The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We saw last time that the initiatory process is the antithesis of the great world doctrines of the origin of the cosmos in the spiritual sense, and that there is a strict correspondence between the small and the great world, so that we can almost see how the images of Genesis, which have to do with cosmological views, with contemplations of the universe, recur in the history of the Redeemer.

The personality of Christ is to be placed at the center in such a decisive way that it was not only a consequence of the Messiah-consciousness of Christ himself, but that it was also something that lay in the whole time at that time. The whole time had the need to place a personality, a person reborn on the heights of spiritual development, at the center of the whole world view, so that there was a profound need not only among those who founded Christianity, but also in the spirit of the time, not only in the expectation of the Messiah among the Jewish people, but also among the pagan peoples. So there was also an urge to come face to face with this personality, to see him. We see that one or the other could be mistaken for him. Paganism virtually created a counter-image in Apollonius of Tyana. He is perhaps as interesting a figure in paganism as Socrates, Plato and so on. But he still has a special interest in that a pagan-human deity was to be tendentiously created, which was to be contrasted with Christ. There is, however, a clear difference between the world of thought associated with Christ and that associated with Apollonius of Tyana. Apollonius is seen more as a man loved by God. Basically, it is the same view that emerged from the Jewish consciousness. I would say, from the pagan point of view, while the deity is emphasized more in Christ, in Apollonius it is said more that he is a man who has come to divinity, a man loved by God, not a god.

And this man loved by God appears to us only as a later development of Socrates, of Plato. [Just as Plato had a special relationship with the god of medicine, Asclepius, the son of Apollo, so did Apollonius:] He was a healer, a sage, and likewise prophecy is said to have been one of his gifts. These ideas were formed from Pythagorean ideas. Just as these live on in the people, following in secret, mystical connection, Apollonius was imagined to be the reborn Plato, a savior.

We are told of Apollonius that he traveled far and wide, seeking less to enrich his own wisdom - which was available to him as he was at a higher stage of reincarnation - than to connect the various religions through a spiritual bond. A cosmopolitan [religion-uniting activity] is attributed to him. He is said to have been with the Indians, Persian magicians and Egyptian priests. Among the Indian sages he was immediately recognized as a deified personality. We are also told that he got to know the Egyptian religion in its various forms, but that he was able to tell the Egyptian priests more than they could tell him. He was able to tell them that they should have their religious ideas about India. He was able to show them their own in the Indian. Thus we see how Apollonius endeavored to see the common ground in the various religions, and so he appears to us at this time as the bearer of a real theosophical striving. He set himself the task of searching for the common ground in all religions. Therefore, when we delve into his teaching, it appears to us as an extract from all the religious teachings existing at that time. He had collected the extract from all of them. It is also a mature teaching. The idea of reincarnation appears to us to have been fertilized in the old Pythagorean sense.

He speaks of the popular religions as an external symbol of what it is really supposed to be. Apollonius draws attention to a very important idea that he can only have drawn from pagan mysticism. He draws attention to the fact that in the various acts of worship performed with the mystic, we are not only dealing with events that represent the world process, but that we are also dealing with the representation of phenomena of nature in symbolic acts. Apollonius therefore presents us with a highly important concept that leads us into the relationship that exists between Christianity and the time. He shows that everything we can see around us and also what is in the starry sky, the stars, can be regarded as a symbol, that all this is nothing other than a symbol of spiritual processes that dominate the world cosmos. Those who heard my lecture on Goethe's "Faust" the day before yesterday will remember that something similar was said there: Everything external, "everything transient is only a parable". This is what Apollonius says. But it is the common view of the entire age at that time.

I must draw attention here to a misunderstanding which consists in the belief that this great symbolism between the small and the great world, between man and the small world occurrences and the great world mysteries is a product of the imagination. In our nineteenth century this doctrine has developed. We see in the popular religions the fairy tale that creates religion, the imagination that creates religion, which personifies the processes [in nature] in the circle of air, lightning, thunder and so on in manifold ways and forms gods for itself. The laws that the stars obey are seen as the expression of a divine-spiritual world order. But within the actual priestly theosophy there was the conviction that when the sun is followed as it moves across the celestial vault, it is not only the process of moving across the celestial vault that is to be seen. This process is only a symbol for the process taking place behind it. That which the popular imagination originally possessed in an exoteric way was later taught as a symbol by the priest. But he saw in the laws - we know that there was a highly developed astronomy in the Assyrian empire - he did not see in the laws the dry naturalistic law, he saw in them the language of the deity, only a symbol for the deeper spiritual process.

For Apollonius of Tyana, the subordinate folk symbolism was only one stage. The initiate was later given a higher parable. David Friedrich Strauss, Darwin and so on were wrong in saying that the imagination [of the people] had imagined the lightning passing through the clouds as a divine fact, that it had then progressed from that to the gods, to the god Zeus and so on. But these were only ideas of the imagination, of popular mythology. In this way they have stripped away everything religious. The [scientific] truth has taken its place. But this matter has never been represented [in this way] within the mystical teachings. Even if there was an ascent from [the ideas of] popular religion to the scientific investigation of the course of the stars, the divine was first sought behind the phenomena. Not that which man absorbed within himself was to be a symbol for the external process, no, just the opposite. The whole of nature itself became a parable. In the mysticism of those centuries we have to do with exactly the opposite of what the materialistic scholars of the nineteenth century imagine. They believe that what the ancients thought up was only a parable. No, it is just the opposite. The scientific idea is only a parable for what lies behind it.

Oriental scholars knew that Christianity drew from the same source as they did. They therefore long regarded Christianity only as a Persian sect.

However, this whole context of the theosophical doctrine of the whole world as a parable for the eternal divine [...] confronts us clearly and particularly deeply in the Apocalypse, which is nothing other than an interpretation of the older mysteries in Christian terms.

But first I have to say something in advance. I said that the whole of external nature was regarded as a parable, as was the case with Assyrian-Babylonian or Persian scholars. They had a precise idea of the laws to be observed in the course of the stars. This will also be clear to other circles because you have heard Professor Delitzsch's lecture on "Babel and the Bible". I could have started from Asian ideas, you find the same thing everywhere. If science now unearths things of which Theosophy must claim otherwise for other reasons, we will nevertheless see confirmation through the excavations of Babylonian antiquities. One finds the results of the excavations compiled in an easy and fine manner by this Professor Delitzsch. I said that from Oriental priestly religions a part of the views emerged which regarded nature as a parable for the eternal divine. You can understand this if you look at the oriental religions. The Egyptians attached more importance to great monuments and laid them down on the outside, while the Orientals sought the parable more in the [theoretical].

When we follow the literature of the pagan writers, we see how the awareness becomes clearer and clearer that in the teachings of astronomy we are dealing with a language for the eternal word of the gods in the world. I only wish to draw attention to a few facts which will make the whole matter clearer. [In the writer Apollonius of Rhodes], then also in Plutarch - although there only sparsely - one finds precise references to this and to the world of legends - such as the legend of Heracles, the legend of the Golden Fleece - and so on, which I have already dealt with earlier. But we can also see from their writers that these legends also presented themselves to the first Christians in such a way that they concealed great world truths.

We see that the sun, in its annual course, in its annual movement, is a symbol of the eternally changing, sinking and renewing world. Given the brevity of time, I can only hint at what the main point is. It is not without reason that the twelve labors of Heracles have been related to the twelve constellations of the zodiac. It is a repetition of what happens in the sky above. The upper and lower correspond to each other.

When we follow these views, we find that great importance is attached to the fact that the sun, the god of light, was worshipped with the annual arrival of spring - just as in theosophy, which sees light symbolized in the sun and truth in the light. It was not the sun itself that was worshipped, but the sun was only a symbol. With the rejuvenating sun, it was seen as a symbol of eternally reborn nature, of spiritual rebirth, of the God who renews himself again and again.

What the Egyptians saw in the firmament is also seen in the sun renewing itself in spring. And the fact that the sun [in spring] is in the sign of the lamb, the ram, means that the sun gains power in the world order through the lamb. This becomes a symbol for the world redeemer. This is why we encounter the lamb, which signifies the rebirth of the sun in spring, the rebirth of the new God. This is why the beginning of spring was also referred to as the point at which the young god is born. The virgin at Sais gives birth to the new god Heracles.

Where the legends are not completely correct, we can prove where the changes came from. The same legends are interpreted by pagan writers in the same way, namely that nothing else can be found in them than what can also be read in the sky. The mystics of that time saw the serpent in the sky as a symbol of the downfall of the god in dark matter. The passage of the sun in the snake symbolizes this. On December 21, in the middle of winter, when the days are getting longer, the sun enters the constellation of Sagittarius. In the middle of winter, Virgo receives the child. Easter is actually the resurrection, the redemption. There the sun enters the constellation of the Lamb of Aries. In summer we have the lion reflected in the course of the sun. What takes place in the individual personalities first took place in the celestial vault. Seen in this way, the course of life of the individual personalities is a mystery of the eternal course of the world. Also in the Greek mysteries, also in the Orient and in Persia, [Zeus] transforms himself into the Golden Fleece at this time.

So we see that the passage of the sun through Aries is given to us as a resurrection festival. Nonnos] mentions a relationship between Zeus and his son Dionysus. He is to ascend to his father and sit at his father's right hand. Here you have the pagan version of the Christian creed. Christianity means the new form of the teachings of paganism. A large number of Christians can be shown to have been inspired by pagan mysticism. These ideas appear again and again in Christianity. There is an indication even in Christianity that isolated spirits of paganism have turned to Christianity and then sought a symbolic expression for the fact that they were able to understand Christianity all the more. The expression can be found in the Gospel, namely that magicians follow the stars to find Christ. They read the stars, and all they had to do was follow what they read in the stars. After following [the star], they see what is given to Christianity. Christianity is represented there in a single person. That is why the Indian scholar said: "In Christianity, we are dealing with nothing other than a Persian sect."

If you take the sun myth and try to translate it into the personal as the course of life of a single personality, then you can say nothing other than that the Christians sought the truth in a humanized way, which was previously sought in the firmament.

The fact that at Easter time the sun passes through the constellation of the Lamb, the Ram, is quite natural [for that time]. At other, earlier times, the Lamb was replaced by Taurus, Gemini, Cancer and so on. This has to do with the fact that these ideas were formed at a time when the position of the constellations was different [from today]. They are always shifting. Our astronomical data is also no longer correct today. So we can say that this Christianity was actually born out of the ancient mysteries and religions. This is not a degradation, but merely shows that it was a necessity of the times.

I have shown how the individual teachings in the Orient are already pre-formed. What interests us in particular, however, is how they are incorporated into the Apocalypse. If one does not grasp the basic idea in this way, it cannot be understood. It cannot be understood that the world of imagination, the sum of [religious] feelings, was already present and reappears in a new form in Christianity. The author [of the Apocalypse] was aware of this. He did not want to reproduce anything other than the old mystical mysteries. He says that everything he has read from the starry world has now taken place as a direct experience in the life of an individual personality. What you previously only saw as cosmic-historical events has become the life of an individual person. That is the basic idea of the Apocalypse. We see how the old priestly concepts confront us in all the descriptions: the seven trumpets, the seven seals and so on. In all this we see nothing other than the expression of ancient, long-existing mysteries, and what is presented to us in the Apocalypse is nothing other than the fulfillment of these things in Christianity. At one point I will show how this old teaching is presented to us there and how the new teaching is then brought into connection with it, how the new teaching develops out of the old. I will deal with the earlier chapters later. First the whole passage from the middle.

The 11th chapter: Measuring the temple of God. Two witnesses killed and alive again. [Gap in the transcript] The seventh trumpet.

"1 And there was given me a reed like a rod, and he said, Arise, and measure the temple of God, and the altar, and them that worship therein. (2) But the court outside the temple, throw it out and do not measure it. For it has been given to the nations, and they will trample the holy city underfoot for forty-two months. 003 And I will give unto my two witnesses, and they shall prophesy a thousand two hundred and threescore days, clothed in sackcloth. 004 These are the two olive trees and the torches that stand before the Lord of the earth: 005 And if any man will hurt them, fire shall proceed out of their mouth, and shall devour their enemies: and if any man will hurt them, he shall be put to death. 006 These have power to shut heaven, that it rain not in the days of their prophecy: and they have power over waters to turn them to blood, and to smite the earth with all plagues, as often as they will. 007 And when they shall have finished their testimony, the beast that ascendeth out of the bottomless pit shall make war with them, and shall overcome them, and kill them. 008 And their dead bodies shall lie in the street of the great city which is spiritually called Sodom and Egypt, where also their Lord was crucified. 009 And some of the nations and kindreds and tongues shall see their dead bodies three days and an half, and shall not leave their dead bodies in graves. 10th And they that dwell on the earth shall rejoice over them, and shall live well, and shall send gifts one to another: for these two prophets tormented them that dwelt on the earth." - Being born again is nothing other than being born again in the initiation process. - 11 "And after three days and a half the Spirit of life from God entered into them, and they stood upon their feet; and great fear fell upon those who saw them. 12 And they heard a great voice from heaven saying to them, 'Come up here! And they ascended into heaven in a cloud, and saw their enemies. 013 And the same hour was there a great earthquake, and the tenth part of the city fell: and in the earthquake were slain seven thousand names of men: and the rest were afraid, and gave glory to the God of heaven. 014 The second woe is past; behold, the third woe cometh quickly. 015 And the seventh angel sounded, and there were great voices in heaven, saying: The kingdoms of the world are become the kingdoms of our Lord and of his Christ, and he shall reign for ever and ever."

It is to be described here that, whereas previously only the individual was permitted, now the Good News is to be brought to all people through Christ.

The 12th chapter: The woman clothed with the sun and the dragon. Michael's conflict with him: "1 And there appeared a great sign in heaven, a woman clothed with the sun, and the moon under her feet, and on her head a crown of twelve stars. 002 And she was with child, and cried out in travail, and was in great pain in childbirth. 003 And there appeared another sign in heaven; and behold a great red dragon, having seven heads and ten horns, and seven crowns upon his heads. 004 And his tail drew away the third part of the stars of heaven, and cast them to the earth. Then the dragon stood before the woman who was to give birth, so that when she gave birth he might devour her child. 005 And she brought forth a son, a little child, which should feed all nations with a rod of iron. And her child was caught up to God and to his throne. 6 And the woman fled into the wilderness, where she has a place prepared of God, that she may be nourished there a thousand two hundred and threescore days. 007 And there was a battle in heaven: Michael and his angels fought with the dragon; and the dragon fought with his angels. 008 And they prevailed not, neither was their place found any more in heaven. 009 And the great dragon was cast out, that serpent of old, called the Devil, and Satan, which deceiveth the whole world: he was cast out into the earth, and his angels were cast out with him. 010 And I heard a great voice saying in heaven, Now is come salvation, and strength, and the kingdom of our God, and the power of his Christ; because that accuser of our brethren is cast down, which accused them before God day and night. 011 And they overcame him by the blood of the Lamb, and by the word of their testimony, and loved not their lives unto the death. 12 Therefore rejoice, ye heavens, and ye that dwell therein. Woe to those who dwell on the earth and on the sea! For the devil cometh down unto you, having great wrath, because he knoweth that he hath but a short time. 013 And when the dragon saw that he was cast unto the earth, he persecuted the woman which brought forth the man child. 014 And the woman was given two wings like a great eagle, that she might fly into the wilderness to her place, where she would be nourished for a time and times and half a time before the face of the serpent. 015 And the serpent cast out of his mouth water like a flood after the woman, that he might drown her. 016 But the earth helped the woman, and opened her mouth, and swallowed up the flood which the dragon cast out of his mouth. 17 And the dragon was wroth with the woman, and went to make war with the remnant of her seed, which keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ."

The stream from the serpent's mouth symbolizes nothing other than the element through which man must return in order to find his way back to God.

The 13th chapter: Seven-headed beast from the sea. "001 And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy. 002 And the beast that I saw was like a pardel, and his feet were like the feet of a bear, and his mouth like the mouth of a lion. And the dragon gave him his power and his throne and great authority. 003 And I saw one of his heads as if it had a deadly wound, and his deadly wound was healed. And the whole earth marveled at the beast, 4. and they worshiped the dragon that gave power to the beast, and worshiped the beast, saying: Who is like the beast, and who can war with him? 005 And there was given unto him a mouth speaking great things and blasphemies; and it was given unto him to continue with him forty and two months. 006 And he opened his mouth to blaspheme against God, and to blaspheme his name, and his tabernacle, and them that dwell in heaven. 007 And it was given unto him to make war with the saints, and to overcome them: and power was given him over all kindreds, and tongues, and nations. 008 And all that dwell on the earth shall worship him, whose names are not written in the book of life of the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world. 009 If any man have an ear, let him hear. 010 If any man lead into prison, he shall go into prison: if any man kill with the sword, he shall be killed with the sword. Here is the patience and faith of the saints."

Two-horned beast from the earth.

"11 And I saw another beast come up out of the earth, having two horns like a lamb, and speaking as a dragon. 012 And he exerciseth all the power of the first beast before him, and causeth the earth and them which dwell therein to worship the first beast, whose deadly wound was healed. 013 And he doeth great signs, so that he maketh fire come down from heaven in the sight of men: 014 And deceiveth them that dwell on the earth by the means of those miracles which he had power to do in the sight of the beast, saying to them that dwell on the earth, that they should make an image to the beast, which had the wound by a sword, and did live. 015 And it was given unto him to give the spirit to the image of the beast, that the image of the beast should speak, and cause that as many as would not worship the image of the beast should be killed. 016 And he made the small and the great, the rich and the poor, the free and the bond, all put a mark on their right hand or on their foreheads, 017 so that no one could buy or sell unless he had the mark, that is, the name of the beast or the number of his name. 18 Here is wisdom! Let him who has understanding consider the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man, and his number is six hundred and sixty-six."

The secret of the mysteries was generalized, was brought to all people. This can be clearly seen in the symbol in the Apocalypse of the four beasts and the three powers that are above the beasts, so that we are confronted by seven powers. We are then told that ten kings, the kings of the new kingdom, will overcome these seven old powers. Now we have to see what all this means.

First I would like to develop it as it has been stated in the ancient mysteries. Then you will realize it for yourself. The Apocalypse sees the world and man as made up of seven principles. The four lower or inferior principles or powers are represented by the four beasts. These must be overcome. By overcoming the lower, the three upper ones are built up. After this has been presented to us, we are shown how the entire seven-membered nature of the world and of man is scorched in fire, that the divine lightning strikes and that the entire material, in which the seven-membered nature is immersed, is once again overcome. The eighth stage is when the actual material, the evil, really perishes. We are then shown that in addition to the three spiritual elements, the fourth physical element appears as an overcomer; the fourth physical element is seized by the three spiritual elements and then also the three lower ones. The fourth element is man himself. Eagle, [bull], lion and man. Man represents nothing other than KamaRupa. The fourth, the human being, combines the three lower physical elements and the three upper ones and gives birth to three new ones from the three physical elements. The physical elements are spiritually reborn, as it were. So we have ten elements instead of seven. This is what the Apocalypse wants to depict with the ten kings.

These are ancient mystical teachings, nothing other than what pagan ideas already knew. From the transformation and victory of the ten kings, we can see that they represent nothing other than the victory of the spiritual over the material, the victory of the Mystery Doctrine.

At the opening of the first six seals, John saw four horses, a white horse, a red horse, a black horse and a pale horse. Death and hell followed them. "And when the fifth seal was opened, I saw under the altar the souls of them that were slain for the word of God, and for the testimony which they held." This killing symbolizes being born again in the spirit and the killing of the lower nature. Man must devour the book, he must become one with the book. The same is also indicated by a Christian mystic, Angelus Silesius. He said: ["Friend, it is enough. If you want to read more, go and become the scripture and the being yourself."] - With this he concludes his "Cherubinischer Wandermann".

The ancient mysteries were a preparation for Christianity. They were reborn through the Lamb. Those who cannot fully comprehend that they have to go further, that they actually have to seek bodily death and spiritual resurrection in Christ, are not yet mature. They are the ones who are to be admonished.

The Apocalypse is one of the most important books of the New Testament. It must not and cannot be understood in any other way than that we see in it a fusion of the Christian mystery truths with the ancient mysteries. It contains the ancient mysteries born out of Christianity.

We began to characterize the Apocalypse last time. It represents a late product of the various views that developed around the time of Christ's birth, especially in the schools from which the deeper theological teachings of Christianity emerged, which only later took on a popular form. We can imagine the process that took place in the first and perhaps also in the second century after Christ in such a way that the old teachings that came from the Mysteries were cultivated in the most diverse ways in the most diverse places of learning, in the most diverse mystery schools, and in particular experienced a spiritual, that is, a theological deepening; these old teachings and this theological deepening are undoubtedly the basis of later Christian theology. With this later Christian theology, it is the case that ecclesiastical Christianity, under the leadership of the spiritual world, the bishops and so on, then tries to popularize it. Now I believe that we can gain an insight into the way in which what is now presented to us as Christian mystical theology was formed in the first centuries [after the birth of Christ] if we follow how Christian dogma was formed in its actual spiritual quality. One then gets the impression that it was formed essentially under the influence of the most diverse mystery cults. What is the relationship between the Apocalypse and this world of mystery cults and later theology? It can still be seen in the Apocalypse that it emerged from the endeavor to absorb and process the teachings of the ancients and to teach them as a preparation, as it were, as something that is ordered towards the new Christianity, as something that is called to replace the old mysteries and to proclaim the deeper content of the same as a world gospel.

If you follow the Apocalypse in its entire composition, you can clearly see this twofold character. You can clearly see the old views precisely represented in the basic components and then you can also see them shimmering through: Now the time is fulfilled, a new way of salvation has come into the world. This new way is the one that has been lived out in Christianity.

So we can trace the two interwoven components of the Apocalypse, which are presented to us in a double number seven, a number seven with a view to the past and a number seven with a view to the future. Everything that is told to us at the opening of the seven seals refers to the past, and everything that is told to us at the sounding of the seven trumpets refers to the future. The fact that the book with the seven seals only refers to the past is clear from the solution to it. If you want to understand the whole situation, you have to visualize it: What has been taught in the theosophical-mystical schools? One must also have an idea [of] who the writer of the Apocalypse was. It is not the specific personality that matters, but what these views arose from, what they were formed from. It was only in the middle of the second century that they were worked together into the form in which we have them now. The author emerged from Gnostic schools that still flourished everywhere in the second century AD. They were a continuation of the old Gnostic schools, which did nothing more than further develop the mysteries. It is difficult to find out what was taught in these Gnostic schools. There are only a few documents that can give us the necessary clues about the actual spiritual world [of these schools]. These Gnostic schools, which were widespread throughout the world at that time, had a spiritualized view of the ancient mystery cults. I do not mean to say that it was a higher level. The spiritual in knowledge does not have to be a higher level than that when one penetrates down into life and grasps the spiritual there. The actual Gnostics, on whom the Christian doctrine is based, were essentially theologians and philosophers who cultivated a very intellectual doctrine. The main thing with the Gnostics - the basic nerve that we can distil from the various schools - was in fact a kind of longing to connect the world of man with the great world of the cosmos. Last time I showed that the Christ doctrine is the cosmic conviction that the redemptive history of humanity is a model of what takes place in the individual human being.

I would like to give a summary of the world view, which perhaps has not really been cultivated in any Gnostic school, but which emerges as an average conception. We must imagine that it is a matter of showing a strict parallelism between the course of the great world and the life of the individual human being. The Gnostic wanted above all to depict the individual human life as that which repeats the macrocosmic microcosmically on its path at the various stages of development, just as the historical aspects of world life are also repeated.

[To show how the historical world life lived in the Gnostic view - to illustrate how it was expressed - I will use the "Exodus from Egypt"). It is an allegory of the inner development of the soul. The land is to be understood as the body of the individual. [The exodus from Egypt thus corresponds to the entry into the "Garden of Eden and the exodus from the sensual body" in the story of the Israelites.] The Gnostic seeks to overcome this, to move out, as it were. By approaching the higher, he is led out [from the sensual nature] by the Initiate. He is not immediately led to Palestine, to the "Promised Land". He must first go through various stages of development. We have a symbol in the 'brazen serpent' set up by Moses as a remedy against the many snakes. Anyone who was bitten by a snake had to die. At the sight of the brazen serpent, however, he was to remain alive. The brazen serpent was nothing other than the prophetic foretelling of redemption through Christ Jesus. The serpent has always been an important symbol. The people then reached the inner world, the life of the soul, the Promised Land, where the Messiah must appear. This is how the Gnostics understood this event: as an allegory of the inner life of the soul. The serpent is regarded everywhere as a symbol of the development of spiritual life passing through matter. The [brazen] serpent symbolizes the destruction of the last material manifestation. The very last stage, the coarsest stage, is precisely that in which the Logos, the highest spirit of God, expresses itself, from which man, human individuality, must [wriggle] out. The turning back, the return of the earthly to the divine must be undertaken. The bronze serpent is the symbol for the exemplary human being who is so far advanced that he can contribute to the spiritualization of the rest of the world through his spiritualization. The Gnostics interpreted all historical events in this way. They saw them as allegories for individual soul processes of the actual human being and thus grew into the divine world processes.

I would like to present one such idea, in which the cosmological grows out [from the depths]: the idea of the initial state of the world. Formed out of the general nothingness, the Gnostic imagines the beginning of the world. Two great world lights then appear: [the Father and the Son; the eternal world spirit and the image of the eternal world spirit]. The All-Mother then appears as the third. The All-Mother is the material principle, and here the non-existence of matter triumphs. The Gnostics imagined matter as something that must be overcome. The highest of these is the Father with the Son. These divine entities work to recognize themselves in order to become life. This is what the development of the world means, what the actual becoming is.

When the world spirit - Father and Son - merges in the womb of the All-Mother, what is called the four elements - fire, earth, air and water - comes into being. These four elements represent in their spiritual essence what the Gnostics thought of as the highest Christ. They envisioned a supreme being that emerged through the marriage of the spiritual and the material. The material, as dark matter, was initially the primordial principle under the image of the All-Mother [who was just as primordial as the Father]. The two supreme spiritual entities unite with these four elements: Father and Son, and produce a spiritual-material entity: [the Christ]. The Christ strives back to the primordial ground of existence.

Then we find that [the Gnostics] thought of heaven as a kind of closed circle. However, they did not imagine the vault of heaven as such. Heaven with Father and Son is first of all the Logos, the spiritual-material entity that is now hidden in the universe and represents the Christ: As the highest celestial, spiritual-etheric entity, they thought of him as the cosmological entity of the universe. In addition to the fertilization of the "All Mother, however, a droplet of light flowed out into the chaos under the name of Sophia, Wisdom. Through this secondary light, which as a lost one in the world space has entered into a different kind of connection with matter than that which is represented in Christ, through this secondary light, through this Sophia, everything has come into being that has led to the formation of humanity - according to the view of the Gnostics. This is the lower, that which we will get to know further. Because it also originates from the two primordial lights, there will be a kind of parallelism with the Upper. Through the connection of Sophia with the chaotic, with the material element, that which is actually described to us in Gnosis comes into being. The whole doctrine of the origin of the world, as it is found in Gnosis, first arose from these small secondary planets of the "great light". The 'Sophia-World-Mother' - in contrast to the "All-Mother" - has fertilized matter once again. From this union of the droplet Sophia emerged the son Jaldabaoth. He produced seven more sons, and these are the seven powers, the seven spheres. We have before us the seven basic forces of the visible world, that is, that from which the world nature is built up, from the actual matter, from the life principle, from the astral body, from the animal soul and from the upper three spiritual forces. The whole human being is built up from these [seven basic forces]. But these emerged from the marriage of Sophia with the elements, so that Gnosis renewed the origin of the world. While Christ represents the actual product of the marriage of the earthly light, Jaldabaoth represents a kind of sub-deity that [worked] down to human existence and brought forth man. This is therefore a cosmological doctrine that reaches down to man.

How does the Gnostic now imagine the formation of man? He has man built up from the seven basic parts. But they are formed through the marriage of Sophia in such a way that they take the downward path. We have to make our way back again. So we have to find our way back. This is how the Gnostics imagined it: Jaldabaoth had gotten into some kind of argument with Sophia, who is from the heavenly lights themselves. If Jaldabaoth had formed man alone, then man would undoubtedly have been lost. It was only because the dispute resulted in a continuous cooperation between Jaldabaoth and Sophia that man was able to find his way back to God.

We have to imagine the story of creation in connection with the story of man in mystical allegorical form. The divine spark of light, the "Sophia", remained with mankind. They led it back, as it was a descent from the spiritual to the material. But the way back was not possible through their own strength. It was only possible because help came to man from the next sphere. This happened through the connection of a perfect human being with that which had previously developed into the highest sphere. This is symbolized in a gnostic way. The return of man to God was envisioned by the Gnostics in such a way that man was able to enter and complete the path to heaven, that he could gradually approach the divine in the course of the various lives. When man has then come so far that he has developed his memory to such an extent - this is gnostic - that in retrospect he can survey the whole cosmological development, as I have now presented it as a general gnostic conception, in such a way that he has it before him not merely as a doctrine but as a fact, when man has again traveled a part of the path in such a way that he sees the rest lying clearly before his spirit, then he is the one who is able to make the waters of the Nile flow upward.

Such people - so the Gnostics assume - exist. The Gnostics knew such people. These are the "messiahs". Now comes something that [the Gnostics] see in Christianity. There is a beginning, a connection halfway between Jesus and Christ. A personality is embodied in Jesus who is able to ally himself with the Christ of the upper region. This is how the Gnostics saw the emergence of the "Son of Man" - and also the emergence of the Buddha - on the one hand; and on the other, the descent of the Christ, the world spirit, and its connection with these "gods" developing from below.

I hope that I have at least evoked a general idea [of gnosis]. [In its essence] gnosis consists in the fact that man can reach this high degree of development in the course of various re-embodiments, and that he has reached the highest when not only his personal life lies before his memory, but when he can look back in this way, when his memory is so far extended that he is able to embrace all embodiments in his memory. This is how far Jesus was, who emerged from the small droplet of sidelight. He is ripe to receive the Christ from the upper regions as "Vahän", as a "vessel". The human being becomes the bearer of the Christ. Thus we have the Christ born out of the spiritual world and the Jesus Christ of the Gnostics.

This is the concept of Christ that gradually emerged in the first two centuries. It is the Christ [who develops an initiated person up to higher levels]. An initiated human being is the one who is developed. An initiated human being is the one who has developed to the highest human state, and a Christ is the one who has ascended to the highest spiritual. According to the Gnostics, it was a halfway connection.

We see this view again in the Apocalypse, only now it interprets the matter in the following way - I would like to present it in the following manner: The person who is on the path of perfection goes back step by step the elemental forces. One by one, the seven seals are unsealed. In this way he follows the initiatory path of the ancients. This path is there at the turn of the Christian world age. But there is also something higher, the gospel of Christ, which consists in the fact that through the long preparatory study man has become mature in his entirety to receive the gospel within himself. Thus what used to be a place of worship is now to be replaced. It is now to be replaced by the entirety of humanity. It is to be the temple of God.

Later it was said that it would be the church that took the place of the temple, and the cult of the past would be replaced by the new sacrifice of the Mass.

In the four parts of the Mass we see the spiritual life and its transformations expressed. First the spiritual, the Gospel - the way back is proclaimed. It goes through two parts of the Mass; bread and wine are offered. It then goes on to the consecration, in which the body and blood are actually transformed into the divine. And in communion, where man receives the divine, Christ is received through Jesus.

Later Christianity only externalized what was cultivated in the Gnostic schools. The person who sees and understands a Catholic mass will see nothing but an embodiment of what the Gnostics saw from their point of view as man's path to Christ, nothing but a popularization of the old mystery teachings. Whereas previously the individual had to be initiated, this initiation is now built up for the whole community, every day this symbolism is repeated for the community, and this repetition is intended to awaken those who are called to it.

Later Christianity endeavored to blur the old. It wanted to emphasize that it was something new, that a new era had dawned. Nevertheless, it will also be possible to rediscover many Gnostic views in the external symbolism, and thus to find old mysteries. But at the same time it will be seen that only those to whom the real meaning of the matter will dawn will be able to penetrate and reveal Christian symbolism. But it is a matter of popularization, and therefore [the Mass] must be repeated over and over again.

The Church Fathers - in their standpoint against the Gnostics - are almost on the same [standpoint]. Their endeavor was to blur what came over from the "old", and yet we can still find all the teachings expressed in symbolism, in the new church, which should be and wants to be "universal". In essence, the Apocalypse represents this replacement of the former, of the mysteries by the general communion of saints. The Apocalypse is nothing other than the paraphrase of the one sentence: The mystery is to become popular. Nothing else is to be achieved than that in the idea of the one-time original initiation - in the repetition of the mass action - it is pointed out again and again that everyone should walk the path and that he will find it when he is ripe for it.

I would just like to draw attention to one passage in the final chapter. The angel says to John: "Do not seal up the words of the prophecy in this book, for the time is near..." and so on. These things will show us that for us the Apocalypse is a paraphrase of the sentence: The mystery is to become popular. It is to revive as a church.

We only need to look at the whole skeleton of the Apocalypse to see that it is nothing other than a popularization of the stages of the Gnostic view. The seven seals signify the return path of man. At the opening of the first seal we are symbolized: the overcoming of the material. At the opening of the second seal: how man develops the higher spiritual forces within himself. At the opening of the third seal: how the understanding of the measure, order and harmony of the universe arises in him, how the spirit-matter becomes clear to him, where the great mystery of the world reveals itself to him.

So at first man is caught up in the material, then he comes to the principle of life.

On the fourth stage, matter is overcome, spirit and matter, through death. At the opening of the fifth seal, we see the spiritual powers of man emerge, the spiritual soul of man is unsealed, "the souls of those who were strangled for the word of God". After they were born again, "they cried out with a loud voice, saying, "Lord, holy and true, how long have you not judged and avenged our blood on those who dwell on the earth!"

At the opening of the seventh seal, the day of wrath breaks out, the day on which the wrath of God is poured out on all material things, where the higher is born out of the lower, the Budhi powers, the wisdom. Man becomes mature enough to sense what is actually divine. He becomes mature enough to sound the actual trumpets. This proclamation happened in the Gospel, and there we see how this maturity is expressed in the new message: Christ has come into the world and resounds through nature.

The seven trumpets represent the spiritualization, the coming to Christ of all human principles. While the Apocalypse initially follows the old mystery path, the sounding of the trumpets is intended to show us a new path that we are to find. In the Apocalypse we also see a kind of 'Exodus from Egypt' - in the second part. This is why we always have a reference to the plagues of animals, frogs and locusts. The Exodus of the Hebrews from Egypt to Palestine can be read as a parallel.

The exodus from Egypt is tailored to individual people. Where the writer then comes up to cosmological primal spirits, where he is in the midst of the heavenly world powers and what is represented in the higher heaven - in the middle the Lamb, the Christ - there he sees these cosmological ideas.

The book with the seven seals opens up the views of the ancient mystery cults to him. He imagines that I am being led before the Savior, Christ Jesus. The seven seals of the book are unsealed for me. That means nothing other than: It becomes clear to me that the world is built on the basis of seven principles that have flowed out of the Eternal. New things will now be proclaimed after man has reached the highest level, after wisdom and spiritual powers have developed, when the first trumpet sounds, the voice of the Lamb. Then Christ leads man further. In a larger human community, humanity is led back to the divine. We can see particularly clearly that this is the case when we see how the seventh vision [that of the New Jerusalem] is described last. This is nothing other than the new, larger community compared to the earlier, narrower community. The New Jerusalem is the new church, the new community. "And I saw a new heaven and a new earth." In the past, heaven and earth were also depicted: The light of dawn shone into the burial chambers.

Christ once called himself the cornerstone, the highest point of the pyramid. He is the one who has reached the highest. - "And I saw the holy city, the new Jerusalem, coming down out of heaven from God, prepared as a bride adorned for her husband." She is the new bride who is to be married in the new spirit. The Spirit is to unite with the church and it is to present the temple. "And he who sat on the throne said, 'Behold, I am making all things new! And he said to me, 'Write, for these words are true and certain. And he said to me: "It is done. I am the Alpha and the Omega, the beginning and the end. I will give to the thirsty from the fountain of living water freely." The living water is the way up. Man has to make his way upwards through material things, he has to turn upwards. "He who overcomes will inherit all things, and I will be his God and he will be my son." The new Jerusalem, the bride of the Lamb is the new church.

Four roads lead to the new city. It "had twelve gates, and on the gates were twelve angels and names written on them, namely the twelve families of the children of Israel". Each path leads through three gates. "From the morning three gates, from midnight three gates, from noon three gates, from evening three gates." The twelve gates and twelve angels are twelve powers. The length, width and height of the city are the same - like the pyramid. The wall measures "one hundred and forty-four cubits, according to the measure of a man, which the angel has". ... "The wall of the city had twelve foundations, and on them the names of the twelve apostles of the Lamb." ... "The foundations of the wall were adorned with precious stones." ... "The twelve gates were twelve pearls." ... "I saw no temple in the city, for the Lord God Almighty is its temple and the Lamb." - This states that the outer place is replaced by the spiritual temple. "The city has no need of the sun or the moon." These old lights are replaced. "The lamp is the Lamb." All the old symbols have merged into the Lamb, who brought the actual Gospel. But they prepared Christianity.

I would like to briefly summarize once again the basic character of what the Apocalypse wants to say: the Christian church has absorbed the ancient mysteries. What the ancient mysteries tell us is the doctrine of the sevenfold path of man. What Christianity tells us is presented in a generally understandable way. In place of the former temples, the Church places the return of the microcosmic to the macrocosmic. We can only understand the Apocalypse if we understand it from the gnosis: that we see in Jesus Christ the Paschal Lamb who has overcome the world, that through his religion he has made himself the bearer of all humanity and then the mystery temples are replaced by the Church. And this is the main proposition to be expressed by the Apocalypse.

[Dearly beloved present]

After we have been able to see from our previous observations how the then prevailing mystery views were used in the formation of Christianity, today we want to look at two main representatives of early Christianity to see how they placed themselves in the whole development, in the formation process.

There is no doubt that Paul saw in Christ the mediator between God and man, a personality at such a high level of the development of existence that this person undoubtedly overcame death in Paul's opinion and really appeared to him in a spiritualized body in the hour of his conversion. That is Paul's faith. This is also what gave him the confidence to teach. Convinced of the mediator between God and man, of the risen Jesus Christ, he went out and preached the gospel.

Where did the components [of these teachings] come from, which presuppose a very specific philosophical conception, and especially those which came to us as a reinterpretation of the [ancient initiation] rituals? Where is the origin of the life of Jesus to be found? We can certainly say: within the sermons preached to the large Christian community in the first century. Within it, Paul probably did not hold the view that we encounter in the Gospel of John, where Christ Jesus is the second form of God who became man. Paul never held this strictly metaphysical, theosophical view. But John [did]. Since the Apocalypse is undoubtedly from John, we are dealing with a spiritualized personality in the school of John, which understands Christ as God incarnate - not merely as the mediator between man and God, not merely as an exemplary personality - but we are dealing with a spiritualized personality in the personality that is based on John. We see a spiritualized personality taking hold.

We know that John spent time in Ephesus, that he wrote his most important writings there and then had a relationship with the presbyter John. Whether the teachings of the Logos are taken from Egyptian-Greek philosophy is more or less irrelevant to us. But it is clear that the metaphysical-theosophical conception came from John.

There was a whole series of Christian communities in Ephesus and Asia Minor. There were certainly many more than seven. Strictly speaking, the Apocalypse is only addressed to seven churches to whom the teaching is to be revealed. When John comes to Ephesus, he plays a very special role. He is one of the most important personalities. He doesn't actually have any special influence in the administration of the church. The administrators are completely different. If one such church leader dies, another is simply elected without any thought of putting John at the head. All the statements that we know from this time indicate that there was a certain opposition [to Paul] - but not conflict - that John's direction and Pauline Christianity must have gone side by side. This is a very important fact. It can only be explained by the fact that, in view of the completely different Jesus figure in John's Gospel and in view of something else that I will say later, we see in John's school a special school [in which was taught] what was not preached to the great masses. We even know that John's teachings were first considered dangerous for the masses. In the school of John we are probably dealing with a kind of secret school, a mystical community, from which the Gospel of John emerged and which also influenced the Synoptic Gospels. It was not written down in the form of history, but only the teachings were written down. The language became the universe. But the story was not written down until the end of the first century at the earliest.

This indicates that we are dealing with the great

Christian community in Ephesus and the surrounding area - and with a mystical theosophical school of John. Everything that we have in terms of historical-allegorical moments in Christianity emerges from this school of John, while in Pauline Christianity we have nothing other than the Christ who died for humanity and what he taught, including that he introduced the communion of the Lord's Supper. That was the common bond by which the Christians of that time recognized each other.

The fact that we are dealing with a mystical church can be seen from the fact that we are dealing with seven churches [in the Apocalypse]. Right at the beginning of the Apocalypse we are dealing with an allegorical school, while in the Gospel of John we are dealing with a mystical-theosophical school. The school of John was not the only one. We may get to know another one today, if there is still time.

So what came into Christianity through the St. John school? The things I have already mentioned. The resurrection of Lazarus, which is nothing other than the representation of an initiation process. These [things] come from schools that were very familiar with the mystery rites. This raising of Lazarus is undoubtedly part of a secret school, and [it was not included in the Synoptic Gospels]. The facts speak for this.

What we need to look at now is: Within the secret school must have arisen what is called the Apostles' Creed. This is nothing other than a result of the mystery cults[, those mystery cults which can be read in the presentation which I have given to the members. Those who have embarked on the path of initiation have had to make a profession of faith, into the meaning of which they have been initiated. I would like to outline such a creed for you. It cannot be made up arbitrarily, but is based on what has been handed down to us:

1. [The person to be initiated] must first believe in a supreme deity, because the deity is deeply hidden, but a perspective opens up for those who want to walk the highest path to the [mysteries]. [God] is the Father of all things. That was the first article.

2 Then he has to believe in the second Logos. The first Logos was the Father himself, who then entered into things. This is how he came to take the form of the second Logos.

The second Logos is therefore a kind of image of God, a spiritual reflection of God. It descends and takes on material form. This is called "the absorption of God in a material existence. It condenses and takes on material form. The world at large is nothing other than the materialized second Logos, which develops up to the human soul in order to find its way back to God from there.

When man searches through matter, he finds the spirit in matter. However, this is nothing other than the spirit that previously entered matter. This descent is presented to us mystically in the figures of Dionysus, in the various mystical figures such as Osiris, Isis and so on. In the mythological processes we have the various transformations of this process. In short: I believe in the materialized Logos.

[B-] Why did God make this sacrifice of materialization? Why did he descend? It means the whole process of development itself. The world would not be there. The Initiator professes this. The Logos has descended into matter and is now in its ascent again.

This general view was repeated microcosmically, as it were, in every single person. There was the view that the same procedure takes place in man as took place with God.

The initiation cults were there to make this particularly clear to the person being initiated. As a rule, such mystery cults were held near lakes. And in Athens they were also held near ponds. The lake, the water - as we know from the Egyptian initiation ritual - were regarded as a symbol of material existence. The descent into material existence was to be reflected by those seeking initiation [by descending into the water]. Water was regarded as a symbol of material existence. That is why this cult was held near lakes.

Something very strange happened. You can find this if you follow the Apostles' Creed, which was established by the various councils: The whole processes that are described there in the Creed are nothing more than the same points, the same processes, which can also be found in the initiation process. The Apostles' Creed still clearly shows the initiation process. If you leave out [for the time being] only the words "suffered under Pontius Pilate", you will see that it is an initiation process. A confession is made of God, then of the materialized God, the second Logos, then of the ascent [of the Initiator]. Three days in sleep, the descent to hell, to be awakened again on the third day and then to emerge from the process as an initiate.

However, there is the difficulty that on the one hand we have the second Logos, Christ Jesus - the Gospel of John identifies Jesus with the second Logos - and on the other hand the personality of Jesus, so that we can assume that [in the creed] we are dealing with a reinterpretation of the second Logos into the personality of Jesus. So [the second Logos] has been Christianized.

Now I come to a hypothesis - I will call it a hypothesis for now - I mean the words: "suffered under Pontius Pilate". We have them from the writings of the time, but we know nothing of the events. We know that Pilate existed, if not in Jerusalem, then at least in the Assyrian Empire. But that cannot convince us that a very strange process must have taken place. So we cannot help but see the Apostles' Creed as a transformed initiation rite. The second Logos has been transformed into a personality. So how does "suffered under Pontius Pilate" come into it? You only need to omit a single letter from Pontius and instead of Pontius just say Pontus and take Pontus in the sense of the sea. This may seem a little daring. But such insertions - don't call them forgeries, because they are made in good faith - occurred every now and then in the first centuries. This confession describes the various stages of initiation according to the Mystery rituals. However, these were held in various individual places, almost always on a lake. It has also always been said that these things took place at some lake here or there. We would therefore be quite surprised if the fact that the event took place on a lake were not to be found in a mystery ritual. We therefore have reason to assume that we are dealing with the [view of an initiatory process], so that it would mean nothing other than the descent [of the Logos] into matter or the undergoing of the process of initiation.

We are therefore dealing with an application of the ritual and with a fusion of what was taught and what flowed into Christianity from various cults. In the most diverse places, the most diverse cults have also been cultivated within Christianity.

Paul started out from a teaching that pointed towards Judaism. He also accepted Gentiles, but always paying attention to what was already there. He also says: "The Jews put more emphasis on signs, the Greeks more on wisdom. I treat both the way they want to be treated." He did not create something that perplexed people, but he shaped what he had before him. To a much greater degree, the others seem to have done the same. To imagine that Christianity was a uniform doctrine from the beginning would be a childish notion.

Paul and Peter were highly divided, and there were also disputes in the churches. Paul often tried to settle such disputes. So [early Christianity] was not a strictly uniform doctrine, but one could see the rays coming together from the most diverse points. The centralization took place much later.

In addition to the popular Christianity of Paul, there was also an esoteric view, the school of John. We owe the related information to a series of written works. They emerge in the sixth century AD and later form the basis of various church writers. Later they are attributed to the [Areopagian writer] Dionysius, who is said to have been converted to Christianity by Paul in Athens. All this has often been considered false. But you can't understand what that means. Perhaps the only way to understand it is that Dionysius did not write the writings himself. But if we follow these writings, we find an even deeper understanding of Christianity. The author is not named, but the references made by church writers show that these writings existed. All traces indicate that they were not present in [early] Latin Christianity, but that we received them quite late. We are therefore dealing with writings that reflect the views of the early church fathers of the Greek Church. The author presents them to us as a development of the old mystery relationships, as the belief in God that is only accessible in a mystical way.

We are then shown how the imperfect beings emanate from this God and in this way a descent takes place to the forms to which man himself belongs. Then it is shown how a return to the God is to take place through the various forms. We find more detailed accounts in Scotus Eriugena, who wrote his "Classification of Nature" in this spirit. What we learn in these writings indicates that from the second century onwards we are dealing with such a mysterious school, very similar to the school of St. John in Ephesus. It too cultivated such mystical-theosophical teachings.

So such traditions, which aim to show that we are dealing with a "pseudo-Dionysius", indicate that such a school existed, which did not write down its teachings, but propagated them orally, and that these teachings can be traced back to Dionysius, who was converted by the apostle. Such secret schools undoubtedly existed in the early days of Christianity. We must therefore distinguish between the popular view and the view held by the individual initiate himself.

When we follow the writings of [Hermas], we can almost grasp with our hands what lies behind the form of expression. [Hermas] does not break with the [Christian mystical] tradition, but stands on the same point of view.

However, we are dealing with teachings that have a deeper understanding of Christianity, which they strive to translate into symbolism, in the creed, which is built up piece by piece in the councils and built up in the ritual acts and rites.

We can almost follow this in the writings of the Church. Sometimes we cannot understand what is contained in such a symbol, but we must accept such a symbol with faith and believe that the meaning will gradually become clear to us. Now if this man [- Hermas -] speaks of there being four degrees of initiation, as described in the scriptures, then we can only say that there must have been an esoteric teaching in addition to the exoteric teaching.

Whoever received the symbol, [to whom] for example the sacrifice of the Mass was presented, is not disturbed by the fact that something is presented to him [which he does not understand], but is given a symbol. Soon he will penetrate the mysterious meaning of the symbol.

In the church writers of the third and fourth centuries we see that the [students of the] deeper teachings of Christianity have to go through various stages of initiation. For the great masses, the esoteric teaching was brought to light in the symbol.

Now let us see how the esoteric teaching has developed and how the esoteric has adapted itself to the exoteric. And how the church strives for worldly power as a result. We want to see how this [esoteric] character has gradually been lost and how traces of it have evaporated right into scholasticism. This is connected with the most important events that took place in church history and with the transfer of events in Christianity from Ephesus in Asia to Rome in Italy.

In the first and beginning of the second century, the most important center for the spread of Christianity was Ephesus. This seat then moved from Ephesus to Italian Rome. We also speak of Ephesus as an Asian Rome, and of a direction that did not concern Johannine Christianity but Pauline Christianity. So we see an esoteric Christianity in the doctrine of John, while in the Pauline direction we have the popular form.

Answer to the question:

Pontus = lake. Pontius Pilate was governor of Caesarea. ["Suffered under Pontius Pilate" therefore means suffering caused by passing through the stages of matter.

"I am Osiris N. Growing among the blossoms of the fig tree is the name of Osiris N."

"Go thy way", see in the Book of the Dead.

Pontius Pilate is mentioned by the Roman or other writers as governor of Caesarea.

The Holy Spirit is nothing other than the third Logos, which we find in matter and in our souls.

The resurrection of the flesh points to the doctrine of reincarnation. Not demonstrable in the Johannine school, probably did not even exist. The Church replaced initiation with inspiration with faith. The secret teachings were canonized [dogmatized]. Why the doctrine of reincarnation was not popular is quite clear to me today. Even today it is difficult to make it popular. It is seen as a political danger. The doctrine of reincarnation in its true form cannot be popularized. The doctrine of reincarnation has led to the wildest superstitions, [the doctrine of] transmigration through animals and so on.

Christianity does not regard the doctrine of reincarnation as a doctrine that could be handed over to the masses. Substitutionary atonement in Pauline Christianity is something that cannot be reconciled with reincarnation and karma.

It was my task to show that Christianity underwent a development in the first centuries, and I emphasized that the conclusion of this development actually occurred relatively late, at least much later than the "orthodox" churches imagine this conclusion to have been.

This development also went through a mystical epoch. The main idea was that everywhere in the Mediterranean region, in Europe and far into Africa, there was a deepening of the religious worldview before our era, before the first century of the Christian era, and that this deepening of religious life moved in exactly the same direction and virtually grew towards Christianity, indeed formed the direct basis for many currents in Christianity.

When we sift through Christian writers from the first century, we cannot say what comes from these or those. The Apocalypse was nothing more than a popularization of ancient mystery ideas. Initiates into the mysteries often converted to Christianity later. They then expressed themselves in the same way as the pagan writers. This became particularly clear to us with the pseudo-Dionysius, Dionysius Areopagita, who is said to have been converted by the apostle Paul. The writings of this Dionysius probably date back to earlier times. They are imbued with mystical ideas; they also contain theosophical ideas. We are dealing with an ancient Egyptian priest who was initiated into the Egyptian or Eleusinian mysteries, who then expresses the truths in this way. Or we can also assume that the mysticism of Dionysius was expressed again in Alexandria. In the first century, we are dealing with a teaching that is in the process of development. In fact, we can say that it was not until the fourth century that the very specific doctrine known in the West as Christianity took hold.

The first writer to testify to the first purely Christian mysticism was St. Augustine, who concerns us today. In him we have the first Christian mysticism before us. Thus the riddle that the mysteries of the ancients underlie primitive Christianity will appear most clearly to us. The Gnostics were Christian mystics of the first century. I said that these Gnostics taught the ancient theosophical teachings of the Logos, of the Logos embodied in matter, and that they spread what they had gained from the ancient Mysteries. I said that they assumed that man can only ascend to a real vision through the various degrees of knowledge - they recognized a spiritualized Christ as their own - that they made use of all the means of the Christian mind in order to carry over as many teachings of Jesus of Nazareth as possible into those teachings which you can still guess from the Gospels today. There were also various sects among the Gnostics. Those teachings are essentially nothing more than ancient mysticism translated into popular form. If we think of this spirit [of the old teaching poured into new forms], then we have what the Gnostics represented. They were also the ones who said that the best cannot be entrusted to Scripture, but that the highest levels can only be transmitted from personality to personality.

So the Gnostics were the bearers of a spiritualized Christianity. We also have such confessions in Alexandria. We could list a whole series of Christian confessions, but we can no longer say what was taught by the various ecclesiastical writers who were labeled false teachers by the Church Fathers.

If we were to go through these various opinions, we would see that in the first years of Christian development we are dealing with a diverse, not a uniform doctrine, with a doctrine that has gained influxes from all sides. It is therefore the case that we are not dealing with a self-contained doctrine in the first century. Today's Christianity is a creation of the two councils of Nicaea and Constantinople.

We must see the most important personality within the Christian mystical development in Augustine, because he sought in himself a deepening that was not achieved in such a way by any later one, nor could it be overtaken, because the later time was [indeed] more Christian, but not more mystical. Augustine presents us with the beginning of that - in the fourth to fifth century - which can show us the basic difference between what must still have been present in [earlier] Christianity and what later took the place of this original Christianity.

I would like to say right away that those who approach the study of Augustine themselves - the deep life of the mind - will find the greatest satisfaction. I would like to say that I would not like to compare any personality with Augustine in terms of greatness and perspicacity of thought. But even among modern philosophers there are probably few and only a few that I would place alongside Augustine. Whoever takes Cartesius and studies him, whoever compares him with him, will find that Cartesius is only a one-sided education. Augustine, however, is one of the most profound thinkers of all time.

What we know about the Gnostics indicates that in addition to the ancient religious systems of the whole world, the Gnostics also had in their basic views that which was still widespread as mysteries, that in Gnosticism everything was indeed represented which we today seek to awaken in the teachings of Theosophy. He who tries to penetrate Gnosticism will be able to say to himself nothing other than that it is undoubtedly the case that this basic Gnostic view is still permeated by the sentiments and ideas which constituted the essence, the deepest core of the old religious systems, that only the documents do not speak to us clearly and distinctly enough.

If we take the doctrine of re-embodiment, of reincarnation, it is this which alone corresponds to an eternal world order, which is strictly self-contained, which alone shows us how the world and God can be identical, because only on the premise of this doctrine can a complete balance, a harmony between the true and the false, in short a complete harmony between all apparently divergent ideas, be possible. I mean that man not only feels at one with some divine being, but with the eternal spirit which pervades the whole world, and feels this spirit not only as the one deity, but also as the individuality which passes through each individual life; I mean, therefore, the re-embodiment of the spirit which also confronts us in the Buddhist doctrine, which has not one, but many Buddhas. This doctrine [of re-embodiment] was undoubtedly something that was contained as a keynote in the ancient teaching of the Gnostics. We now understand why deeper initiates, disciples of Dionysius, used this apostle's name over and over again. Like the Pythagoreans, they were of the opinion that the spirit of the founder still lived on in them. They recognized him in themselves, just as the Pythagoreans recognized their forefather in themselves. It was only later that the teachings [of Dionysius] were recorded. The one who recorded them regarded himself as a personality who reached up in spirit to the time of the founding of the order.

This is the basic phenomenon of Christianity, that this doctrine of the general spirituality of the world, this esoteric view, is gradually being overcome, forgotten and disappearing. Christianity without this view of the world, without this basic mood, first appears to us clearly and distinctly in Augustine. He represents a view that is free from the transformation of the soul and free from the transformation of the spirit. In Augustine we therefore encounter the first mystic who only deals with the one personal human life. What lies between the individual personalities, what the old religions interposed between the individual personality and the All-Unity, has fallen away with Augustine.

The great and significant thing is that despite this, a personality appeared in the Church that reached an immeasurable depth, even though it knew no intermediate links between personality and all-unity. This is what gives us an understanding of Augustine's teachings. They contain a mysticism without the foundation of an ancient mystical view, a mysticism in which everything that the ancients placed between the two is placed in the Godhead. What is between man and the Godhead is placed within the Godhead. This is why Augustine also writes: "I have transferred into the Godhead that which men formerly perceived as their world. When people used to look at the whole world and then at their personal characteristics, they said to themselves: This world is not a boundary. It includes personalities before and after; and the balance that I cannot find in myself, I find in the whole world. What I lack in one place at one time can be replaced in another place and at another time. For people, therefore, everything is only seemingly limited, isolated, because sooner or later it balances itself out again. This whole question: How is it that a single personality with these or those characteristics appears in such a way that a peculiarity that destroys others turns to the good in this one? - This question stood before Augustine as a great riddle. He solved it in a way that it can only be solved. This man of wisdom appears to be inhuman, apparently carried away by the worst fanaticism when he speaks about this question, because he does not have the opportunity to answer in the sense of the theosophy of the ancients. That is why he had to burden a God with it, that is why he had to say: It is not the personality that determines its own existence in the eternal development of the spirit; this individual personality, he had to say to himself, stands there all by itself; and what stands opposite it is the infinite perfection of power [of God]. He had to say to himself as a logical thinker: So all the characteristics of man, regardless of whether he comes into the world as a sinner or as a good person, as a genius or imbecile, stem from the Godhead. This cannot be explained by anything else in the world. It can only lie in the Godhead, if all intermediate elements are removed. Hence the harsh teaching of Augustine: man is either predestined to eternal bliss or to eternal damnation.

It would have been impossible for a personality who suffered as much as he did to have taught such a harsh doctrine if he had not at the same time sought to build up a world system within this view in a logically consistent manner. In the last lecture, i.e. today over eight days, we will see how this doctrine was reversed immediately after Augustine by a highly significant inconsistency into a completely different doctrine, in the case of an equally profound thinker, Scotus Eriugena.

This is what makes St. Augustine understandable to us, this is what explains why this personality clings to it so rigidly: Man is predestined for good or for bad. That intermediate link [- re-embodiment -] which the Gnostics still had, has been lost to him. Now begins that Christian development which has eliminated the doctrine of the transmigration of souls, palingenesis.

Augustine is considered the greatest authoritative and most important Doctor of the Church. Let us now take a look at this great personality of St. Augustine himself. There will hardly have been a second personality in the Christian Church who combined all three characteristics in such a harmonious way. Let us disregard what the Christian Church had lost at that time and consider St. Augustine as a Christian mystic. Clear thinking, sharply based on reason, depth of mind and at the same time the noblest will and character. These were the qualities that were present in rare harmony in this man. We therefore also see that his life is a continuous process of self-initiation, which is sought by most mystics. We see how he is religiously educated by his mother Monika, but how he is not satisfied by the ordinary teachings of the Church; we see how he falls into doubt, how, after finding no satisfaction in the teachings that his mother could give him, he joins the Manichaeans, a sect.

This sect shows us that the Persian worldview had penetrated the Christian doctrine, in which two opposing forces play a role: Good and Evil. They regard Christ, as the Logos, as the helper who leads people entangled in the bonds of evil back to good. The Manichaeans are [destined] to explain evil. For them, evil is an original power and should only be overcome.

According to the theosophical view, evil arises merely through a sacrifice that the deity itself makes by entering into existence in an external way, by incarnating itself. This creates the appearance of evil, of falsity, of error. The error arises because the complete connection within the world cannot be made clear to us. It is concealed by the various material intermediate grounds between individuality and allness.

This teaching of the Manicheans satisfied Augustine for a time because he had felt the bad, the pulling down, the evil passions, desires and impulses in his youth. He could not explain this in any other way than that these forces are present in the world. However, something in St. Augustine resisted this view. And so it was that within this doctrine a contradiction arose and confronted him. He could not explain how two original elements could exist: a good All-One and an evil All-One. He could not grant error the same right [as truth] in his progressive thinking.

Now came something that must come over every human being who has progressed to this stage. The period arises when evil and good, ugliness and beauty actually confront him like two equal forces. The Buddha is approached by Mara, the Christ by Satan. Only life, immersion, can bring about victory. No knowledge that is given to us beforehand is capable of doing so. We ourselves must bring about victory through our own work on ourselves. There are two ways. We can perhaps advance to this conquest of evil through mystical guidance, or if this is not possible, as it was for Augustine, who could not have any external mystical guidance, then the only possibility is to fight for that victory from within ourselves, to climb that step.

Augustin found this guidance in Christianity, which he grasped as deeply as possible [...]. He did not find this path immediately. At first he did not find people who could help him. His own strength was not so well developed. He did not find anyone who could have taught him from the Christian tradition itself what he later called "the spirit over the letter". It was therefore necessary for him to go through the most terrible doubts into which he now fell. He himself became a doubter, a skeptic and went through the most bitter doubts of knowledge before he became a Christian in the sense [that] is called "soteric".

It was the Bishop of Milan, Ambrose, who introduced him to the spirit as opposed to the letter. We can still see the doubts he went through page by page in his "Confessions". This work should be read by everyone, Protestants and Catholics alike. They will read through the book with the greatest satisfaction. And so will everyone else who does not belong to these confessions.

Luther himself was an Augustinian monk, was a Catholic and regarded [Augustine] as the first saint. Anyone who has grown up in theosophical ideas will find in Augustine a mysticism that actually went as far as one can go without the missing teachings that I have mentioned. Doubt emerges everywhere between the lines in the "Confessions". He shows us how he fought throughout his life. And he became a victor over doubt.

What kind of doubts were these? We also have doubters in our time that we have to confront. But you have to study Augustine's doubt, and then you have to see and say: there is a right to doubt once you have reached this level of Augustine. The doubts that come from people who do not want to conquer them, or from people who have taken them from philosophy, seem to us like a frivolity of knowledge compared to Augustine's doubt. But Augustine's doubt, which is based on the question of how good and evil can be in harmony, is overcome in spite of everything. Augustine struggles through under the guidance of Ambrose, Bishop of Milan. He describes this development in his spiritual journey. We see that Augustine achieved everything that could be achieved in the current of thought in which he was placed. We even see in him an echo of Indian teachings. His path of knowledge appears to us in seven limbs. Within the seven limbs, however, everything that must be missing is missing, since the primal element is missing.

Man develops out of material existence. He is at the same stage as plants and animals. That is the first stage. You will find these stages somewhat different from what is known about them in Theosophy. Man then develops from this material stage to the organic stage, he develops his organs, his organic activity, his sensory activity, his memory activity. He now also lives in the outside world. There he is on the second stage. There he works cognitively in the sensory element. Then he comes to the third stage. It introduces the spirit into the outer world. The spirit takes possession of the outer world, from the simple technical activities up to that which appears to us as our formulation of the spirit in the world, up to that through which the spirit receives its strength for practical work. And then, when man withdraws again, when he has become a willful being, when he feels the spirit of goodness and truth, then he is on the fourth stage. He reaches the fifth stage when he senses that the divine dwells in the true and receives a "prospect of the divine thoughts. He reaches the sixth stage when he not only feels the divine within himself, but also senses it in his eternal existence. He is on the seventh stage when he acts with willpower like the deity.

The Buddha teachings show us how man has to go through certain stages. When he has reached a certain stage, he sees the cosmic in-breath and out-breath; he sees how man emerges from one house, as it were, and then later enters another house. Thus the spiritually developed person sees how the human being enters the process of re-embodiment from the spiritual world and then returns to the spiritual world. This is what had to be distinguished in the Buddha teaching. In Augustine's teaching, which otherwise appears to us to be similar to the Buddhist teaching, we lack this poignant element, which had been forgotten in Christianity. Augustine's seven-limbed path lacks the gripping description given to us five hundred years before the birth of Christ on "The visible fruits of the ascetic life". It is a writing that no one will read without receiving the greatest impressions of the meaning of what was present in the Buddha community.

[Are they not words of deepest knowledge about Augustine that confront us in the wisdom of Augustine's biography?] What we previously encountered as a bone of contention appears to us [in Augustine] in a transfigured way. For example, the Trinity, which has led to countless sectarian formations. When we encounter this in Augustine, he refers us to our self-knowledge. He says: I immerse myself in my own personality, and this confronts me as a threefold. I feel myself first as my "being", then as the "knower" and then as the "willer". I am these three in one person. And just as I am these three in one person, so it is in that of which the personality is only an image. - The divine lives in man. Man can therefore only find the divine by penetrating into his inner being, in the inner truth that we can find through our self-knowledge.

The fact of thinking is the deepest fact there is for him. There he finds the most poignant words to describe it for him, which also gave him the certainty of the divine [primordial One]. "I went out into the world and looked at the most diverse natural things. I could find that they are divine, but I could not find that they are God. I look at people and finally look inside myself. I see that I must be divine, but I also see that I am not "God. I first had to come to complete certainty within myself, I had to become better myself. Then I discovered the "good in me." - Self-deepening must come first: That is true mysticism. If you have not first discovered what is within you, all previous self-knowledge will be of no avail. First awaken this primal One in you, then you will also be able to find the deepest. - He wanted to doubt that he is alive, doubt that he thinks; but he cannot doubt that. And what is this primordial One? "I asked the earth, the sea, I asked the winds" - see the "Confessions" - "they answer: We are not God." He could not recognize the spiritual [there]. He only saw it under symbols. He believed [at first] that this was it. But that was his mistake. He felt it was the highest good to see the spiritual also spiritually. - I now see the eternal goals, the eternal ideas, as the Pythagoreans saw them. I don't just see counted, understood things, but I see in such a way that I see into the numbers, into the things, that I see the purely spiritual itself.

In Scotus Eriugena we will get to know a personality of infinite, mystical depth. But we must say to ourselves that in Augustine we have found such a leading personality for Christianity that it becomes clear to us from Augustine's teaching and personality what Christianity has lost in terms of its old mystical views. It becomes clear to us to what depth it was able to reach despite what it had lost. St. Augustine experienced everything that was possible for him, because he was a personality who had lived through everything, who had found the law of truth as the primal law of life. This is the teaching of St. Augustine, which cannot be ignored when speaking of Western mysticism.

Answer to the question:

Question: It is strange that Augustine, despite his inner vision, despite his mystical deepening, did not find the doctrine of re-embodiment.

Answer: Those who follow Augustine's teaching achieve a harmony between cognition, feeling and moral love. This gives them the perspective of the divine, which they recognize as the innermost human being. This is a level of vision in which the divine does not take shape. However, this is possible when vision has reached the point where the spiritual presents itself to us on the most diverse levels. Its seven stages therefore also appear to us as the most important thing not contained.

Through contemplation, he can penetrate mysticism, and mysticism means life in the divine to him.

Buddha's personality is higher than the personality of Augustine.

The truly mystical has never been lost. The esoteric has permeated the exoteric both in Buddha and in the first Christian centuries.

Dear guests!

Of course, this can only be a kind of artificial, provisional conclusion, brought about by the fact that I still have to deal with the theosophical-mystical view of Scotus Eriugena.

I have undertaken to deal with this personality because this personality forms a conclusion to the Christian research that lies ahead of him on the one hand and on the other hand the starting point of what is actually called the Christian Middle Ages.

Scotus Eriugena shows us clearly that what is called the Christian view was by no means as fixed until the ninth century as it was later regarded. What was meant by genuine, true Christianity was not so fixed that it would not have been possible for such a mind to have views on the Christian teachings of the Church that differed from the majority of others.

However, this is already the great battle that the centralized Catholic Church is waging against such views. Christian doctrine is [still] fluid on all sides. Debates are still taking place as to how the various dogmas should be interpreted. With Scotus Eriugena you can clearly see that at that time it was still possible to have a free interpretation of the Bible. He is a completely theosophical interpreter of the Bible. He cites the sentences of the Old and New Testaments as symbols for spiritual processes alongside the historical side. He chooses those symbols and interpretations which correspond better to his own views. This free custom dwindled [in the course of time] in the Catholic Church, dwindled more and more. The faith established by the administration is asserting itself more and more. However, it had been preserved as a tradition that only those who had reached a certain high level of life were called to interpret the Bible and the teachings of the Church. I don't think it would be easy to prove that almost lay interpretations of Scripture could have asserted themselves; I don't think anyone would have dared to criticize the dogma who had not already attempted to do so through their pursuit of wisdom. Belief in authority was taken for granted. What St. Augustine, for example, had written and said was not regarded as the opinion of a single person, but as a teaching given to us through the indwelling of the power of wisdom in such a person. These views must be understood according to their intention.

Those who were later condemned, who were heretized, grew out of the material that the Church preserved and which first had to permeate those who became involved in such things in the first place, who believed they were called to approach an interpretation of the Church and the Church's teachings.

It would be wrong to compare the philosophy of Scotus Eriugena with any other. It can only be understood in and within Christianity. It must also be viewed in this way and not in the same way as Giordano Bruno. I have already mentioned a person who lived in the first century and left behind writings. [I am referring to the works of the "false" Dionysius, whose author is said to have lived in Athens with the Apostle Paul.] We know that these writings represent a mystical deepening. At the end of the fifth century, we realize that we are dealing with ancient teachings. They must also be understood as such. The teachings can be traced back to the time when the Gospel of John and the Apocalypse were written. They were probably [given] by the one who founded the [Athenian] school.

Finally, we come to the point where wisdom ceases to be wisdom, where it must pass over into life. This is a view that underlies gnosis. It endeavors to turn wisdom into immediate life. The practical meaning of gnosis lies in bringing the spirit down into the material. This view in turn has as its equivalent the view that wisdom cannot be attained through the mere pursuit of wisdom, but only the prospect of it.

There are two different views: "positive theology" and "negative theology". The primary source of the former is sensory perception. One sees, hears, feels this being, this thing; this thing has these and those properties. Negative theology, however, says that behind what we see, hear and so on lies the original source of existence. Nothing can lead us to penetrate it completely; it is only the [inner] life that leads us on the path to penetrating that primordial existence.

This is the path to the heights of mystical knowledge as opposed to external scientific knowledge. Positive theology, which therefore really says something for man, is only a down payment. This knowledge only becomes negative theology because man is forced to say to himself that there is something hidden in the primal grounds of existence. So where, above all, the realization of inadequacy emerges, where the right to doubt awakens, where the feeling awakens that knowledge is only a support in the effort to advance towards divinity - this is where negative theology arises.

You do not reach divinity through concepts, not through the mind. If you imagine divinity as personality, you see divinity in the superpersonality, as essence in the superessential, as perfection in the superperfect! It is most remarkable that the Western world could be surprised by the word "superman", which we encounter so often today. In Dionysius we see a word that takes us much higher, in that he speaks not only of the superman, but of the "supergod". This is in contrast to the God who is human-like, in contrast to what was then called "positive theology", the vital theology that was behind the negative one. Nicholas Cusanus said - after he had acquired all the knowledge that science could give him, after the realization had dawned on him during a voyage across the great sea of how the spiritual eye must become clear at a glance - that these are not expressions for something that exists, but only for symbols that can awaken a perspective in us.

These writings by Dionysius Areopagita were given to Louis the Pious by the Greek owners and have been in Paris ever since. When Scotus Eriugena was favorably received by Charles the Bald, he was commissioned - he was one of the few who knew Greek - to translate these writings. In this way he immersed himself in the spirit of the first Christian centuries, and so we see a Christian tinged theosophy emerging in his works. The writings of Augustine supported him in this. They became a great help for monks and priests, and for the Church in general.

What was probably still present in the Gnostics of the first centuries and what the Christian Church has not preserved is completely missing in [Augustine]: the awareness of a pervasive individuality and any mention of transmigration. Nothing is interposed between personality and divinity. Augustine had to attribute every human peculiarity to the will of the Godhead, so to speak. He could say nothing [else], since he knew nothing of a pervasive individuality. That which appears in me as my own personality is the result of that which reaches out backwards and forwards. But [Augustine] must trace this back to the will of the Godhead. Thus we create a boundary between the Godhead and the will of the individual. And this is how the [so-called predestination] controversy arises. On the one hand, we have those who are saved, and on the other, those who are not allowed to enter divinity: despite the immense love, the realization of the terrible. In other words, dualism.

With such a doctrine, it was extremely difficult to work within the church. One can only imagine that this doctrine could only be presented to a generous mind; it was not possible to present it to the congregations. Nevertheless, it was clear to the church that the wisdom of Augustine set the tone. This [drastic] doctrine of predestination could not be maintained, so they tried to conceal and weaken this hard, cruel doctrine. It was said: "It is quite undoubted that from the very beginning sinners were predestined to eternal damnation, the righteous to bliss; but then the possibility was introduced that a crossing over [to the other side] could take place. In short, they tried to get out of the dilemma. The only way out, which is given in the transmigration of souls, was now sought to be bridged by the half-measure of the Augustinian doctrine. A French monk, [Gottschalk], stood up against this half-measure of Augustine's teaching at the court of Charles the Bald in France. Although he did not name Augustine, he represented him completely and he taught the entire Augustinian doctrine [of absolute predestination] again.

Scotus Eriugena was then presented with the question [of the correctness of this doctrine], first by the Church and then by his master, Charles the Bald. Gottschalk had been publicly flogged. He was flogged in [Mainz at the synod of 848 AD and in Quierzy at the synod of 849 AD]. A treatise had been written against him on predestination. It said that Gottschalk should have been burned, that he should have been dealt with by fire and sword - the heretic judgments began much later. So the only options were condemnation or public flogging.

Scotus Eriugena contrasted himself with Gottschalk. Nevertheless, he emphasized that the doctrine that prevailed in the church was not the right one either. He himself also stated that the theosophical-mystical element always and repeatedly breaks through in large-scale natures. He said that Augustine could only be misunderstood in a view that places divinity beyond the world and where the divine [does not] permeate the whole world, i.e. only in such a teaching. From such a deepening we see the meaningful writing of Scotus Eriugena "On the Division of Nature" emerge. The stream of the divine runs through the world. But the divine must be sought in the world in various stages. He advocates a kind of pantheism of which Boehme would say that he does not mix the world with the divine, but rather evaluates it by saying: The things of the world are indeed the divine, but not in such a way that it can be found in the individual things. They only lead to it, they are the guides [to the divine]. Thus we also see in Scotus Eriugena's objection to Augustine's doctrine that he says: "If one part of the world were indeed to be regarded as bad, as an apostasy against the original good and the original beauty, if it were a dualism between good and evil, then it would be impossible for the divine to permeate the world, for the divine would then also have to be present in the bad. But then the bad would be a manifestation of the divine - or one would have to speak of an impotence of the divine.

Whoever has gained an insight into the depths of the world as a whole cannot possibly recognize two world powers in this way or think of the world as constructed in this way. He must think of the world as constructed in a unified way, so that what we regard as error must be founded in a [unified] way. He cannot suppose that the divine has determined a part to be unattractive, he can only suppose that the divine has determined the aim and purpose of the world; he can only suppose that the beautiful and the ugly only appear, that the world is not divinity itself, is not the entity existing in unfathomable divinity, but that the divine has poured itself out in the world. Evil arises through diversity, through multiplicity. It only has an existence if we express it in earthly terms, it only appears to us as evil [if we do not see through the world as maya, not as illusion]

Jakob Böhme has an idea that is very similar to this. He compares the world to an organism. Every single limb is alive. The hand is just as necessary to the whole of the organism as the foot or any other part of it. It is what it is only in the context of the organism. When the hand is separated from the organism, when it dies, it is no longer a hand; as a hand it must be permeated by the organic. Thus the manifold is only good because it is connected with the original source. Can this prevent one hand from injuring the other? Because the organism is made up of parts, it is possible for parts to come into conflict with each other. Thus disharmony is not rooted [in the organism]. But it can arise if the organism appears to us as a manifold. When the parts of the manifold have returned to unity, then disharmony can no longer come about, then the forces can no longer be turned against each other. As long as the world is a manifold, parts of it will continue to turn against each other. Although the whole is good and in harmony, disharmony is still possible. If we could see through time and space at a glance, then every single thing that seems bad to us would turn out to be good, every disharmony would cancel itself out in the harmony of the whole. We only see a part because we ourselves are a member of the manifold. Thus, for Scotus Eriugena, this doubt is resolved by the fact that he does not assume God's dominion, but God's integration into the world. Thus evil must also have only an illusory nature, and necessarily so, because God assumed matter.

In four parts, in four forms of existence, Scotus Eriugena breaks down nature by treating Augustine's teaching:

First, into that which cannot be attained, the uncreated, creating nature, which we only have in truth if we say to ourselves: all concepts are not sufficient to attain that which underlies everything.

The second is the development out of the [un]created: the created and creating nature. For him, these were the primordial spiritual forces. They are creating and created. That which Plato calls the world of ideas, that which symbolizes unity for us, has separated into multiplicity. This world-spirit, this all-soul, this world-pervading spirituality, which is manifold, which is divided into intelligence and unintelligence - but in a spiritual way - in short, this whole Platonic world of ideas, which as a spiritual world underlies our world, these primal reasons of existence, those thoughts which lived in the Godhead as model images, the eternal primal thoughts of the Godhead - we form the ideas, but they have lived themselves out in the Godhead - they are the "Worb. The things of nature are created according to the patterns of this word. He equates them with the eternal Son of the Godhead. The infinite wisdom, the spirit full of wisdom: This to him is the Son, the second entity, which, as he expresses it, is to the first entity as in the relation of the Son to the Father. This relationship then reached a historical personality - Jesus: Jesus Christ. This Christ is an existence free of desire, an existence beyond the world of desires and senses, he can be wisdom without will and once came into the world, says Scotus Eriugena.

Then comes the third stage of the forms of existence of nature: the created, but non-creating nature. Man, who has assumed matter, is not created and not creating, but existing.

The fourth stage is nature that is neither created nor creating. The divine nature is its goal, to which all beings return in their eternal bliss, resting in themselves. A return of the Godhead to itself is for him the world process in the most eminent sense of the word. All beings are permeated by the Godhead, where they rest in bliss within themselves. They should regard this as their goal.

However, this is how Scotus Eriugena appears to us as a theosophical interpreter of Christianity in the West. It also seems theosophical to us that, in a seven-fold ascent, he outlines the path for people to strive for union with the Godhead.

He therefore distinguishes between four natural powers. Under the first he understands God as the reason for creation, under the second the Platonic world of ideas, under the third the world of bodies, under the fourth God as the final purpose of creation. This is why he calls the process return, "reversio>, "deificatio. To him, the whole process is the return of unity to unity, which only transforms from a creative to a non-creative one.

The beings who undergo the process of development go through it in seven stages. The people who have theosophical aspirations and are engaged in theosophical studies always come to seven stages.

The first stage is the body. The second stage is that which animates the body, the life force that flows through it. On the third level, the sense is animated. From this arises the animal soul. Fourthly, the spirit awakens within the sense. The higher stages, which are no longer bound to the elements, no longer bound to the senses, are contained therein, thus fifthly: the receptivity for the spiritual hovering above the senses. Then, sixthly, bliss, spirituality, develops. The spirit is [...] turned towards the senses, thus still permeated by the body of desire, which chains it to material existence; at the seventh stage this ceases, there the spirit steps before itself in its pure existence. [This makes it possible to embark on the path to return to God, to the divine. The divine would then be the [highest] level.

Then we also see a view in Scotus Eriugena that cannot be integrated into his other teachings. He cannot logically explain the contrast between the elect and those who do not attain beatitude. He cannot bridge this contrast. But this contrast does not exist at all in Christianity: it has only been possible for those minds in the West to find the ideas and truths unconsciously slumbering in Christianity, [which had clarity about the idea] that the essence [of man] is rooted in eternity. If we explore Christianity in and according to its depths, we will find that these ideas lie dormant in Christianity.

It is therefore a matter of awakening the depths of religion. Christianity only needs to be grasped deeply enough to awaken its content. We must therefore reach the point where we can find out what unites them all in the great religious systems, to see how one spirit is expressed in all of them.

It must therefore fill us with great satisfaction to see how in Theosophy we encounter the common spirit in all religions. As we ponder and penetrate the ancient wisdom of Buddhism and see the infinite deepening of spiritual life in these oriental teachings, we will also notice that this spirit has emerged in our scientific endeavors and also in Christianity. In the teachings of natural science, the core also rests in the same way as in the world religions. But it is not from the best core of the same. It is basically the same whether we open the great book of nature or pick up a religious book and look it up. Both lead to the great theosophical convictions. I believe that even the wing of natural science that is [not] on the side of Christianity is fighting in this direction: even the battles that are being waged against the Church are Christian ways of fighting. Those who see the deeper context see this direction in the way modern researchers fight Christianity. What Christianity and the Church have forged is being used against them.

A direct balance cannot be found between two such powers. But that which can lead us to believe that reconciliation must be possible is shown to us by spirits such as Scotus Eriugena. They do not yet recognize the sharp distinction between the two wings: Natural science on the one hand and religion on the other. Scotus Eriugena could still be a good Christian, and he could still describe the whole world as nature in a Christian world view. It seems that this is no longer possible for the minds of people today. It seems to me that the only salvation lies in continuing along the path that has been followed in the West for decades. We must draw new courage from the sources of light in the Orient, from the two rivers that flowed together back then, and create reconciliation.

If we immerse ourselves in oriental wisdom, reconciliation will still be possible. For me, it is proof of this that the light that came from the Orient still lived in Scotus Eriugena in a more or less unconscious way in undivided unity. What has carried people for so long will continue to carry them in such a way that they must find the path through this light. And what has brought the spirit into harmony will continue to do so. But for this we need to delve deeper into the theosophical teachings. If we find the path that reunites the two, then it will mean the reconciliation of natural science with Western religions, then it will become clear that they are seeking the same thing on different paths.

The outer forms of the phenomenal world have, in addition to their outer significance, an inner meaning. They are, as it were, symbols of an earlier phase of development. “All that is transitory is but a parable” to him who looks more deeply. To the psychograph, which looks with astral power into the inner becoming, into the soul of the world, the things of the phenomenal world reveal their inner history. The eye of the Dangma sees the transformations of the Logos in a developmental series. The sacred books of the Vedas and the Rosicrucian Chronicle speak of ten such avatars or metamorphoses of our present Sun Logo. For the clairvoyant, the present-day lancelet (Amphioxus lanceolatus) is the memory sign of an incarnation of the Sun Logo and a parable for the foreshadowing of the vertebrates. This can be imagined when one thinks of the signs Sickle, Scorpio, Fish and so on in the calendar, which symbolize processes in the world of the stars. The vertebrae, from which in succession fishes, amphibians, birds and mammals have developed, were present in the Vorahn only in the first stage, just as in the present-day lancelet the organ of touch is indicated by a single nerve cord, from which in later developments the brain of aquatic animals, of fishes, organized itself.

The first metamorphosis of the Sun Logos is expressed by the Rosicrucian Chronicle in the following words:

The single mother substance of spiritual light dawned upon itself. And from the dawning density of matter, a spiritual peculiarity escaped, empathizing with the dawn of matter.

The World Spirit lives in this feeling as the soul, whose body is the waters.

Indian: Matsya = Fish

First Avatar.

The Solar Logos incarnates as an example and guide in the midst of a new phase of development. Originally, the spirit dawned upon itself, spirit and matter are still undifferentiated in each other. Thus, mollusks and worms today show no separate nervous life; sensation permeates all of the unified substance of which they are composed. In the first avatar, the spirit separated from the egg-shaped astral, fine shell of matter and formed a luminous point within it, permeating it with its rays. All development is polar.

And the spirit light generates within itself an even higher spirituality; it brings forth an even finer mental matter – into which the brain later integrates itself – the sentient astral matter is pushed back, enveloping itself protectively at its outermost pole with an even more solid matter, from which the physical matter later develops. This would be the second avatar, the second metamorphosis of the deity, which the Rosicrucian chronicle expresses in the following words:

And feeling escaped from the body of water, drawing to itself the solidity that slumbers in the waters. The material solidity became the suffering of feeling. Trembling, the garment was adapted to the life of the world soul; the soul created harmony in the trembling garment.

The symbol of remembrance of the second avatar is Kurma, the turtle (amphibian). That is why Paracelsus saw animals in the amphibians that are even closer to the deity in their nature. Second third of the second round.

In the third metamorphosis of the Logos, spirituality withdraws even more into itself, astral matter expands, becomes stronger and more solid, and the developing human being lives completely in its powerful strength and might, while the spirit is in a state of slumber. The astral substance first had to become resistant in full selfhood in order to be overcome again later.

The symbol of remembrance for the third avatar, at the beginning of the third round, is called Varaha, the boar. The Rosicrucian Chronicle says:

The Keide should be firm against the storms of the material: it should be a strong cover for its spiritual Lord, and in

Therefore the soul of the world clothed itself in the garment of strong animality.

In the fourth avatar (first third of the fourth round) this beast-man became ruler. Giant in his power of matter, he drew all spirituality into himself and made himself lord of it, protecting it with his mighty strength. A small part remained as a warner, and united with the All-Soul the Soul was symbolized as a dwarf – the Nara-simha, the man-lion's power.

And the strong animality became the Self, self-power streaming through the loins of matter, repelling the power of the enemy from the tender spirit-self that slumbers as a warner in the strong animality of the man-lion.

But the dwarf of the spirit, Vamana, pours his invigorating power through the limbs of the giant, guides him and makes himself the ruler of the man-lion, just as the giant Goliath was ruled by the dwarf David. And now the warner, too, is drawn completely into the material world and loses the last connection with the universal soul. Man is now completely left to his own resources and has reached the extreme degree of separation. In the beginning this spirit, separated in the material, fights in selfishness and arbitrariness against the other separated spirits; it becomes unrestrained because the Warner is missing and the guidance. It is the physical man, and the fifth avatar reads:

And the Warner became the ruler of the strong beast-like nature of man-lion. The dwarf conquered the giant's mighty strength: and he awakened spirit-life in the beast-like nature's massive limbs.

Now the sixth avatar appears as the first lawgiver, and the law now severely punishes the abuse of the warrior's strength. It is the epoch of Parashu-Rama (father of Rama). He leads the warriors and bends them under the harsh but good law.

Sixth Avatar:

From now on, the body's loins should not stretch without the spirit life's judgment. Such stretching, alien to the spirit, would become evil. The spirit life stepped into the midst of the loin-gifted warriors, and the good law wanted to punish the forces alien to the spirit.

Now, as the seventh metamorphosis of the Logos, Rama, the son of Parashu-Rama, appeared, and he softened the hardness and strictness of the commandments in love, and the warriors loved the law in willing obedience. He was the first legendary ideal king of the Indians and all other peoples.

Seventh Avatar:

The spirit's compulsion was strict and stern. So it gave birth to gentleness within itself. In love, hard law was dissolved.

Now Krishna appeared as the eighth incarnation of the god, teaching people to feel love as bliss and living as an example of bliss:

And the seed of love blossomed and bore the fruit of love, which is called bliss. And bliss itself was human.

Up to this point, the human life was an ascent to the height of Budhi, of bliss, but now the path had to be traveled down again, to learn wisdom and to release Manas through work, through karma, and to connect it with Budhi. And so Buddha appeared as a guide and archetype, so far ahead of human development to show them the way. Thus is the name of the ninth avatar: Buddha.

And Bliss sent her son to Earth, who is called the Embodiment of Wisdom. And she dwelled in the mortal body of the king's son. — Buddha.

The tenth avatar: that is, he who is to come; Kalki, says the Indian. The Rosicrucian Chronicle reads:

But when the times are fulfilled, the eye opens, and the destiny of man becomes luminous within, let the luminous figure choose as guide: then destiny itself becomes law and loving volition. He whose eye opens sees living roses growing from the cross.

For the Rosicrucians, Christ was this coming one, Christ as the ever-evolving crystallization into the shining example of evolving humanity, who as Jesus took upon himself human karma and remains connected to the karma of Christianity through ever new incarnation, guiding and directing it until the end of this race.

All the life legends of the Nirmanakayas, the teachers of humanity, are similar, they follow a certain pattern: life, temptation, sacrificial death and transfiguration, chosen for the common purpose of descending into matter: Zarathustra, Hermes, the Druid teachers, Buddha, Christ. The lives of Jesus and Buddha are the same until the transfiguration; from here on, there is a change, and Christ descends the deepest into matter, for he has been given a special task. When Mahaguru's individuality incarnated as Buddha, his teachings had led to misunderstandings and divisions; he had given too much. Once again, Buddha had to incarnate as Shankaracharya, and it was from him that the Tibetan teachers, the Mahatmas, were then trained. These teachers handed over the teaching of theosophy to the public in part, in order to convey to the various religions the esoteric content that underlies them all, and to raise the fallen spiritual level of humanity. When the individuality of the Mahaguru incarnated in Christ, he did not choose, as was his custom, a virgin embryonic matter, pure and free of karma, but descended lower, in order to bring, in full brotherhood with humanity, the densest matter to spiritual transfiguration, laden with karma, as flesh from their flesh. Thus the mystery of Christ came about: that the Mahaguru took possession of the body of a lower Mahatma, a chela of the third initiation, the thirty-year-old Jesus, whose body had already passed through life and formed karma. From now on, the great teacher of humanity appeared as Christ. Up to the transfiguration, the life of Jesus resembles that of the Buddha, but from here the tragedy of the Christ begins. He was destined to experience death on the cross and resurrection in an exemplary and public way, in his own body, which otherwise were only carried out symbolically in seclusion. Through this sacrifice, he was also to uplift the masses and lead them towards redemption from lower matter. Thus, on the one hand, Buddha stands on a higher level because he remained untouched by the lower matter and only taught, and on the other hand, Christ stands higher because he made the greater sacrifice and, by descending into the densest physical matter, brought it back spiritualized.

Christ did not leave any records like other great teachers of mankind. His task was to live these teachings, which were already present, to live in an exemplary way for humanity and thus to release the mystery teachings in order to bring as much of humanity as possible to a faster spiritual evolution. Thus he made the greatest sacrifice for humanity: his enlightened spirit descended into the darkest matter.

The Bhagavad Gita, which contains the most sublime teaching of virtue in the Indian world view in poetic form, is a self-contained episode from one of the most famous and oldest of the two great heroic epics of the Indians, the Mahabharata, which means the great war.

What the Homeric poems are to the Greeks and the Nibelungenlied to the Germanic peoples, that is the Mahabharata to the Sanskrit people. Its core is formed by the ancient war songs and heroic sagas from the time of the great migration and the conquest struggles on the Ganges. The origins of this poetry go back to the 10th and 11th century BC and provide a faithful portrait of the mores of this, the most ancient of India's heroic ages. These descriptions are based as much on historical facts and personalities in poetic guise as on other folk songs.

The centerpiece is the struggles of the two related clans of the Kurus and Pandus, which end with the decline of the heroic age of the Kurus. The Bhagavad Gita is the account of a wonderful religious and philosophical conversation between the hero Arjuna and Krishna, the incarnate God. The luminous and exalted wisdom teachings and the extremely finely differentiated capacity for feeling and discernment in the most subtle ethical questions not only suggest that our tribal ancestors had an unrivaled culture in this area, but they also seem like direct revelations of the divine spirit. Wilhelm von Humboldt was so moved by the incomparable beauty and depth of this poetry that he exclaimed enthusiastically: “It is worth living so long to get to know such a poem.” At the beginning, the two hostile armies face each other ready for battle. Arjuna the hero has his golden chariot, drawn by white steeds, steered into the middle of the battlefield to take a closer look at the battle-hungry enemies. But when he discovers blood relatives in their ranks, fathers, sons, grandsons, cousins and brothers, who are about to kill each other in a rage, his noble heart trembles in wild sorrow, and overwhelmed by compassion, his already tensed bow falls away from him. He shudders at the thought of bloodshed, preferring to renounce glory and kingship rather than incur this sin; he would rather die at their hands than be responsible for the death of one of his relatives. But Krishna approaches the fainthearted man and settles the fight within him by explaining to him his duties as a warrior, his dharma. Arjuna the hero is the human being, and his inner being is the battlefield where the hard struggles of the soul are fought. Torn between the earthly and heavenly parts of our mental life, in the conflict of feelings, plagued by anxious doubts, we often do not know where to turn, what our duty is. For every special being has its own special duty, its dharma, which it must recognize.

What does the Indian mean by “Dharma”? Dharma has many meanings, but they are all complementary and interrelated. Dharma is closely linked to karma; they are related to each other like fruit and seed. Dharma is the result of past karma, of past activity, and Dharma is the present creative principle within us, again creating the karma of the future. Dharma is the guiding force of our own thoughts and actions, our own personal truth. It denotes our inner nature, characterized by the degree of development achieved; it is the law that determines growth for the future period of development, the continuous thread of life. Like ring upon ring, incarnation follows incarnation, a continuous chain. Dharma is our past, present and future at the same time and works in us as father, mother and son. The Father as the Overself, as the higher self, as one's truth and law; the Mother as the developing being and the Son as the future. An incarnation is worthless and lost if it does not become a stepping stone to higher development through activity; likewise, striving and desiring perfection that has not been acquired through previous activity is futile. There is no leap in development; we patiently weave our way through the loom of time, garment upon garment. What has been practiced in a past stage becomes a predisposition in a future one, and activity in an earlier period becomes skill in a later one.

It is always difficult for us to find our own dharma, the law of our personal existence, to fulfill the commandment “know thyself”. It takes a long time to become accustomed to being able to immerse ourselves in ourselves, uninfluenced by the things of the sensual world, by our own desires and admired role models, and to listen to the inner voice that shows us the path of our duty, which our position, our relationships, the circle into which we were born impose on us. When we correctly recognize the level of our being, our degree of imperfection, when we become quite clear about what the truth and duty is at our level of development, then self-knowledge does not serve selfishness, but that is Dharma, because Dharma is the observance of the law in the sense of true self-knowledge. We then find our personal note and can make it resound powerfully in the eternal harmony of the world. We must learn to understand our intimate connection with the cosmos, as a part of it; our vibrations must harmonize with the rhythmic movement of the cosmos. Injustice and sin are nothing more than disharmony, when our irregular vibrations cause disruptions and disturbances in the lawful course of cosmic events. The more we feel at one with the cosmos, the more it will reveal to us. Only the spirit speaks to us, which we have learned to understand. According to the extent of our knowledge, divine inspiration is bestowed upon us, the higher self, which is of divine nature, reveals itself to us.

We can only recognize a part of that great, eternal truth, to the extent and magnitude that we have brought it to manifestation in us through our own activity, through our karma. Life after life, this scope increases in our process of development, we progress in knowledge and insight, for it is our destiny to gradually absorb the whole conceptual content of our world, our cosmos, into ourselves. We can never do this without gradually experiencing the whole richness of the world of phenomena. Nature lives in us when we fully grasp it. Calm, peace and contentment with one's life must overcome everyone who clearly recognizes that he has been born into the circle for which he had prepared himself through his past karma and which he must now fulfill with all his loyalty and exhaust in its entirety through his activity. In this way he has gained a field of knowledge through his own life and is now working in his own line to expand it, in order to create higher and better conditions of existence for himself in the future. And so he will also reach out his hand in loving understanding to his brother, who is trying to climb up under him on the ladder of beings, to help him, because he himself was still on the same rung not so long ago, struggling laboriously upwards, stretching out his hands to his brothers who had gone before him.

Thus we see how each of us has different duties, how clearly we must learn to distinguish in order not to be led astray, to maintain our balance, to follow our law. With wise foresight, the high leaders and enlightened kings had divided the Indian people into castes. As cruel as this may seem to us Westerners, who are accustomed to freedom and unrestricted choice, there is a deep meaning behind this strict compulsion. The caste system of the ancient Indians corresponds entirely to the natural division of the human race. Each person is born through his own karma into the caste appropriate to him; he must first fulfill the full range of duties within that caste before he becomes ripe for a new incarnation in the next higher caste. As long as one's judgment is still undeveloped at a lower level, one must learn obedience; one must acquire the virtues of loyalty and devotion through service, and so the caste of the Sudra is the school for unconditional obedience and subordination – these practiced virtues that make one capable of self-conquest, self-determination, and a loving and mild rule.

In the second caste, the Vaisya, man, engaged in agriculture and animal husbandry, will enter into the most intimate relationship with the surrounding nature. He will learn to work the soil with the sweat of his brow, he will sow and reap and thus produce food for his fellow brothers; he will practice all the virtues of a farmer. Then he will become a merchant, engage in trade and industry, accumulate riches and undergo many of the vices of his class. It is only through selfishness and avarice that he will often learn the first wisdom of economics and the proper use of his wealth for the benefit and worship of his fellow citizens. When he has learned his lesson to perfection at this level, he will be born as a Kshatriya in the next incarnation, in the warrior caste. Here he must use his powers to protect and defend his homeland; he must gain strength through courage and bravery and self-denial to be able to face any danger. He can only do this if he is prepared to sacrifice his life to duty at any moment. The warrior must give up his physical life, then his soul acquires the spirit of self-denial and is the creator of an ideal. The body is solely intended to help the development of the inner life; it must disappear when the soul needs a new body, that is, a more suitable garment for its advanced development. War is the school that must be passed through to reach that highest caste of the Brahmins, for whom - at their level of development and knowledge - fighting and killing is a mortal sin. “Kill your enemy” is commanded to the Kshatriya, but he knows that he can never truly kill one of his brothers nor be killed by him, as Krishna says to Arjuna in consolation.

Only by attaining the highest perfection in all the duties of the other castes does one become qualified to enter the Brahmin or priestly caste. The Brahmin must keep away from fighting and quarrelling; he collects and guards the highest goods of humanity, he is its spiritual leader and teacher. He imparts peace and wisdom and knowledge to his weak brothers, and in him rest all the experiences of the past centuries as an ability to guide humanity to its eternal destiny.

Thus we see how each stage of development must fulfill its own dharma. What is considered good at one stage must be avoided as evil at the other stage. Good and evil have their place in the eternal world order; in it they lose the meaning that we attach to them. They are necessary because they are the poles of development, they have emerged from a single origin. Good and evil, action and reaction, condition and complement each other like sleep and waking, like rest and activity, like light and shadow, like brightness and darkness, and they belong to each other like spirit and matter. It is Atma as purest light, the original source of all being, and Aima as its mirror image, darkest point and germinal power in the densest matter, which gives the impetus for the development and refinement of matter in the eternal change of form structures, until the contrariness has risen to the light source of the spirit and reunites with its starting point in Nirvana. From the original unity of world harmony, the eternal reason of all things, being, contrast breaks away – the eternal becoming of matter, which develops out of itself and upwards in countless changing forms to fulfillment, in order to merge from the diversity of appearances, the many, back into a unity, enriched with the countless experiences of the separate units. With Nirvana, the circle closes: the beginning and return to the eternal original spirit.

For the Western world view, which sees the highest goal in the development of the present being, Nirvana means nothingness. However, there is nothing of what is considered a perfect being in Nirvana. Nirvana is the nothingness of karma; no more karma can arise because Dharma has become apparent.

Past worldviews looked at what is not yet, and the present being was an imperfect transition to something higher. They saw every state of activity as an intermediate link between imperfection and absolute perfection in Nirvana. The goal and ideal for them was the state of an entity that has revealed all its dharma and thus burned its karma and enters nirvana.

[The beginning of the statement is missing.]

When the selfless stream returns to its starting point in two cyclical outpourings and matter dissolves again, nothing has happened but that it returns enriched to its origin. Only by absorbing and overcoming the selfish current will the unselfish current develop such a strongly vibrating power that it must go beyond itself, that is, beyond the cosmic circle that forms the first meeting of the two currents. A new region will be born out of the selflessness, called forth by it: Paranirvana, the negative matter, because in contrast to matter held within the cosmic circle by attraction, it spreads outwards. One can visualize the process by imagining the swinging of a pendulum. The pendulum swinging forward will immediately swing back and, if it is not stopped by obstacles in its path, will swing so strongly that it goes beyond its starting point – just as a cart rolling forward cannot suddenly stop, but must roll a little further.

With this preparation and gradual development of matter, the material components for a planetary formation would now have been created, but planetary life itself cannot yet arise. So the Logos could not remain in paranirvana; he had to return, and on this return journey he formed the maha-paranirvana region. From here, the Logos had to make the sacrifice and begin the cycle through matter again, so that other life, besides himself, but out of him, could arise.

All life in manifold forms has emerged from the unity, the one Logos. In him, all diversity still rests undivided, undifferentiated, hidden. As soon as he becomes recognizable, perceiving himself as self, he emerges from the absolute, from the undifferentiated, and creates the non-self, his mirror image, the second logos. He animates and invigorates this mirror image; it is his third aspect, the third logos.

Thus, the first Logos would be the undifferentiated, in which life and form rest undivided, to be regarded as the Father. Time begins with his existence; he separates his reflection from himself, the form, the feminine, which he fills with his life, the second Logos; and from this inspiration, the third Logos emerges as son, as animated form. Thus, all religions have conceived of their God in threefold form, as Father, Mother and Son. Thus Uranus and Gäa, the maternal Earth; and Kronos, Time, emerged from her womb as a son; Osiris, Isis and Horus and so on.

The sacrifice of the Logos is: the spirit descends into matter, animating its reflection, and thus the world of animated forms is also given its existence, all of which lead their special existence and go through the cycle of evolution in order to become one again with the Logos as the most highly developed individualities, who receive the wealth of experience through them. If He had not poured Himself out to animate all these forms, there would be no independent growth and development. All movement, all becoming would have no life of its own; it would only stir and move according to the direction of God.

Just as people are only interested in the unknown, the individual, about people, and are indifferent to anything they can calculate and understand, so too the Logos can only take joy in independently developing life that emerges from it, for which it sacrifices and devotes itself.

The process of development of matter begins, in which the qualities of the being are reflected and are effective until these reflections begin their activity as separate forms and thus spiritualize and animate matter more and more until it becomes one again with the being Atma, Budhi, Manas... [space]

First, the cosmic basis was created by the coming together of the two qualities of selfhood and selflessness of the first Logos. Through the second current of the same, guided by harmony, the atomic essence was formed. This enveloped itself with the already existing mother substance, and the atom was formed. These atoms, with their shells of varying degrees of density, gradually formed matter, which could serve as a medium for the second Logos, which is the mirror image of the first, to give up its mirror image of the same. The second Logos now flows into this matter, which, on its first, the nirvana level, is of such a fine texture that it can flow through it unhindered and unchanged. It now reaches the region of Budhi; here it is detained, and even if in this region selflessness is so strong that it does not want to retain the Logos for its realm, it still claims it for its entire cosmos. Here the sacrifice of the Logos begins, the voice, the sound emerges from it: it wants to animate matter with its spirit, so that its thoughts shall have their existence as independent forms. Here, where the divine thought becomes sound and voice, in the sphere of Budhi, is the divine realm for the Middle Ages. Enveloped in Budhi, the Logos now flows into the mental region, which is divided into the stages of Arupa and Rupa; the divine world of thought now pours into this region, the exemplary ideas surge through each other. What later becomes a special being and still rests enclosed in the Logos in the Budhi sphere is called into existence here as an exemplary idea. This Arupa level of the mental sphere is the world of ideas of Plato, the world of reason of the Middle Ages. On the Arupa level, these ideas take on their first forms. As divine geniuses, they begin their special existence and float around together, still penetrating each other as similar spiritual beings. This is the heavenly realm of the Middle Ages.

These spiritual beings now enter the astral sphere; here, enveloped in a denser substance, they awaken through touch; only now do they feel themselves as separate beings, they feel the separation. It is the elemental realm, the world of the elemental. Having descended into the etheric sphere, this sensation is pushed out from within, it swells up, expands and grows through the etheric vegetative power, only to be enclosed and crystallized by physical matter, because here the ego is still striving mightily for limitation. Thus is the sensation enclosed in the mineral kingdom and the divine ideas sleep in sublime calm in the chaste rock. The stone - a frozen thought of God: “The stones are mute. I have placed and hidden the eternal creator word in them; chaste and shameful, they hold it locked within themselves.” So reads an old Druid saying, a prayer formula. In the Middle Ages, the etheric and physical realms, or mineral kingdom, were called microcosm or the small realm.

As it flowed in, the Logos surrounded itself with ever denser shells until it had learned to define itself firmly in the rock. However, the stones are mute; they cannot reveal the eternal creative word. The rigid physical shell must be cast off again; it remains in its realm, while now the crystalline forms in their soft etheric shell expand, growing from within, that is, being able to live, because life is growth; the stone becomes a plant. And ascending further, the Logos also sheds this etheric shell and arrives at the astral sphere of sensation. Here, through the interaction of touch and perception, activity unfolds; the sentient animal existence is formed out of sensation and will. In this way, the animal gradually develops its organs of perception, with the stimulus from outside acting as a sensation within. The types are formed. Crossing over into the mental realm, this sensation perceives itself, and with the consciousness of self, the stage of humanity is reached.

From the cosmic point of view, the Logos' descent into the mineral kingdom marks its deepest descent into matter, and the casting off of the first shell marks the beginning of the Logos' ascent. Seen from the point of view of man, however, in the anthropocentric sense, as adopted, among others, by the ancient Druid priests, the resting of the spirit in the chaste rock would be an exalted stage of existence. Untouched by selfish will, the stone obeys only the law of causality. For the human being at the lower mental level, at which we now stand, the rock would be a symbol of higher development. Through lower, earthy passions and trials, we develop into an ethereal plant existence, living and growing from within in selfless self-evidence, in order to later live in our causal body, untouched by anything outside, as pure spirit resting within ourselves, like the crystallized spirit enclosed in stone.

The second Logos, as the mover and animator of the matter in which it is enclosed, has only reached as far as the lower mental sphere. Through self-awareness, the sentient animal has reached the human stage of existence. It is able to relate the external world to its personality; it perceives itself. Nature has led and guided him so far, but here she leaves him alone and in freedom. The further development of man now depends solely on his will. He must make himself the vessel, strip off the outer shell of the lower mental sphere, so that he can now receive the inflow of the first Logos, just as the seed opens and waits for fertilization, without which it cannot grow and bear fruit.

The first logos is the eternal in the universe, the immutable law according to which the stars move in their orbits, the basis of all things. The individual forms are subject to destruction and change. We perceive colors with our sensory vision that may appear different to another vision. The external, solid object, which is held together by its parts in a certain form, can disappear at a certain temperature, its parts can dissolve, but the law according to which it has become remains and is eternal. Thus the whole universe moves according to eternal laws, the first logos flows spread out in it. Man must raise himself up to him with his will. He must develop in himself the selfless lower soul knowledge (Antahkarana). He must perceive through pure contemplation this eternal immutable law in the transitory; he must learn to distinguish what is only a transitory phenomenon in a particular form and what is its essential core; he must absorb and preserve what he has seen as a thought. Thus he gradually becomes acquainted with the unreal in the world of phenomena; the thought becomes for him the real; he gradually ascends to the stage of Arupa, he lives in the pure world of thought. The many dissolves for him and merges in the One; he feels himself one with the All. Thus he has raised himself so high that he can receive the inflow from the first Logos directly as intuition. But not to every individual soul does a single soul flow in this way; no, it is the All-Soul, it is the soul of Plato and others, in which he shares, with whom he becomes one in thought. Gradually, the higher man develops from the lower.

At this turning point, where he is to rise up in freedom through his will, he needs a teacher, and that is why the Sons of Manas descended and incarnated in the third race of the fourth round, the Lemurian period, to serve as guides. With the simple act of counting, with the understanding of numbers, mental development began and distinguished the thinking human from the animal, which only senses through the senses.

In the wisdom schools of Plato and Pythagoras, students were only allowed to penetrate to the higher sources of knowledge after studying mathematics. Eternal wisdom was only revealed through pure selflessness, and mathematics was the only science that could educate people to this, because it serves no purpose, no selfish satisfaction, and only teaches the pure relationships, the pure laws of the basic forms.

Man's development is a descent from the All-Unity to the particular and a gradual ascent in conscious freedom to the realization of his connection with the All and return to the General. Therefore, from the mental point of view, the dead stone is a model of the higher for man. In it the great connection is still preserved; in it only the law of causality is effective; what sets it in motion, it gives to the outside world. It extends from the mental into the physical, for pure thought is enclosed within it. Its life is only form. Thus the sun, which as a physical image of the Logos is at home in the mind, and the whole mineral kingdom can be regarded as a great laboratory of physical and chemical forces.

With the plant, which has its origin one stage lower, in the astral, life begins and with it the process of isolation. It draws nourishment into itself from outside in order to increase in size; it wants to grow and spread. It is the beginning of egoism. However, the plant can develop one stage higher; it develops from the astral through the physical realm up to the etheric sphere. The animal that arises in the etheric sphere already feels, it not only wants food to grow, it wants to take from the outside world that which creates pleasure for itself and appropriate it. It feels life as pleasure and suffering; it rises and develops to the astral.

And man as such, who has his origin in the physical and, as a creature of nature, has reached the point of perceiving the outside world and perceiving himself as an individual, is at his lowest in his egoism, yet he can elevate himself in thought to the mental sphere, although he can only perceive in the physical, because he lives with his brain and his visible body in the mineral kingdom. But he carries all the elements of the universe within him, he has passed through all the realms, and the powers of all rest in him as principles; he can consciously develop them from within himself. What we see is the physical body, it belongs to the mineral kingdom, but through prana, the life principle, it also lives in the etheric sphere of the plant world, it has its etheric body; and further, it also lives through sensation in the astral world, in its astral body, and through rational perception in the mental world, through the kama-manas principle. In the lower world, man possesses four bodies with the principles. But he is also connected to the higher world, since he has his origin there. He can develop his mental body and advance from the conception of the individual and the many to the idea of the type; he can develop the causal body and ascend to the higher world of the trinity of manas-budhi-atma. In the sphere of Budhi he will form his thoughts out of astral matter, he will be able to create the Mayavi-rupa body, he will live and work out of his causal soul, be a creator himself and become one again with the totality.

This upper trinity, to which man must develop, is, however, in truth deeply hidden within him, it underlies his being; he must liberate it in succession – “As above, so below”. The multiplicity that we see is nothing other than the principle of unity, the Logos, which has dissolved into multiplicity. Disharmony can only arise in multiplicity because the many separateness, which are all parts of the spirit, can come into conflict with each other. When this multiplicity reunites to form a whole, our cosmos becomes a whole again, it becomes the Logos again, harmony. “As above, so below!” – Atma, the highest principle in our cosmos, in our mineral kingdom, to which we count the stars with their orbits and all the stars and all the forces in nature, has at the same time penetrated the deepest into matter; our physical organs are essentially animated and held together by Atma. Atma as the highest principle has its counterpart in the physical realm.

The Budhi principle has only penetrated into the etheric and astral spheres, forming the essence of the plant and animal world, their etheric and astral bodies. When man, originally still in connection with the divine geniuses, forming a whole with them, separated into an individual being in the astral sphere and attained to ego-consciousness through imagination, then Manas, the third principle, descended into the astral sphere: united with Kama, enclosed in the brain of man, he formed his Kama-Manas body. Man has passed through all realms on the descending arc of his development. We carry Atma as a mineral cosmos within us; it is our physical body; Budhi as a living, sentient cosmos in our prana and kamakörper; and Manas, in its connection with Kama, forms our Kama-Manas-body. He is the fourth principle in the lower world and at the same time forms the transition to the higher mental world. It is the connecting bridge to it. When freed from all lower sheaths, manas reunites with budhi in selfless radiance into the universal.

Of all the entities, the human being is most deeply immersed in egoism and a separate existence. He has absorbed everything and carries the whole trinity of Atma-Budhi-Manas within himself. In the mineral kingdom, Atma is spread out; it rests in its entirety in the rock, which is still directly connected to the cosmos. In the plant and animal world, dualism is already present; Budhi penetrates into the etheric and astral worlds, and the plant and animal world is built from life and sensation. Manas, wisdom, hovers above them and brings about the wisdom that is expressed in nature, in the wonderful conformity to law of the structure of all animals' rational actions. But man draws Manas into himself. Wisdom can no longer affect him from the outside. Bound up with Kama, enclosed in his mental body, wisdom is clouded for him. Man is a condensation into the single form of chemical-physical processes that take place in the mineral cosmos. Man is also active in the astral world through his feelings, desires and passions. He ceaselessly creates astral beings in that sphere, which have a truly living, material existence there, because the matter of the astral world consists of surging sensations such as envy, hatred, goodwill, anger and so on. There, the beings created by human feelings lead their special existence as elemental beings; there are also beings from other worlds that require the astral sphere for their development, and then there are the astral bodies of the souls awaiting their human incarnation. Furthermore, there are the devas, who also come from other worlds and often seek to influence people. There are the four Deva-Rajas, who form the physical bodies according to the astral scheme from the four elements of fire, water, air and earth, which the Lipikas, the lords of karma, have formed from the mental substance of the individuality.

The higher development of man depends on conscious concentration and meditation, which must be practiced daily and carried out according to certain rules. By detaching himself daily, in the morning hours, even if only for five minutes, from all impressions of the outside world and directing all his concentration to a revealed thought of eternity, he will gradually connect with the cosmos and take part in its rhythmic movement. Through this consistent daily retreat from the transitory world of appearances, for the short time of his meditation, man gradually ascends to the Arupa sphere. By thinking through a sentence that contains an eternal universal truth, so that it takes on life, the human being draws out its entire content and absorbs it. The control of thought and meditation, strictly practiced daily, must not serve the individual's own education and expansion of the mind; it must be done with the awareness that in doing so we are helping and working with the development of our cosmos. All our uncontrolled, “real” thinking constantly disturbs this regular process. The person who wants to develop his astral senses must also learn to control his feelings and awaken in himself a sense of reverence for the wisdom of highly developed beings; and he must cultivate a devotional surrender, in proper appreciation of the distance to that higher wisdom. Every evening, the person practicing meditation should review the past day, look upon failures without regret or remorse, and learn from them in order to benefit from the experiences and improve. Meditation should not be forced; it should not separate the person from their surroundings or change their usual existence. On the contrary, the person should surrender to their nature without worry. He will learn more from the collection and overview at the end of the day than if he tried to force himself to become a better person.

If man wants to ascend to higher development, where the first Logos flows into the second, he must become a chela and develop the qualities of a chela within himself. He must gradually develop four main qualities within himself:

First: the power of discrimination, the distinction between the permanent and the transitory; that is, man must learn to recognize in the transitory, in that which he perceives, the formative power that is permanent. All things that our senses perceive have an inherent power that seeks crystallization, just as salt, which is dissolved in warm water, [forms crystals when the water cools]. The arable soil is ground crystal, the seed contains the power to become a plant and fruit, and the vertebral bone has the potential to develop into a skullcap. Thus the lancelet, which consists only of the spinal column, is a miniature image of the first living, sentient form in which the Logos manifested itself. The enormous first fish, which consisted only of a gelatinous mass, is the ancestor that carried in its vertebrae the possibility for the development of amphibians, fish, mammals and humans. Thus, the physical human being is to be understood only as a temporary phenomenon that changes its mineral substances daily and whose sense organs will not remain as they are today, but will adapt to the higher human stages of development and carry the power of transformation within themselves.

The second quality to be developed is the appreciation of what is lasting. Knowledge becomes perception. We learn to value what is lasting more highly than what is passing, which increasingly loses its value in our estimation. And so the developing chela is led by the development of the first two qualities to the third by itself, to the development of certain soul abilities.

a) Thought control.

The chela must not allow himself to look at things from only one point of view. We grasp an idea and consider it to be true, while in fact it is only true from that one aspect or point of view; we must later also look at it from the opposite point of view and hold up the reverse side to every obverse. Only in this way do we learn to control one thought with another.

b) Control of actions.

Man lives and acts in the material world and is placed in the temporal. He can only comprehend a small part of the world of phenomena and is bound by his activity to a certain circle of the transitory. Daily meditation helps the chela to focus and control his actions. He will consider only the enduring in them and place value only on the action with which he can helpfully serve the higher development of his fellow human beings. He will lead the abundance of the phenomenal world back to the highest unity.

c) Tolerance.

The chela will not allow himself to be dominated by feelings of attraction and repulsion. He will seek to understand all - criminals and saints - and although he experiences emotionally, he will judge intellectually. What is correctly recognized as evil from one point of view can be judged as necessary and logical from a higher aspect.

d) Tolerance.

Accepting good and bad fortune with equanimity, not letting them become determining powers that can influence us. Not letting joy and pain push us out of our direction. Keeping oneself free from all external influences and influxes and asserting one's own direction.

e) Faith.

The chela should have a free, open, unbiased heart for the higher spiritual. Even where he does not immediately recognize a higher truth, he should have faith until he can make it his own through knowledge. If he wanted to proceed according to the principle of “testing everything and keeping the best,” he would apply his judgment as a standard and place himself above the higher spiritual, closing himself to its penetration.

f) Equilibrium.

The last soul ability would result as the outcome of all the others as equilibrium, as a sense of direction, soul balance. The chela gives direction to himself.

And so he would now have to develop the fourth quality within himself: the will to freedom, to the ideal. As long as we still live in the physical, we cannot attain full freedom, but we can develop the will to freedom within us, strive towards the ideal. We can free ourselves from external circumstances and no longer react to external impulses, but make the law within us, the enduring, the guiding principle of our thinking and acting, living not in the passing personality, but in our individuality, which is enduring and strives for unity.

I must first say something that is important for understanding evolution and re-embodiment. Every personality, every individuality must live through the devachan up to the Arupa sphere in order to obtain the continuous, unified 'thread [through several earth lives].

A personality as exalted as Nicholas of Cusa was already active in ordinary life from the Arupa sphere. Although every person acts from the Arupa sphere, only a few are aware of it. The higher a person has raised himself in the Arupa sphere in the time between two earthly lives, the more the divine breaks through in him. Cusanus wrote a work about not-knowing out of higher knowledge: De docta ignorantia. Ignorantia means not-knowing, and not-knowing here is equivalent to higher beholding. In his books he stated the following: There is a kernel of truth in all religions, we need only look deeply enough into them. He also stated that the earth moves around the sun. He said this out of intuition. Copernicus only had this realization in the 16th century, Cusanus already in the 15th century. Such an incarnation as that of Cusanus is to be considered in connection with his later embodiment. Cusanus already points on the one hand to future theosophy and on the other hand to future modern natural science. This had an influence on his following incarnation. It was Nicholas Cusanus who reappeared in Copernicus.

It is possible that the memory of past embodiments, which is lost in an incarnation, may be reawakened later, perhaps after one or more incarnations. The means of the causal body can only be used when one awakens in the plane above the causal sphere (in devachan). Every human being must be drawn down from Devachan back into the physical sphere by a force in order to learn abilities there that he has not yet developed. In the highest Arupa level, the person gets to know these forces and thereby gains influence over his later incarnation. He then also takes his life into his own hands to a certain extent. He is an example of regular development.

However, an incarnation does not depend solely on one's own development, but also on the benefit and significance for the whole evolution. The succession of personalities of higher individualities is no longer irregular. For the less developed, embodiment is still irregular. For highly developed individualities, salient qualities will emerge. These include

1. a reverent looking up to the Higher,
2. a calm love for God,
3. becoming in God.

As an example of a regular development of an individuality, we can consider a contemporary of Jesus, Philo of Alexandria. His individuality reappeared as Spinoza and then as Johann Gottlieb Fichte. So here we have one continuous individuality in three personalities. If you read Fichte without knowing about this, you will understand very little. But with this knowledge, you will find that his words are written in fire. All these great minds have undergone a regular development.

Postscript by the editors:

H. P. Blavatsky writes in volume III of the “Secret Doctrine”, section XLI:

“As an example of an adept... some medieval Kabbalists cite a well-known personality of the 15th century – Cardinal de Cusa; as a result of his wonderful devotion to esoteric studies and the Kabbalah, karma led the suffering adept to seek intellectual respite and rest from ecclesiastical tyranny in the body of Copernicus.”

Rudolf Steiner presents this in more detail in the lectures of January 21, February 15 and March 7, 1909 (in “The Principle of Spiritual Economy,” GA 109/111, pp. 1 6, 52/53 and 290), in which he says that the astral body of Nicholas of Cusa has been transferred to Nicholas Copernicus, although Copernicus' I was quite different from that of Cusanus.

Rudolf Steiner also talks about Spinoza and Fichte in the lecture of June 5, 1913 in Helsingfors (GA 158).