylphs; in the flickering fire he saw the Salamanders. All this he saw and from it have arisen the myths and legends which have been preserved with most purity in the parts of Europe where there remained remnants of those Atlanteans who did not reach India. The Germanic Sagas and Myths are the relics of what was still seen by the old Atlanteans within the vapoury masses. The rivers, the Rhine, for instance, lived in the consciousness of these old Atlanteans as if the wisdom, which was in the mists of ancient Nivelheim had been cast down into their waters. This wisdom seemed to them to be in the rivers, it lived within them as the Rhine Nixies or similar beings.

So here in these regions of Europe lived echoes of the Atlantean culture, but over in India another arose, that still showed remembrances of that picture world. That world itself had sunk from sight, but the longing for what was revealed in it lived on in the Indian. If the Atlantean had heard the voice of Nature's wisdom, to the Indian there remained the longing for the oneness with Nature, and thus the character of this old Indian culture is shown in the desire to fall back into that time where all this was man's natural possession. The ancient Indian was a dreamer. To be sure, what we call reality lay spread all around him, but the world of the senses was “Maya” in his eyes. What the old Atlantean still saw as hovering spirits was what the Indian sought in his longing for the spiritual content of the world, for Brahma. And this kind of going back towards the old dream-like consciousness of the Atlantean has been preserved in the Oriental training to bring back this early consciousness.

Farther to the north we have the Medes and Persians, the original Persian civilisation. Whereas the Indian culture turns sharply away from reality, the Persian is aware that he must reckon with it. For the first time man appears as a worker, who knows that he is not merely to strive for knowledge with his spiritual forces, but that he is to use them for shaping the earth. At first the earth met him as a sort of hostile element which he must overcome, and this opposition was expressed in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the bad divinity, and the conflict between them. Men wished more and more to let the spiritual world flow into the terrestrial world, but as yet they could recognise no law, no laws of nature within the outer world. The old Indian culture had in truth a knowledge of higher worlds, but not on the grounds of a natural science, since everything on the Earth was accounted Maya; the Persian learnt to know nature purely as a field of labour.

We then come to the Chaldean, the Babylonian and the Egyptian peoples. Here man learnt to recognise a law in nature itself. When he looked up to the stars he sought behind them not the gods alone, but he examined the laws of the stars and hence arose that wonderful science which we find among the Chaldeans. The Egyptian priest did not look on the physical as an opposing force, but he incorporated the spiritual which he found in geometry into his soil, his land; outer nature was recognised as conforming to law. The external star-knowledge was inwardly united in Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian wisdom with the knowledge of the gods who ensoul the stars. That was the third stage of cultural evolution.

It is only in the fourth stage of post-Atlantean evolution that man advances to the point of incorporating in civilisation that which he himself experiences as spiritual. This is the case in the Greco-Latin time. Here in the work of art, in moulded matter man imprints his own spirit into substance, whether in sculpture or in the drama. Here too we find the first beginnings of human city planning. These cities differed from those of Egypt in the pre-Grecian age. There in Egypt the priests looked up to the stars and sought their laws, and what took place in the heavens they reproduced in what they built. Thus their towers show the seven-story development which man first discovered in the heavenly bodies; so too do the Pyramids show definite cosmic proportions. We find the transition from priest-wisdom to the real human wisdom wonderfully expressed in early Roman history by the seven Kings of Rome. What are these seven kings?

We remember that the original history of Rome leads back to ancient Troy. Troy represents a last result of the ancient priestly communities who organised states by the laws of the stars. Now comes the transition to the fourth stage of culture. The ancient priest-wisdom is superseded by human cleverness, represented by the crafty Odysseus. Still more plainly is this shown in a picture which can only be rightly understood in this way and which represents how the priest-wisdom has to give way before the human power of judgment. The serpent can always be taken as symbol of human wisdom, and the Laocoon group depicts the overthrow of the priestly wisdom of ancient Troy through human cunning and human wisdom symbolised in the serpents.

Then by the directing authorities who work through millennia the events were outlined that had to happen and in accordance with which history must take its course. Those who stood at the foundation of Rome had already foreordained the sevenfold Roman culture as it stands written in the Sibylline Books. Think it out: you find in the names of the seven Roman kings reminiscences of the seven principles. That goes so far in fact that the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, comes from without; he represents the principle of Manas, Spirit-Self, which binds the three lower with the three higher. The seven Roman kings represent the seven principles of human nature, spiritual connections are inscribed in them. Republican Rome is none other than the human wisdom, which replaced the ancient priestly wisdom. Thus did the fourth epoch grow within the third. Man sent forth what he had in his soul into the great works of art, into drama and jurisprudence. Formerly all justice was derived from the stars. The Romans became a nation of law-givers because there men created justice, “jus,” according to their own requirements.

We live ourselves in the fifth period. How does the meaning of the totality of evolution come to expression in it? The old authority has vanished, man becomes more and more dependent on his own inner nature, his external acts bear increasingly the stamp of his character. Racial ties lose their hold, man becomes more and more individualised. This is the kernel of the religion which says “He who doth not leave father and mother, brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” This means that all love which is founded on natural ties alone is to come to an end, human beings must stand before one another, and soul find soul.

We have the task of drawing down still further on to the physical plane that which flowed from the soul in Greco-Latin times. Man becomes in this way, a being who sinks deeper and deeper into materiality. If the Greek in his works of art has created an idealised image of his soul-life and poured it into the human form, if the Roman in his jurisprudence has created something that still further signifies personal requirements, then our age culminates in machines, which are solely a materialistic expression of mere personal human needs. Mankind sinks lower and lower from heaven, and this fifth period has descended deepest, is the most involved in matter. If the Greek in his creations has lifted man above man in his images (for Zeus represents man raised above himself), if you find still left in Roman jurisprudence something of man that goes out beyond himself (for the Roman placed more value on being a Roman citizen than on being a person and an individual) then in our period you find people who utilise spirit for the satisfying of their material needs. For what purpose is served by all machines, steamships, railways, all complicated inventions? The ancient Chaldean was accustomed to satisfy his need of food in the simplest way; today an immensity of wisdom, crystalised human wisdom, is expended on the stilling of hunger and thirst. We must not deceive ourselves about this. The wisdom that is so employed has descended below itself right into matter.

All that man had earlier drawn down from the spiritual realms had to descend below itself in order to be able to mount upwards again—and with this our age has received its mission. If in man of an earlier time there flowed blood which bound him with his tribe, today the love which still flowed in the earlier blood shows greater and greater cleavage; a love of a spiritual kind must take its place and then we can ascend again to spiritual realms. There is good reason for us to have come down from spiritual heights, for man must go through this descent in order to find the way up to spirituality out of his own strength. The mission of Spiritual Science is to show mankind this upward path.

We have followed the course of mankind as far as the time in which we ourselves stand; we must now show how it will evolve further, and how one who passes through an initiation can even today forestall a certain stage of humanity on his path of knowledge and wisdom.

IT IS now our task to speak somewhat of the progress of human evolution in the future and of what one calls initiation. It is by means of initiation that present day man passes in advance through stages of life which are otherwise only passed through by humanity in the future.

If we occupy ourselves with the first problem it may seem to you audacious to try to speak about the future, or even that it is impossible to find out anything of the future of man. Nevertheless if you will consider the matter a little you will find that the view that one can know something about the future is not so unfounded after all. You have only to compare these things with what the ordinary researcher, the natural scientist, for example, can know with regard to future events. He can tell you definitely that if he mixes together oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur under certain conditions, sulphuric acid always results. One can say exactly what happens when one intercepts rays by a mirror. In fact, this goes even further in regard to things of external life; one can predict eclipses of the sun and moon for indefinitely long periods of time.

How is it possible to do this? Because, and in so far as [one knows], one knows the laws of physical life. Now if someone knows the spiritual laws of life, from these laws he can likewise say what must come about in the future. Here, however, a question generally arises which weighs heavily in people's minds. It is so easy to imagine that it is a contradiction of freedom, of man's own voluntary acts, if it could be known in advance what will happen. This too is an incorrect idea. When you combine sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen under certain conditions, sulphuric acid arises; that is determined by the laws of the combination. Whether you do it, however, depends on your will; and so it is also in the spiritual course of human evolution. What will happen will be done by man in entire freedom of will, and the higher a man develops the freer he will be. Nor must one think that it is already decided what a man will do in the future because one can see it in advance. Most people, however, have no right understanding of this problem and in fact it presents very great difficulties. Since ancient times philosophers have tormented themselves with the question of human freedom and the law of predestined phenomena. Practically all that has been written in this field is extremely unsatisfactory, for as a rule people cannot distinguish between foreseeing and being foreordained. Seeing in advance is in fact no different from looking out to some distant spot in space. If you look in space to a point far off, let us say the corner of the street over there, and you see a man giving a penny to another, have you brought about this action? Has it been caused through the fact that you see it? No, you only see that he does it, and that exercises no pressure on his act. Now in a certain respect it is like this in time, only people cannot grasp it. Let us suppose you are reincarnated in a couple of thousand years, you then do something of your own free will; that is the same as the example of the gift of the penny. Under certain circumstances the seer sees what is done in the future, and this future act is just as little determined by the present point of time as the gift of the penny by the point of space. People often say if one sees that something will happen then it is actually predetermined. But then one is confounding the present with the future. In fact it would be no prevision into the future if it were already predestined; you are not seeing something that is already there, but something that has first to come; you must grasp with exactness the concept of seeing-into-the-future. It must be exercised and practised in patient meditation, then only does one find it possible to understand these things aright.

After these introductory words we will now speak of some few things that can be said about the evolution of humanity in the future. We have reached the point where humanity has descended most deeply into matter, where men turn to account their spiritual forces in the construction and manufacture of instruments and machines that serve the personal life. Connected with this was an ever-increasing densification, both of mankind and the earth as a whole. We have seen that the mineral kingdom, as we call it, the densest part of the earth, only arose at a definite point of time in our evolution. It was only then that man entered upon his present earthly, development; and the division of the sexes and other phenomena went hand in hand with it. At that time when the human being had not as yet entered this physical development which contains a mineral kingdom, he too was of a much finer, softer nature. Just to give some idea of it, let us note how the reproduction of the human race took place in those ancient times before the two sexes were in existence. At that time the human being who was still of double sex and of a thinner, finer corporeality, brought forth another being from itself. This did not take place as it does today, but somewhat as in spiritualistic seances the etheric body of some other being proceeds from the medium. That gives you more or less a picture of this materialisation from oneself, the manner of human propagation in ancient times. It was like an out-pressure from human beings who were ripe to continue their own development.

Thus you see that with the densification of man in the cosmos is connected a descent into the world of matter. And another force is connected with it which could never have developed without it:—egoism. Egoism has a good and a bad side. It is the foundation of human independence and freedom, but in its reverse aspect the foundation too of all that is bad and evil. But man had to go through this force of egoism if he was to learn to do good of his own freewill. Through the forces which had guided him previously, he would always have been impelled to the good; it had, however, to be possible for him to go his own way. Just as he has descended he must now ascend again to spirituality; and as the descent is linked with the predominance of egoism so does the ascent depend on men's selflessness, their feeling of sympathy for one another, becoming stronger and stronger. Mankind has evolved through various epochs, first through the old Indian, then the Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin to the present, the Fifth epoch. And this will be replaced by a sixth. And as human evolution is working towards this, it is working at the same time at the overcoming of the principle which has been strongest since the time when the etheric body united with the point in the brain of which I spoke to you yesterday. That was the time of the fall into the deepest egoism.

Man was also egotistic in his earlier evolution, but it was then in a different way. The egoism which enters so deeply into the soul as in our present age is inseparable from the predominating materialism; a spiritual age will denote the overcoming of this egoism. Therefore Christianity and all movements imbued with genuine religious life have worked consciously towards breaking through all the old blood-ties. Christianity has made a radical statement in the words, “He who forsaketh not father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister cannot be my disciple.” This indicates nothing less than that in place of the ancient blood ties there must enter the spiritual bond between soul and soul, between one human being and another.

The only question now is—what are the ways and means by which humanity may attain spirituality, that is, the overcoming of materialism, and at the same time reach what may be called the bond of brotherhood, the expression of universal human love. One might imagine that universal human love need only be stressed strongly enough, and that then it must come about or that one should found Unions which aim at the goal of a universal human love. Occultism is never of this opinion. On the contrary! The more a man speaks of universal brotherly love and humanity, becoming in a sense intoxicated by them, the more egotistic he becomes. For precisely as there is a lust of the senses so is there a lust of the soul; and it is in fact a refined voluptuousness to say: “I will become morally higher and higher.” This, to be sure, is not a thought which creates the ordinary conventional egoism, but it does lead to a subtle form of egoism.

It is not by emphasising “Love,” “Sympathy,” that they are generated in the course of mankind's evolution. Mankind will be led to that bond of brotherhood far rather through something else, namely, through spiritual knowledge itself. There is no other means of bringing about a universal human brotherhood than the spreading of occult knowledge through the world. One may talk forever of Love and the Brotherhood of Man, one may found thousands of Unions; they will not lead to the desired goal, however well intentioned they may be. The point is to use the right means, to know how to found this bond of brotherhood. Only those whose lives are grounded in universal occult truth, valid for all men, find themselves together in the one truth. As the sun unites the plants which strive towards it and which yet remain individually separate, so must the truth to which all are striving be a uniform one, then all men find themselves together. But men must work energetically towards truth, for only then can they live together in harmony.

The objection might be made: surely all are striving towards the truth, but there are different standpoints and therefore strife and dissension arises. That denotes a knowledge of truth which is not sufficiently thorough. One must not plead that there may be different standpoints, one must first experience that truth is single and indivisible. It does not depend on popular vote it is true in itself. Or would you put it to the vote as to whether the three angles of a triangle are equal to 180 degrees? Whether millions of people admit that, or not a single one, when you have recognised it, it is true for you. There is no democracy about truth. And those who are not yet in harmony have not penetrated far enough into the truth—thence originates all quarreling over truth. It may be said: “Yes, but someone asserts this and another that in occult matters!” In genuine occultism that is not so. It is the same in occult things as in materialistic things, there too someone asserts this and another that, but then one of them is false. Even so is it in genuine occultism; it is only that people often have a bad habit of judging occult matters before they have been understood.

The aim of the Sixth epoch of humanity will be to popularise occult truth in the widest circles; that is the mission of that epoch. And the society which is united in spirit has the task of carrying this occult truth everywhere—right into life—and applying it practically. This is precisely what is lacking in our age. Only look how our epoch is searching and how no one can find the right solution. There are innumerable problems, the Educational Problem, the Feminist Movement, Medicine, the Social Problem, the Food Question. And people doctor away at these problems, endless articles are written, and each talks from his own standpoint, without being willing to study what lies at the centre—occult truth.

It is not a matter of having some abstract knowledge of the truths of spiritual science, but of applying them directly to life, of studying the social problem, the educational problem, in fact the whole range of human life, from the standpoint of real occult wisdom. “But then,” it might be urged, “one would have to know the highest wisdom.” That arises from the mistake of thinking one must always understand what one makes use of in life. But that is not necessary; understanding of the highest principles often comes much later than their application. If mankind had wished to wait in the matter of digestion till the laws of digestion were understood then the evolution of mankind would not have been possible. So too one does not need to be aware of all spiritual laws in order to let spiritual science flow into everyday life. That is precisely the way in which the Rosicrucian method deals with the spiritual—fewer abstractions, but instead, the study of the problems of everyday life. Do you think that the child knows all the grammatical rules of speech when it has learnt to speak? First it learns to speak and then learns grammar. So we must lay stress on the value it has for a man, with the help of spiritual teachings, to attack what lies directly around him, before he occupies himself with what is to be found in the highest worlds, with information concerning the astral plane and Devachan. This is the only way to understand what exists in our surroundings, and where we ourselves must play our part. And we shall find that it is our task to bind together through the unifying bonds of spiritual wisdom those portions of humanity who have been torn out of the old bonds of blood and race.

And then, inasmuch as we evolve from the fifth into the sixth and then into the seventh epoch, the ancient connection of race and blood will be increasingly lost. Mankind becomes freer of physical ties in order to form groups from the aspect of the spirit. It was a bad habit in Theosophy to speak of races as if they would always remain. The concept of race loses its meaning in the immediate future. To state incessantly that seven and again seven races have always evolved in the world is the speculative extension of an idea that only holds good for our age—looking backwards and forwards; it has never been said from clairvoyant vision, from occultism. Races have arisen, as everything else arises; and as everything again dies out so will races die out too. Those who have always only spoken of races will have to accustom themselves to making their ideas fluid. It is only a convenient way of talking. If one looks but a little into the future those ideas which applied to past and present are already no longer valid. It is most important that people should not consider that something they have once brought into a beautiful concept is a truth for all time. Men must get into the habit of making ideas fluid, of recognising that ideas change-that will be an advance. The ability of passing over from rigidly dogmatic ideas to mobile ones must be cultivated in those who would be the bearers of the future. For just as times change so must our ideas change too, if we would understand the times.

Souls live now in a human body which you distinctly perceive with the senses. By what means has it arisen? It was very different in earlier times when the soul descended, in fact for our present material outlook even comically different. The soul took up its abode in it. By what means has the human being evolved to its present form? Because the soul has itself worked in the body during all its incarnations. You can form an idea of how the soul has worked on the body if you consider what possibility has remained to the man of our materialistic age to work upon his body. He can work relatively but very little on his dense physical body. See how you work temporarily on the body and its physiognomy. Something for instance causes you terror, anxiety; the impression of anxiety and fear makes you go pale. And your physical appearance is affected in the same way by the blush of shame. This passes away again, but you see how it is caused. Something acts on the soul and the effects extends to the blood and thence to the physical body, changing the very appearance. The effect can be still more intensive. You know that people who lead a life of thought have it very much in their power to create an impression on their countenance of their intellectual work, one can observe whether or not a man has lived a life of mental activity. So men still work on their external expression and a man of noble feelings displays them in dignified movements. These are but very slight relics of how man has worked on himself during millions of years. Whereas nowadays you can only bring the blood to the cheek and drive it away again, in earlier times man was entirely under the influence of a picture-world which was the expression of a world of spirit.

The effect of this influence was that the human being could work much more creatively on his body. At the same time the body was also more soft and yielding. There was a time when you could not merely stretch out your hand, when you could not only point with the finger, but when you could send your will into your hand, and so form it that you could thrust out the fingers as continuations. There was a time when the foot was not yet permanent but could be extended as a continuation when man needed it. Thus through the pictures which he received from the surrounding world man shaped his own body. Today in our material age this moulding is unimaginably slow, but a time will come again when it will proceed more rapidly. In the future man will again acquire more influence over his physical corporeality. We shall see when we consider Initiation by what means he gains this influence; although he may not reach it in one life, yet he will be able to do much for the next incarnation.

Thus it is man himself who will bring about the future form of his body. Inasmuch as the human being becomes softer and softer, inasmuch as he separates himself from the hard parts, he is approaching his future. An age comes when man will live above his earthly portion as it were, as in time gone by. This condition, which is comparable to your present sleep-condition, will then be replaced by another when the human being will be able to draw his etheric body out of his physical body at will. It will be as if the denser part of man were here below on earth and the human being will make use of it from outside like an instrument. Man will no longer bear his body about and live within it, but will float above it, the body will itself have become rarefied and finer. That seems a fantastic idea today, but one can be distinctly aware of it from spiritual laws just as one reckons future eclipses of the sun and moon from the laws of astronomy. Above all it will be upon the reproductive force that man will work. He will transform it. Many people cannot imagine that there will ever be a different generative process. But it will be so, the process of generation will be altered. The generative process and all that stands in connection with it will pass over in the future to another organ. The organ that is already preparing to become the future organ of generation is the human larynx. Today it can only bring forth vibrations of the air, can only impart to the air what lies in the word that goes forth from it, so that the vibrations correspond to the word. Later on, not only will the word press forward in its rhythm from the larynx, but it will be irradiated by man, it will be penetrated by very substance. Just as today the word only becomes airwaves, so in the future man's inner being, his own likeness, which today is in his word, will issue from the larynx. The human being will proceed from the human being, man will speak forth man. And this in the future will be the birth of a new human being—that he is spoken forth by another.

Such things throw a definite light on phenomena in our surroundings which no natural science can explain. That transformation of the reproductive force which will again become free of sex, takes over then the functions of the earlier reproduction. Hence in the male organism at the age of puberty, a transformation also takes place in the larynx. The voice becomes deeper. This shows you clearly how these two things are interconnected. Thus occultism throws light again and again on facts of life and illumines phenomena for which materialistic science can give you no explanation.

And just as the organ of the larynx will be transformed, so too will the human heart. It is the organ which stands in intimate connection with the circulation. Now science believes that the heart is a kind of pump; that is a grotesquely fantastic idea. Occultism has never made such a fantastic statement, as has modern materialism. It is the feelings of the soul which give rise to the movement of the blood; the soul drives the blood, and the heart moves because it is driven by the blood. Thus the truth is exactly the opposite of what materialistic science states. Man today, however, cannot guide his heart as he will; when he feels anxiety, it beats faster, since the feeling acts on the blood and this quickens the motion of the heart. But what is suffered involuntarily by man today, will later, at a higher stage of evolution, be in his own power. Later on he will drive his blood by his own volition, and cause the movement of his heart as today he moves the muscles of his hand. The heart with its peculiar structure is a crux, a riddle for modern science. It has diagonally striped fibres, which are otherwise only to be found in voluntary muscles. Why? Because the heart has not yet reached the end of its evolution, but is an organ of the future; because it will in the future be a voluntary muscle. Thus it already shows the rudiments of this in its structure.

All that goes on in the soul changes the organism. And if you now imagine the man who is able to create his own likeness through the spoken word, whose heart has become a voluntary muscle, who will have altered yet other organs, then you have a conception of the future of the human race in future planetary incarnations of our earth. Humanity will progress on our earth as far as it is possible under the influence of a mineral kingdom. This mineral kingdom, in spite of its having arisen the last, will be the first to disappear again in its present form. Man will then no longer build up his body from mineral substances as today, the coming human body will only incorporate into itself substances of a plant nature. All that works in man today, as mineral will disappear. In order to give you a seemingly grotesque example: the human saliva of today is a mineral product, for the physical body is an inter-action of mineral processes. When man will have ended his mineral evolution he will no longer have a mineral spittle; it will be of a plant-nature—man will, so to speak, spit flowers. Glands will no more secrete what is mineral, but a plant-like substance. The mineral kingdom is brought to an end by the evolutionary return of humanity to plant-like existence.

Thus the human being lives over to Jupiter inasmuch as he expels all that is mineral and passes over to the creativeness of the plant. And inasmuch as he then later passes over to animal-creation—the animals will be different from those of today—when his heart will have progressed so far that it can appear as a creator, then he will create in the animal world, as today he creates in the mineral kingdom, and then the Venus condition will arise. And when he can create his kind by virtue of uttering his own likeness, then is the meaning of evolution complete, then is the word fulfilled: “Let us create man in our own image.”

Only by observing this aspect—that the body will be moulded from the soul—will man really transform the human race. Only through a thinking trained in the occult and spiritual sense, will there appear what has been described as the transformation of the heart and the larynx. What humanity thinks today, that will it be in the future. A humanity that thinks materialistically will produce frightful beings in the future, and a humanity that thinks spiritual thoughts, so works upon and transforms the future organism that beautiful human bodies will proceed from it.

What the materialistic mode of thought brings about has not yet been completed. We have two streams today, a great materialistic one which fills the earth, and the small spiritual stream which is restricted to but few human beings. Distinguish between soul-evolution and race-evolution. Do not think that if races pass over to a grotesque form that the soul too does the same. All materialistically thinking souls work on the production of evil race-formations, and what is done of a spiritual nature causes the bringing forth of a good race. Just as mankind has brought forth that which has retrogressed in the animals, plants and minerals, so will a portion split off and represent the evil part of humanity. And in the body which meanwhile will have grown soft the inner badness of the soul will express itself externally. Just as older conditions which have degenerated to the ape species seem grotesque to us today, so do materialistic races remain at the standpoint of evil, and will people the earth as evil races. It will lie entirely with humanity as to whether a soul will remain in the bad race or will ascend by spiritual culture to a good race.

These are things that we must know, if we would live into the future with real knowledge. Otherwise we go through the world with our eyes bound, for forces are working in humanity which we must recognise and to which we must pay attention. A man would neglect his duty to mankind if he did not wish to become acquainted with the forces which work in the direction of right evolution or against it. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge would be egotism. He who wants to know in order to look into higher worlds acts egotistically. But one who tries to carry this knowledge into the direct practice of everyday life, furthers the advance of the coming evolution of humanity. It is extremely important for us to learn more and more to put into practice what exists as the conception of spiritual science.

So you see, the Spiritual Movement has a quite definite goal, namely, to mould future humanity in advance. And the goal can be reached in no other way than through the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. This is the thought that lives in the mind of one who conceives spiritual science as the great task of mankind. He thinks of it as inseparable from evolution and he regards it not as an object of desire but as a task and duty that is laid upon him. And the more we acknowledge this, the more rapidly do we approach the future form of humanity in the Sixth Age. As at that time in ancient Atlantis, in the neighbourhood of modern Ireland, the advanced human beings were drawn to the East in order to found the new civilisations, so have we now the task of working towards the great moment in the Sixth Age, when humanity will undertake a great spiritual ascent.

We must endeavour to come out of materialism again, and societies with a spiritual aim must undertake to guide humanity, not from motives of arrogance and pride, but as a task and duty.

So a certain group of people must join together in order to prepare the future. But this union is not to be conceived of geographically. All ideas of locality have then lost their meaning because it is no longer a question of racial relationships. The point will be for people over the whole earth to find each other spiritually, in order to fashion the future in, a positive way. For this reason, 400 years ago, when our epoch plunged the deepest into matter, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood emphasised that practical spiritual science which contains an answer to all problems of everyday life.

Here you have the ascending evolution following the descending. Just as old knowledge acts as a disintegrating force, as is shown in Mauthner's Criticism of Language, so the spiritual current of thought seeks the unifying bond of spiritual wisdom. Hence arises the new school of initiation which is directly concerned with leading humanity over into a new cycle of time.

Thus with the principle of human evolution is connected the concept of Initiation.

WE have yet to speak today of the principle of Initiation, or esoteric training. And we will speak of the two methods of training which take into special consideration what has been explained here concerning human evolution. For we must be clear that in a certain way we find the truth by retracing our steps to earlier stages of humanity.

It has been said that the inhabitants of old Atlantis could perceive wisdom in all that surrounded them. The further we go back into the far past, the more we find states of consciousness through which men were able to perceive the creative powers which pervade the world, the spiritual beings which surround us. All that surrounds us has arisen through these creative beings and to see them is indeed the meaning of “knowledge.”

When mankind had developed to our present stage of consciousness (and this has only come about during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch) a longing was left in the soul to penetrate again into the spiritual realms. I have told you how in the ancient Indian people there lived from the beginning that deep longing to know the real spirit behind all that surrounds us in the world. We have seen how they had a feeling that all that surrounded them was a dream, an illusion; how their only task was to evolve upwards to the ancient wisdom that had worked creatively in early times. The pupils of the ancient Rishis strove to tread the path which led them through Yoga to look up into the realms from which they had themselves come down. They strove away from Maya to these spiritual realms above.

That is one way which man can take. The most recent way of attaining to wisdom is the Rosicrucian path. This path does not point man to the past but to the future, to those conditions which he will further live through. Through definite methods the pupil is taught to develop in himself the wisdom which exists in germ in every human being.

This is the way which was given through the Founder of the Rosicrucian esoteric stream, known to the outer world as Christian Rosenkreuz. It is not an unchristian way, rather is it a Christian path adapted to modern conditions, and lies between the actual Christian path and the Yoga path.

This path had been partially prepared long before the time of Christianity. It took on a special form through that great initiate, Dionysius the Areopagite, who in the esoteric school of Paul at Athens inaugurated the training from which all later esoteric wisdom and training have been derived.

These are the two paths of esoteric training particularly fitted for the West. All that is connected with our culture and the life we lead and must lead, is lifted up, raised into the principle of initiation through the Christian and through the Rosicrucian training. The purely Christian way is somewhat difficult for modern man, hence the Rosicrucian path has been introduced for those who have to live in the present age. If someone would take the old purely Christian path in the midst of modern life he must be able to cut himself off for a time from the world outside, in order to enter it again later all the more intensively. On the other hand the Rosicrucian path can be followed by all, no matter in what occupation or sphere of life they may be placed.

We will describe the purely Christian way. It is prescribed as to method in the most profound Christian book least understood by the representatives of Christian theology, the Gospel of St. John, and as to contents, in the Apocalypse or Secret Revelation.

The Gospel of St. John is a miraculous book: one must live it, not merely read it. One can live it if one understands that its utterances are precepts for the inner life, and that one must observe them in the right way. The Christian path demands of its disciple that he considers the St. John Gospel a book of meditation. A fundamental assumption, which is more or less absent in the Rosicrucian training, is that one possesses the most steadfast belief in the personality of Christ Jesus. The pupil must at least find it possible to believe that the most lofty Being, the Leader of the Fire-Spirits of the Sun evolution, was physically incorporated as Jesus of Nazareth; that Christ Jesus was not merely the “Simple Man of Nazareth,” not an individual like Socrates, Plato or Pythagoras. One must see his fundamental difference from all others. If one would undergo a purely Christian training one must be sure that in him lived a God-man of a unique nature, otherwise one has not the right basic feeling that enters the soul and awakens it. Therefore one must have an actual belief in the first words of the beginning of St. John's Gospel: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and a God was the Logos “to the words” And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” Thus the same Spirit who was the ruler of the Fire-Spirits, who was linked with the transforming of the Earth, whom we also call the Spirit of the Earth, has actually dwelt among us in a garment of flesh, he was actually in a physical body. That must be recognised! If one cannot do this then it is better to undertake another method of training. One, however, who has accepted this basic condition and calls before his soul in meditation every morning through weeks and months the Gospel words down to the passage “full of grace and truth,” and moreover in such a way that he not only understands them, but lives within them, will experience them as an awakening force in the soul. For these are not ordinary words, but awakening forces which call forth other forces in the soul. The pupil must only have the patience to bring them before his soul continuously, every day, then they become the forces which the Christian training needs, aroused through the awakening of quite definite feelings. The Christian path is more an inner one, whereas in Rosicrucian training the experiences are kindled by the outer world.

The Christian path is pursued by an awakening of the feelings. There are seven stages of feeling which must be aroused. In addition are other exercises which are only given personally to the pupil, and suited to his special character. It is, however, indispensable to experience the 13th Chapter of St. John's Gospel, so to experience it as I will now describe. The teacher says to the pupil: You must develop quite definite feelings. Imagine the following: the plant grows from the soil, but is of a higher order than the mineral soil from which it grows. Nevertheless the plant needs it, the higher could not exist without the lower, and if the plant could think, it would have to say to the earth: It is true that I am higher than thou, yet without thee I cannot live. And it must incline itself to the earth in gratitude. Likewise must the animal bear itself to the plant, for it could not exist without plant life, and even so must the human being bear himself with regard to the animal. And if man has ascended higher, he must say to himself: I could never stand where I do without the lower. He must bow thankfully before them, for they have made it possible for him to exist. No creature in the world could subsist without the lower, to which it must feel gratitude. So even Christ, the very highest, could not exist without the twelve, and the feeling of his inclination to them in gratitude is powerfully portrayed in this 13th chapter. He, the highest of all, washes his disciples' feet.

If this is thought of in full wakefulness as a basic feeling in the human soul, if the pupil lives for weeks and months in reflection and contemplation which deepen this fundamental feeling—the gratitude with which the higher should look down to the lower to which it really owes its existence, then one awakens the first basic feeling. The pupil will have entered deeply enough into the experience when certain symptoms appear, an external symptom and an inner vision. The external symptom is that one feels the feet to be laved by water; in an inner vision one sees oneself as the Christ washing the feet of the twelve. This is the first stage, that of the Washing of the Feet. The event in the 13th Chapter of St. John's Gospel is not only an historical event, it can be experienced by all. It is an external symptomatic expression of the fact that the pupil has raised himself thus far in his life of feeling, nor does this sign fail to appear when he has progressed to this point in the enhancement of his feeling-life.

The second stage, the Scourging, is passed through if one deepens oneself in the following: How would it fare with you if the sufferings and blows of life broke in on you from every side? You should stand upright, you should make yourself strong to meet all the sorrows that life offers, and should bear them. This is the second fundamental feeling which must be experienced. The outer feeling of it is an irritation on the whole surface of the body, and a more inner expression is a vision in which one sees oneself scourged, at first in dream, and then in vision.

Then comes the third, which is the Crowning with Thorns. Here week-long, month-long one must live in the feeling: How would it fare with you, if you must not only undergo the sorrows and sufferings of life, but if even the holiest, your spiritual being, should be subjected to scorn and derision? And again, there must be no lamenting, it must be clear to the pupil that he must stand upright in spite of all. His inwardly developed strength must make him able to stand erect despite mockery and scorn. Whatever threatens to overthrow his soul he must stand erect! Then in an inner astral vision he sees himself with the crown of thorns and is sensible of an external pain on the head. This is the sign that he has advanced far enough in his life of feeling to be able to make this experience.

The fourth is the Crucifixion. Here the pupil must again develop a quite definite feeling. Today man identifies his body with his ego. One who would go through the Christian initiation must accustom himself to carry his body through the world as if it were a foreign object, a table, for instance. His body must become foreign to him, he bears it in and out of the doorway as something external, not himself. When a man has advanced far enough in this fundamental feeling, there is revealed to him what is called the “Ordeal of the Blood.” Certain reddenings of the skin appear on certain places in such a way that he can call forth the wounds of Christ, on the hands, the feet and on the right side of the breast. When the pupil by his depth of feeling is able to develop in himself the Blood Ordeal, the external symptom, then appears likewise the inner, the astral, in which he sees himself crucified.

The fifth is the Mystic Death. The pupil raises himself ever higher to the feeling: I belong to the whole world; I am as little an independent being as the finger on my hand. He feels himself embedded in the whole world, as if a part of it. Then he experiences the feeling that all around him grows dark, as if a black darkness envelops him, like a pall that becomes dense around him. During this time, the pupil of the Christian initiation learns to know all the sorrow and all the pain, all the evil and wickedness that attaches itself to mortal man. That is the Descent into Hell; each one must live through it. Then something comes to pass as if the veil were torn asunder, and the pupil sees into the spiritual worlds. This is called the Rending of the Veil.

The sixth is the Burial and Resurrection. When the pupil has advanced so far he must say: I have already accustomed myself to look on my body as something foreign, but now I see everything in the world as standing as near to me as my own body, which indeed is only taken from these substances. Every blossom, every stone, is as near to me as my body. Then the pupil is buried in the earthly planet. This stage is significantly linked with a new life, with the feeling of being united to the deepest Soul of the planet, with the soul of the Christ, who says, “those who eat my bread tread me underfoot.”

The seventh, the Ascension, cannot be described; one must have a soul that is no longer dependent on thinking through the instrument of the brain. In order to be sensible of what the pupil undergoes in what is called the Ascension, it is necessary to have a soul which can live through this feeling.

This passing through states of humility and deep devotion represents the nature of the Christian initiation, and he who earnestly goes through it experiences his resurrection in the spiritual worlds. Today it is not possible for all to undertake this path, and so the existence of another method leading to the higher worlds has become a necessity. That is the Rosicrucian method.

Here again I must refer to seven stages which will give a picture of the content of this training. Much of it has already been described in Lucifer-Gnosis,¹ much can only be given from teacher to pupil within the school, and yet an idea must be formed of what the training provides. It has seven stages, though not consecutive, it is a question of the pupil's own individuality. The teacher prescribes what seems to him adapted to his pupil, and much else forms a part that cannot be made public.

The seven stages are the following:

1. Study
2. Imaginative knowledge
3. Inspired knowledge, or reading the Occult Script
4. Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone
5. Correspondence between Macrocosm and Microcosm
6. Living into the Macrocosm
7. Divine Bliss

Study in the Rosicrucian sense is the ability to immerse oneself in a content of thought not taken from physical reality but from the higher worlds. This is called the life in pure thought. Modern philosophers for the most part deny this; they say that every thinking must have a certain vestige remaining from sense perception. This, however, is not the case, for no one, for example, can see a true circle; a circle must be seen in the mind; on the blackboard it is only a collection of tiny particles of chalk. One can only attain to a real circle if one leaves aside all examples, all actual things. Thus thinking in Mathematics is a super-sensible activity. But one must also learn to think supersensibly in other fields.

Initiates have always exercised this kind of thinking in regard to the being of man. Rosicrucian theosophy is such super-sensible knowledge, and its study, with which we are now occupied, is the first stage of the Rosicrucian training itself. I am not bringing forward Rosicrucian theosophy for any external reason, but because it is the first stage of the Rosicrucian Initiation. People think often enough that it is unnecessary to talk about the principles of man's being, or the evolution of humanity or the different planetary evolutions, they would rather acquire beautiful feelings, they do not want to study earnestly. Nevertheless, however many beautiful feelings one acquires in one's soul it is impossible to rise into the spiritual worlds by that alone. Rosicrucian theosophy does not try to arouse the feelings, but through the stupendous facts of the spiritual worlds to let the feelings themselves begin to resound. The Rosicrucian feels it a kind of impertinence to take people by storm with feelings. He leads them along the path of mankind's evolution in the belief that feelings will then arise of themselves. He calls up before them the planet journeying in universal space, knowing that when the soul experiences this fact it will be powerfully gripped in feeling. It is only an empty phrase to say one should address oneself direct to the feelings, that is just indolence. Rosicrucian theosophy lets the facts speak, and if these thoughts flow into the feeling nature and overpower it, then that is the right way. Only what the human being feels of his own accord can fill him with bliss or blessedness. The Rosicrucian lets the facts in the cosmos speak, for that is the most impersonal kind of teaching. It is a matter of indifference who stands before you; you must not be affected by a personality, but by what he tells you of the facts of world-becoming. Thus in the Rosicrucian training that direct veneration for the teacher is struck out, he does not claim it nor require it. He wishes to speak to the pupil of what exists, quite apart from himself. One who will press forward into the higher worlds must accustom himself to the kind of thinking in which one thought proceeds from another. A thinking of this nature is developed in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Science. These books are not written in such a way that one can take a thought and put it in another place; much more are they written as an organism arises, one thought grows out of another. These books have nothing at all to do with the one who wrote them; he gave himself up to what the thoughts themselves worked out in him, how they linked themselves one to another.

Study, then, for one desiring to make a somewhat elementary approach means acquiring a certain knowledge of the elementary facts of spiritual science itself, whereas for one who wishes to go further it means an inner meditation in a thought-structure which lets one thought grow out of another, out of itself.

The second stage is Imaginative Knowledge, the knowledge which unites with what is given to the pupil in the study-stage. The study is the basis, it must be perfected through individual imaginative knowledge. If you think over various things that I have touched upon in the last lectures, you will find traces—in the echo for instance—of what were everyday occurrences on Saturn. It is possible to look on all around us as a physiognomy of an inner spiritual element. People walk over the earth and it is a conglomeration of rocks and stones to them, but men must learn to grasp that all surrounding them is the true physical expression for the Spirit of the Earth. Just as the body is ensouled, so is the earth planet the external expression for an indwelling spirit. When men look on the earth as possessing body and soul as man does, then only they have an idea of what Goethe meant when he said “All things corruptible are but a semblance.” When you see tears run down the human countenance you do not examine by the laws of physics how quickly or how slowly the tears roll down; they express to you the inner sadness of the soul, just as the smiling cheek is the expression for the soul's inner joy. The pupil must educate himself to see in each single flower in the meadow he crosses, the outer expression of a living being, the expression of the Spirit dwelling in the Earth. Some flowers seem to be tears, others are the joyful expression of the earth's Spirit. Every stone, every plant, every flower, all is for him the outer expression of the indwelling Earth Spirit, its physiognomy that speaks to him. And everything “corruptible” or transitory becomes a “semblance” of an eternal, expressing itself through it. Feelings like these had to be attained by the disciple of the Grail, and by the Rosicrucian. The teacher would say: Behold the flower chalice which receives the ray of the sun, the sun calls forth the pure productive forces which slumber in the plant and hence the sun's ray was called the “holy lance of love.” Look now at man; he stands higher than the plant, he has the same organs within him, but all that the plant harbours in itself, perfectly pure and chaste, is in him steeped in lust and impure desire. The future of human evolution consists in this: man will again be chaste and pure, and speak forth his likeness into the world through another organ which will be the transformed organ of generation. Chaste and pure without desire, without passion, man's generative organ will be; and as the calyx of the blossom turns upward to the holy love lance, it will turn to the spiritual ray of wisdom, and fructified by this will bring forth its own image. This organ will be the larynx.

The Grail pupil was shown: the plant on its lower stage has this pure chalice, man has lost it; he has degenerated to impure desires. Out of the spiritualised sun ray he must let this chalice come again, in chastity he must develop that which forms the Holy Grail of the future.

Thus the pupil looks up to the great Ideal. What comes to pass in the slow evolution of the whole human race is experienced earlier by the initiate. He shows us mankind's evolution in pictures and these pictures work quite differently from the abstract thoughts which have been produced by the modern materialistic age. If you picture evolution in such lofty and powerful pictures as the Grail, then the effect is different from that of ordinary knowledge, which is unable to exercise any deep influence on your organism. Imaginative knowledge works down on the etheric body and thence on to the blood and this is the medium which acts formatively on the organism. Man will become increasingly more able to work on his organism through his etheric body. All imaginative knowledge based on truth is at the same time healing and health giving, it makes the blood healthy in its circulation. The best educator is imaginative knowledge, if man is only strong and devoted enough for it to be able to work on him.

The third stage is Reading in the Occult Script, that is, not only seeing isolated pictures but letting the relationship of these pictures work upon one. This becomes what is called occult script. One begins to coordinate the lines of force which stream creatively through the world forming them into definite figures and colour-forms through the imagination. One learns to discover an inner connection which is expressed in these figures and this acts as spiritual tone, as the sphere-harmony, for the figures are founded on true cosmic proportions. Our script is a last decadent relic of this old occult writing and is modeled on it.

One comes to the fourth, Preparing the Philosopher's Stone, through exercises of the breathing process. If man breathes as ordained by nature he needs the plant-world for his breathing.

If the plant were not there he could not live, for it gives him oxygen and assimilates the carbon which he himself breathes out. The plant builds its own organism from this and gives back oxygen, thus through the plant world oxygen is continually renewed for man. Humanity could not exist by itself; eliminate the plant world and mankind would in a short time die out. So you see the cycle: you breathe in oxygen which the plant breathes out, you breathe out carbon which the plant inhales and from which it builds up its own bodily nature. Thus the plant belongs to me, it is the instrument by which my life is sustained. You may see in the coal how the plant builds its body from carbon, for coal is nothing else than the dead remains of plants.

Rosicrucian training guides the pupil through a definitely regulated breathing process to form that organ that can within himself effect the transformation of carbon into oxygen. What is today done by the plant externally, will later on, through a future organ which the pupil is already developing through his training, be effected in man himself This is slowly being prepared. Through the regulated breathing process man will bear in himself the instrument for the preparation of oxygen; he will have become akin to the plant, whereas now he is of a mineral nature. He will retain the carbon in himself and build his body from it, and hence his body will later on be more plant-like, then he can turn towards the holy love lance. The whole of humanity will then possess a consciousness like that gained by the initiate today when he raises himself into the higher worlds.

This is called the transmutation of human substance into that substance of which carbon itself is the basis. This is the Alchemy which leads man to build up his own body as does the plant today. One calls this the preparation of the “Philosopher's Stone” and carbon is its outer symbol. But it is not the Philosopher's Stone until the pupil can create it himself through his regulated breathing process. The teaching can only be given from teacher to pupil, it is wrapped in deep secrecy, and only after he is completely purified and made ready can the pupil receive this mystery. If it were to be made public today, then men in their egoism would gratify their lowest needs through the misuse of this highest mystery.

The fifth is the Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm. When we survey the path of human evolution we see that what lies within man today has gradually entered from without—for instance, the glands were an external growth on the Sun, like our modern fungi; all that today lies within the human skin was once outside. The human body is, as it were, pieced together from what was spread outside it, each separate member of your physical body, etheric body and astral body was somewhere outside in the universe. This is the macrocosm in the microcosm. Your very soul was outside in the Godhead. Whatever is within us corresponds to something which is outside, and we must learn to know the true correspondences in ourselves.

You know the spot on the brow just above the root of the nose; it expresses the fact that a certain something which was formerly outside has drawn into man. If you penetrate this organ in meditation, sink yourself into it, this denotes more than a mere brooding in this point, you learn to know then the part of the outer world which corresponds to it. The larynx, too, you get to know and the forces which build it. Thus you learn about the macrocosm through sinking yourself into your own body. This is no mere brooding within yourself! You should not say: God is within and I will seek Him. You would only find the puny human being whom you yourself magnify into God! One who only speaks of this inward brooding never comes to real knowledge. To reach this by the path of Rosicrucian Theosophy is less comfortable and demands real work. The universe is full of beautiful and marvelous things, one must be absorbed in these, one must seek God in his individual expressions, then one can find him in oneself and then only does one learn to know God as One. The world is like a great book. We find its letters in created things, we must read these from beginning to end, and then we learn to read the book microcosm and the book macrocosm from beginning to end.

This is no longer a mere understanding, it lives over into feeling, it fuses the human being with the whole universe and he feels all things to be the expression of the divine Spirit of the Earth. If a man has reached this point, he voluntarily performs all his deeds in accordance with the will of the whole cosmos and this is what is known as Divine Bliss.

When we are able to think thus, we are treading the Rosicrucian path. The Christian school is based more on the development of inner feelings, in the Rosicrucian school all that is spread out in physical reality as the divine nature of the earth is allowed to work upon us and reverberate in us as feeling. These are two ways which are open to all. If you think in the manner of modern thought then you can take the Rosicrucian path, no matter how scientific you may be. Modern science is an assistance if you do not merely study cosmic evolution, reading the letters, as it were, but carry your research into what is concealed behind, just as in a book one does not consider the letters but reads the meaning by their aid. You must seek the spirit behind science, then science becomes to you but the letter for the spirit.

What has been said is not meant to be a comprehensive account of the Rosicrucian training, it is only meant to serve as an indication of what can be found in it. It is a path for present day man, it makes him capable of working into the future. These are only the elementary stages, to give some idea of the way. We can thus realise how through the Rosicrucian method one may oneself penetrate into the higher mysteries.

Spiritual Science is necessary to humanity for its further progress. What is to take place for the transforming of mankind must be brought about through men themselves. He who accepts the truth in his present incarnation will mould for himself in later incarnations the outer form for the deeper truths.

Thus what we have discussed in this lecture course is coordinated to a whole. It is the instrument which is to work creatively for future civilisation. It is taught today because the man of the future needs these teachings, because they must be directed into the evolutionary path of mankind. Everyone who will not accept this truth of the future, lives at the cost of other men. But he who accepts it lives for others, even if at first he is impelled by an egoistic longing for the higher worlds. If the path is the right one then it is of itself the destroyer of self seeking and the best educator of selflessness.

Occult development is now needed by mankind and must be implanted into it. An earnest, true striving for truth, step by step, this alone leads to genuine brotherliness, this is the magician which can best bring about the uniting of humanity. This will serve as the means to bring about humanity's great goal, unity; and we shall reach this goal when we develop the means to it in ourselves, when we seek to acquire these means in the noblest, purest way, for it is a matter of hallowing humanity through these means.

Thus Spiritual Science appears to us not only as a great ideal, but as a force with which we permeate ourselves and out of which knowledge wells up for us. Spiritual Science will become increasingly more widespread, it will penetrate more and more all the religious and practical aspects of life, just as the great law of existence penetrates all beings; it is a factor in humanity's evolution.

This is the sense in which these lectures on Rosicrucian Theosophy have been given. If it has been understood, not only abstractly, but so that feelings have been evoked through knowledge of facts, then it can work directly into life. When this knowledge flows into all our members, from head to heart and thence into the hand, into all that we do and create, then we have grasped the foundations of spiritual science. Then we have grasped the great task of civilisation which is laid in our hands, and then from this knowledge feelings, too, are developed which one who likes to take things easily would prefer to develop direct.

Rosicrucian Theosophy does not wish to revel in feelings, it wishes to bring the facts of the spirit before your eyes. The pupil must take part, must let himself be stimulated by the facts which have been described, feelings and sensations must be aroused in him through them. In this sense Spiritual Science should become a powerful impulse for the sphere of feeling, but at the same time be that which leads us direct into the facts of super-sensible perceptions, which lets them first arise as thoughts and then leads the seeker upward into the higher worlds.

This was intended to be the significance of these lectures.

• 1. Dr. Steiner refers to the articles in Lucifer-Gnosis afterwards published as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

The aim of these lectures is to give a survey of what we are accustomed to call theosophy. Theosophy must become a new impulse of culture in an encompassing way. For a long time humanity has been yearning for it, and from many aspects it is called upon to give an answer to the burning questions now advanced by men. At the present time, however, theosophy is to a great extent something which people not only wish to oppose, but something which they look upon as questionable, even as mad, like the dreams of certain fantastic brains.

Of course, if they were to ask these dreamers what THEY seek through theosophy and what they expect from it, their answer will be a rather wide one. Those who have recognised the vital essence of theosophy, which modern people take to be mere dreams, look upon theosophy as something which in a few decades will have an immense significance for human thought and feeling, and for man' s will and actions.

There is nothing into which theosophy cannot shed its light as an impulse, nothing into which it is not called upon to shine.

It is a well known fact that at the present time there are many problems, hygienic, social or pedagogical problems, or women's suffrage, and even greater is the number of answers supplied to these questions. But if we investigate all these questions and answers in an objective way, we come to the conclusion that modern civilisation puts the questions rightly—for they are determined by the conditions of our time—but that our modern epoch is not able to supply the answers to these questions without further ado. One who shuts his eyes and ears to the problems of our time, will continually encounter obstacles along his path. A time will come when men will realise that they must face many other problems too: these problems arise out of the inner, and outer strife of humanity, out of all the pains and sufferings and out of the shattered hopes in every field. But only theosophy is able to supply an answer.

Ever greater grows the number of people who despondently bow their heads, who fulfil their duty, but do not know the reason for their work and whose nervous state of mind often culminates in despair, and even affects their physical health, ending in neurasthenic conditions.

Let us only allude to these things, for the fundamental idea which should rise up before us is that theosophy is not something which takes hold of the minds of a few lazy people, who have nothing better to do, but theosophy must penetrate into practical life.

During the thirty years of its existence, the Theosophical Society of course had to pass through many things and many an illness of childhood, which made people question its significance! But it will extricate itself from these illnesses and show what it is capable of. Spiritual science must become an all-encompassing concern, a universal task, because it must supply the answer to questions which are, after all, the fundamental questions of all existence, and it must point out the way in which modern men should grasp these questions and why religions and sciences exist at all. Whatever we do, and if art, science and practical activities are to exist at all, we must go back to certain fundamental questions, and these must in some way or other be solved. All religions were attempts to give an answer to such questions, an answer which was always in keeping with the intellectual and cultural stage of different peoples.

Theosophy does not wish to be a religion, it has nothing to do with sects and it does not agitate.

Religion, as you know, is as old as human endeavor. If we gain an insight into the different religions of different nations, we come to the conclusion that all these religions endeavoured to supply an answer to the questions: What is, in the first place, man's essential being? Secondly, what is his task and goal? and thirdly, what reaches beyond physical existence?

In regard to these questions, a strange epoch lies behind modern humanity, one which called into life many a doubt in religion. Let us ask: How many people are there to-day who need religion, but who are not able to have it? Some of us can look back into times when religion was still a truly experienced life, when it still counted far more, indeed in a much higher measure, than is the case to-day with single religiously disposed natures. These natures still possess something of that warm feeling which existed throughout thousands of years. The longing, the need for what we call the spiritual world, or the longing for religion, still exists to-day; indeed, among the most truth-loving natures this longing has even grown. Such a person may say to himself: When I was a child, I still had true faith. But then things changed: I become acquainted with so-called science and with its facts, and since science speaks in quite a different way, for instance, concerning the origin of the world, I seriously began to doubt that which I once believed in my childhood. And there followed a deeply sad mood in life; the soul felt as if it were torn and devastated, and when it looked out into the world, no light was shed upon the inner contrasts. This explains the torn state of mind swaying between religious longing and satisfaction of the soul, and it also explains the tragedy of modern man, But the strife of such souls is perhaps better than the other condition: namely, to ask nothing at all, to lose the habit of asking questions, to become superficial and just allow oneself to be driven along by ordinary life.

Is it the fault of religion that things have come to such a pass? No! It is plainly evident that this is not so, for every religion, even the ancient myths and legends, have means and ways to lead the heart once more towards the spiritual world to reanimate the soul, if the soul is willing.

Who would have thought that such mighty impulses from the ancient myths, which had apparently died out thousands of years ago, leading an almost hidden, unknown existence, could rise to new life, as is the case in Richard Wagner's dramas?

It is not necessary to found a new religion; the time for this has past. What is needed now, is a new attitude towards religion, a new understanding of religion! What has changed, is the human spirit, the human soul, the human heart!

If we immerse ourselves in the development of human souls, we shall find in the course of these lectures, that human souls have already lived many times upon the physical plane, and that they gradually developed, until they reached the present stage, At first, this may sound strange, yet during past lives our souls have frequently heard the deep truths which will be explained in to-day's lecture.

The teaching of reincarnation will, for instance, be advanced; but your souls have listened, as they are listening to me now, to the Druids who lived and taught particularly in this region. These druidic teachers of ancient times already taught the truth of reincarnation to a smaller circle; they cultivated this primordial wisdom concerning the riddles of life. They went out to those whose souls thirsted for a deeper knowledge. But if these teachers of ancient times had spoken as I am speaking to you now, your souls could not then have understood them, for at that time the human spirit had not yet reached the present stage of development. Logical thought did not as yet exist in the human spirit. Man possessed instead the possibility of grasping truths in the form of images. These teachers therefore spoke in the form of images, and these images are known to us to-day in the form of legends and myths. If in the past our souls had not heard these teachings, we could not understand the spiritual truths to-day, when they are taught to us in a new form.

The soul thus makes enormous progresses through thousands of years; it continually takes on a new shape and therefore truth must be presented in a constantly new form; it must ever again be proclaimed anew. Let me give you a second example.

Let us go back into, the evolution of humanity as far as the ancient Egyptians, Chaldeans and Babylonians. When these peoples were the bearers of culture they did not look upon the sun and the stars as mere physical bodies. To-day, when a materialistic astronomer contemplates the heavenly bodies, he only sees in them physical bodies, and nothing besides. Even the earth is to him a physical body in the world's spaces, and man crawls about upon it, like the gnat upon our hand.

But it was otherwise among the ancient Egyptian astronomers. When the ancient Egyptian astrologer looked upon a star, he did not think of a purely physical body, for the star meant to him something quite different than it does to modern men. When he pronounced, for instance, the name of Mercury, he uttered it with veneration. It never passed through his mind to address the physical heavenly body, just as you would not dream of addressing a body made of cardboard. Everything which the eye perceived was at that time the expression of something spiritual. For the ancient astronomer, the physical star Mercury was therefore the expression of the Spirit of Mercury. You must not grasp this intellectually, but with your feeling, for otherwise you cannot understand what lived in the soul of such an astronomer. Everything in the world was to him the expression of something spiritual. He said: Everything is Spirit, and I, as a spirit, am a part of this Spirit.

You should bear in mind this feeling of the sages of ancient times; we should endeavour to understand them, and grasp what they knew concerning the processes which took place in the spiritual spaces. Those who immerse themselves in this feeling, know how immensely superior is this conception to our modern materialistic one! It is necessary to understand the sages of olden times; we should find out what they knew concerning that which took place in the spiritual spaces of the universe, for then we begin to notice the tremendous difference between their conception and our modern one, and the enormous significance of those ancient teachings of wisdom! This may seem ridiculous to the materialistic sense of our time, which is only acquainted with the purely physical conception of astronomy—yet it is so.

How did it come about that man has now lost the understanding for the spiritual life which lies at the foundation of all physical existence? Why had this to occur?

Let us turn our gaze to our immediate surroundings. Were you able to compare man's present environment with that which once surrounded him at every step, you would find that at that time man only possessed the most necessary means of subsistence; but he had, on the other hand, more comprehension for spiritual things. This comprehension for the spiritual world had to withdraw in order to give man the possibility to acquire his present dominion over the earth. Every technical and industrial progress of the present time could only be achieved through a world-conception which had become materialistic, through the fact that the spirit, the super-sensible world, withdrew. At the cost of spiritual contemplation man gained, in the course of the last centuries, his rule over the physical world. It is a primordial, eternal law of humanity that capacities acquired in one sphere, can only be gained by the withdrawal of others upon another sphere. For instance, man could never have called into life the possibilities of travel and communication had other capacities not withdrawn. The sense for spiritual things had to withdraw, in order that everything which now surrounds us might arise. All that once filled the human soul had to withdraw, to render possible the conquest of the physical world.

Thus we see that around the 16th century men lost the vision of the spiritual world, and we see how the materialistic conception took hold of humanity. Those who believe that they themselves do not live in the very midst of such materialism are greatly mistaken.

It is not the task of spiritual science to deny or renounce things; it does not intend to criticise the bad world of to-day; but it wishes to indicate the necessity of man's descent into matter. The great horizon of spiritual life had to withdraw from humanity while this descent took place, and this explains why man lost the old way of comprehending spiritual things. The truths exist in their old, earlier forms. Spiritual science can show how those truths can be rendered accessible to modern men. This is its chief aim. Consequently theosophy is merely the instrument whereby the deepest truths can be rendered accessible to the modern human spirit, in order that they may be grasped in their full depth.

To-day it is once more necessary to draw attention to the Spirit. We should not content ourselves with pointing out the “magnificent progress” of modern times! Spiritual truth is always accessible to us, and we must comprehend it in different ways.

If we turn back to ancient India and Egypt, and to ancient Greece at the time when Christianity arose, we always come across the same ancient truths, in different forms. There were always leaders of humanity who took care that the truths which had paled with the decay of civilisations should, at given times, be communicated anew. All the great founders of religion can be found among such leaders.

Before the dawn of our modern epoch, before the time of Copernicus and the 16th century, care was taken also in Europe to establish the foundation for a new way of proclaiming spiritual truths. Around the 16th century, lived certain people who were able to interpret the signs of the times. As early as 1459, a higher spiritual individuality, known in the external world as Christian Rosenkreutz, founded, with quite a small number of men, an occult school for the cultivation of wisdom, of ancient wisdom, but in a form suited to modern men. This is the wisdom of the Rosicrucians, cultivated for the first time around 1459. As stated, this wisdom is nothing new; it is the ancient primeval wisdom, but in a form suited to modern men.

What is the connection between this Rosicrucian wisdom and Christianity? There is no difference between the genuine Christian teachings and those of the Rosicrucians. If we grasp Christianity in its essence, we obtain the theosophy of the Rosicrucians. It is not necessary to found a new religion, but Christianity should be grasped in the way in which the early Christians grasped it. Only a few people still know something concerning the mysteries of the early Christian development. Even official theology has not the slightest idea of this. We come across St.Paul, as a man who had a deep knowledge of the Christian mysteries, who taught those mighty truths which were to guide humanity throughout thousands of years. At Athens, St. Paul had founded a school, whose leader was Dionysios thc Areopagite. Dionysios was a genuine disciple of St. Paul.

The teachings of Dionysios have always remained alive, and they have always been taught, particularly to those who had to bring Christ's living Word out into thc world. Had men stopped at Dionysios' standpoint, no new form would have been required. But the new era dawned, and with it arose the necessary of proclaiming these truths in such a way that no science could raise any objection against them. This is the aim of the Rosicrucian theosophy. Rosicrucian theosophy is therefore that form of religion which is suited to our time.

Only those who understand Christianity in the right way, can have an idea of its living content.

If we were in the position to hear from every side that which Rosicrucian theosophy had to say in connection with true Christianity, we would discover that scientific facts do not contradict these descriptions. The chief thing to bear in mind is that there should be no contradiction between religion and scientific facts, and that these scientific facts should harmonise with religion.

What does the Rosicrucian theosophy wish to give us? The knowledge of higher worlds, that is to say, of the worlds to which man will belong, when his physical body shall have decayed. It gives him the knowledge of life, the knowledge of the true nature of death and of human development. In this way, it can give him new strength in regard to religious truths and religious life.

No one should say: I stand firmly upon the foundation of the ancient teachings, and these suffice for me ... What do I care for those who doubt!—No opinion can be more selfish or un-Christian that this! It is still possible to-day for a certain number of men to live upon the foundation of old religions, but in a not too distant future this will no longer be possible. Those who have an insight into that which great social upheavals throw up to the surface, cannot judge in this way. They will realise that it is not possible to quarrel over the fact that theosophy must be proclaimed.

Thinking men know that spiritual science exists in order to supply an answer to the most burning questions, and that it is actually able to reply to all these questions. After all, one can prove or disprove anything, but this is not the essential point: It is impossible to quarrel over a REMEDY; the essential point is the success which we achieve with it. It is exactly the same with spiritual science. Humanity needs spirituality as a remedy, and it can only recover from its illnesses if this remedy streams into it. It is an evolutionary factor of our civilisation, and a giver of life.

Our modern way of living does not suffice, for it is directed exclusively towards physical-bodily things. The aim of theosophy is the health and recovery of Soul and Spirit. Spiritual science is nothing arbitrary; our present time and its problems call for it. All that it tells us, constitutes the teaching of those men who were able to make investigations in this sphere.

Spiritual science leads us into higher worlds, into which no physical eye can look, and which contain the causes of the effects to be found in the physical world. It will bring us knowledge of the external part of human nature, of every individuals essential being, the knowledge of the spiritual worlds and their hierarchies.

As we learn to know these, we also learn to know man's mission and significance. What we should endeavour to grasp is the true essence of human nature. We shall learn to know worlds which exist, but which cannot be perceived through our ordinary physical senses. Some might say: What you are telling us is very fine, but we cannot really know anything about it.—Fichte has already supplied an answer to this objection. Imagine that you were to enter a world of blind-born men, as the only one endowed with sight, and that you were to describe colours to these blind men ... These men will say: You are telling us nonsense; colours do not exist. But if the blind could be operated on, so as to give them the power of sight, they would be able to experience this world of colours and of light.

The same argument applies to the above objection. Those who raise it, adopt the same standpoint of the blind. No one should therefore say: Such things do not exist ... For no man has the right to speak of “limits of knowledge”, as did Du Bois-Reymond. As many worlds exist, as there are organs able to perceive them, and this is an infinite number of worlds! We are unable to perceive them to-day, because we still lack the organs of perception. The world is not only spatially infinite, but also intensively infinite: These is a world for every organ of sense. These worlds are still inaccessible to us yet they exist,—they exist, where we ourselves exist. The only thing needed is that our eyes should be opened, for these worlds are in our very midst.

The words of Christ: “Do not seek the Kingdom of God, for the Kingdom of God is in your midst”, should be taken literally. Also spiritual science speaks in this sense of the spiritual worlds. There have always been initiates who knew how to enter these kingdoms of heaven. Every religion speaks of these kingdoms. Spiritual science is but the means of disclosing anew this fundamental truth contained in every religion: Whatever we see and perceive round about us, is but the result and the effect of what takes place in the spiritual worlds. Whatever manifests itself upon the earth, is but the development of that which works and lives in the spiritual worlds.

Official Christianity has long ago lost the capacity of understanding the depths of religious documents. Spiritual science therefore had to take over the task of supplying the key to the forgotten treasures of knowledge, thus offering humanity, which is standing at the parting of thc roads, the remedy which it needs. Yet spiritual science does not know fanaticism; it simply relates and clearly sets forth man's being; it indicates his destiny after death, and how his soul develops outside the physical body. It describes that which takes place in the higher worlds; it speaks of the evolutionary stages of the earth and of the other planets, and it throws light upon the life-path trodden by man so far, and upon his future path. It points to that which man must still pass through, in order that he may reach his goal.

We shall try to grasp man's being and the nature of the worlds from which he comes. This is the sphere of knowledge to which spiritual science leads us.

Now we might object that all this only exists for the so-called clairvoyant seer, who is able to look into the spiritual worlds. Of what use is it to us, for these worlds are not accessible to us!

To this objection we can reply: There are, to be sure, certain methods of training which are only suited to the spiritual investigator, which make the above objection seem justified. But the path of Rosicrucian training is a different one. The clairvoyant eye and the ear of an initiate are of course needed if we wish to penetrate into the spiritual worlds, but our ordinary logic suffices to understand them. All that the spiritual investigator describes to us, is accessible to our logical reason; our sound common sense suffices for the comprehension of such things. Those who cannot grasp them, simply lack logical power. For the discovery of spiritual mysteries the clairvoyant eye of the spiritual investigator is of course needed, but our ordinary logic suffices in order to understand the things described in Rosicrucianism.

Those who cannot understand these things, should not ascribe their lack of understanding to the Rosicrucian training. Their failure does not depend upon the fact that they are not clairvoyant, but because their understanding is not sound and their thought is not consistent. Many people have no idea of logic. There is a modern musician, for instance, who even said that it is a mistake to think over things ... Even our scientists do not think beyond a certain limit. But if we use our understanding in the right way, we are able to grasp spiritual truths and spiritual wisdom, and they can become alive within us. If you keep on asking: Of what use are these things to us? I can give you the following reply:—Nothing can be given to us which is of greater importance than the knowledge of spiritual science! This alone transforms us into real human beings and gives us, even at the present time, a contented heart and a soul that has reached harmony.

With more words we do not proceed far in this field, for the striving after knowledge is an earnest matter and we must immerse ourselves in the necessities and problems of life. We must endeavour to pass on courageously from one sphere of spiritual life to the other, for this will give us an insight into the whole evolution of the universe and of man. The overwhelming greatness of these events will not only take hold of our hearts, but awaken new capacities within us; which render us more capable to face the tasks of everyday life. Direct forces stream out of spiritual science, and these become a treasure which cannot be lost and which transforms us into creative man beings.

You will understand the physical world, only if you learn to know the spiritual world. Spiritual science is not meant for cranks, but for the most practical of the practical!

Every form of life is spiritual. Even as ice is condensed water, so matter is condensed spirit. Mineral, plant, animal, or man—each is a condensed form of the spirit.

In this sense, the Rosicrucian theosophy will lead us to understand the spiritual foundations of the world. It does not change us into brooding egotists, but into lovers of life, for it does not despise ordinary life, nor estrange us from our earthly tasks, but it unites us with them. It stimulates us to diligent activity, for it knows that every action, as well as every Being, is an expression of the Spirit.

Yesterday we spoke in an introductory way of the aim and essence of the spiritual-scientific movement; to-day we shall penetrate more directly into the essence of this science. It has the disadvantage that it may shock those who are not familiar with these things, but we must have patience and realise that many things which seem almost nonsensical at first, will in the course of time appear well founded and comprehensible.

Of the subject which lies before us, we shall first of all consider the nature of the human being.

Let us place this human being before our soul. He is a most complicated being, the most complicated being of all which we encounter in the known world. Those who possessed a deeper insight have therefore always called man a microcosm, in contrast to the macrocosm, the universe. Paracelsus used a very fine comparison expressing man's being in the form of an image. He said: Contemplate Nature around you, and imagine every being in Nature, every plant, animal and stone, as the letter of an alphabet, and if you imagine a word written with these letters, you obtain man.

We find, in this connection, the confirmation of Goethe's words, that we must understand the whole of Nature in order to understand man.

To begin with, my explanations will only be a kind of sketch of man's nature. This will be related to the explanations of the following days in the same way in which a charcoal sketch is related to the finished picture.

If we contemplate man with our physical senses, when he stands before us as an earthly being, if our eyes perceive him and our hands can touch him, we look upon him, from the materialistic standpoint, as complete, as a whole being. Yet a deeper, that is to say, a spiritual contemplation of the world, sees in that which is perceptible to our physical senses only a small part of the human being, that part which the anatomist dismembers and dissects, The anatomist endeavours to understand the human being through the intellect, by dissecting the visible part into cells which can only be perceived through the microscope, and he thinks that he thus obtains an idea of the structure and activity of the single organs.

Ordinary science thinks that all this constitutes the physical body of man. But at the present time, man's physical body is frequently looked upon in the wrong way, for people think that the human being standing before them only consists of a physical body. This is not the case at all, for higher members of human nature are intimately connected with the physical body, are active through it, and it is through these members that this body becomes manifest in the form in which one human being confronts another. The physical body would present an altogether different aspect were we to separate it from the higher members of human nature. Man has this physical body in common with the whole mineral world. All the substances and forces which are active in mineral substances, such as iron, arsenic, carbon, etc, are also active in the substances of the human body and in the physical body of animals and plants.

Our attention is immediately drawn to the higher members of human nature if we once realise the tremendous difference which exists between man's physical body and the other physical substances which surround us in the mineral world. You will know that this wonderful structure of the physical body bears within it what we call inner life, consciousness, desires, joy and pain, love and hate; this physical body does not only contain substances pertaining to the mineral world, but also thoughts. You may indeed perceive the glow upon the countenance, or the colour of the hair, but you do not perceive what takes place within the physical body in the form of inclinations and dislikes, joy and suffering, etc, All this we do not see, nevertheless it takes place within the covering (sheath) of the skin. This is the most evident and irrefutable proof that there is something in addition to the physical body, something besides mere physical substances.

When you watch a tear falling, this tear is but the physical expression of sorrow, which is an inner process, Now look upon the mineral world: these minerals are dumb! You cannot perceive in them any joy or sorrow, nor any other inner life. The stone has no feelings and no consciousness, such as we have. To a spiritual scientist this stone appears like the nails upon our fingers, or like the teeth. Observe one of your finger nails: it has no feeling, no consciousness, nevertheless the nail forms part of your being. There must be something within us which brings about the formation of nails and teeth, and in the same way there must be something in the world outside which produces minerals. The nails themselves have no consciousness, but they form part of something which is endowed with consciousness. If a small beetle creeps over one of our nails, this nail perhaps appears to it as a mineral. This is the case when we creep over the earth, without being aware that behind this mineral earth there is consciousness, even as there is, consciousness behind our nails. Later on we shall see what kind of consciousness lies at the foundation of the mineral world. This Ego-consciousness of the mineral world lies high above us, even as, for instance, the consciousness, of the small beetle creeping over our nail is surpassed by our own consciousness behind the nails.

The Rosicrucian philosophy ascribes this consciousness of the mineral kingdom to a world which it calls the WORLD OF INTELLIGENCE; there lies the consciousness of minerals, and there lies also the foundation of human intelligence, enabling us to form thoughts. Yet the thoughts which live in us are very deceptive, for human thoughts are related to the Beings of the Intelligent World in the same way in which our shadow is related to our real self. Even as the shadow upon the wall is not I, but only my own shadow, so man's thoughts are only shadow-pictures in the world of the spirit. But here on earth we are able to grasp a thought because in the Intelligent World there is a real Being who produces this thought. This is a world in which our thoughts are real beings, whom we encounter in the same way in which we here meet other human beings. This Intelligent World of the Rosicrucians is for an initiate the higher Devachan World, the Arupa Devachan of the Hindoos, or the higher Mental World. When an initiate passes through the physical world, every portion of the earth speaks to him of life, and he experiences everywhere the manifestations of another world. Since in our physical body we are nothing but portions of the physical world, we also have a subordinate physical consciousness, reaching as far as the Intelligent World, that is to say, as far as the consciousness of the mineral world.

Our physical body is therefore, in its substances, of mineral nature, and the consciousness of the physical body lies there where the consciousness of the mineral world is to be found.

What is, however, the difference between our physical body and a mineral—for instance, a rock crystal? If we compare our body with a crystal; we find upon comparison, that
our body is a most complicated thing, Let us picture to ourselves the difference between a mineral and a living being.

In regard to the substances, there is no difference at all, for exactly the same substances can be found in living beings as in minerals, except that the structure is far more complicated.

If you have before you the mineral and its form, you will find that it remains the same; if it only depends upon itself. But this is not the case in a living being, in a plant, an animal, or a human being. As soon as a substance takes on so complicated a form that it can no longer be held together through its own forces, in other words, that it would decay if left to itself, there is something in this substance which prevents it from decaying, and in that case we have before us what we call a LIVING BEING.

Spiritual science therefore says: A living being would decay into the component parts of its substances if it were left to itself, if within it there did not exist something which prevents this decay. That which every moment prevents this living being from decaying, the preventing factor of such a decay, is what we call the etheric or the vital body. This is of an entirely different nature from the substances which constitute the physical body in every living being, and it has the capacity to produce the most complicated physical substances, to maintain them and to prevent their decay. What a living organism thus reveals in a purely external form, is what we call LIFE. This etheric or vital body, or this body of formative forces, cannot be perceived by physical eyes, but it can be perceived through the first degree of clairvoyant vision, and it is the task of a clairvoyant to develop himself so as to be able to perceive this etheric body. Modern natural science does indeed try to discover the etheric body, but it tries to form a conception of it in a purely speculative way, by speaking, for instance of vital force, or vital energy.

How does the etheric body appear to a clairvoyant eye, that is to say, to the clairvoyant?

If you contemplate an object of the mineral world, for instance, a rock crystal, through the eye of a clairvoyant, eliminating for this purpose the physical substance, by deviating as it were, your attention from it you would see nothing in the space occupied by the physical crystal. This space is void. But if you contemplate in the same way a living being, a plant, an animal, or a human being, this space occupied by the physical body will not be empty, for it will be filled up by a kind of shape of light, and this is the above-mentioned etheric body.

The etheric body is not of the same kind in every living being; on the contrary, it takes on very different forms, even as regards shape and size in relation to the physical body of the living being in question; this varies according to the stage of development of the different beings. The etheric body of plants has quite a different shape from the plants themselves; the etheric body of animals has a greater resemblance to the external shape, and the etheric body of man appears as a shape of light which corresponds almost exactly to the form of the physical body. If we contemplate, for instance, a horse from this standpoint, we see its etheric body protruding rather far from the head as a shape of light, but it more or less resembles the shape of the horse's head. But in the case of an average man of to-day we can see his etheric body protruding only slightly above the head and its sides. In regard to the substance of the etheric body, one generally has quite wrong ideas. Even in theosophy people write and talk a lot of confusing nonsense on the etheric body, but this forms part of the “childhood illnesses” of the Theosophical Society, and they must be overcome. To obtain a correct idea of the substantiality of the etheric body, please try to follow my thoughts in this comparison:—

Imagine that you have one hundred pounds and that you spend more and more: Your property will grow smaller and smaller and finally you will have nothing at all. This would be the least possible substantial state of your property. But there is one still less substantial, when you diminish still more the zero-stage of your property by making debts and acquiring a “negative” property. You can therefore reduce your property still more, for you have less than nothing if you borrow, for instance, ten pounds.

Or imagine this applied to something else. Imagine a battle with its tremendous noise; if you go further away from it the noise will grow weaker and weaker; the silence will grow until you finally hear nothing more. If you reduce still further this stage of hearing nothing at all, then it will be more than silent around you, more than soundless ... Such a silence actually exists, and it is in the highest degree blissful, though an ordinary person will not so easily be able to imagine it.

Now imagine these examples applied to the density of substance. At first you will have the three generally known aggregate conditions: the solid, liquid and gaseous conditions; but in accordance with the above-mentioned example of the property, you should not remain by these three conditions. Even as it is possible to dilute the property into a “negative” property, so the substance can also become thinner and thinner, more and more diluted, beyond the gaseous stage. Imagine therefore a kind of substance opposed to the physical substance; this will give you a kind of idea of that which constitutes the etheric body.

A “negative” property has the opposite qualities of a positive one, for a “plus” property makes us rich, and a “minus” property poor; the more money I have, the more I can buy; the less money I have, the less I can buy. In the same way, the cosmic ether, of which the etheric body of every living being is a part, has the opposite qualities of physical substances.
Even as physical substance has the inclination to fall asunder, to decay, so the etheric body has the inclination to hold everything together, preventing the physical body, which it permeates from decaying. As soon as the etheric body abandons the physical body—in other words, when physical death arises—the decomposition into the elemental parts immediately sets in. We have thus traced matter into a world where it has the opposite effect of our physical matter.

When I say that man's etheric body resembles his physical body, I mention a fact which must be borne in mind and which must be mentioned here, for it will give rise to important conclusions in following lectures. This statement must be subjected to an important limitation, for in reality the etheric body differs greatly from the physical body and resembles it only in its upper part, in the head; but it differs from it greatly in regard to the fact that it is of opposite sex: man's etheric body is feminine, and woman's etheric body is masculine. Every human being is therefore bisexual; the sex of the physical body is only an external expression, having its opposite pole in the etheric body. Even as a magnet has a north pole and a south pole, even as a magnet cannot have only a north pole, so we also find two poles in man: the pole and the counter-pole.

The etheric or vital body, also called the body of formative forces, therefore constitutes the second member of man's being, and from birth to death it remains intimately connected with man's physical body, and when the etheric body severs itself from the physical body, this signifies death.

The physical body is first built up by the etheric body; the etheric body is, so to speak, the architect of the physical body. If you wish to have a picture for this, take that of water and ice: When the water cools down, it takes on another shape, it becomes ice. Even as ice is formed out of water through condensation, so the physical body is formed out of the etheric body.

Ice—water, physical—etheric body; this means, that the forces of the etheric body have become tangible, physically perceptible in the physical body. Even as the water already contained the forces which then manifest themselves in the solid ice, so the etheric body already contains, all the forces needed for the structure of the physical body. The etheric body thus already contains a force producing, for example; the heart, or the stomach, or the brain, and so forth. For each organ of our physical body there is a predisposition in the etheric body; these predispositions are not substances, but currents of forces.

Man has the etheric body in common with every plant and animal, that is to say, with every physical being manifesting LIFE,

Now we may ask: Do the plants have a kind of consciousness such as we have found for the world of the minerals? We have already seen that spiritual research discovers the consciousness of minerals in the higher Intelligent World, the origin of our thoughts.

Even as our fingers do not have a consciousness of their own, for the consciousness of the finger forms part of man's consciousness, so the plants form part of a state of consciousness lying on the lower Intelligent World, in the heavenly world (Rupa Devachan), When the spiritual investigator enters this world, he encounters in it the souls of the plants. There, the souls of the plants are Beings, such as we are beings here on earth; and these Beings are related to the plants in the same way in which man is related to his fingers.

The consciousness of plants is therefore rooted in this lower Devachan World. In it are rooted the forces which lie at the foundation of every growth and of every organic structure; in it are also rooted the forces which build up our physical body, that is to say, the forces of our etheric body, which, we have already designated as the architect of our physical body. This consciousness of the vegetable world is far higher and wiser than the consciousness of man,

You will realise this at once if you bear in mind the wise structure not only of man's physical body, but of every being permeated by an etheric body, that is to say, of every living being. What enormous wisdom is needed to build up the simplest physical body of any living being; not to mention the most wonderful structure all living beings on earth; the human body!

Observe, for instance, man's upper thigh bone; how wonderfully and in accordance with every rule of architecture the single little osseous joists and beams are put together! In its upper part, the upper thigh bone is far more complicated than it appears to us externally; for it is composed of a trestle of beams whose angles are arranged so skillfully that the weight of the whole body is borne by the least quantity of matter; truly a far greater work of art than the most complicated bridge construction; no engineering skill in the world could imitate it!

Or contemplate the structure of the heart: it is built so wisely that man with all his wisdom is but a child in comparison to that wisdom which reveals itself in the structure of the heart. How many things does the human heart withstand, though man's foolish attempts to ruin it every day, for instance, through our so-called stimulants—coffee, alcohol, nicotine.

Forces reaching as far as the astral world are needed for the construction of such a wonderful edifice as our physical body; only the Beings of this astral world are, trivially speaking, clever enough to build up such a physical body.

And now we come to the third member of man's being. Plants have a physical body and an etheric body; but they lack something which both man and the animals have; they have no pain, no desires, no sufferings, and no sensations whatever. This is the difference between man and animal on the one side, and the plants on the other. The difference consists therein that inner, processes take place in the animals and in man. From processes observed in plants, modern science even seeks to ascribe sensations to plants. It is a shame to see how concepts are being misused! These are no inner processes, as in the case of a sensation—such sensations might just as well be ascribed to a blue litmus paper. Such mistakes arise if sensations are looked for in the physical world; no sensation can be found in the physical world in a phenomenon of the kind which may be observed in certain plants, for we must rise up to heavenly worlds if we wish to find sensations in plants. To prevent misunderstandings, let me add that in the case of so-called reacting plants, for instance, in the mimosa, the sensitive process of reaction does not reflect itself in the physical world as a sensation, but only in the lower Intelligent World, the seat of the plant's consciousness. Here, in the physical, world, only man and animals have instincts and passions, joys and pains. Why?—Because they have, in addition to the physical and etheric body, also the astral body, the third member of human nature.

To a clairvoyant seer, the astral body appears in such a way as to envelop the whole human being in an egg-shaped cloud, and within this cloud every sensation comes to expression, every instinct and every passion. The astral body is therefore the carrier of desire, pain, suffering and joy. This third member presents a different aspect from the etheric body and the physical body. When man is asleep, only the physical and the etheric body lie upon the bed, whereas the astral body and the Ego are lifted out; but when the astral body and the etheric body go out of the physical body, then death arises, and with it the decay of the physical body.

Why is this third member called astral body?—No more appropriate name could be found for it! Why?—Because this member has an important task which we must bear in mind. At night, this astral body is not inactive, for then it works upon the physical and etheric body, and the clairvoyant seer can observe this. During the day, we use up our physical and etheric body, for everything we do uses up the physical body, and the expression of this is fatigue. Now the astral body repairs what we use up during the day. The astral body really eliminates fatigue while we are asleep. This shows the importance and necessity of sleep. The clairvoyant seer can do this repair-work consciously. The refreshing element of sleep depends on the fact that the astral body has worked in the right way upon the physical and astral bodies. But since the astral body must first return into the physical and etheric bodies, the refreshment of sleep arises gradually, that is to say, about one hour after waking up.

Something else, something important is also connected with the fact that the astral body goes out during sleep. When the astral body enters in connection with the external world during the waking life of daytime, it must live together with the physical and etheric body; but when it extricates itself from the body, that is to say, during sleep, it is freed from these fetters of the physical and etheric body. Then something wonderful arises; the forces of the astral body then reach as far as the starry world, where the soul-Beings of the plants are to be found, and it draws its strength from that world. The astral body reposes in a world where the stars are embedded. This is the world of the Harmony of the Spheres, according to the Pythagoreans. It is a reality and not a mere fancy. If we live consciously in this world, we can hear the harmonies of the spheres, we can hear the stars resounding in their reciprocal forces and relations. In this sense, Goethe was an initiate, and in this meaning we should read the beginning of the Prologue in Heaven of “Faust:—

“Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Bruderspharen Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Stärke,
Wenn keiner sie ergründen mag;
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich, wie am ersten Tag.”

(Translation after Latham)

“The sun, with many a sister-sphere,
Still sings the rival psalm of wonder,
And still his fore-ordained career
Accomplishes with tread of thunder.
The sight sustains the angels' prime,
Though none may spell the mystic story;
Thy Works, unspeakably sublime,
Live on, in all their primal glory.”

People do not know Goethe, and as a rule they are not aware that he was an initiate, for they simply say: A poet needs images ... . Yet Goethe knew that the sun stands in the midst of a choir and that it resounds as Spirit of the Sun! Goethe therefore remains by this image and continues:—

“Horchet! Horcht dem Sturm der Horen!
Tönend wird für Geistesehren
Schon der neue Tag geboren.
Felsentore knarren rasselnd,
Phöbus' Räder rollen prasselnd;
Welch Getöse bringt das Licht!
Es drommetet, es posaunet,
Auge blinzt and Ohr erstaunet,
Unerhörtes hört sich nicht.”

(Translation after Latham)

“Hark! The Hours in storm are winging,
And to spirit ears loud-ringing,
Now the new-born day is springing.
Rocky portals clang asunder,
Phoebus' wheels roll forth in thunder,
What a tumult brings the light!
Loud the trump of dawn hath sounded,
Eye is dazzled, ear astounded,
The Unheard no ear may smite.”

During the night, the astral body lives in this world of stars. During the day it comes into a kind of disharmony of wordly things, whereas at night, during sleep, it is once more embedded in the world of the stars. And in the morning it returns with the forces which it brings along from this world. From the astral world we bring with us the harmony of the spheres, when we awake from sleep! The real home of the astral body is the world of the stars, the astral world, and that why it is called astral body.

Now we have learned to know three parts of human nature; the physical body; the etheric body and the astral body.

The fourth part, the Ego, we shall learn to know next time. The Ego is that member which raises man above the animal and makes of him the crown of creation.

The animal does not have man's consciousness, although it has a certain kind of consciousness, just as we have seen it in the case of the plant and of the mineral; but the consciousness of animals lies in the astral world. Man's fourth member, the Ego, constitutes with the other three members, the, “holy fourfold essence” of man, of which all the ancient Schools speak.

Man therefore has the physical body in common with the mineral, the etheric body in common with the plants, and the astral body in common with the animal. He alone has an Ego, and this raises him above the others. In man we find, as it were, the essence of everything which we see spread out round about us. In fact, a microcosm! We must therefore first learn to know our environment, if we wish to know man.

We should therefore think of these three members, of these three bodies, as sheaths, woven in different regions, and we, that is to say, our Ego, lives in these sheaths, together with the higher members of human nature, together with our immortal part.

There is a “holiest of holies” in man which we may designate as his self-consciousness. Those who see this in the right way, have no difficulty in perceiving that this word “self-consciousness” expresses at the same time the true meaning of human life. Self-consciousness is the capacity for transmitting the knowledge that One is an EGO.

You may clearly obtain an idea of this if you bear in mind that there is one name in the whole language which fundamentally differs from all the others: it is the word “I”. Anyone can designate the table, but, “I” is a designation which can only be applied individually to one's own self. To every other person one is a “you”. Never can the word “I” resound from outside, if it is to designate my own being. Spiritual science has always experienced this.

In the Jewish religion, for instance, when speaking of man's inner being, it was referred to as the unspeakable name of God. For the Hebrews said: When the “I” is to be pronounced, it must resound from the central point of our being. No being outside can utter this name: A kind of shudder therefore passed through the whole congregation when the priest uttered the word JAHVE, “I am the I am”. The God within man begins to speak—this is the pure, original, meaning of the Jewish name of God. You will also learn to know other names, but they all stand in some kind of relationship to this one name.

With this word “I,” we designate the fourth member of man's being. Through the Ego, and from this centre, man works upon the other members of his being, upon his astral body, etheric body and physical body. No matter how far we go back into the history of human development, we find that man always possessed these four members, and it is this which distinguishes him from the animals.

Let us now form an idea of the relationship between developed and undeveloped men in regard to these four members. Consider under this aspect one of the most savage men, who eats up his fellow-men, and compare him with an average European, and the latter again with a highly developed individual—Goethe, for example, or Schiller, or Francis of Assisi. The savage blindly follows the instincts and passions contained in his astral body. He has an Ego, but this Ego still lives completely under the sway of the astral body. An average man of the present time is already able to distinguish good and evil, and this is due to the fact that he has worked upon his astral body. He has worked upon it and even transformed certain instincts into so-called ideals. Man reaches an ever higher stage of development the more he transforms his astral body through his Ego. The modern average European has transformed a good part of this astral body. An individuality such as Schiller or Goethe has already transformed the greater part of the astral body. But a human being who has subjugated all his passions through his will, as for instance, Francis of Assisi, has an astral body which is entirely transformed by his Ego, there is nothing left in this astral body which is not completely under the sway of the Ego.

That part of the astral body which man has been able to transform, we designate as “Manas” or “Spirit-Self”. This is the fifth member of his being. We may then say: The Ego contains the seed for the transformation of the astral body into Manas, Spirit-Self,

Now man has the possibility to transform not only his astral body, but also his etheric body, so that the Ego also becomes the sovereign of the etheric body. But you must realise that this is a far more difficult and slower work. The difference between the transformation of the astral body and of the etheric body is the following:—

Consider what you knew when you were eight years old, and what you have learned since your youth! The bearer of all these transformations is the astral body. Consequently it changes essentially every day through the external impressions which you take in. But this is not the case with the etheric body. If you wish to have an idea of this imagine the following:—If you were a choleric child at the age of eight, you will probably still lose your temper even to-day. Only a few people succeed in transforming themselves to such an extent as to change also their habits, inclinations, temperament and character. This does not in any way contradict what I have explained above. The astral body is indeed connected with pleasure and pain and the other sensations, but when these have become habitual and so-called character traits, then they are rooted in the etheric body; and if we wish to transform these habits, then the etheric body must be transformed, for it is the bearer of every habit and character-trait.

I have frequently compared the transformations of astral body and etheric body with the progress of the minute and second hands of the clock.

Later on we shall speak of the development of the more advanced pupil. He is not a pupil in the meaning of ordinary life, not only one who learns something. Undoubtedly, such a pupil must also learn a lot, but far more important than learning, is the above-mentioned work upon the etheric body: He must succeed, for instance, in transforming a choleric disposition into gentleness of character. Spiritual science in particular gives him indications for this.

He who succeeds in transforming from one day to the other at least one of his habits, that is to say, some quality of his etheric body, has attained a high stage of development. Such a transformation of the etheric body should go hand in hand with the other things which the disciple of occult science learns. But even if a man knows nothing of such a training, he nevertheless transforms his etheric body of his own accord—though slowly and gradually, and throughout many incarnations And that part of his etheric body which he has been able to transform, we designate as Budhi, or Life-Spirit, which constitutes the sixth member of human nature.

Then there is the stage lying far, far above the others, upon which man learns to work upon his physical body and to transform it. That part of his physical body which he has learned to control, we designate as Atma, or Spirit-Man. It is the seventh member of his being. Atma is connected with the German word “atmen”, to breathe, for the process of transformation goes out from the breathing process.

We can only form an idea of what it means to control one's physical body consciously, through the Ego, if we bear in mind how little we really know of our physical body. This knowledge has nothing to do with the assertions of modern anatomy concerning man's physical body. Long before modern anatomy existed, there were ancient teachings, which of course were not known publicly, but which contained a knowledge concerning man's inner being. This knowledge enabled the wise men of ancient times to follow, for instance, the currents of life and of the blood, and they were thus able to observe themselves inwardly, to observe the physical body and all its organs. When we shall have reached this stage of development, not one portion of our body will move without the conscious participation of our will. This is the transformation into Atma, the Spirit-Man.

Now someone might object: The Physical body is the lowest member of human nature; how is it possible that its transformation should constitute the highest member? Just because the physical body is the lowest member, man's highest effort is needed in order to gain control over this body. The transformation of the physical body is intimately connected with the acquisition of power over forces which permeate the whole cosmos. And the sway over these cosmic forces is what we designate as magic.

Man's true inner nature thus consists of seven parts. But those seven parts are completely intermingled. A true idea of this intermingling can only be obtained if we compare it with the seven colours of the rainbow, which are all contained in the light of the sun. Even as the light consists of these seven colours, so man consists of his seven members.

Let us now consider the significance of this structure of man's being in connection with the knowledge of man's whole life-path. Yesterday we learned to know the nature of sleep. The physical body and the etheric body lie in the bed; respiration and blood-circulation remain, as life-expression of the etheric body, but everything pertaining to the astral body is lifted out of the physical body and the etheric body together with the Ego.

When death arises, something else appears, in contrast to this. Whereas the physical body and the etheric body remain united throughout the life between birth and death, death separates the etheric body also, and not only the astral body, as in sleep, from the physical body. But the physical body is so complicated (let us bear in mind yesterday's explanations) that it must decay, if obliged to rely upon its own forces.

Let us now observe clairvoyantly the human being after death: Before us lies only the physical body, and above it soar, the astral body and the etheric body ... Immediately after death, the deceased human being experiences a peculiar manifestation: At the moment of death, the course of his whole life appears in the field of human memory, like a spread-out picture. Every event, even the most insignificant, passes before him in the form of an image. This is the natural result of the fact that the etheric body, besides having the above-mentioned quality of preventing the decay of the physical body, is also the bearer of memory. As soon as it loses its first task, it devotes itself intensely to this second task. Since every event in life, whether, pleasure or suffering, is connected with joy or pain, owing to the permeation of the etheric body with the astral body, now that the astral body is also severed from him, man experiences those memory pictures, that is to say, he experiences his whole past life, without any sensations or feelings, as if it were a great panorama.

As long as the etheric body remains connected with the physical body, the instrument which it must use, the brain renders our memories incomplete; we only retain fragments of life impressions in our memory. The deficiency of the physical brain is responsible for this, but as soon as the etheric body becomes emancipated from the physical brain, it can remember everything.

An analogy may even be found in ordinary life, during the shock which one experiences, for instance, at the moment of drowning, or crashing, etc. This is simply due to the fact that at such a moment the etheric body becomes forcefully severed from the physical body, which also takes place, for example, in a slight degree when an extremity falls asleep (pins and needles), or in hypnosis. In the case of a hypnotized person, the clairvoyant can see his etheric body hanging out at both sides of the head. Materialistic physiology objects that in hypnosis there is a physical change in the blood, but people simply mix up cause and effect.

Man's first experience after death is therefore this retrospection of his past life, which differs in length, but averages about three and a half days.

Then comes a second kind of death, when the etheric body completely severs itself also from the astral body, so that a kind of etheric corpse remains behind. But this corpse soon dissolves, more or less quickly in each individual case, and becomes part of the universal cosmic ether. Yet it does not dissolve altogether; a kind of essence remains from the past life. The Ego takes this essence along with it; it is an imperishable treasure, which remains for all the subsequent incarnations. After every incarnation a new leaf is added, so to speak, to the proceeding one. In Theosophy this essence of the etheric body is called the Causal Body, and the quality of the causal body determines the way in which the future incarnations take place.

Now the astral body remains alone ... What is the difference between this condition, in which it is severed from the other members, from the physical body and the etheric body, and that of sleep, in which it also remains alone? The forces which it had to use during sleep in order to elaborate and improve the physical body, have now become emancipated, through the fact that the physical body has definitely been laid aside. The astral body now uses those forces for its own self and is conscious of this. In this state of self-consciousness the astral body now passes through a time which can be understood best of all if we consider the following:—

Imagine that you are enjoying a specially tasty dish—you eat it and enjoy its taste. This pleasure is not rooted in the physical body, but in the astral body, but it can only arise because it has the required organ, namely a tongue and a palate. Thus the physical body supplies the instrument for the gratifications of the astral body.

Now, what takes place after death, when the physical body has been discarded? The instrument is lacking, the transmitter of enjoyment, but the astral body has not lost the longing and desire for some special pleasure. Now imagine this state as vividly as possible. It resembles the condition of a man who is thirsting in the midst of a desert. After death the astral body still feels the desire for certain enjoyments, in the same measure in which it was accustomed to feel this during the past life on earth, and for this reason the time after death is for so many people a time of unsatisfied desires.

This condition is named Kamaloka (Kama means desire, and locus place). It is the same condition which we find described in many myths—for instance, the tortures of Tantalus, or purgatory. Of course, this condition is not only a torturing one; it tortures us until the astral body has lost the habit of desiring enjoyments. The more needs the astral body feels during physical life the longer does this condition of Kamaloka last.

But you may gather from the above, that according to the quality of these needs experienced by a human being during his past life on earth; the astral body may encounter in Kamaloka experiences which are not only torturing, but under circumstances very good and pleasant. The astral body will, for instance, feel pleasure in every moment of joy given to him by Nature and its beauty. In order to experience this enjoyment of Nature and its beauty, we must indeed have eyes to see, but beauty is something that transcends the physical, and therefore this condition is in Kamaloka the source of increased enjoyment. These things produce great joys and wonderful experiences even during the Kamaloka period.

Thus we may render this Kamaloka time more beautiful by emancipating ourselves from purely physical enjoyments. If you consider this, you will be able to understand several things in life, for instance, everything which constitutes art. The more ideal art is, the more the ideal essence manifests itself through art, the stronger and the more uplifting will, be the influence of the work of art, an influence transcending physical life. The Spirit is the real element of art. The materialistic short-sightedness, alone has led to naturalism in art.

After passing through this Kamaloka period, we therefore reach the stage where we have lost the habit of physical enjoyments, and this means that we must now pass through an entirely different condition. The soul now discards all those parts of the astral body which man, that is to say, the Ego, has not yet transformed. The discarded astral sheath now constitutes the third corpse which we leave behind.

Now that the Ego has united itself with that which it has gained from the other bodies—viz. with the above-mentioned essence of the etheric body and with that of the astral body—it passes on to the Spirit-realm. There it lives until the time of a new birth.

We shall speak of this tomorrow. To-day I only wish to emphasize once more that all these spiritual worlds exist continually round about us, and not in a “Beyond”, which is spatially separated from us. One who can look into the spiritual worlds can at any time perceive the above-mentioned corpses, as shadows or spectres. It is these corpses which so frequently intrude themselves in spiritistic seances. But if such an astral corpse is mistaken for the individuality in question, it is just as foolish a mistake as that of taking the physical corpse for the living human being, Thus the astral corpse frequently reveals very ridiculous traits, for it possesses the very qualities which the Ego has discarded.

Since it is our task to-day to continue following, man's destinies in the spiritual world, it will be advisable if we first form some idea of what we designate as a world, in the spiritual-scientific meaning.

We are conscious of the world round about us, because we have certain capacities and organs which enable us to perceive it. If we had other organs, this world would present an entirely different aspect. For example, if a man had no eyes enabling him to see the light, but an organ enabling him instead to perceive electricity, then he would not see this room flooded with light, but he would perceive electricity in every wire, flashing, streaming through it.—The world round about us, what we call our world, is therefore dependent upon our sense-organs.

The astral world, too, is nothing but a sum of phenomena, which the human being experiences in his environment , when he has severed himself from his physical body and from his etheric body, so that he can use forces enabling him to see what he cannot otherwise see. This is the case, when he has discarded his physical body and his etheric body. The perceptive organs for the astral world are the organs of the astral body, analogous to the sense-organs of the physical body.

Let us now contemplate the astral world.

Through methods which will be discussed later, a man endowed with spiritual vision can perceive the astral world even here, in his physical body. The astral world differs greatly from our physical world. You may obtain some idea of what is round about you in the astral world, if you summon up before your soul the life of dreams, which is the last trace of that early clairvoyance which man once possessed in times gone by. You all know this life of dreams from your own experience, as world of chaotic images. How does it come about that man dreams at all? We know that while we dream, the physical body and the etheric body lie on the bed, while the astral body soars above them. In a sound, dreamless sleep, the astral body is completely lifted out of the etheric body; but in a sleep filled with dreams, certain tentacles of the astral body still reach into the etheric body, and this enables man to perceive the more or less confused pictures of the astral world.

The astral world is as transparent as the dream-pictures; it is, as it were, woven out of dreams. But these dreams which constitute the astral world differ from ordinary dreams, for they are the images of a reality, just as “real” a reality as the physical world. We perceive this reality in the same way in which we perceive dreams, for the astral world, too, is perceived symbolically. You all know that the world of dreams is a symbolical world. Everything from the world outside which enters our sleep, takes on a symbolical aspect in our dreams. I will give you a few typical examples of dreams, which will show you how a simple impression from outside constitutes the foundation of a dream's symbolical image.

For example, you may be dreaming that you have caught a frog. You feel its slippery body, and on waking up you find that you are holding the cold end of the sheet in your hand. Or you may dream that you are in a cellar, in a dark hole full of spiders' webs: You wake up ... with a headache. Or you may see snakes in your dream, and when you awake you will find that you have abdominal pains. Or another dream: An academician has a long dream of a duel, beginning with some insult and ending with the pistol-shot: He hears the shot, awakes, and discovers that a chair has fallen.

The whole course of this last dream can also show you that the conditions of time are quite different in dreams. Not only does time run backwards, so to speak, but the whole conception of time loses its meaning in a dream. During a dream, we may pass through a whole life in the fraction of a second, in the same way in which our whole life passes before our soul's eye during the moment of drowning, or crashing. The point to be borne in mind in all these dream-pictures is that the cause which gave rise to them appears in the form of IMAGES.

This is the case in the astral world. Its images can be interpreted. The same astral experience always appears in the form of the same image; there is always regularity and harmony in these pictures of the astral world, whereas our ordinary dreams are chaotic. In the end, we can find our way about in the astral world just as well as in the physical world.

The astral world is woven out of such pictures, but they are the expression of soul-beings. After death all human beings are enveloped in such pictures, which are in part very rich in colour and form. Also when we are asleep the astral body can be seen in the midst of streaming, changing forms and colours. If we have the astral power of vision, we can perceive these astral beings in a surging sea of colours.

The astral world has, however, one peculiar quality, which appears strange to one who hears this for the first time. In the astral world everything exists, as it were, in the form of a picture reflected in a mirror, and a pupil of spiritual science must therefore get accustomed little by little to see things in the RIGHT way. For instance, you may see the number 365, but this really corresponds to 563. This applies to everything which we see in the astral world. There, everything that goes out of our own being appears as if it were coming towards us. It is most important to consider this fact.

When astral images arise, for instance, in pathological conditions, we must know how to deal with them. They often appear when people are delirious; a delirious person often sees all kinds of faces and forms rushing towards him, for the astral world becomes accessible to him in this pathological condition. Although these astral pictures seem to be rushing towards him, they are in reality streaming out of him. Progressive doctors should bear this in mind, for in future such symptoms will be more and more frequent, arising out of a concealed religious longing. The subject of a painting such, as for instance, the well known “Temptation of Saint Anthony” is based on such astral experiences.

If you think these things through to the very end you will no longer find it strange that time too is reversed in the astral world. An echo of this may be found in dreams. In this connection you should remember the above-mentioned example of the duel in a dream. In the astral world everything is reversed; even time. When we observe the development of a tree astrally, we first perceive its fruit, then its blossoms, and so on backwards to the seed.

After death, during the time in which we must lose our earthly habits, our whole life in the astral world runs backwards. But this process of living through our whole life once more backwards, concluding it ,with our first impressions of childhood, is faster than the one on the physical plane; it lasts about one third of the duration of our life on earth. Thus we live through our life again in a reversed order, but we experience many other things too.

Let us suppose that you were eighty years old when you died, and that now you live through your life backwards as far as your fortieth year. At that time you may, for instance, have boxed someone's ear, thus causing him pain. In the astral world this sensation of pain also appears as if in a mirror, i.e. YOU now experience the pain felt by the other person when you boxed his ear. But this also applies to every pleasant experience.

Only when the human being has thus passed through his whole life backwards, is he ready to enter the heavenly world. Religious traditions should always be taken literally. If you bear in mind what I have just now explained to you, you will easily understand that the human being can only enter the spiritual world—and the spiritual world is the one which the Bible designates as “Kingdom of Heaven”—when he has lived through his whole life backwards as far as infancy. This lies at the foundation of Christ's words: “Unless you become as little children you cannot enter the Kingdom of Heaven”. For on reaching the stage of childhood in his reversed passage through life, the human being discards the astral body and enters the spiritual world.

Now I must give you a description of the spiritual world. The Kingdom of Heaven differs from the physical world even more than the astral world. But since it is only possible to describe the spiritual world with expressions taken from the physical world, it should be borne in mind even more than for descriptions of the astral world, that everything I say about the spiritual world should only be taken comparatively.

In the Kingdom of Heaven we also find a triad, as here on earth. Even as upon the earth we find the three aggregate states of solid, liquid and gaseous, and accordingly divide the earth into continents, oceans, and atmosphere, so we may also distinguish three similar spheres—but, as stated, only as a comparison—in the spiritual realm. The continental sphere, however, consists of something which differs from our rocks and stones. What constitutes the firm ground of the spirit realm, are the archetypal images of the physical world. For everything physical has its archetype, even man. The clairvoyant seer perceives these archetypal images as a kind of negative, that is to say, he sees space as a kind of shadow-form, and round about it radiant light. But corresponding, for instance, to the blood and nerves, these shadows are not uniform. But a stone, or a mineral reveal in their archetypal images a uniformly empty space surround by raying light.

Even as you walk, on firm ground here on earth, so in the spiritual realm you walk on the archetypal images of physical things. This forms the continents of the spiritual world.

When the human being first sets foot on these continents, a definite aspect always presents itself to him: It is the moment when he first has a clear perception of his own body lying before him. For he himself is spirit. Normally this takes place about thirty years after death, and this is connected with the fundamental experience: “This is you.” The Vedanta philosophy based one of its fundamental teachings on this knowledge, the “Tat twain asi”—this is you. All such expressions are drawn out of a deep spiritual knowledge.

The second sphere of the spiritual realm is the oceanic sphere. Whatever is life here in the physical world, i.e. everything that possesses an etheric body, exists in the spiritual realm as if it were a liquid element. Streaming, surging life flows through the spirit-realm. It even collects like the waters of the ocean, in a kind of ocean-basin, or to be more precise, like the blood streaming through the veins and collecting in the heart.

And thirdly we have the atmosphere of the spirit realm, consisting of all the passions, instincts, feelings, etc. You have all these sensations up there as an external perception, resembling the atmospheric phenomena here on earth. All this blows through the atmosphere of Devachan. As a clairvoyant, you can perceive in the spirit-realm all the sufferings and joys experienced on earth. Every passion, every feeling of hatred and such like, appears in the spirit-realm as if it were a storm. A battle, for example, appears in such a form that in the Devachan world the seer experiences a tremendous storm. The whole spiritual world is thus permeated with wonderful joys which pass through it, but also with terrible passions.

In the same way it is possible to speak of spiritual ears. When you have advanced to the stage of having an insight into the Devachan world, you may both see and hear these floating phenomena, and what you thus hear is the HARMONY OF THE SPHERES.

We have thus characterised the spiritual region up to this stage. But there is a fourth region in Devachan. Up to now we have found in it:

1. The prototypes of all physical forms; as the continents
2. The prototypes of all life, as the oceans
3. The prototypes of all soul-life, feelings, etc., as the atmosphere

Now there is something in human life which cannot have its origin in the external world, and its spiritual content constitutes the fourth sphere of Devachan. There we find every original idea, going as far as the creative productions of genius. All that is original, that is to say, all that man puts into the world, thus enriching the world, the prototypes of all these creations form the fourth sphere of Devachan. This concludes the description of the lower parts of Devachan.

Beyond this there are three higher spheres, but during his physical life man can only reach them through a higher initiation. They are only accessible to an initiate, and after death, they can only be perceived by more highly developed individuals.

What does such an advanced initiate experience when he penetrates into the next higher sphere of Devachan? At first he experiences that which is designated in Occult Science as the Akasha Chronicle. Everything that occurs in the world and that has ever occurred in it in the past, is preserved as an impression in a fine substantiality, which is imperishable.

Let me illustrate this through at example: Now I am speaking to you, but you would not hear me if my voice were not able to produce vibrations in the air. Thus every word which I utter exists in the air in the form of fine movements. These fine movements of course vanish, but everything which occurs here on earth becomes impressed in that fine substantiality which we experience when reaching the spiritual world. This impression is everlasting. Every word, every thought, everything which has ever taken place in humanity, can be read in the Akasha Chronicle. This entails either initiation, or that moment after death when the human being enters the higher devachanic sphere, that is to say, when he has developed so far as to perceive this high sphere of Devachan after death. In that case he is able to look into the past.

The Akasha Chronicle is a writing which preserves everything that has ever occurred. But it is not really a writing in the ordinary physical meaning, for it consists of images. You see, for example, Caesar in every situation of his life,—you do not see what he has done, but the inner impulses which led him to his deeds. These Akasha pictures possess a high degree of life, and if we cannot interpret them in the right way, they can give rise to great delusions. The source of many spiritistic aberrations is, for example, the appearance of an Akasha picture at one of these seances. If you summon Goethe, and the Akasha picture of November 25th 1797 appears before you, giving you information concerning some question, this picture will reply as Goethe would have replied had he been asked that question on November 25th 1797. Only those who really know the spiritual world can judge whether they are dealing with a reality or with a shadow. These descriptions can show you what aspect the higher spheres of the spiritual world present.

The first experience is therefore the perception of one's own body, and this experience is the starting point for all other experiences. The human being feels strongly that he has emancipated himself from his bodily involucres, for the most blissful of moments is the one in which he discards the last body, the astral corpse. Even as a plant wedged in the fissure of a rock would experience it as bliss to be freed, so this feeling of blissfulness becomes a fundamental sensation of the human being. It permeates him and transfigures the other feelings which were once experienced in an earthly manner, for instance, feelings of friendship, which may perhaps undergo certain transformations here on earth, but which are deepened and purified in the spiritual realm.

Also a mother's love for her child undergoes such a purification, and vice versa. The originally animal feeling of belonging to one another, which even here upon the earth took on a moral character, unfolds a still higher moral-power in Devachan, Every tie on earth becomes deepened in the spiritual realm, and all connections interpenetrate.

Through love man works his way up from the narrowness of egotism to the encompassing experience of cosmic life. There, nothing, is divided or severed; each one works for the others, for even in the spiritual world activity and work constitute the element which carries, furthers and unites the souls. But Love is the inexhaustible source of all life.

It will be our task to-day to describe to a certain extent the human being during his sojourn in Devachan between death and new birth. In this connection we must first of all form an idea of that which man gains through the fact that during his passage through the spiritual world he is, to begin with, active for his own sake. We can picture this more easily if we bear in mind the relationship of two things: of that which we experience, and of that which our experience becomes during the time between birth and death.

Consider, for instance, everything which you experience when you learn to write. You would find it difficult, to remember all the things which you had to take in at that time in order to learn the or writing. Think of all admonishments of your teacher. Perhaps even of his anger! All this passed through your soul, and what has remained? The capacity to write. Everything else has become blurred and the art of writing has remained.

This is the course of things in life generally—not only during the life between birth and death, but in the whole life of the universe, both in the physical and in the super-sensible world.

It is possible to form a conception of how the things explained above are active in the super-sensible world. Let us, for example, take Mozart. When he was quite a young boy he heard a long piece of music at St. peters in Rome; according to an old tradition it was not allowed to write down this music, but Mozart wrote it down afterwards, from memory. What memories you must have had! And he could do this as a young boy! How do materialists explained this? They would protest energetically if they were asked to believe that an ox grows out of a piece of earth, that in animals such as the ox arises in a way which does not correspond to Nature. They say: Miracles do not exist ... and they are perfectly right in this. But in the face of spiritual things they become tremendously superstitious and believed in miracles at which point materialists simply accept back such as the one just now described from Mozart's life, and without further ado they place it to the account of heredity. Yet at Mozart's case, an explanation not arising out of a spiritual science describes just as great a miracle as that of an ox growing out of a piece of earth. For it is possible for a human being gradually to acquire an excellent memory if he turns his spirit again and again towards the same object. Memory develops in exactly the same way in which something perfect develops out of something imperfect, and it would be a miracle if Mozart's memory had grown out of nothing!

The answer of spiritual science to such a problem is that even in such a case upgrade developed gradually and naturally. If a materialists seeks an explanation for it, he cannot extricate himself otherwise that by admitting that he must either believe in miracles or that capacity is which does manifest themselves prove that they already existed in a former life and that they followed an entirely natural course of development.

Reincarnation is consequently the logical deduction of such a train of thought. And those who explain, through a materialistic way of looking at things, that such a perfect memory as that of the young boy Mozart can arise out of nothing, should follow their belief to a logical conclusion and admit, for instance, that frogs develop without further ado from mud—A fact which was accepted by a natural scientists before the time of Francesco Redi. Consequently, those who wish to be logical in spiritual science state: Even as an oak-tree grows out of the acorn and develops gradually, so our soul-capacities develop little by little, and when a human being enters life with capacities so highly developed as those of Mozart, this undeniably proves that the human being gained these capacities during former lives on earth. This gives us a clue to the comprehension of man's destiny in the spiritual world.

The essential point is therefore that the experiences of one life transform themselves into capacities for the succeeding life. All the dispositions of character which we bring with us in this life are the fruit of experiences gained during earlier lives on earth. For this reason it is necessary to study man's passage through Devachan in order to understand fully how the experiences of one life become capacities in the next life.

When we pass through our life on earth, we daily experience many things, and all these experiences appear in the panorama-picture already described to you, which rises up before the soul's eye immediately after death. But the capacities which we have gained through all these experiences remain as an essence, and we take along with us into the spiritual world this essence,which endures for all times to come.

When the human being enters Devachan, he perceives the regions described to you yesterday; the continental region, consisting of the archetypes of all earthly forms; the oceanic region, consisting of everything which is life; the air-region, consisting of everything pertaining to the soul, pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, etc. In the continental region the human being first perceives the archetype of his own physical body, and in the air-region he of course perceives, to begin with, also that which took place within his own soul during his past life on earth in the form of joy, suffering, pleasure, pain and passions. In other words, he once more perceives all the experiences of his past life, but in an entirely different way than during his passage through the Kamaloka period, which I have already described to you. In Kamaloka he lived through them once more in order to lose the habit of being dependent on them. In the watery region of Devachan man experiences all the peculiarities of his bodily life, and in the air-region of the celestial world he passes through all his psychic experiences.

It is important and of great interest to realise that everything which we have experienced in the course of one life—our feelings concerning the world, pleasure, pain, etc.—that in the spiritual world all this surrounds us as an external world. We need not feel sad that there our sufferings lie spread out before us. This is not sad at all, for there, all our sufferings exist in the same way in which storms exist in the physical world and in the spiritual world all our joyful experiences appear to us like wonderful cloud-phenomena. In Devachan our own inner experiences do not exist within us, as here on earth, but they live in our environment in an external form, in the same way in which a picture of Nature lies spread out before us. Our inner experiences live round about us, as if they were images, sounds or atmospheric phenomena; they have become objectified, as heavenly forms.

I have told you that it is not sad if our sufferings come raying towards us; just as little sad as lightning or thunder in physical life. Those who perceive these connections know what they owe to their sufferings in particular. Just those who have passed through pain and suffering will always say that they gratefully accept joy and pleasure, but that they would never wish to do without suffering and pain. We owe all Our wisdom to our suffering and pain during past lives on earth. A man whose physiognomy bears upon it the mark of wisdom in this life, owes this to the fact that in former lives he experienced the world's connection as suffering.

I have already explained to you that everything which we have experienced during our earthly-life lies spread out before us in pictures, etc, , when we enter Devachan. What does this signify? It will be easier to understand this if we realise what influence the environment exercises upon us. You all know Goethe's words: “The eye has been formed through the light and for the light.” What does this mean? The eye must exist in order to perceive the light. If we did not possess our eyesight the world would be dark and gloomy. But what is the origin of the human eye? It has been formed by the light itself, and similarly the eye would degenerate if there were no light. It has, for instance, been possible to observe this fact directly, in the case of animals who immigrated into the caves of Kentucky.

Light is the origin of the power of sight. Once upon a time man was not endowed with sight, because he still lived under quite different conditions; in earlier times of the earth's development the sun was not visible to an external sensory eye. Let us remember in this connection what the legends relate in regard to “Niflheim”.

The:more man lived exposed to the sun, the further the eye developed by the light of the sun. All the other sense organs developed in the same way: sound formed the ear, heat the sense of heat. We would have no sense of touch if there were no hard objects. The external world moulds and forms our body.

This is most important in practical life; in fact, theosophy is always meant to be applied to practical life. It is also most important in education, for only an educator who can look deeply into man's nature educate in the right way.

The physical body develops until the child changes its teeth, the etheric body develops up to the 14th/15th year, and the astral body up to the 21st year. We must know all this if education is to be approached practically and not fantastically. Since the disposition of the physical body is what we must bear in mind up to the seventh year, physical impressions, that is to say, everything which the child perceives through his sense organs, must be considered deeply and thoroughly. Sins of omission in education in connection with the form and disposition of the physical organs in the child's body, are a loss for the whole of life.

An insight into this last sentence gives medicine in particular many guiding lines for a right treatment of illnesses, among others, for instance, rickets, How is it that rickets arise just in this period of life? Just because; the child is moulding its body, and that is why these symptoms manifest themselves in the form (deformed bones, bad teeth, wrong form of the skull, etc.) But for this very reason the child is still able, until dentition, to correct the wrong forms and lead them back to a normal condition. We can see that even the most crooked legs grow straight again if the child receives the right treatment, and that perfectly sound second teeth can develop even if the milk-teeth were quite defective, whereas crooked legs which were not healed up to the seventh year remain crooked for the whole of life.

Up to the seventh year the brain is also engaged in the work of moulding its plastic forms, and the fine developments and forms of the brain's shape which could not be moulded up to that time are lost forever. Since the physical brain is the instrument through which the spirit manifests itself, it is of tremendous importance that this instrument should be moulded as finely as possible, that is to say, that it should be prepared during, the first seven years of life. For even the greatest individuality can do nothing with a defective brain, just as the greatest pianist cannot play well on a piano which is out of tune. Spiritual science, can give most important guidance to pedagogy, as well as to medicine, particularly in regard to the development of the brain.

In modern medicine one comes across a complete misunderstanding of facts particularly in this field. Rickets manifest themselves in a deformation of the bones, but very frequently they also appear in the shape of a defective glandular system and diseased mucous membranes; that is to say, children affected with rickets frequently have symptoms of swollen glands, adenoid growths, etc. A third pathological symptom in such children is that at school they frequently remain behind spiritually and that they become apathetic, indeed even slightly idiotic. In reality this is based on the defective development of the physical brain, particularly of its so-called corticose substance, which must above all be developed in its finest structure during these years. And in the same way the other symptoms are based on defective development.

Through the modern natural-scientific training and attitude, modern medicine is in such cases more than inclined to follow the example of modern natural science, namely to look upon the external symptoms as cause and effect, linking them up together like pearls on a chain and completely ignoring the deeper spiritual causes. What is the result? The facts are: rickety bones, adenoid growths, diminished attention and comprehension on the child's part. The conclusion to which modern doctors arrive is: Children with adenoid growths become mentally defective Owing to those growths; consequently it is necessary to remove them. The growths are consequently removed by operation. If this conclusion were right, every child who underwent such a treatment would respond to it by the disappearance of the impediments in the brain. But what is observed after such a treatment in the great majority of cases? The operation results in a sham success of brief duration, for the growths appear again after a very short time. But if the illness is to be attacked at its root—and this is quite possible, only now this would lead us too far away from our subject—the deformed bones, the swollen mucous membranes and glands disappear, as well as the impediments in the working of the brain.

After this digression, let us new return to our subject. The external world thus calls into being and moulds the right physical forms. Up to the seventh year, the child is in reality nothing but sense-organ. Everything which it takes in with its senses is elaborated ; above all, what it sees and hears in its immediate environment. Until dentition, the child is therefore an imitative being, and,this goes as far as its physical organisation. This is quite natural. Through its sense-organs, the child takes in its whole environment. And it is always practicing how to use it to limbs. It watches how its father or mother, etc. do this or that thing, and it simply imitates them. This goes as far as the movements of hands and legs. If the father or the mother are, for instance, fidgety people, then the child will also become fidgety in countless cases; if the mother is calm, then the child will of course, also become calm. We must try to produce the right counter-condition by placing the child in a right environment.

It is absolutely necessary to stimulate the child's fantasy, besides giving it sensory impressions, if it is to receive the influences needed for the development of the physical brain. It is consequently necessary to give a small child toys which are as simple as possible. A natural child will again and again turned to the “old doll”, made of a rag, no matter how beautiful the “new doll” which it receives. Only the spoiled children of our age are brought up on “beautiful”dolls. What is the reason for this? The child must exert its fantasy in order to transform the red-doll in its fancy into something resembling human shape, and this is a sound activity for the brain. Even as the arm grow stronger through gymnastic exercises, so the brain develops through this exercise.

Also the colours in, the child's surroundings are important. They exercise quite a different influence upon a small child than upon an adult. Many people think that green has a calming effect upon children. But this is quite wrong. A fidgety child should be surrounded with red and a calm child with green or blue-green. The effect of red upon the child is as follows: If you look upon a bright red and then turn your gaze away quickly to a piece of white paper you will see its complementary colour, which is green. ... By this I mean to, illustrate the tendency which the eye has to produce the opposite colour. The child also attempts to do this; inwardly he seeks to unfold the activity which calls forth the counter-colour. This is an example showing how the environment can influence a child.

In a similar way the child is influenced by everything which surrounds it, in addition to many, many things which I shall explain later, in another connection. All this contributes to a very great extent to the development of the child's physical body, from its birth to dentition; to the development of the etheric body, from the seventh to the fourteenth year; or to the development of the astral body, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, etc. Indeed, during the whole life the surrounding world exercises its influence upon the human being. The proverb, “Tell me with whom you go, and I will tell you who you are”, is based on this insight, for “with whom you go” means “what takes place in my environment”. This environment therefore has a strong influence upon us. This applies particularly to the time when the astral body develops, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, and it is an almost daily experience that a young person can easily be astrally corrupted by his environment during these years.

It is exactly the same in Devachan, as here in physical life. Even as here on earth the human being is constantly exposed to the influences of the atmosphere, so he is also exposed to them in Devachan—and there the atmosphere consists of all psychic life, our own and that of our fellow men. All this soul life continually influences the, human being, and gifts and talents develop through the fact that they attract the psychically kindred astral forces from the environment, allowing them to exercise their influence. Mozart was born with such a great musical memory because in a former life he had gathered experiences having this goal in view, and then allowed these experiences to exercise their influence for a long time, during his life in Devachan. Through our environment in Devachan we pass through an enhanced development of our innermost being—indirectly, through all our experiences during our preceding life on earth.

All our capacities are therefore the fruit of former lives, and in Devachan they have been further developed. This is the bliss-giving feeling in Devachan. In Devachan we hatch out what we are able to do in our present life, And in accordance with this is the feeling which we have during the whole intermediary time of our Devachan existence: This feeling, connected with everything productive, is bliss.

Here on earth we often feel pain, but in Devachan even pain is bliss, for there we realise, that we acquire wisdom through pain. Even a materialistic scientist has discovered this fact his book “Mimic of Thought” he writes: “Every wise countenance reveals the expression of crystallised suffering”. From the pains of his preceding life the human being in fact produces through his experiences in Devachan talents and wisdom for his next life on Earth. And the feeling of producing this is one of untold bliss.

You may see a pale reflection of this here on earth in a hatching hen. If you transfer this to the spiritual plane and enhance it immensely you obtain the feeling of incessant infinite bliss between the time of Kamaloka and a new birth,—for then the human being works out all his dispositions and capacities for the next life. Everything there becomes a source of blissful life.

We have therefore seen that one source of bliss in Devachan is all the ties formed here on earth are formed once more in Devachan, indeed we experience the spiritual part of those relationships in an immensely enhanced form. The other source of bliss is the productive, creative activity for our next life, as described above.

If the spiritual investigator now turns his gaze upon this activity of man in Devachan he perceives that this productive work has a meaning not only for the individual human being and for his future organisation, but that the human being must contribute and cooperate in a significant way in the progress of the whole evolution of the earth. It is an error to think that in Devachan we are only concerned with our own affairs. How must we work, as blissful spirits in the realm of spirits?

The activity of the dead is a cooperation in the development of our earth . . . We might easily ask: Why are we always born again, after having passed through the experiences of one earthly life? Is not reincarnation useless?

But this is not the case. It is never useless for a man to be born again. The single lives on earth are so far apart , that we always learn something new and pass through new experiences. Centuries elapse between two incarnations, and when we return, the earth has completely changed. Let us suppose that we lived on earth in the second century after Christ. What aspect did the earth present at that time? Even the descriptions of this region, of the Elbe and the Weser etc. of a much later period would be quite different from present descriptions, for here, in Nassau-Hessen, there were still virgin forests.

When the human being is born again, he experiences something quite different from his former life. During our various lives on earth we participate in the development of the earth itself, through the very fact that we incarnate again and again. In addition there is the change brought about by every civilisation. Think of what a Roman boy was able to do! Of the great difference in the education of a boy of the present time! As we have seen, all these experiences are immensely important. It therefore has a deep significance that the human being must always come back again.

Let us now ask: Who changes the face of the earth? The dead themselves, who live in the spirit-realm, do this, through the power which they there acquire, enabling them to work upon this transformation of the earth. Even as human beings are here active externally upon the earth, so the dead are active upon the spiritual prototype of the physical earth. It is they who send their forces into this physical earth, cooperating in its transformation. Of course, there are leaders in this work and higher beings who take over the guidance. In this spiritual realm—which is in our very midst—the dead work upon the transformation of the countenance of the earth.

Why am I in this very place to-day? Why have I been born here? Because I myself have, so to speak, prepared my bed in the very place where I was born. The forces which have a transforming influence both upon the oceans and, upon the surface of the earth, are the forces of our dead. We know that the Atlantic Ocean of to-day was once upon a time a wide expanse of land; this transformation too has been brought about by our dead, and these forces are quite natural and in no way miraculous.

An insight into such things proves with absolute logic the importance and necessity of this work in the spirit realm. If we only know how to interpret the phenomena in the right way, we may even describe this work. Here on earth we breathe the air; we could not live without air. It is similar with the dead, except that there the light plays the same part which the air plays here on earth. The initiate perceives the dead in the midst of light, which is spread out everywhere. A clairvoyant seer, for instance, sees the plants surrounded by the spirits of the dead and these spirits of the dead make the plant grow through the light and change the plant. In the spiritual world we shall all soar above the earth and work upon the plants.

If we thus contemplate the world in connection with the spiritual beings, it becomes larger and more significant to us.

In conclusion, let me mention a few things which can help us to understand certain fine details in our civilisation.

At times, the seer finds that his own observations are confirmed by phenomena in the history of ancient peoples, which before were enigmas to him. It is, for instance, a well known fact that at first primitive nations possess a kind of clairvoyance enabling them to see things of which we have no idea. These primitive races often saw in the shadow, for example, something which is connected with the soul. The clairvoyant now returns to this through his own observations. For if you look in to the shadow which you yourself throw, you first learn to perceive your own spiritual emanations. If we retain the physical light, we perceive the spiritual in the shadow-space. This knowledge has been preserved in occult science, and many who had no inkling of this truth have used it, for example, Chamisso in his “Peter Schlemihl”. This is a man who lost his shadow and is very unhappy over this. But it is a spiritual fact that the soul is visible in the shadow, and the man without a shadow is therefore a man without a soul.

There are hundreds of examples of this kind. We really learn to know the world fully if we learn to know its spiritual foundations. Spiritual science therefore is not for brooding people, but for those who wish to be active in practical life. We do not wish to withdraw from the visible world, but rather to understand it better.

The higher facts are related to the visible world as magnetism is related to iron. We learn to know iron fully if we also learn to know magnetism. A few examples will show us that especially that which we learn to know in the spiritual world bears fruit in practical life.

When, as we saw yesterday, man has reached the stage in the spiritual world in which he has, so to speak, transformed everything which he possessed in the form of capacities and talents acquired during his earthly life, then the time has come for him to prepare for a new incarnation. But we must realise that two things should be dealt with in that which comes towards us from the human being. One thing is that which reproduces itself in the course of physical heredity, and the other is that which the human being brings along into the world from his earlier lives on earth.

To-day we shall have to describe man's descent into the world, but you need not object to the word “descent”, for it is not a spatial descent, but a gradual process of development whereby man comes out of the world which is round about us and enters into the physical world.

Yesterday we saw that the spiritual world should not be sought in a “Beyond”, but that it is also round about us; modern man, however, is not able to perceive this spiritual world.

Out of this spiritual world develops that which we designate as a new embodiment. We saw that from his former life man retains an essence of his etheric and of his astral body, a survey of his experiences, and that he also took with him into the spiritual world that part of his astral body which he had been able to transmute, casting off the unrefined part.

It will be easier to form an idea of reincarnation if we bear in mind a few other things concerning the life after death. We saw that immediately after his physical death man lives for about three and a half days within his etheric body and that his past life rises up before him in these three and a half days like a kind of picture. The etheric body dissolves and then comes the Kamaloka time; this is the time of purification, in which the astrality still requiring purification is cleaned and purged.

But now I must mention another experience. When this memory picture arises immediately after death, man has a significant experience. He has the experience as if he suddenly grew in size, quickly breaking through his own surface and growing out into space. This feeling does not vanish until he is born again. Man feels that he is as large as the whole world to which he belongs, as large as the whole space of the universe. This will enable you to realise that man can look upon his body and experience it as something which does not belong to him, for he sees his passions as if they were outside his body. He has the strange feeling of being spread out over the whole universe.

Then comes something which is more difficult to understand. During the whole time of Kamaloka man feels as if he were really split up into space. You may understand this better if you bear in mind the following: During the time of Kamaloka, when man lives through his life backwards as far as his childhood, in the manner described, he passes through all his experiences as if they were reflected in a mirror. If he once slapped someone's face it is he who now feels the slap, for he feels that he is a part of the world once occupied by the other person. For example, if you died here in Kassel and the other person whom you slapped lives in Paris, then you feel as if one part of your being were in Paris. Thus you feel as if you were split up over, the whole world; parts of you live, so to speak, wherever you have to look for something. But you should understand this in such away that you cannot feel anything in the space between Kassel and Paris. If you thus bear in mind all the events of your life, you really feel split up into many many places during your passage through the period after death.

The following may serve you as a simile: A wasp. consists of two parts, a front and a back part, with a very thin connection. Now imagine that the back part were completely severed, but that the wasp nevertheless, drags it along with it. This is more or less the way in which you can picture to yourself what I have just described: You feel that you consist of single parts and that there is no connection between them. But when the human being enters Devachan, he once more feels as he did immediately after death, namely as if he filled up the whole space of the universe.

Now, when in Devachan man has transformed all his dispositions into talents and capacities, the Ego once more feels attracted towards the physical earth and endeavors to descend to the earth in a physical incarnation. First of all the Ego surrounds itself with an astral body. This process takes place through the fact that Ego attracts everything astral; the astral substance comes shooting towards it, as it were. It is just as if you were holding a magnet in front of iron filings; even as these filings are attracted in definite forms, so the Ego attracts the astral substance. But while passing through the soul and spirit realms the Ego has gained impressions through its experiences and all these form the fundamental forces which help to build up the new astral body. The new astral body thus takes along with it everything that the human being has experienced during his former life and in Kamaloka. All the impressions which he has had there, have a definite influence upon the way in which the new astral body enters into him.

The human being has now acquired an astral body; but he must also have the other members. The astral body has only been formed through its own forces of attraction. Before conception, man is enfolded only by this astral body. The seer therefore continually sees these astral germs of human beings waiting to be born—that is to say, waiting to be conceived. He sees them flying about with a tremendous speed; bell-like shapes move about. through space with enormous speed; distances play no part whatever; they move so rapidly that distances play no part at all.

Now comes the enfolding with an etheric body; but that a process in which the human being does not become enfolded with his own forces alone. His own forces, which lie in him, can no longer care for the etheric body; for that purpose, man needs the help, of certain spiritual Beings who must cooperate in this.

You may have an idea of these Beings if you bear in mind that you sometimes use words which you do not generally connect with any definite thought; for instance, the word Folk-spirit, Folk-soul. To-day we have no definite idea in connection with this word, but only something quite abstract. But the clairvoyant seer connects with it something quite different. There really are Beings of a higher nature, who exist even as we ourselves exist, but who never incarnate in the flesh, and these beings are the souls, or the souls of tribes and races. We do not use a vague expression when speaking of the Folk-soul: The Folk-soul is a real being, except that it does not possess a physical body, for its lowest member is the etheric body. Then the Folk-soul has an astral body, the Ego, Manas, Budhi, Atma, and a still higher member which man does not attain and which Christian Esoterisism calls the Holy Spirit, and which Theosophy generally designates as the Logos.

The clairvoyant seer may therefore address the Folk-Soul even as he addresses other human beings. To-day we have no real conception of such things and believe that this word designates characteristics of single nations. But this is not true—a reality is connected with it. The understanding for such things was necessarily lost through the materialistic conception, but it will be reached again. To-day men are inclined to dissolve such things into empty concepts. This had to come. For this same reason a book had to be published in our modern epoch which constitutes, so to speak, the very opposite of a theosophical conception. This book had to appear and has been greatly admired. It is Fritz Mauthner's “Kritik der Sprache” (The Critique of Language). Mauthner is a thinker who dissolves everything which lies beyond sensory things. Only a radical thinker who had been abandoned by every good spirit, could have the courage to write as Mauthner did, breaking with everything that is spiritual and real. In centuries to come, men will turn to this very book when they wish to know how people used to think at the beginning of the 20th century.

The Folk-Soul is a reality; it spreads out like a mass of fog, and in it are embedded all the etheric bodes of the individual human beings belonging to a definite nation and its forces stream into the etheric bodies of individual men.

Now there are spiritual beings having the rank of these Folk-souls, who cooperate in the building up of the etheric body of the new soul. These spiritual beings bring about the fact that the human being is led towards the nation which is most suited to him. The etheric body does not always fit quite perfectly; all the disharmonies which you often encounter in life often depend upon the fact that man is unable to build up his etheric body through his own forces. A complete harmony will only be reached upon a much later stage of development of the earth.

The enfolding with the etheric body takes place with great rapidity—a speed which you cannot conceive of if you compare it with physical conditions. Still higher spiritual beings then lead man towards the parents who are able to supply him with the substance which he needs for his physical body.

The modern materialist who sees that the son resembles his parents, will not be able to believe that something else is also connected with the body inherited from the parents. Of course, as regards our body we resemble our ancestors, but this does not contradict the facts explained above.

Let us observe a definite case—the family of Bach In the course of two hundred and fifty years, over 29 more or less significant musicians have come out of that family. Materialists will say: This clearly proves that there is such a thing as heredity!—In the same way the family Bernoulli produced eight mathematicians in a short time. How can we explain this? We can understand this best of all if we bear in mind hereditary conditions. As this is easier to grasp in the case of a musician lot us observe the family of Bach.

Let us suppose that a young Bach had lived in Rome during his former incarnation, that he had elaborated his dispositions and was ready to reincarnate. Supposing he had brought with him, as the result of his former incarnations, the greatest musical gifts; he could do nothing with these gifts if he were not able to find a well developed ear. Without such a well developed ear, he would be just as helpless as a great artist without an instrument. Necessarily such an individuality would have to incarnate in a body supplying a good organ for his dispositions. But the external form of the inner and outer organs is hereditary and if this individuality wished to become a musician, a well developed ear would be essential! Where can he most easily acquire such an organ? In a family of musicians. So he is led towards a family where he can find the best organ for his further development and the unfolding of the talents reposing in him. At that time, the best which could be found in that direction were the parents of Johann Sebastian Bach.

And how do matters stand with the brothers Bernoulli? Mathematical thought does not depend upon the structure of the brain (for mathematical logic does not differ from any other), but the mathematical gift is based upon the specially exact development in the structure of the three semicircular canals. This is an organ not larger that a pea, embedded in the middle of the ear and consisting of three semicircular canals, exactly corresponding to the three-dimensional space. If one canal lies exactly horizontally, then the second one stretches from right to left, and the third one from the front to the back.¹ They all face one another in an angle of 90 degrees The essential thing is therefore this exact position: The more exact the right angle is, the better does the organ function. If the organ is in any way injured, giddiness arises; you can no longer orientate yourself in space. The mathematical talent, that is to say, the possibility of using it, is based upon a specially fine elaboration of these canals. And this organ is inherited in the same way as, the musical ear.

The brain forms thoughts concerning space in exactly the same way in which it forms thoughts on philosophy. But the fact of having an understanding for the forms in space depends upon these three semicircular canals. Thus an individuality with highly developed mathematical gifts will incarnate in a family in which this organ has reached the most perfect development and this was the case in the family Bernoulli.

A suitable instrument is also needed in order to be morally efficient. An individuality with a high morality therefore seeks parents who promise to supply the best instrument for this purpose. The proverb, which is often used so superficially and trivially: “one cannot be too careful in the choice of one's parents”, is true in the deepest and most earnest sense, for a child chooses its own parents, so to speak.

Many people might object to this and ask: How can we explain mother-love, if that is so? For mother-love depends on the fact that the mother knows that the child is part of her own self. But viewed in the right light, mother-love does not suffer in any way—on the contrary, we learn to know it better.

Why is a child born to a certain mother? Because its spiritual qualities lead it to a mother who is spiritually related to it, and the child loves its mother even before it is conceived; mother-love is, as it were, the counter-part of this primary love and attraction. Consequently this insight even deepens the idea of mother-love.

Now the occasion for incarnate is essentially dependent on the qualities of father and mother; and there, father and mother work differently. When a human being descends to a new birth, the Ego, which possesses more volitional forces, feels more attracted by the father, and the more astral forces by the mother. The father has a greater influence upon the Ego, the will and character, and the mother has more influence upon the astral body—that is to say, more in the direction of thought. Of course, it is best of all if both parents are suited to the individuality seeking to incarnate.

When man descends, those forces are also active which were impressed upon him when he ascended to the spiritual worlds. All this develops forces of attraction and he is drawn into the sphere which was related to him from the very beginning. He is consequently led towards those human beings with whom he was already connected before.

Let me give you an example based on real fact. It once happened that a man was sentenced to death by a vehmgericht of four or five judges and executed. The former life of these six men was investigated through spiritual science and it appeared that they had formerly all been together on earth, but that the executed man had been their chieftain and that the others had been sentenced to death by him. The last execution was therefore a kind of atonement. This case in particular brings into clear evidence the law of Karma.

Thus the various forces which man attracted during his former life exercise a determining influence when he is born again, both in regard to the structure of his body and the place of birth, and in regard to his later destiny. Disharmonies appear in the physical body even more strongly than in the etheric body.

All these things show how man becomes enfolded by the three bodies when he is born again. And in every incarnation one Ego works upon the astral body, the etheric body and the physical body. Later on we shall see how man ascends to this high degree of perfection, for he transforms the astral body and the etheric body more and more. Out of the purified astral body develops Manas, out of the purified etheric body Budhi, and out of the purified physical body Atma. We are therefore able to imagine the ever growing perfection of man from incarnation to incarnation.

This appears most beautifully in the Lord's Prayer. But we can only understand it in the right way if we grasp it in the truly Christian meaning, as it was grasped in the Occult School of St. Paul. In this School the Lord's Prayer was explained according to its true Christian meaning, and the pupils were told: Imagine the higher members of human nature, which develop, through the fact that man more and more refines his three lower members. Early Christianity used to look upon these three higher members (Manas, Budhi, Atma) as man's higher nature. By developing the three higher members more and more, man gradually approaches the Godhead. From this standpoint, the esoteric Christians of the past used to call the three highest members the Divine Nature, and they called the highest Atma, i.e. the Father. This is the deepest divine essence in man: the Father in Heaven.

The Father is the essence towards which all men develop. He is the centre of the world's creation. The creation in the Christian meaning, can be best imagined if we bear in mind the sacrifice. Think of your mirrored-image, and assume that you could be just as selfless as this mirrored image, to the point of being able to sacrifice your own life. This is how we must think of a selfless creative activity: We ourselves must become completely one with the created object.

Now imagine the Father as the centre of a reflecting hollow sphere: The Father's image will in that case be reflected a thousand-fold. The esoteric Christian of olden times said to himself: Look at the world: All the Beings in it are, after all, the reflected images of God. And in their esoterisism they used to call this reflection of the Godhead's own image “the Kingdom”, that is to say: God, reflecting Himself everywhere.

“Continue now to develop your feelings,” was the instruction given to the pupil of esoteric Christianity in olden times, “continue to develop, your feelings. and if you can perceive God in everything, if you have dissolved the Godhead in an infinite number of single objects, and if you wish to distinguish these objects you must give each a name. This name: must be sanctified, it must be hallowed, for every single creature is a mirrored image of' the Godhead.”

In the course of his development, aiming at the attainment of God, man enters into these three elements. But you must not think that man becomes God. Take a drop out of the ocean: In its essence it is akin to the ocean, but it is not the ocean. In the same way the drop of divine nature within us is akin to God, to be sure, but it is not “the Godhead.” By developing the three highest members more and more, man gradually becomes united with the Kingdom; for the spiritual world comes down to him.

Here you have the three first entreaties in the Lord's Prayer: the first place, the appeal to the Father; in the second place, the entreaty that the Kingdom should come to us; in the third place, the Hallowing of the Name.

If we develop those three highest members within us, we shall always endeavour to avoid acting in a way which is not in harmony with the Spirit of the Father, from Whom we descend and to Whom we go in our development.

In contrast to the three higher members esoteric Christianity then considers the four lower members of man which must also become more and more perfect.

The physical body consists of the same substances which are also to be found outside in Nature, and these substances continually go in and out of our physical body. Indeed, if the physical body is to remain healthy, they must continually go in and out.

The etheric body has forces which are inter-related with the whole Folk-soul, even as the physical body's forces are inter-related with the whole of Nature. If the physical body is to remain sound, physical substances must go in and out of it day by day. If the etheric body is to remain sound, it must not develop upon an individual basis, but enter into harmony with the whole Folk-soul and with all the higher Beings.

The word “trespasses” is connected with the word “debts.” Debts clearly show that you do not stand there isolated, but that you live within social connection with your fellow-men.

That which brings disorder into the astral body of man was considered in early Christian esotericism as something connected with man's inclinations, passions, impulses and desires. Everything which can bring disorder into these is expressed by the word “temptation”. “Trespasses” are something which brings man into connection with the social community, whereas “temptation” is something into which every man may fall, in so far as he is an individual being.

If physical substances did not go in and out of our physical body, this body would come into disorder. Hence, we pray: this day our daily bread.

If the etheric body did not enter into a harmonious relationship with the Folk-soul, that is to say, if it did not insert itself harmoniously into the whole social structure, this body too would come into disorder. Hence we pray: Forgive us our trespasses.

If man fell into the error of giving way to every temptation which approaches him, this would bring disorder into his astral body. Hence we pray: Lead us not into temptation.

The Ego can commit errors which we designate as “evil”. Everything which transforms a normal, sound self-consciousness
into to evil, that is to say, into selfishness, belongs to these errors of the Ego (which is our own Self). To these errors belong all the aberrations of selfishness and egoism. Hence we pray: Deliver us from evil.

The physical body can thus develop soundly if we nourish it in the right way with daily bread.

The etheric body can develop soundly, if we bring it into a right harmony with the social structure in which we live.

The astral body can develop soundly, that is to say, it can be purged and purified, if we overcome all temptations.

The Ego can develop soundly, if we endeavour to transform every form of egoism into altruism, every form of selfishness to selflessness. Thus we may see in the Lord's Prayer a prayer encompassing the whole development of man.

Someone might now object—and you will often come across this objection: The Lord' s Prayer is one that was given by Christ Jesus for every man. Of what use are explanations such as the above, since the majority of men knows nothing about them?

The naive' person need not know anything about them. Look at the rose. The greatest wisdom has built up the rose, and yet even the simplest man may rejoice in it! It is not necessary to know anything of the wisdom contained, in the rose. It is the same with the Lord' s prayer. A power goes out from it and influences the human soul, even if the soul in its simplicity does not know this . But the Lord's Prayer could never contain this force had it not been drawn out of the deepest wisdom. Every great prayer, such as this greatest of all prayers, has been drawn out of the deepest wisdom, and the power of such prayers is based upon this fact. If you think that this is simply a thought-out explanation, you will be wrong, for the Being Who gave us the Lord' s Prayer laid into it this deep power.

You may therefore see that only with the help of spiritual science can we understand that which we practice daily the power of which has been experienced by mankind for nearly two thousand years.

Now we have reached a stage in the development of humanity where it is no longer possible to proceed without such a deepening of our understanding. Formerly, that is to say, up to that moment, humanity was able to feel the spiritual forces contained in this prayer without knowing its deeper meaning. But now humanity has progressed so far in its development that it must ask after this meaning, and an answer has to be given now.

The Christian religion will not lose any of its value thereby, but it will, on the contrary, manifest itself in its whole depth. Religious truths will be gained anew through the greatest wisdom. The esoteric explanation of the Lord's Prayer is an example of this. (See Rudolf Steiner's booklet: The Lord's Prayer) It shows us the path which man must tread through many incarnations. If he walks in the spirit of the four petitions referring to the four lower members, they will help him to fulfil the work leading to the development of his higher members, as expressed in the first three petitions of the Lord's Prayer.

• 1. In regard to the human head, and the directions “above, below”, “right and left”, “in front and at the back”, the organ as a whole stands like a cubus poised on its point.