The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Fifth Lecture

[ 1 ] We face a relatively difficult task today. However, our esteemed audience will surely accept today’s somewhat demanding requests if we also point out that, in the coming days, we will once again gain ground on which we feel more firmly rooted. But if one does not wish to remain stuck at the level of mere abstractions in Spiritual Science, if one wishes to work one’s way through to reality, then one must occasionally be willing to accept insights that belong to the higher realms of spiritual knowledge. It may also be added that today’s remarks are by no means mere deductions or purely theoretical inferences, but rather concern matters that have always been known to those who have delved more deeply into these matters. Thus, they will consist of the sharing of insights by specific individuals.

[ 2 ] Yesterday we saw how a person might find their way within what is called the innermost part of their astral body if, upon waking, they could consciously immerse themselves in this astral body, and we gained an understanding of what it means to pass by the so-called Lesser Guardian of the Threshold. Now, what was discussed yesterday is actually quite hypothetical, for in normal life this moment—in which a person would consciously penetrate into their inner being simply by waking up—basically never occurs. We have, however, said that a person can prepare themselves through what is called mystical contemplation for such a conscious descent into their outer bodily sheaths. What this means, however, will only become clear to us in the course of these lectures, and we will also hear what this preparation entails. For the normal consciousness, the most that occurs is that a person, due to circumstances stemming from their previous incarnations, experiences such moments of conscious awakening. This happens to certain individuals. They wake up feeling a certain sense of constriction. This feeling of constriction stems from the fact that the inner self, which had spread out in the macrocosm during the night and felt free, returns, so to speak, to the prison of its body. There may also be another feeling upon waking. This feeling could be characterized more accurately by saying that, when such unusual states occur, a person feels better at the moment of waking than they do during the course of the day. They feel that there is something within them that they might call their “better self.” This stems from the fact that, upon waking, a person has a lingering sensation that something has flowed into them from worlds higher than their own sensory world. These are the kinds of feelings that can arise in normal consciousness and in which, even in everyday life, a certain confirmation of what was said yesterday can be seen. But what has been described can be experienced to its full extent only by the genuine, true mystic.

[ 3 ] The question now is whether one can go even further. For what one experiences there—what was described yesterday—is the inner aspect of the spiritual part of the outer human being; it is the inner aspect of what is called the human astral body. The question now is whether one can descend even deeper to less spiritual aspects—or rather, to those aspects of human nature that appear less spiritual in ordinary life. They may nevertheless be thoroughly spiritual in their foundations, for everything we encounter in the outer world has a spiritual element in its deeper background. The question is whether one can descend even further to the physical body, and whether there lies something else between the astral body—which is the most spiritual at first glance—and this physical body. The anthroposophical books describe this other aspect as the etheric or Life-Body, so that, as we descend, we should encounter—after having become acquainted with the astral body from within—the etheric body and perhaps also some trace of our physical body, which we otherwise only view from the outside, but which we can nevertheless also recognize from within through such a conscious entry into our physicality.

[ 4 ] However, in general, it is not advisable—indeed, it is not without risk—to go a step further in terms of mystical deepening than was described yesterday. Everything that was described yesterday can only be undertaken with great caution by someone who has acquired an understanding of what you will find in my work: “How Does One Gain Insight into the Higher Worlds?” or in the second part of my “Esoteric Science,” about which you will hear more in the coming lectures. To this extent, then, a person can help themselves for the time being. But to proceed further along this path into the innermost being of the human being is not without danger, and in the way people today tend to acquire their spiritual insights, it cannot be done at all. Therefore, we will see that a different path of knowledge is chosen today. The path of descending deep into the human inner being without concerning oneself with anything else is one that, under normal circumstances, should no longer be taken in our present-day culture. Our spiritual life today is structured in such a way that people are only willing to submit to a certain degree, and that they also wish to follow their own path of knowledge with as much freedom as possible. We will see that there is also a path into the spiritual worlds that takes full account of this characteristic of modern human nature, and we will come to know this path—the so-called Rosicrucian path of knowledge—as the true, contemporary path of knowledge. But this path of knowledge is a path of more recent times. It did not yet exist in the mysteries—that is, in those places where people in antiquity were initiated into the deeper secrets. There were mysteries that simply led people past the little guardian of the threshold and into their own inner being, and mysteries that led people out into the wider world, so that they had to undergo a kind of ecstasy. These two paths are the ones that were primarily followed and experienced in ancient times. The path of descending into one’s own inner self was best and most intensely experienced in those places of initiation known as the Egyptian Mysteries, the Mysteries of Osiris and Isis; and today, in order to describe what a person can experience during this descent into their inner self, we will have to draw somewhat on the experiences of a student of the Isis and Osiris Mysteries. As we shall see in the following lectures, it is certainly possible today to attain the initiation that leads to a full understanding of these mysteries, but no longer by the same path as in ancient Egypt. In ancient Egypt, something was necessary that modern human nature would rebel against. Namely, it was necessary that at the point where a person was to enter into their own inner self—or even earlier—they no longer sought progress independently through their own paths of knowledge, but rather entrusted themselves to what is called, in the terminology of Eastern philosophy, a guru: a great initiated teacher. Otherwise, the path was too perilous for the individual. As a rule, even the steps of mystical contemplation described yesterday were taken under the guidance of the guru, the great initiated teacher.

[ 5 ] What, then, is the purpose of the guidance provided by these great initiated teachers? We heard in an earlier lecture that when we immerse ourselves in our physicality in the morning, our souls are received by three powers, which we have designated with terms taken from ancient terminology: the power of Venus, the power of Mercury, and the power of the Moon. What is generally understood by the “Venus power” is something that a person can still deal with on their own when they descend into their own inner being. They can come to terms with the Venus power by receiving a certain education in humility and selflessness. Before undertaking such a journey into the unknown worlds of his own inner being, he must suppress all selfish impulses—the impulses of self-love—and train himself in selflessness. He must become a being who feels love and compassion, not only for his fellow human beings but for all existence. Only then, at most, can he surrender to that power—which we have referred to as the “powers of Venus”—when he descends into his physical body. But the matter would become far more dangerous if a person were to surrender himself even to those forces we have designated as the Mercury forces. In the ancient Egyptian initiations, he was guided by the great teacher, who—through his earlier experiences—was able to handle these Mercury forces in a fully conscious manner. A person was led into his own inner being by a priest of Hermes or Mercury. This, however, required strict submission to everything that this great teacher demanded of the student. It required such a degree of submission that the student had to resolve to completely set aside his own ego, to will nothing of his own, to have no impulses of his own even within his soul, but to carry out strictly only what the Hermes priest instructed him to do. This obedience, which would be repugnant to people today—and to which they no longer need to submit—was something the initiate of the Egyptian Mysteries had to fully master. For many years, he had to follow the teacher—not only in his outward actions, but he had to entrust himself to the guidance of this teacher right down into his thoughts and into his emotional world, so that he could safely descend into his own inner being. Now we come to the things that many people have experienced—things recounted from the experiences the individual underwent under the guidance of his great teacher—and which might be described by saying: The individual came to know a deeper layer of his own inner being.

[ 6 ] Yesterday we described vividly and concretely what it means to come to know one’s astral body from within. Now let us recount some of what the initiate in the Isis and Osiris mysteries experienced, guided by his teacher, with regard to the human etheric or Life-Body. Through the suspension of his ego, the initiate was led to see with the spiritual eyes of his teacher, to think with the teacher’s thoughts, to become a kind of external object to himself, and to look at himself through the eyes of his teacher. And there he was introduced to remarkable experiences—experiences in which he had the feeling of moving backward through time; and at the same time, he had the feeling that his entire being—which he was now observing through the spiritual eyes of the Hermes priest—was expanding and growing. He had the feeling that he was expanding within himself, that he was growing upward into times that preceded his present life, as if he were moving backward through the sequence of time. And he gradually began to feel as though he were going back many, many years—a span of time far longer, many times longer than the life he had lived since his birth; thus, the student experienced a vast journey backward through the sequence of time. And while he was experiencing this, seeing through the eyes of the initiated teacher, he first saw himself, but then he saw further back in the sequence of time many generations, whom he felt were his ancestors. For a certain time, the initiate had the feeling that he was walking up the line of his ancestors, but not in the sense that he was actually within those ancestors, not as if he were identical with them, but as if he were, so to speak, hovering above them up to a certain point, all the way up to an ancient ancestor. Then the impression faded. It was as if he were seeing earthly forms to which his own existence was somehow related.

[ 7 ] The point was for the guide to make it clear to the initiate what he had actually seen. We can only begin to understand what he saw in the following way. When one enters into existence through birth—that is, with one’s spiritual being—after having passed through the spiritual world between death and a new birth, one carries within oneself not only the characteristics brought over from the previous life, but also—as anyone who observes life knows—everything that is called inherited traits. One is born into a family, a people, a race. Through this, one carries within oneself what are called inherited traits; one carries within oneself the legacy of one’s ancestors. Naturally, one does not bring these legacies with oneself from one’s last incarnation, but rather they have been passed down from generation to generation. Now the question is to recognize: What is the significance of the fact that a human being, with his innermost being, incarnates precisely in a particular family, a particular people, a particular race? What is the significance of the fact that, in his descent through birth, he seeks out very specific hereditary traits? — He would never seek out these specific traits if he had no connection to them at all. In fact, the human being is connected to these characteristics long before birth. If we take a specific person and trace back to his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, and so on—if one could truly follow this inwardly—the hereditary traits would become apparent through a very specific number of generations, up to a certain generation. Then these hereditary traits fade away. This means that you can trace a series of generations, and you will find that the hereditary traits are passed down through them. Ultimately, they are still present in their most diluted form, and then they disappear entirely.

[ 8 ] Just as we see hereditary traits gradually disappear over the generations, so we can observe—starting with a particular individual—that the traits present in the son are most similar to those of the father, somewhat less so to those of the grandfather, even less so to those of the great-grandfather, and so on. Now, the priest of Isis and Osiris who was to be initiated actually traced the person’s lineage back until he reached that ancestor who still possessed characteristics that the power of heredity had carried down to him. This shows us that human beings have certain connections to what we call their hereditary traits. It is indeed the case that we have entered into a spiritual relationship with that ancestor from whom we have still inherited something—with that great-great-great-grandancestor from whom we still possess certain characteristics within us, however diluted they may be. Yes, in a certain sense, human beings spend a long time preparing what ultimately become their inherited characteristics. They do not merely inherit them, but in a certain sense they bestow them upon their ancestors, implanting them in them from the spiritual world. They work through entire generations in such a way that ultimately the physical body to which they feel drawn can be born. As strange as it may sound, it is true that we ourselves have worked from the spiritual world on the physical bodies of our ancestors in order to gradually shape, from the spiritual world, those qualities that we ultimately receive as inherited traits at birth.

[ 9 ] This is what first becomes apparent when a person is led down into their own etheric or Life-Body. It becomes clear to them that this etheric body, which they now carry within themselves, does indeed have a long history, that it has long been prepared by them. Long, long before they could enter into existence through this birth, they themselves had been working in the spiritual world on the etheric or Life-Body that they now bear. And they began working on this etheric body at the very moment when their most ancient ancestor set foot on the physical Earth—an ancestor from whom they have still inherited certain characteristics. This is a true experience of a part of our etheric body. By listing that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric or Life-Body, an astral body, and the “I”—by doing so, one has merely provided certain pointers, certain core teachings. How that which exists as our own inner being within these sheaths actually appears can only be understood by familiarizing oneself with the messages of those who have themselves descended into this human sheath structure.

[ 10 ] Thus, as a human being passes through his own birth, he learns to enter those realms he traversed before he came into existence through birth; thus, as a mystic, he comes to know a part of his life before birth—a vast part that spans centuries. For it is centuries that they pass through, up to the time when, in the life between their last death and their present birth, they began to form the archetype of their etheric body. At the very moment he began to do so, the first seed of the distinctive characteristics sprang into the blood of a physical human being; these characteristics became increasingly pronounced until this etheric body was ready to take on, at birth, the characteristics it had itself helped to bring about. That is one aspect of the experience. What one experiences there is, so to speak, a reconstructing of everything that one oneself had to do in the spiritual world long before one entered into existence through birth in this incarnation. What one built there and then, as it were, pushed together and compressed into one’s present etheric body—what has condensed in the etheric body over the course of centuries—was called the “Higher Self,” the heavenly or spiritual human being. Thus the technical term existed: The human being comes to know his Higher Self by entering the etheric or Life-Body. — This was called the heavenly or spiritual human being, because the human being had to sense that what had descended from within him was formed from the spiritual realm.

[ 11 ] Once a person had been guided this far by the Hermetic initiate, he came to know something else. He came to know something that might at first have seemed foreign to him, but which the teacher explained to him as something that, after all, should not be entirely foreign to him. He was shown—and the student soon came to realize that this was true—that he was confronted by something he himself had once left behind from his own human nature, something that had been left behind by him, something that was intimately related to him, but which now stood before him as something external, as something foreign. What is this with which the human being was connected in such a most peculiar way? We will understand it best if we begin with a description of the moment of death.

[ 12 ] Spiritual research shows us, after all, that at the moment of death, a person sheds their physical body. What remains of them is what we have come to know as the “I” and the astral body—which leave the physical body every night during sleep—and, for the time being, the etheric or Life-Body remains. After death, the human being lives for some time—though this amounts to only a few days—in these three aspects of their being: in their “I,” in their astral body, and in their etheric body. But then the most essential part of their etheric body departs from them like a second corpse. It is always said—and I believe I, too, have rightly pointed this out—that what departs as a second corpse disperses into the general etheric world, dissolves, and that the human being takes with them only an essence, an extract, a seed into the life they now begin between death and a new birth. This is how the process is usually described, but in reality it is considerably more complicated. What dissolves there, what gradually passes into the general etheric world like a second corpse, takes quite a long time to dissolve completely, and it is the last traces of this dissolving etheric body from his last life that the initiate now encounters as something foreign when, on his journey backward, he has developed upward to the point in the sequence of time where the human being has reached his last ancestor from whom he has still inherited something. There he encounters the last remnants of his last etheric body. And now, as he continues his initiation, the human being must, as it were, penetrate this last etheric body of his that he has left behind, and then he lives backward again, for almost—but not quite—as long a time as he had previously lived up to his last ancestor. The time up to the oldest ancestor is to the time he now has to live through as seven to five. Now the human being experiences a period in which he finds, so to speak, the last remnants of his former life becoming increasingly condensed. As it contracts in his perception—his last etheric or Life-Body—it becomes more and more similar to the form his etheric body had at the moment he passed through his last death. And now, after the form has contracted more and more, the person stands before his last death. At this moment, there is no longer any doubt for the initiated person that reincarnation is a truth, for he has gone back as far as his last death. Thus we have come to know the part that the person finds as the remnant of his last earthly life.

[ 13 ] In Spiritual Science, what a person experiences as coming toward them from their last earthly life has always been referred to as the “earthly human being” or the “lower self.” Thus, almost in the middle of his initiation experiences, the human being underwent the union of the Upper with the Lower and then traced the Lower back so far that he descended to his last life. In this way, during their initiation, the individual undergoes a cycle in which, penetrating into their present etheric body, they reach the etheric body of their last life and then return again to their present life. Through spiritual vision, they have united with what they were in a previous incarnation. In Spiritual Science, this was always called a cycle and was expressed through the symbol of the coiling serpent encircling itself. The serpent is a symbol for many things, including the experiences of the initiate in the mysteries of Isis and Osiris, which have just been described.

[ 14 ] Thus we see that the statement “Human beings have an etheric body” does not, in fact, fully describe the nature of this etheric body. One only comes to know its nature when one enters into it. Then one comes to know the two human beings who are united within every person; one comes to know karma, so to speak, at work. One can then understand why one enters into existence in a very specific way through birth. One had to wait from one’s last death until the new birth, until the old etheric or Life-Body had dissolved, and only then could the process of forming the new etheric body begin. But what I have just described shows you that the human being has not in fact completely overcome that which has dissolved as his old etheric body, for he still finds it when he descends into his own inner being. Why can they find it again? Well, because they have retained an essence, an extract, of it. If they had not retained this extract, then they would not be able to find again that part of their etheric or Life-Body that has dissolved.

[ 15 ] So you can see how deeply grounded this is—something that can only be revealed bit by bit in lectures on Spiritual Science. When it has been said elsewhere, even in exoteric lectures, that after death a person takes with them an essence of their etheric body, this is not an abstraction. We have now reached the point where you can see where spiritual research derives this knowledge from. Everything that is communicated on this subject is based on the deepest possible foundations; it is all based on spiritual research. Here you have a glimpse of this research; here you have a description of how these insights are sought out, which are then communicated in the field of Spiritual Science.

[ 16 ] Thus, then, the human being has arrived at his final death, and we have thereby come to know some qualities that the mystic, delving even deeper within himself, comes to know through his initiation under the guidance of his teacher. Whereas yesterday we explored astral qualities that manifest to us as an infinitely heightened sense of gratitude on the one hand and an infinitely heightened sense of responsibility on the other—that which the mystic finds in his astral body—today we have explored what the mystic finds when he descends into his etheric or Life-Body: the “Upper” and the “Lower.”

[ 17 ] The subsequent stages of initiation then lead the individual to a point where, after arriving at his last death in his spiritual retrospective, he can proceed further and come to know his last life. But coming to know this last life is not particularly easy. The point is that, under the guidance of their guide, the individual is once again reminded that they must not proceed further without first completely surrendering themselves—without falling into complete self-forgetfulness—for one cannot proceed if one still retains even a trace of the personal self-awareness of this present incarnation, this life between birth and death. As long as one still calls anything one’s own, one cannot come to know what is, in fact, a different personality: the previous incarnation. One must become capable of seeing oneself as someone else—that is the crucial point—yet without losing oneself. One must therefore become capable of transformation to such a degree that one can feel: one is slipping into an entirely different physical shell. — Only then, when one has reached this degree of selflessness—which is a complete forgetting of everything that can be experienced in this incarnation—and when one has merged with one’s guide to the greatest possible degree, can one proceed to the last incarnation, from the last death to the penultimate birth. Then—and this is important—one does not experience what one saw with the senses in the outside world during the previous incarnation, but rather one now experiences everything one worked on within oneself in the last incarnation, everything one made of oneself in the last incarnation. What the eye has seen, what the ear has heard—everything that has come to meet us in the external world—is experienced in a different way. But what one does experience is what one has made of oneself during one’s last incarnation, right up to the final death. One experiences all the efforts one has made to advance oneself a little further in that past incarnation.

[ 18 ] Once one has gone through this, once one has lived through this work on oneself, the Guide then leads one back to one’s present incarnation, to one’s present embodiment. So the transition now moves swiftly from the previous incarnation to the present one, and only then does one find oneself again. And now one has a peculiar feeling—the feeling that one actually consists of two personalities, that one has brought one personality with oneself, and that one has entered into one’s present personality with this personality. This gives the feeling of being inside one’s physical body. One cannot experience oneself in one’s physical body in any other way than through the feeling that one has merged with one’s previous incarnation.

[ 19 ] As I have repeatedly indicated, in ordinary, everyday life one sees the physical body from the outside. Now one first gains an understanding of what it means to see the physical body from the inside. The only way to enter into oneself is to take the detour through the previous incarnation. Then one is immersed in it and can observe one’s own physical body through the eyes and experiences of the last incarnation. But that is not yet enough, for one still perceives very little of one’s present physical body. For when the guide has brought the person to the point where they have once had the feeling of standing consciously within themselves with their previous personality, the guide must then have the person retrace the entire path once more. Now, in the same way as has been described, the person retraces the path from the penultimate birth to the penultimate death; there they relive what they have experienced in the spiritual world in the meantime as the higher and lower self, and live back up to their penultimate incarnation—thus reaching their penultimate incarnation through their penultimate death. Mind you, through a single cycle one can only reach one’s previous incarnation; then one must re-enter one’s body and can now undergo a second cycle. Then one arrives at the penultimate incarnation. With this, one returns once more to the present body. Now one has the feeling that three personalities are contained within one’s present personality.

[ 20 ] This cycle can be repeated as often as necessary until a person ascends to a point far back in Earth’s evolution. There the person discovers that they were incarnated in a previous life during the preceding cultural epoch, the Greco-Roman era; that they were incarnated in an even earlier culture during the Egyptian era; in a still earlier one during the Proto-Persian culture; and in yet another earlier one during the ancient Indian era. Then they continue to trace their way back to what you have described as the Atlantean era, and even further back to the so-called Lemurian era. That is where the possibility of having experiences such as those just described comes to an end. Thus, human beings do indeed have the ability to trace their own inner development through all possible cultures and races all the way back to the beginning of their earthly existence, to their very first earthly incarnation. Within what we call the inner being of our physical body, all our previous incarnations are actually present as forces. What we are today externally as a physical body contains within itself, as forces, all our earlier incarnations. You see, when one says in exoteric terms that the human being consists of a physical body, an etheric or Life-Body, and an astral body, this means that the human being consists, first and foremost, of something that, viewed from within, resembles nested incarnations. In fact, all our incarnations are at work, united within our physical body. And when we speak of the etheric or Life-Body, we must bear in mind that, viewed from within, it appears as a cycle that flows backward, from our present birth to our final death. This reveals the qualities of our sheaths—that which we possess within ourselves, into which we can mystically immerse ourselves, into which we can descend.

[ 21 ] But then, when the human being has gone back that far, when he has arrived as one to be initiated, guided by the hand of Hermes the Initiate during his first incarnation, he learns much more; at this point in his journey backward, he learns that at a certain time in our Earth’s becoming, in our Earth’s development, he was quite different from what he is now, and that his surroundings, too, were quite different from what they are now. The Earth was quite different back then, in the time when the human being lived in his first incarnation, in his first embodiment. When we look out into the world now, we encounter three kingdoms of nature: the animal kingdom, the plant kingdom, and the mineral kingdom. We essentially have all three of these kingdoms within us; we have the animal, plant, and mineral kingdoms within us. We have the animal kingdom within us because we have an astral body that powerfully permeates our outer body; the plant kingdom through the fact that we have an etheric or Life-Body that does something similar. We have the mineral kingdom within us because we unite the substances that exist externally in the mineral kingdom with ourselves, take them into ourselves, and allow them to pass through us. Indeed, when we ascend so far into the spiritual realm that we have reached the experience of the inner life of our physical body during our first incarnation, we realize that at that very moment the Earth had just arrived at the stage of its development where the mineral kingdom had only just come into being in its present form. That is why we were also able to form our first physical embodiment at that time, because it was then—as the mineral kingdom was forming—that we were first able to absorb something of this mineral kingdom into ourselves. In doing so, we simultaneously reach the beginning of the mineral kingdom on our Earth.

[ 22 ] Now you might say: Yes, but wasn’t this mineral kingdom on our Earth actually here before the plant and animal kingdoms? — Anyone who thinks, so to speak, only as far as the end of their nose can reach might well believe that. But anyone who thinks a little in terms of analogies will say to themselves: Even in ordinary coal, I already have something that originated from a plant and only became mineral after having previously been plant-based. — Under conditions different from those of today, the plant kingdom could have existed before the mineral kingdom. The mineral kingdom is a later formation than the plant kingdom. The plant kingdom preceded the mineral kingdom. It is not the plant kingdom that follows the mineral kingdom, but rather the plant kingdom had already existed beforehand under different conditions. The mineral kingdom arose as a product of the hardening of the plant kingdom. And at the very moment when the mineral kingdom formed on our Earth, at that very moment, human beings entered their first earthly incarnation. The mineral kingdom developed over certain long periods of time. We have been undergoing our earthly incarnations ever since the development of this mineral kingdom began. It was only then that we first assimilated this mineral kingdom. Before that, we existed as beings in a different substantial form; before that, we had not yet incorporated the substances of the mineral kingdom into ourselves, as we possess them today as physically embodied human beings. — That is why Spiritual Science has always taught: Our Earth has advanced in its development to the point of forming the mineral kingdom, and with this, humanity has simultaneously assimilated this mineral kingdom.

[ 23 ] Here we see once again how human beings, by descending within themselves to the awareness of their physical body, reach a point where they step outside of themselves. How could we expect it to be any other way? We know that through our astral body we are related to the animals, through our etheric body to the plants, and through our physical body to the minerals. It is no wonder that, when we descend to the physical body, we encounter the mineral kingdom as the outer boundary at this point. We enter, as it were, into ourselves and, strangely enough, arrive at a point where we step out of ourselves and into the mineral kingdom. Not, however, into the mineral kingdom that surrounds us today, but into the one as it was at the moment of its formation on Earth during the Lemurian era. We distinguish between our present Earth epoch, which dates back to the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, and the one preceding it, the Lemurian epoch. Before the Atlantean catastrophe, the face of the Earth was quite different from what it is today. We lived on a great continent—the Atlantean continent—situated between present-day Europe and Africa on one side and America on the other. In an even earlier era of Earth’s history, the face of the Earth was different once again. At that time, human beings—that is, we ourselves in our earlier incarnations—lived on a continent that we would have to seek today on Earth between Australia, Africa, and Asia, in ancient Lemuria, as modern science also calls it. At that time, human beings underwent their first incarnation, and it was then that the mineral kingdom came into being. That was also the moment when the Moon, which we have in the heavens today, separated from the Earth. In the past, our Moon was connected to our Earth. Let me just mention that in passing. We will discuss how this is being researched in the coming days.

[ 24 ] We have thus seen that when we delve into our inner selves and truly come to know ourselves—when, guided by the teacher, we delve deeper into our inner being through a truly mystical experience—we emerge from ourselves. Our path leads us out of the human being and toward the mineral earth—that mineral earth from which we have acquired our earthly materials, our physical substance.

[ 25 ] This is the path I wished to describe to you as the one that could be traversed—and has been traversed—by many in the ancient mysteries of Isis and Osiris. As I said, it could only be traversed under the guidance of a leader to whom one submitted in the strictest sense. If, at that time, a person had not submitted himself with his entire being to the guide, he would never have been able to walk the paths that have now been described; instead, he would have descended into his inner self and come to know the very worst aspects of his inner being. He would have come to know what he had made of himself through his selfish ego. In the coming days, it will be our task to describe the other path—the path of the Nordic mysteries—which led people not inward but outward, into the heavenly world. And after we have become acquainted with these two paths—neither of which is viable today due to the advanced state of human nature, which seeks freedom from absolute subservience—we will come to know the path that is viable and appropriate for human nature today: the so-called Rosicrucian path.

[ 26 ] It should also be mentioned that certain more recent mystics sought to help themselves when they did not have a guru to whom they submitted so strictly. In such cases, they knew how to help themselves in a different way, and it is interesting to see how the path of such mystics also becomes understandable once one is familiar with the mysteries that have just been described. Take Meister Eckhart, for example. He was a medieval mystic who did not have a guide in the sense that the ancient initiates of the Isis and Osiris mysteries had, but rather, so to speak, descended into his inner self on his own. It would have been very dangerous for him if, beyond a certain point, he had simply continued his own inner contemplation, which arose naturally within him. He would hardly have been spared the risk that, at a certain point, the demands of his own ego would have emerged after all. For that is precisely the danger in this contemplation of one’s own inner self: that one’s own ego asserts itself in a selfish manner. Of course, one can go on at great length about how a person should descend into their own being and how, by doing so, they can delve deep enough to find the God-man within. But those who speak this way have generally not gotten very far. If they had gone far, they would also have discovered that, when left to their own devices, the selfish ego asserts itself in a terrible way. One could observe in such mystics that, as long as they were guided by conventional external life, they were quite decent people; but the moment they immerse themselves in their inner world—that is, when they turn away from external influences and seek their inner self—this inner self also asserts itself. While these people had previously been taught by their external upbringing to tell the truth, it can happen that, when the selfish ego asserts itself, they begin to lie, become insincere, and develop more selfish tendencies than other people in ordinary life. Such experiences can be observed by anyone who watches misguided mystics, who like to talk about the need to immerse oneself in one’s own inner self in order to find the higher self. One usually does not find this higher self, but rather one’s most ordinary self, which is generally worse than the conventional person. One must guard against this claim of the selfish ego.

[ 27 ] In the Egyptian mysteries, the initiate was protected from this by the priest of Hermes, who took on the role of guide for him, so that the student no longer followed his own ego. Meister Eckhart did not have such a teacher. Tauler had one from a certain point onward, but Eckhart did not have such a guide. But how did he protect himself from the selfish demands of the ego? A person of such sound character as Meister Eckhart—just like almost all the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages who did not have such a guru—protected himself by allowing himself to be completely permeated by the feeling: Now you are no longer yourself; now you have become someone else; now it is no longer you who speaks, feels, or wills what you speak, feel, or will; now let yourself be completely filled with Christ. — He made the Pauline saying true: “Not I, but Christ in me.” Then he underwent this transformation. He, so to speak, transcended his own self. He surrendered his “I” and allowed himself to be filled by another “I.” “Entwerdenm,” the opposite of “werden” (to become), is a beautiful term used by the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages. Just as one “becomes” an independent “I,” so these mystics sought to “unbecome”—that is, to surrender their “I” entirely and to be completely filled with another “I.” These were the remedies against the selfish claims of the “I,” to which mystics such as Meister Eckhart or the author of the so-called “Theologia Deutsch” resorted—so that they would not speak from themselves, but could allow a higher human being, one capable of inwardly enlivening and inspiring the present human being, to speak through them. Hence the recurring emphasis by these mystics that they wished to surrender their self entirely to what they experienced inwardly. Thus, as modern times drew near, we see how the Christian mystics of the Middle Ages—who were already living in anticipation of the era of modern humanity—replaced the external guru with an inner guru: Christ. What must now be done so that the human being, who is deeply immersed in today’s spiritual life, may find his way into the spiritual worlds while maintaining his present state of mind and soul—this will become clear to us tomorrow, once we have first discussed the path taken in the Nordic mysteries to become acquainted with the macrocosm into which the human being enters upon falling asleep. We will begin with a description of the process of falling asleep and go on to describe the macrocosmic spheres into which people immersed themselves, and then make the transition to the more recent methods of the path of knowledge into the higher worlds.