The Rudolf Steiner Archive

When discussing on various occasions the spiritual history of recent times I have often mentioned the name of Herman Grimm. I should like to begin this lecture by referring to one instinctive remark amongst many others which Herman Grimm made about the pressing needs of recent history, although he was unable to translate into concrete fact the intuition he instinctively felt. He was opposed to the whole modern approach to historical investigation. He rightly felt that this approach set out unconsciously to exclude the Christ Event from the account of human history, to study history which did not allow for the fact that this Event was a decisive factor in the course of human evolution. He wanted, on the other hand, to establish a method of historical investigation that made the Christ the pivot of the historical development of mankind, a method which would demonstrate how important was the impulse that had entered human evolution through the Mystery of Golgotha. As I have indicated, Herman Grimm had an intuitive perception of what might be called Goethe's “Weltanschauung”, but because he was denied insight into the spiritual world, it remained an instinctive feeling, a presentiment rather, that he was unable to formulate clearly.

It may seem paradoxical to say that the primary aim of historical enquiry is to expunge the record of the Christ Event from the pages of history. None the less this is a fact and is so deeply rooted in the modern outlook that many are at great pains to prevent the real, deeper significance of the Christ Event from finding a place in the history of human progress. Because this instinctive urge is so firmly rooted in the souls of men there is almost total ignorance of the centuries before and after the Mystery of Golgotha. Not that people did not try to arrive at a full understanding of the historicity of the Mystery of Golgotha—when we take into account the many factors I have already referred to in the course of our lectures it is clear that they made serious efforts in this direction—but they sought to invest what had occurred in those early centuries with their own preconceptions, so that they failed to perceive what had really happened during that period. It seems almost as if there is a conspiracy to present the history of these centuries in such a way that people fail to perceive that the events clearly reveal the powerful impact of the Mystery of Golgotha. When we recall how our age that claims to be free of all authority is deeply dependent upon a belief in authority, we can measure its unparalleled success in suppressing virtually all knowledge of what occurred in the evolution of mankind during those centuries. And when a personality such as Goethe appears—and in my last lecture I gave a characteristic example of his approach to nature, an approach which led him directly to a view of the world in which nature and morality are one—then the attempt is made to minimize whenever possible or to reject outright that which, if it were rightly understood in such a personality, would lead to a spiritual-scientific view of the world.

We then experience something very remarkable. I have already spoken of Goethe's dissatisfaction with Linnaean botany. He looked for a botany permeated with spirit. As a result of his investigations he was able to discover the spirit as it is revealed in the plant kingdom, that spirit which the plant kingdom cannot attain in its present form because it cannot fully develop its inherent potentialities. I referred to this in my previous lecture. Goethe therefore tried to penetrate more deeply into the potentialities of the plant kingdom—and of the mineral kingdom as well—more deeply than is possible through sense-perception, for sense-perception can only describe the plant kingdom in its present stage of development. It was most inopportune, therefore, that Haller's view of nature (note 1) should come to the fore in Goethe's day, a view which Haller neatly summed up in the following words: “No created spirit can penetrate into the heart of nature. Fortunate are those to whom she reveals her external shell alone.” To which Goethe replied: “I have heard this refrain now for sixty years and am heartily sick of it. Nature has neither kernel nor shell, she is both at once—a unity. First test yourself and find out whether you yourself are kernel or shell. [original note 1]

Goethe therefore was strongly opposed to Haller's view because behind his vast spiritual background he had an instinctive knowledge which the nineteenth century has attempted to destroy. The scientist of the nineteenth century was only too familiar with Schopenhauer's dictum: “The world is my idea” or “without the eye there can be no colour, no light”. To this Goethe replied quite logically: “It is true that light cannot be perceived without the eye, that without the eye the world would be dark and silent. But, on the other hand, without light there would be no eye; the eye owes its existence to light, it is formed by the light for the light. Out of indeterminate organs light has called forth an organ akin to itself—the eye.” If we pursue the matter further something quite extraordinary emerges.

As I indicated in my last lecture, the plant kingdom was really designed to reproduce spontaneously its own kind by metamorphosis. Fertilization was originally intended to serve a completely different purpose. Goethe had an inkling of this and was therefore delighted with Schelver's theory of a-sexual plant reproduction and had the courage to introduce moral values into his study of plants. He believed that the plant kingdom today exists in a different sphere from the one in which it could have evolved a-sexually by metamorphosis. This decline is due to that momentous event—the Fall of man through the Luciferic temptation. But the forces that would operate in plants if they had been able to fulfil their metamorphosis, that is, if the new individual had been able to develop out of the plant without sexual reproduction—these forces have now become spiritual and are operative spiritually in our environment. These forces are responsible for the sense organs which man possesses today. The words of Lucifer: “Your eyes shall be opened” signified that man would be transported to another sphere where of necessity plants could not develop their full potentiality, but where man's eyes were opened. The action of light was such that, in the Goethean sense, it was able to open men's eyes to the physical world. But this perception of the phenomenal world implied, on the other hand, a loss of spiritual vision. Men could direct their attention to the external world of the senses, but the spirit dwelling in that world could not enter into them; their eyes were closed to the manifestation of the spirit. And thus arose that strange idea which flourished especially in the nineteenth century, namely, that our perception is limited to the sensible world, that we cannot see behind this world. “No created spirit can penetrate into the heart of nature; fortunate are those to whom she reveals her external shell alone.” Man, it was believed, could not penetrate to the inmost core of nature. Only a heightened, purified consciousness could achieve this, and Goethe was aware of it. The strange or rather baleful doctrine arose that man perceives only the evidence of the senses. This doctrine, which is simply destructive in the field of natural science but is useful through its very destructiveness, would, in the field of art, if the artist were to accept an analagous teaching and did not struggle and fight against it, destroy his creative imagination. For this view is identical with the one which declares: Goethe's Faust survives only in books. We read the printed words but Faust is more than the printed words. No one can penetrate into their inner meaning; fortunate are those who are content with their superficial meaning. Now there are certain philologists who are satisfied with the superficial meaning of Faust. The printed words must, of course, be there, but in order to understand Faust one must grasp the meaning behind them, one must not adhere to the superficial meaning. The words must be there but the average reader does not attempt to interpret them. People do not realize that that which has become second nature to us in our materialistic age contradicts the most obvious facts.

We can arrive at a different point of view only if we are to some extent in tune with Goethe's idea. I will quote his words once again: “I have heard this refrain now for sixty years and am heartily sick of it. Nature has neither kernel nor shell; she is both at once—a unity. First test yourself and find out whether you yourself are kernel or shell.”

One of the mysteries of human evolution is that if we reject the Goethean outlook in favour of Haller's, then it is possible that in our survey of history before and after the Mystery of Golgotha we shall miss its true significance. This may sound paradoxical at first, but it is nonetheless true. If we consider the course of history from the antiGoethean point of view, then we see the pre-Christian era in such a way that we recognize that some undefined historical event took place at the beginning of our era, but in that event, the powerful impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha must be realized within ourselves “where no created spirit shall enter”. People fail to perceive that whilst history is moving towards the Mystery of Golgotha, something then intervenes which indicates a decisive turning-point, the most decisive turning-point in human evolution. And they also fail to perceive that the repercussions of this decisive moment are felt in post-Christian history. Instinctively they have felt it necessary to exorcise Goethe's “Weltanschauung”, to prevent it from invading modern thought.

In this instinctive endeavour people often betray themselves unwittingly. In saying this I have no wish to impute blame to anyone for I know the objection will be raised that those who politely dismiss the Goethean “Weltanschauung” from the contemporary view of the world are motivated by the best of intentions. We need only recall the words of Antony in Julius Caesar: “so are they all, all honourable men”. I admit this of course, without hesitation; but what matters is not a man's intentions but what is their effect, what influence they have upon human evolution. Sometimes in their laudable intention to dismiss politely the Christ Event from history by refusing to accept the Goethean way of looking at things, people unwittingly give themselves away. For, if adopted today, the Goethean conception of the world must lead directly to Spiritual Science. I recently came across a pamphlet which has had great influence at the present time. It offers reflections upon history, in particular the history relating to Christ Jesus. The author felt that any possibility of evaluating the Mystery of Golgotha as the decisive turning-point in the history of mankind should be carefully excluded from the study of history. This is only possible if we assume that we cannot plumb the hidden depths of history but must for ever remain on the surface, that we cannot see into the mysterious workings of history. I will read to you the actual words of the author for they are most interesting:

“I must call attention in particular to the fragmentary character of all our historical knowledge, even the most complete. The wealth of information, the facts of past history are in content and extent far beyond the range of our knowledge, even if we were to pursue our investigations for thousands of years. Of the vast canvas of history only a fraction is accessible to the historian, only what is transmitted through source material and records. Everything else that was not transmitted or could not be transmitted because it belongs to the inner life of the spirit, to the hidden sphere of the psychic life, to the inner domain of the personal life, cannot be ‘known’ by the historian; it can only be surmised. And this ‘surmise’, however careful and conscientious our investigation, will at all times be marred by defects and subjective factors. When Goethe says: `No creative spirit can penetrate into the heart of nature’, we must add to this dictum, ‘And nobody can penetrate into the inner recesses of history.’ ”

I have no intention to pass moral judgements. I wish to state quite objectively: thus is Goethe falsified and after so short a space of time! His ideas are distorted; their meaning is reversed and the public is presented with a false picture. And of course the public fails to detect the deception. What I have described here is taken from the book of A. W. Hunziger entitled Christianity in the Ideological Struggle of Today. The whole spirit that runs through this book is identical with the spirit that prevails in the existing anti-Goethe “Weltanschauung”. Here is a case in point which betrays the sense for “truth” in those who have a large public following today. I told you that this author recently gave a course of lectures which prove conclusively that his thinking is uncorrelated, incoherent, totally corrupted, and that he never makes the slightest attempt to probe beneath the surface. I promised to procure a copy here (since I had been obliged to leave the book behind in Dornach) in order to read to you a few samples, which would confirm the discontinuity, the corruption of his thinking, even as the passage I have quoted is evidence of his corrupt interpretation of Goethe. Unfortunately I could not procure a copy; the book is so much in demand that it is temporarily out of print.

Such then is the state of affairs today when we are concerned to know the truth. Therefore it is both necessary and justified solemnly to call attention to what is necessary, and to remind you that behind the words, “change your attitude of mind”, lies something extraordinarily profound, something that carries historical implications if we are prepared to look for them. The words of the Baptist are not only related to what we can learn of human evolution from the standpoint of Spiritual Science, but also to what can be observed historically if we endeavour to make the Goethean “Weltanschauung” a living reality and do not trim it to meet the desires of a philistine public. It then becomes a powerful impulse towards a new understanding of Christianity and leads directly to Spiritual Science.

I can best make clear to you the real issue in human evolution if I remind you of some of the things I have often discussed with you in detail. I have discussed the existence of the Mysteries in pre-Christian times and I attempted to show the purpose of these Mysteries in the book Christianity As Mystical Fact in which I quoted what Plato said about the Mysteries. Today, of course, we can look upon the following utterances of Plato with a condescending smile, the sceptical smile of the philistine: “Those who are initiated into the Mysteries participate in eternal life; the others are doomed.” In the book Christianity As Mystical Fact I purposely drew attention to these words of Plato, for they bear solemn witness to what Plato had to say about the Mysteries.

The great secret of the Mysteries consisted in this: through a special training the neophyte in pre-Christian times was granted insight into what the mineral and animal kingdoms would have become if they had been able to develop their potentialities without interruption. Thus he would have attained to a knowledge of man and would have been able to say: Had the mineral kingdom and animal kingdoms been able to develop their potentialities to the full, then it would have been possible for man to reveal his true nature in the sphere in which he would then have dwelt. When the neophyte had been initiated into the secrets of nature and had been permitted to see man as he was originally designed to be, he underwent a complete transformation. He then realized that the kingdom of the warm-blooded animals, the ligneous plants and the human kingdom do not in their present form reveal their true origin; they remain unexplained, because they do not bear within them any direct evidence of their origin. Thus whilst plants and minerals do not develop their potentialities to the full, men and animals do not disclose their origin.

In pre-Christian times—and the real purpose of the Mysteries testifies to this—it was necessary that certain men should be initiated. In earliest times atavistic clairvoyance was common to all; it was only later, when this atavistic clairvoyance was lost, that it became necessary to initiate certain individuals into the secrets of the external nature of the mineral and plant kingdoms in order to know man as he really is. It is equally necessary today to call attention once again to man's origin, to learn to see him from a new angle, so that he reveals once again his origin and is once again integrated into the whole Cosmos. I attempted to show this, albeit imperfectly, in my book Occult Science: An Outline, in so far as it is possible today. Just as the Mysteries played their part in the pre-Christian era, so Spiritual Science plays its part in our present epoch, the period following the Mystery of Golgotha. It is only when we realize that the Mystery of Golgotha is a decisive turning-point, the frontier between two historical epochs, that we can gradually arrive at a true understanding of this Mystery. And this will become clear to us if we do not allow ourselves to be blinded by anti-Goethean prejudice in our approach to the early years of the first century, if we examine this period with the spiritual insight that Herman Grimm called for, but did not possess himself.

The Mystery teachers, the hierophants of ancient times, knew full well why they insisted upon a special training for those seeking Initiation, and up to a certain point in time this training was mandatory for those who were to be initiated into the Mysteries. And in ancient Greece especially, Initiation was refused to those who had not undergone rigorous training. The neophyte learned to make the right use in his daily life of the secrets imparted to him and the Greek Mystery Schools especially set great store on this. Just as Christ Jesus refused to disclose the Mysteries of the Kingdom to the Scribes and Pharisees and revealed them only to those whom He had chosen as His disciples, so too the Mystery Schools firmly insisted that their teachings should not be divulged to those who were unworthy of them.

At a time when the Mystery of Golgotha was drawing near it was no longer possible to keep secret the Mystery teachings as in former times. The hierophants were in no way responsible for this. The time for hidden teachings was past. It was Imperial Rome that, without warrant, unveiled the secrets of the Mysteries. The time was approaching when the initiate-priests could no longer resist the commands of the Caesars. And the violation of the spiritual life by the Roman emperors is reflected in the events of the time. A man such as John the Baptist had clear foreknowledge of this; for those who have the will to see, coming events cast their shadow before. Only those who refuse to open their eyes remain blind to future events. This foreknowledge is reflected in words which, though often ambiguous, are none the less true in every respect. The words of John the Baptist: “Change your attitude of mind for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand” might be rendered as follows: “Behold, the accumulated wisdom of the ancient Mysteries which brought salvation to mankind is no more, it has been appropriated by Imperial Rome which has also taken Judaism under its wing. Change, therefore, your attitude of mind, do not look for salvation in that which emanates from Imperial Rome, i.e. in the kingdom of the world, but seek it rather in the things that are not of this world. Receive baptism whereby your etheric body is loosened, so that you may see that which cometh after me and which will bring new Mysteries, for the old Mysteries have been appropriated by force.”

In due course the Roman emperors, by Imperial edict, demanded to be initiated into the Mysteries and this became the accepted practice. Augustus was the first to be initiated, but he did not abuse the privilege of Initiation. It was against this practice in particular that John the Baptist protested. He sought to segregate those who wished to be baptized so that they should not look for the future well-being of mankind only in that which emanated from the Roman Empire.

The Emperors who were fully initiated into the secrets of the Mysteries were Caligula, and later, Nero. The fact that Initiates such as Caligula and Nero could acquire knowledge of the Mysteries by force is one of the enigmas of history. Imagine the state of mind of those who realized that this was impending and yet sensed what it signified. Try to enter into the thoughts and feelings of men such as John the Baptist. It would have been natural for them to say: that which must come and will come is the Kingdom of Heaven; it is here that the sacred Mysteries must henceforth be sought, and not in the kingdom of men! History often speaks through its symbols. The Greek philosopher Diogenes went round the market place in Athens carrying a lantern in his hand in search of the “man” who was lost, the “man” who had lost his spiritual vision. Why had this vision been lost? Not because this “man” was unknown, nor because the time was fast approaching when men no longer sought for that which the Mysteries could communicate about the secrets of evolution. Fundamentally, Nero and Caligula were aware of this, but for this very reason it was kept secret. And like John the Baptist, Diogenes felt, in his own way, that the time was approaching when, because the Mystery teachings were known to have been betrayed, “man” would be plunged in darkness and would have to be sought for with a lantern.

Caligula had been instructed how to live in accordance with the teachings of the ancient Mysteries, how to live in accordance with the spiritual principles embodied in those Mysteries. He knew therefore how to command his consciousness between sleeping and waking so that he could communicate with those spiritual Beings known to the ancient Mysteries as the Moon Gods. From the Mysteries he had learned the art of holding converse with the Moon Spirits during sleep. It pertained to the hidden teaching of the ancient Mysteries to know what lay behind ordinary waking consciousness and to discover how this waking consciousness is modified so that a man learns the secrets of consciousness during sleep. Through the fact that he is aware that his individuality inhabits the spiritual world between sleeping and waking, he realizes that his individuality is not only incarnated here on Earth as a being of nature related to other beings of nature, but that it is related to the spiritual world, to the spiritual Hierarchies. When a man knows the secret of the Moon Gods his relationship to the Sun Gods naturally changes also. Owing to the blunting of his waking consciousness by Lucifer he does not perceive the Sun Gods in the surrounding world, but he can perceive them during sleep with his awakened or clairvoyant consciousness. A man such as Caligula knows from his own experience that from the time he goes to sleep until he awakens the human individuality inhabits the spiritual world, and he is also aware that this individuality in its waking consciousness is not only present in the trappings of external nature, that it participates not only in the physical sunlight, but that it dwells among the Spirits associated with the Sun.

But Caligula had not undergone the necessary training to perceive the Sun Spirits. He was able during sleep to commune with the Moon Gods and this is why in his waking consciousness he addressed Jupiter (whom the ancient Greeks looked upon as Zeus in another sphere) as “brother Jupiter”. “Brother Jupiter” was the customary form of address employed by Caligula, for he clearly felt himself to be a citizen of the spiritual world where Jupiter dwelt. He therefore bore himself in such a way that he betrayed by his demeanour that he belonged to the spiritual world. Sometimes he invited homage as Bacchus crowned with oak leaves and with the thyrsus in his hand; at other times he appeared as Hercules with club and lion skin. Or he would appear as Apollo crowned with a nimbus and the (Apollo) bow in his hand, surrounded by a choir singing his praises. He also appeared as Mercury with winged head and caduceus, and as Jupiter. A tragic poet who was considered to be an authority in these matters and was invited to decide who was the greater, Caligula or Jupiter (and for this purpose Caligula had a statue of the god placed beside him) was scourged because he refused to concede that Caligula was the greater.

What do we learn from this judgement of Caligula? It is instructive to associate with it the words uttered by Lucifer at the temptation in the Garden of Eden: “In the day ye eat thereof your eyes shall be opened and ye shall be as gods”—concluding with the words: “and ye shall know good and evil”. The power to distinguish between good and evil was implanted in mankind by a Spirit who could participate in evolution only up to a certain time. This time was now past. It came to an end when John the Baptist first appeared, crying: “The Kingdom of Heaven is at hand.” He did not add, however, the words “and the kingdom of Lucifer is at an end”. John the Baptist, of course, spoke only of the Kingdom of Heaven. Caligula's judgement was clear evidence that the power to distinguish between good and evil no longer existed. When a judicial error had been made on one occasion—an innocent man had been condemned to death because he had been mistaken for the guilty party—Caligula said: “It is of no consequence, because both are equally guilty!” And when Petronius lay under sentence of death Caligula said: “Those who condemned him might just as well be condemned themselves for they are equally guilty.” The power to distinguish between good and evil therefore had already ceased to exist at the time of which I am now speaking. We can ascertain the moment in time when this power to distinguish was lost if we are really prepared to wait upon the events of history.

Nero was a similar type of Initiate to Caligula. Fundamentally he was a psycho-analyst—only not so narrow-minded as many of our contemporary psycho-analysts—but on the grand scale, a man of heroic stature. He was the first psycho-analyst because he supported the doctrine that everything in man is determined by the libido—a doctrine that has been revived again in our day by psycho-analysts. Professor Freud, however, is no Nero; he lacks his stature.

But what John the Baptist knew was also known to Nero. For Nero also knew (and in this respect he differs from Caligula) through his initiation into the Mysteries that man was faced by a dilemma, that the truths, the real impulses of the ancient Mysteries had to a certain extent been lost; they had lost their effectiveness and could be maintained only by external constraint. It was not John the Baptist alone who said that the old world order had come to an end—but it was he who added the words: “Change your attitude of mind, the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand!” Nero also knew that the old order had come to an end, that a decisive turning-point in evolution had been reached. But in addition he was endowed with a diabolic consciousness, he harboured all the demonic impulses of an unworthy initiate. And therefore, like John the Baptist and Christ Jesus, he foresaw the end of the world. If the prophecies of John the Baptist and Christ Jesus concerning the end of the world are rightly understood, there will be no need to interpret them literally in the sense that the world will end at a definite moment in time. We shall realize that the end of the world is already at hand as the Bible prophesied. But you already suspect—and I will say more of this in my next lecture—that the Parousia, the Second Advent, is a reality. Nero knew that a new order was imminent, but it was not to his liking. Hence his characteristic remark that nothing would please him more than to hasten the destruction of the world. I should be delighted, he said, to see the world go up in flames! This was his particular obsession. It was under the impact of this obsession that he ordered Rome to be set on fire. Though historians may doubt his responsibility for the destruction of Rome, it is none the less an established fact. In his delusion he believed that the conflagration would spread far and wide and ultimately engulf the whole world.

I have given a few indications which are intended to show that the world was then nearing its end and would have to begin anew. But in external reality things are interrelated; the old order often persists after the new impulse has already begun to operate. And although since the Mystery of Golgotha the Kingdom of Heaven dwells amongst us, the Roman empire has continued to exist at the same time in a state of continuous decline. And this has led the savants of today, from a wide variety of motives, to emphasize that it is the spirit of the Roman empire, the spirit of the imperialism of the Caesars that persists amongst us today and permeates the early manifestations of Christianity! If we were to pursue the matter further, some strange facts would come to light. In the first place we should discover that the concepts of justice which arose later can be traced back to Roman law, that Roman law which from a Christian point of view is anti-Christian has impregnated the whole of modern life. And we should have to touch upon many other fields of knowledge if we wished to discuss the survival of Roman imperialism down to our own times, and especially if we wished to discuss all that is concerned with the progressive decline of the Roman Empire.

There is something instinctive in the way Roman history is taught in our schools and in the way in which historians who write that “fable convenue” called history today, and particularly the specialists, convey to mankind a knowledge of the Roman empire which excludes the spirit. Consequently they were undeniably successful in one respect—mankind as a whole never realized the full significance of the historic moment when the Cross was raised on Golgotha. They sought, more or less instinctively, to conceal the real meaning of that event. There is little evidence of the courage which is necessary in order to penetrate to the inner meaning of history. Indeed we find that there are authors with a large public following who are prepared to falsify Goethe, in order to give the impression that even his “Weltanshauung” supported the idea that history was merely an external shell. Influences of this nature affect large areas of our psychic life. Consequently not only are we unable to arrive at a right understanding of a particular issue, but our whole life is coloured by such influences and tends to see things in these terms. Therefore men like Goethe remain voices crying in the wilderness. Furthermore they are vilified in that people attribute to them an attitude to knowledge that is diametrically opposed to the one intended.

But we can also see what are the consequences of such influences. We learn much from Karma, even when we try to give knowledge a form that we can present to our fellow men. Yesterday I came across an observation of one of our contemporaries which is closely connected with that living impulse which I described in our discussions of the Mystery of Golgotha. This contemporary has undergone many changes in the course of his development. Finally he was converted to Roman Catholicism and was active in propagating the Catholic faith. And so we have the remarkable phenomenon of a freethinker who publicly bears witness to Christ, and what is more, from the Catholic standpoint. His views on Christ were coloured by his own preconceptions. And the following testimony of the man is characteristic, it is a typical document of our time. Let me read to you this profession of faith of a modern witness to Christ:

“It is a waste of time to look for the after-life. Perhaps it does not even exist. No matter how we approach this problem we are never vouchsafed an answer. Let us leave all occultism to adepts and charlatans. Mysticism of every kind is wholly irrational. Let us submit to the authority of the Church because, supported by the authority and practical experience of centuries, it prescribes the code of ethics” (the Church if you please!) “in which nations and children must be instructed. And finally we must submit to the authority of the (Roman) Church because, far from exposing us to the dangers of mysticism, it definitely protects us against them, silences the voices of the mystic groves” (this is his term for the inspiration that could be received from the spiritual world), “expounds the Gospels for us and tailors the liberal anarchism of the Saviour to the needs of modern society.”

(Barrès).

Here is the confession of a man who was converted from modern materialism to Christianity. He turned to Christianity because it satisfied his ideal and he was able to accept conversion because those sublime impulses which Christ bequeathed to the world had been adapted to, or sacrificed to the needs of modern society. But the sentiments expressed by this Christian witness are more widely shared than people imagine. People feel a pressing need to present the Christ to the world in a form that is acceptable to modern man. And instinctively they seek to conceal from mankind the truth that Jesus’ death was inevitable because Christianity and the Roman empire were incompatible; consequently their co-existence could only lead to the death of Christ. Therefore if we really wish to dwell in a world of light beyond earthly shadows we must ascertain to what extent our modern life is related to a true understanding of Christianity and we must gradually summon up that righteous anger which Christ Himself felt when He had to reply to the frequent objurgations of the Scribes and Pharisees.

I have attempted in this lecture to give you a picture of the happenings in the centuries when Christianity was first established and have drawn your attention to the need to study history in depth, especially that moment of history when the Mystery of Golgotha took place. For this is possible even if we keep within the confines of history alone. But we must develop a sense which will enable us to evaluate the single events of history, a sense for what is important and expressive of the epoch in question and what is unimportant, a sense for those aspects of the various spiritual streams of the past which still persist and where they persist.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. These verses can be found in Goethes Gott und Welt—in the poem Allerdings.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Albrecht Haller (1708–77), born in Bern, was physiologist, botanist, historian and poet. His poem “Die Alpen” describes in realistic detail the Alpine landscape, rural scenes and the unsophisticated life of the Swiss peasant. It is a faithful record of sense-impressions. Goethe protested in “Allerdings” (quoted here from his collection of poems “Gott and Welt”) against the naturalism of Haller which echoed the rationalist philosophy of the Aufklärung, the view that ultimates are inaccessible to human reason, the Kantian view that we can never know das Ding an sich, “the thing in itself”.

We shall the better understand the real nature of the events of today and especially of the immediate future if, from a spiritual angle, we see them as the continuation of the events which took place during the early years of Christianity. This may seem paradoxical today. It is difficult to bring home to the majority of people how certain forces which at that time had been implanted in, and had made a deep impact upon the evolution of the Earth and Man, are still operative today, because, in the present climate of contemporary thought they fail to perceive the deeper impulses, the deep underlying forces that are at work in contemporary events. They prefer to approach everything from a purely superficial standpoint. These deeper spiritual forces are not accessible to mankind today because people are not prepared to investigate them. Anyone who wishes to penetrate a little beneath the surface events of our time will find, in many a published document and in the vicissitudes of fortune that befall those who are unaware of the motives that determine their actions, impulses that are often a continuation, a resurgence of certain impulses that were manifested especially in the early centuries of the Christian era. It is not even possible to characterize the outstanding examples of the resurgence of ancient impulses in our present age because people cannot endure their characterization. But those who study the first Christian centuries in Europe from a certain standpoint will be able to detect the forces that are emerging once again and are actively at work. I have therefore attempted to draw your attention to certain phenomena connected with the expansion of Christianity in the first centuries A.D., because, through the appropriate use of the ideas derived from them, much that is taking place today will immediately become clear to you.

I propose to add further information based upon our recent investigations which we can discuss in detail later. Let us first look at this new material so that our later enquiry may bear fruit.

I have often spoken to you of the remarkable fact that the early Roman emperors acquired Initiation by constraint and this explains many of their actions. Consequently they gained knowledge of certain facts connected with the great impulses of cosmic events, but they exploited this knowledge derived from the Mysteries to their own advantage.

It is most important to realize that the intervention of the Christ Impulse into the historical life of mankind was not merely an event on the physical plane which we can apprehend through a study of the historical facts, but was a genuinely spiritual event. I have already pointed out that the Gospel report that Christ was known to the devils has deeper implications than is usually recognized. We are told that Christ performed acts of healing which are described in the Gospels as the casting out of evil spirits. And we are constantly reminded that the devils knew who Christ was. On the other hand Christ Himself rebuked the devils and “suffered them not to speak for they knew He was the Christ.” (Mark I, 34; Luke IV, 41). The appearance of Christ therefore was not only a matter for the judgement of men. It is possible that at first people did not have the slightest inkling of what the coming of Christ presaged. But the devils—beings belonging to a super-sensible world—recognized Him. The super-sensible world therefore knew of His advent. The more informed leaders of the early Christians were firmly convinced that the coming of Christianity was not merely an event on the terrestrial plane but something that was related to the spiritual world, something which evoked a radical change in the spiritual world. Without a shadow of doubt the leading spirits of early Christianity were firmly persuaded of this.

Now it is a remarkable phenomenon that the Roman emperors, because of their forced initiation which gave insight into the spiritual world, had a presentiment of the far-reaching importance of the Christ Impulse. There were some emperors. however, who despite their irregular initiation, understood little of these secrets; but there were others who understood so much that they were able to divine something of the power and effectiveness of the Christ Mystery. And it was these more talented, the more perspicacious emperors who began to pursue a definite policy towards Christianity which was then gaining ground. Indeed the first emperor to adopt this policy was Tiberius who succeeded Augustus, though the objection might be raised that Christianity was not as yet widely diffused. This objection, however, is not valid for, when he learned of Christ's birth in Palestine, Tiberius—who had received a partial initiation into the ancient Mysteries—realized its significance. Let us consider for a moment that policy towards Christianity which began under Tiberius and was pursued by all the initiated emperors. Tiberius announced his intention to admit Christ to the Roman pantheon.

The Roman empire pursued a deliberate policy towards the worship of the gods. In essence it was as follows: when the Romans conquered a people they received the gods of the newly conquered people into their Olympus. They declared that these gods were also deserving of veneration and they were added to the Roman pantheon. The object of this policy therefore was to appropriate not only the material or temporal goods, but also the spiritual forces of the conquered peoples. The initiated Caesars saw in the gods something more than the mere external images; they had a deeper understanding than the people. They knew that the visible image of the gods concealed real spiritual powers pertaining to the different Hierarchies. Their policy was perfectly consistent and comprehensible, for the authoritarian principle of Rome was consciously reinforced by the power which was believed to derive from the assimilation of other gods. And, as a rule, the worship of other gods was accepted not only in an outward and exoteric way, but the Mystery-teachings of other peoples were also taken over by the Roman Mystery-centres and merged with the Mystery-cult of the ancient Roman empire. And since, at that time, it was generally held that it was neither right nor possible to govern without the support of the spiritual powers symbolized by the gods, this practice was taken for granted.

The aim of Tiberius therefore was to integrate the power of Christ, as he conceived it, with the impulses proceeding from the other deities recognized by him and his peoples. The Roman Senate thwarted his intention and nothing came of it. None the less the initiated emperors, Hadrian among them, made repeated efforts to achieve this goal, but constantly met with opposition from the dignitaries who could make their influence felt. And when we examine the objections raised against this policy of the initiated emperors we can form a good idea of what happened at this decisive turning-point in human evolution.

We witness here a remarkable coincidence. On countless occasions Roman writers, influential personalities and large sections of the Roman populace accused the Christians of profaning what others held to be sacred, and vice versa. In other words, the Romans repeatedly emphasized that the Christians were radically different in thought and feeling from the Romans and other peoples—for the other peoples together with their gods had been assimilated by the Romans. Thus everyone looked upon the Christians as people with a different make-up, people with different feelings and responses. Now this view could be dismissed as a calumny; suchlike accusations are always ready to hand, of course, when one takes a superficial view of history. But we cannot regard this view as a calumny when we realize that many of the opinions of earlier times and many of the contemporary opinions concerning the Mystery of Golgotha have passed over verbatim into Christian teaching. To put it more clearly, the Christians expressed their sentiments in words that could be found amongst many of their contemporaries. One of these was Philo of Alexandria (note 1), a contemporary of Christ, who probably had first-hand knowledge of what was later found in the Christian writings. Philo makes the following remarkable statement: “According to traditional teachings I must hate that which others love” (he is referring to the Romans) “and love that which others hate.” If you bear this statement in mind and turn to the Gospel of St. Matthew, you will find countless passages which echo this statement of Philo. And so we can say that Christianity has developed, as it were, out of a spiritual aura which required people to say, “we love what others hate”. This means—and this saying was quoted in the early Christian communities and served as one of the fundamental principles of Christian teachings—that Christians themselves openly acknowledged what others reproached them with. It was not therefore a calumny; it accorded with the Roman view: “the Christians love what we hate and hate what we love”. And the Christians, for their part, said exactly the same of the Romans.

It is clear therefore that something wholly different from anything that had been known before now entered human evolution—otherwise it would not have had so great an impact. Of course, if we wish to understand this whole situation we must realize that the new impulse had come from the spiritual worlds. Many who were contemporaries of the Mystery of Golgotha, such as Philo, caught fleeting glimpses of it which they described each after his own fashion. And so many of the passages from the Gospels which are interpreted expediently today, as in the case of Barres, whom I mentioned at the conclusion of my last lecture, will be seen in their true light when we cease to interpret them to suit our convenience, but when our interpretation is determined by the whole spirit of the age. There are strange interpretations in Barres; indeed Biblical exegesis assumes very strange forms nowadays. Much that Philo says agrees closely with the Gospels and I would like to quote a passage which shows that because he was not inspired to the same extent as were the Evangelists later, his style was rather different from theirs. As a talented writer in the popular sense he made less heavy demands upon the reader than the Evangelists. In one notable passage Philo gave expression to something that was occupying the hearts and minds of the men of his time. He says: “Do not concern yourselves with the genealogical records or the documents of despots, take no thought for the things of the body; do not attribute to the citizen civic rights or civil liberties, which you deny to those of humble origin or who have been purchased as slaves in the market, but give heed only to the ancestry of the soul!” If the Gospels are read with understanding one cannot fail to recognize that something of this attitude of mind, albeit raised to a higher level, pervades the Gospels and why therefore an opportunist like Barres can write the passage I quoted to you in my last lecture. We should do well to bear his words in mind and I propose therefore to read them to you once again.

“It is a waste of time to look for the after-life. Perhaps it does not even exist. No matter how we approach the question we are never vouchsafed an answer. Let us leave all occultism to adepts and charlatans. Mysticism of every kind is totally irrational. Let us submit to the authority of the Church because, with the traditional teaching and practical experience of centuries she prescribes the code of ethics in which nations and children must be instructed. And finally we must submit because, far from exposing us to the dangers of mysticism, she actively protects us against them, silences the voices of the mystery teachings, expounds the Gospels and tailors the liberal anarchy of the Saviour to the needs of modern society.”

In the passage which I quoted from Philo we can see, since it is echoed again and again in the New Testament, what lies behind this whole movement. Philo's reference to the ancestry of the soul carries profound implications; he implies something that is opposed to the leading ideas of the Roman empire. For the Roman empire recognized only physical inheritance in its various forms, and the whole social order was founded on this principle. And suddenly the cry was raised: “Take no thought for the ancestry of the body but give heed only to the ancestry of the soul!” One could hardly imagine a more radical breach with the fundamental principles of the Roman empire, a greater contrast. And this contrast was raised to a higher level by the advent of Christ Jesus—indeed the world had been waiting for this moment—and was vigorously opposed to the existing world order of that time.

The Roman emperors would have been only too pleased to receive Christ into their pantheon as a new god amongst the other gods though He struck at the very roots of their society, for the Christ God who embodies a far deeper reality would thereby have become one of their own gods. But the initiated emperors soon realized that the advent of the Christ would be fraught with difficulties for them. When initiation of the emperors, as was the case in Rome after Augustus had been made obligatory by imperial decree, the forces of initiation exercised a powerful influence in the external world. They influenced the policies of the emperors and were operative in the measures and impulses which shaped society. The aims and intentions of the initiated emperors were more clearly defined, more uncompromising than those of the ordinary initiate. Suppose, for example, that one of the emperors who had received initiation had said: “Now John the Baptist baptized with water. Through this baptism by water the etheric body was loosened” (the initiated emperors were of course aware of this) “and the candidates for baptism thereby gained insight into the inner structure of the spiritual world.” They were aware that a decisive turning-point in the history of the world had now been reached. This was known to those whose etheric bodies had been loosened through total immersion. Let us now suppose that one of these emperors had said: “I accept the challenge”—such things were not unknown in the Mysteries “I am prepared to do battle against that which has entered the world at this decisive moment in history!”—One must realize how autocratic, self-willed, these emperors were. But they never dreamt for a moment that they might be powerless against the will of the gods; they were determined—and it was for this purpose they had themselves initiated—to try issue with the spiritual world-impulses and to stem the tide of world-evolution. Such things had already happened before; and they are happening before our eyes today, only people are unaware of it.

Here is a historical incident that confirms the hypothesis I have suggested above. In the age of Constantine, Licinius ruled over the Eastern part of the empire. He took it upon himself to challenge the gods. He decided to celebrate a cult act, for these ritual performances symbolized the struggle against the spiritual powers. The ceremony was intended to demonstrate publicly that he had undertaken to challenge the gods. In other words, he wished to ridicule baptism in the eyes of his fellow men (for it was baptism that had made known to the world that the turning-point in world-history had come), and so challenge Christianity and blunt the force of the Christian impulse. To this end a festival was organized at Heliopolis. It was arranged that an actor, Gelasius, should be dressed in the white robes of a priest and be immersed in water. It was to be presented as a spectacle, as a burlesque of Christian baptism. Gelasius, clothed in white, was immersed in the water and was taken out again. He was then exposed to the assembled populace as an object of ridicule. And what happened? Gelasius turned to the people and said: “I have now become a Christian and I will remain a Christian with all the strength at my command.” Licinius had received his answer from the spiritual world. Baptism was no longer an object of ridicule; the effects of baptism were demonstrated for all the world to see. He (Licinius) recognized that the critical moment in world history had arrived. This inititated Emperor had taken it upon himself to challenge the gods and had received his answer.

It is hardly possible for us today to form an idea of the significance of this answer. It was seen by all, even by the heathen, as a complete vindication of baptism, a valid answer, an answer that had to be reckoned with. And those who at that time were initiated into the secrets of world events received a momentary illumination from another source and were granted insight into the meaning and import of Christianity. Widely different customs which had an occult meaning had survived from ancient times. Under the Antonines, for example, the Sibyls delivered their oracles. People consulted them and took their instructions from them. One important oracle of the time of the Antonines predicted that Rome was doomed to destruction, that ancient Rome would not survive! Now oracular utterances, though often ambiguous and open to various interpretations, can be correctly interpreted. This particular oracle gave out this strange prophecy: “Rome will perish and the place where the city once stood will become the haunt of foxes and wolves.” This was a sign that had to be reckoned with. People naturally looked for a deeper meaning but they felt that the turning-point of world history had arrived. The might of Rome would be extinguished. Foxes and wolves would lord it amongst the ruins and take over in her place. Oracles of course often speak ambiguously, but occasionally, even in those times, the aura of initiation was transmitted through an ordinary, uninitiated sage, so that he frequently uttered remarkable prophecies which could only be construed as referring to the turning-point of world evolution.

In my last lecture I spoke of Nero and told you what this initiate emperor really thought. He wished to set the whole world on fire so that he might witness its destruction in person. If Rome as the centre of the world power was to be destroyed, at least he wished to determine for himself the manner of its destruction. Seneca once warned him in a remarkable statement which can be understood only if we are aware that the Roman emperors who were in possession of the principle of initiation believed themselves to be endowed with divine authority which the Christians refused to honour. Seneca, who knew no other way of bringing his message home to the tyrant, said to Nero: “You have absolute power, you have unlimited authority, you can even order the death of those whom you think may contribute in some way to the world order that will follow the downfall of Rome. But there is one thing a despot cannot do, he cannot compass the death of his successor.” These words had profound implications. Seneca was referring of course not to the potential successor if the occasion should arise, but to the actual successor. Seneca wished to indicate that death set a limit to the Emperor's power. The belief that Rome was doomed had an important influence, especially upon imperial circles.

The Christians reacted differently from the Romans to this tradition. We are here faced with a paradoxical situation. The Christians, for their part, championed the idea that Rome would not perish, that her dominion would endure to the end, which always implied the end of an era. It was the Christians, therefore, who upheld the view that the dominion of Rome would endure, that it would outlive the time of the foxes and wolves. Not that the Christians would have denied—if I may risk an oracular statement—that Rome would become the habitat of wolves and foxes They agreed that it was possible, but they maintained, on the other hand, that her power would endure.

We must bear in mind these different attitudes or opinions. Many of them in fact have proved to be correct. For example, the mother of Alexander Severus who was a pupil of Origen—although suspected of heresy, he was none the less regarded as a kind of Church Father—had managed to set up a kind of pantheon for her private use. In her private sanctuary she revered equally Abraham, Christ, Orpheus and Apollonius of Tyana and she considered the worship of these four deities was indispensable for her salvation. As a devoted pupil of Origen she found that this practice was in no way contrary to his teaching.

When we consider these different shades of opinion which I have tried to outline briefly, we find that they reflect the atmosphere of the first three centuries of our era. And during this period we find repeated attempts by initiated emperors to come to terms with Christianity and to incorporate Christianity into their religious system. Despite the recorded persecutions of the Christians this was the Imperial policy up to the fourth century.

Now in the fourth century a remarkable personality appeared on the scene in the shape of the Emperor Constantine (note 2), a contemporary of Licinius. He was an outstanding personality both politically and spiritually. I have indicated on other occasions how spiritual forces were at work in the personality of Constantine and to some extent guided him in the difficult administration of the Western empire. Today I should like to consider him from another standpoint.

His spiritual make-up was such that he was unable to find a right relationship to the principles of ancient initiation. In contrast to his predecessors and contemporaries he shrank from coercing the hierophants into granting him initiation into the ancient Mysteries. The Sibylline oracles and the prophecies of Rome's impending downfall weighed heavily upon his soul. He was also aware of the Christian teaching that Rome would endure to the end of time. He was well informed on these matters. But he shrank from initiation into the Mysteries; he shrank from carrying the war against the Christians into the realm of the Mysteries. This has significant implications.

What history tells of Constantine is extremely interesting and shows how he tried to find a modus vivendi with Christianity by other means, how he set himself up as the protector of Christianity and introduced Christianity, as he understood it, into the Roman empire. But he could not incorporate his form of Christianity into the old principle of initiation. He was faced with an insurmountable difficulty because the Christians themselves and their leaders were vigorously opposed to this. They felt, and many even realized, that the mission of Christianity was to unveil the ancient Mystery teachings which until then had been kept secret in the Mystery temples. It was their desire that the truths hidden in the Mysteries should be proclaimed to the whole world and should not be restricted to the temples. Fundamentally, the aim of these initiated emperors was to deny Christianity to the people and to restore it again to the Mystery temples. In that event, they believed, people would be initiated into Christianity in the same way as they had been initiated into the secrets of the ancient pagan Mysteries. It was difficult for Constantine to achieve his goal in face of the objectives pursued by the Christians. The Christians saw in the turning-point of world history an event of a spiritual, non-temporal order. And their claim that the Roman empire would endure must be understood as an expression of a wholly spiritual impulse. And this is clearly reflected in the secret teachings of the early Christians. In maintaining that the Roman empire would endure they sought to anticipate what actually came to pass. I pointed out recently that the deeper impulse of the Roman empire has not ceased, that it still lives on, not only in jurisprudence, but in other domains also, which, to those who do not probe more deeply, appear to be a new innovation. But in fact we are simply witnessing a prolongation, an extension of the driving forces behind Imperial Rome. Although the old Roman empire is no more, its spirit still lives on and bites deeply into our civilization.

Certain people maintain that we are haunted today and will always be haunted by the ghost of the old Roman empire. And this is accepted as a truism by the educated, even today, and is unlikely to change. The Christians wished to draw attention to this. But at the same time they contended that Christianity will always contain an element that is antagonistic to the Roman empire, for the spiritual impulse in Christianity will always be at odds with the materialism of Rome. And this contention of the Christians was prophetic.

You will now understand more clearly why the Senators and the Roman Emperors were alarmed, for they naturally associated the decline that was prophesied with the external empire which they saw slowly crumble under the impact of Christianity. And the emperor Constantine shared this view. Although not himself initiated, he was aware that a primordial wisdom had once existed in ancient times when man possessed atavistic clairvoyance. This wisdom had been transmitted to later ages, had been preserved by the priesthood, but had gradually become corrupted. In Rome too, Constantine said to himself: our social order embodies something that is associated with the institutions of this primordial wisdom, but we have simply buried it beneath the social order of a materialistic and secular empire. This was expressed in a pregnant symbol that is an “Imagination”, and not only an “Imagination”, but also an historical cult act, for these “Imaginations” often took the form of cult acts. People knew that in earlier times wisdom was not an arbitrary invention of man but was a revelation from the spiritual worlds. They knew that in primordial times priests had preserved this wisdom, not in Rome, of course, but across the sea in Ilion, in Troy where they originally dwelt. And this is expressed in the legend of the palladium, the so-called image of Pallas Athene which fell from Heaven in Troy, was preserved in a sanctuary, was then transferred to Rome and buried under a porphyry pillar. In all that was connected with this symbolical cult act people felt that they were able to trace back their civilization to the ancient wisdom which they had received from the spiritual world, but that they could not reach the heights which this wisdom had known in ancient Troy.

Such were the feelings Constantine harboured; and he also felt that even if he were to be initiated into the later Mysteries, they would be of little help to him; they would not lead him to the palladium, to the ancient primordial wisdom. He therefore decided to challenge the cosmic powers after his own fashion in order to save the Roman empire from destruction. He realized that this must be achieved in accordance with certain cosmic impulses and that it would have to take place in accordance with certain cult acts which were publicly enacted for all the world to see. He decided therefore to transfer the capital from Rome to the site of ancient Troy, to have the palladium dug up and taken back to Troy. The plan miscarried. Instead of establishing a new Rome on the site of Troy, he decided to found a new city, Constantinople, transfer the power to her and thus save declining Rome for future ages. By these means Constantine hoped to stem the tide of world evolution. He was prepared for Rome to become the habitat of foxes and wolves as the Sibylline oracle had foretold, but at the same time he wished to transfer the hidden impulses of Rome to a new site and so restore them to their original source. Constantine therefore embarked upon the ambitious plan to found Constantinople, and the work was completed in A.D. 326. He intended that the foundation of the city should coincide with this turning-point in world history. He therefore chose to lay the foundation stone at the moment when the Sun stood in the sign of the Archer and the Crab ruled the hour. He followed closely the indications of the cosmic signs. He wished to make Constantinople famous and to transfer to her the enduring impulse of eternal Rome. He therefore had the porphyry pillar (which was later destroyed by storms) transported to Constantinople. He ordered the palladium to be dug up and to be placed beneath the pillar. He also treasured among his possessions some relics of the Cross and a few nails that had originally secured the Cross. The relics of the Cross were made into a kind of frame to hold a much prized statue of Apollo and the nails into a nimbus with which he was crowned. This statue was set up on the porphyry pillar and an inscription was engraved on it which read somewhat as follows: That which sheds its beneficent influence here shall, like the Sun, endure for all time and proclaim the fame of its founder Constantine to all eternity! These things must of course be taken more or less imaginatively, but with this qualification, that they refer at all times to actual historical events.

This whole story has passed over into legend and, transmuted, lives on in the following legend: the palladium which is a symbol for a particular centre of primordial wisdom had been deposited originally in the secret Mystery Centres of the priest-initiates of Troy. It came to light for the first time when it was transported by circuitous routes from Troy to Rome. It saw the light of day a second time when it was transferred from Rome to Constantinople on the orders of Constantine. And those who believe the legend say that it will see the light of day a third time when it is transported from Constantinople to a Slavonic city. This legend is still vitally alive and survives in many things and under manifold forms. Today many things which appear in their purely physical aspects conceal a deeper layer of meaning.

Constantine therefore actively strove to prevent the downfall of the Roman empire in spite of his firm belief in the prophecy of the Sibylline oracle. He wanted to save Rome from herself.

In what I have told you I want you to recognize that in the historical personality of Constantine psychic impulses were at work which had significant and far-reaching effects. And bear in mind also what the earlier Christians and their leaders maintained: “The Roman empire will endure and the Christ Impulse we have received will also be realized and will ever be present amongst us.” Here we see two parallel phenomena of importance which have a significant bearing upon the different currents which have influenced the cultural development of the West. In particular you will be able to form an idea of the attitude towards the Roman empire in the early Christian centuries and in the age of Constantine, and of the sharply conflicting opinions on the way in which the future was envisaged. And you will perhaps find criteria which will enable you to see many of the later events in their true light. And we can only see many of these later events in proper perspective if we answer the following question: How far does the later development of Christianity up to now accord with its original intention and what must be done to bring it into closer rapport with that intention?

It remains for me to speak of a still more important moment in evolution in connection with the expansion of Christianity, the moment when an initiated Emperor called Julian the Apostate came face to face with this emergent Christianity. From the results of our historical enquiry we shall then be in a position to discuss in this context the further question: How can we prepare our souls to draw near to the Christ whose presence will be experienced in the etheric world in the present century? What steps must we take, especially in our present age, to draw near to Him?

In my next lecture I should like to discuss the trend of events under Julian the Apostate and to indicate the relation of our present age to the Etheric Christ in so far as it is permissible to touch upon this question today.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Philo of Alexandria or Philo Judaeus (circa 30 B.C.–A.D. 40) was an important representative of Hellenistic Judaism. He believed that the Pentateuch had divine authority. In his “Allegories of the Sacred Law”, a commentary on Genesis, he regarded the characters in Genesis as allegories of states of soul. He is considered to be the first religious philosopher (cf. H. A. Wolfson, Philo. (2 vols.) 1947).

Note 2. Constantine was firmly convinced of his divine mission to rule over the world and to establish the orthodox teaching of the Church. He prided himself on having settled the Donatist conflict and the Arian heresy. On his initiative the Council of Nicaea was compelled to introduce the doctrine of the “filioque” which split the Church for a century and a half.

One of the outstanding figures in world history is Julian the Apostate (a successor of Constantine) who fell by the hand of an assassin in the campaign against the Persians in the year A.D. 363 (note 1). Julian occupies a special place in the history of the West. His life and career show how the course of world history is determined by the clash of contending forces. I pointed out in my previous lecture that in Constantine we have a personality who had to abandon the former coercive measures practised by the majority of the earlier emperors when they sought initiation into the Mysteries. To compensate for this he therefore did everything in his power to advance the cause of exoteric Christianity in the Empire.

Now from earliest childhood Julian was held in low esteem by the Imperial family and their adherents. In the age with which we are dealing it was the custom to anticipate the future of an individual such as Julian by resorting to prenatal prophecies. The Imperial family had been obliged to conclude from the predictions of the Sibylline oracles that Julian would actively oppose the policy pursued by the Emperor Constantine. From the first, therefore, they tried to prevent Julian from being raised to the purple. It was decided that he should be murdered while still a child and preparations were made to have him butchered along with his brother. There was a strange aura attaching to Julian which inspired terror in those around him and countless stories relating to his personality testify to the fact that there was something uncanny about him. On one occasion during his campaign in Gaul a somnambulist cried out as the army passed by: “There is the man who will restore the old Gods and their images.”

The appearance of Julian at this moment in history must be seen as something predestined, something deeply significant. As often happens in such cases his life was spared lest his murder should bring greater disaster in its train. People persuaded themselves that whatever steps he might take against the policies of Constantine could be quickly nullified. And precautionary measures were taken to neutralize the dangerous tendencies of Julian's make-up and his leanings towards Paganism. In the first place it was decided to give him a sound Christian education which accorded with the ideas of Constantine. It was wasted effort and met with no response. Anything which had survived from the ancient Hellenic traditions fascinated him. Where powerful forces are at work in such a personality they ultimately prevail. And so, because his mentors sought to protect him from dangerous associations he was driven into the arms of Hellenic tutors and was introduced to Hellenic culture and civilization. When he grew older Julian learned how the neo-Platonic philosophers were imbued with the spirit of Hellenism and in consequence he was finally initiated into the Mysteries of Eleusis. Thus at a time when the Roman Emperors had already dispensed with the principle of initiation, an initiate in the person of Julian once again sat on the throne of the Caesars.

Everything that Julian undertook must be judged in the light of his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries (and history has been at great pains to misrepresent his actions in every possible way). In order to form a true estimate of such a personality as Julian we must give due weight to the effects of this initiation. What spiritual benefit had Julian derived from his initiation into the Eleusinian Mysteries? Through direct spiritual perception he learned the secrets of cosmic and world evolution, the spiritual origin of the world and how spiritual forces operate in the planetary and solar systems. He learned to understand certain things which were quite incomprehensible to his contemporaries (with the exception of a few Greek initiates), namely, the relation of solar influences and the Being of the Sun to the old Hermes-Logos. He understood the meaning of the Pythagorean maxim: “Thou shalt not speak against the Sun!” This does not refer, of course, to the physical sun but to the Spirit which is concealed behind the Sun. He knew that the ancient sacred traditions ascribed the origin of the world to the spiritual Being of the Sun and above all that man must recover his relation to the spiritual Sun if he is to penetrate to the source of his existence.

Julian therefore was aware of the ancient Sun-Mystery. He realized that the physical sun is but the external form of a spiritual Sun which can be awakened in the soul of man through initiation, and when awakened can reveal to him the intimate connection between the universe and the historical life of man on Earth. It was clear to Julian that the world can never be ordered on a basis of rationalism, that only those who are able to be in touch with the Sun Logos are in any way fitted to have a voice in the ordering of the world. He had to recognize that the movements of the celestial bodies and the great historical movements of mankind are governed by a common law.

Even a Church Father such as St. Chrysostom was aware of the existence of an ancient Sun-Mystery, since he went so far as to declare that men are so dazzled by the physical sun that they cannot penetrate to the spiritual Sun. The soul of St. Chrysostom was still illumined by a ray of wisdom from olden times, but in those around him hardly a trace of it remained. It is clear that scarcely a vestige of understanding remained for that method of awakening the soul to the secrets of the universe which had been communicated through the ancient Mysteries and which were certainly communicated to Julian who was one of the last to be instructed in that method. He was therefore surrounded entirely by adherents of Constantine, by those who echoed the thoughts of Constantine. It is true that in the West, up to the end of the ninth century we find outstanding personalities even amongst the Popes, who were still inspired by the ancient Mystery wisdom; but the real opposition came from Rome which set out to nullify the efforts of these individuals and to pursue in its place a definite policy of its own towards the traditions of the ancient Mysteries. I shall say a few words about this later. In effect, Julian only came in contact with a very exoteric form of Christianity.

Through complicated psychological processes which are difficult to describe in detail he lighted upon the idea of utilizing the last surviving remnants of initiation in order to ensure continuity in evolution. In reality he was not an opponent of Christianity; he simply favoured the continuity of Hellenism. He was more interested in promoting Hellenism than in opposing Christianity. With passionate enthusiasm he strove to arrest the decline of Hellenism and to transmit its traditions to posterity. He was opposed to any sudden break in continuity, any radical change. As an initiate of Eleusis he knew that the policies he proposed to embark upon could not be realized unless one was in close touch with the spiritual forces operating in the sensible world, and that if we seek to introduce new impulses into world evolution by appealing to physical and psychic forces alone, then we are “speaking against the Sun” in the Pythagorean sense. Julian had no such intention; indeed his purpose was quite the reverse. In effect he accepted one of the greatest challenges that it is possible to imagine.

Now we must not forget that in Rome at that time and throughout the whole of Southern Europe there was active opposition to this challenge. Remember that up to the time of Constantine, in large sections of the population the last remnants of ancient cults had been preserved. Today the question of miracles is a real thorn in the side of Biblical exegesis, because people refuse to read the Gospels from the standpoint of the age to which they, the Gospels, belong. The question of miracles raised no problems for the contemporaries of the Evangelists, for they were aware of the existence of rites and ceremonies from which men derived spiritual forces which they were able to control.

Whilst, on the one hand, Christianity was introduced as a political measure which culminated in Constantine's edict of toleration, so attempts were made on the other hand, to suppress the ancient pagan rites. Endless laws were promulgated by Rome which forbade the celebration of rites which derived their power from the spiritual world. These laws, it is true, declared that the old superstitions must cease, that no one may practise ritual magic in order to injure others and no one may communicate with the dead, and so on, but these were only pretexts. The real purpose of these laws was to eradicate root and branch any traces of pagan cults which had survived from ancient times. Wherever possible, history has endeavoured to hush up or to conceal the real facts of the situation. But our earliest historical records were the work of priests and monks in the monasteries (a fact which modern science, which claims to be “objective and to accept nothing on authority”, studiously ignores). The avowed object of the monasteries (i.e. priests and monks) was to suppress all knowledge of the true character of antiquity and to prevent the essential teachings of the pagan Mysteries from being transmitted to posterity.

And so Julian saw the vanishing world of antiquity in a totally different light from the forerunners of Constantine. Through his initiation he knew that the human soul was related to the spiritual world. He could only hope to succeed in the task he had undertaken—to use the forces of the old principle of initiation in order to further the continuity of human evolution—by resisting the current attitude to man's evolution. Because of his initiation Julian was in reality a man with a profound and sincere love of truth, a sense for truth that was totally foreign to Constantine. Indeed Julian's profound respect for truth has not its like in the history of the West. With his deep instinct for truth that had been fortified by his initiation he turned his attention to teachings of the universities and schools of his day. He found that the Christian dogma had been introduced into the schools in the form that had existed since the time of Constantine. Armed with this dogma the teachers gave their personal interpretations of the Hellenistic writers whose works were centred round the figures of Zeus, Apollo, Pallas Athene, Aphrodite, Hermes-Mercury and so on. And Julian said to himself: “These teachers are the most outrageous sophists. How can they presume to expound ancient writings whose authors were convinced that the old gods were still living forces in the world? On what grounds do these teachers presume to interpret these writings when, by the very nature of their dogmas, they must deny the existence of these gods?” Julian's instinct for truth was outraged. He therefore forbade those who, by virtue of their Christian dogma were unable to believe in the old gods, to expound the ancient writings in the schools. If today we had the same honesty of purpose as Julian you can well imagine how much would be excluded from the curricula of our schools!

Julian wished to meet the challenge of the current trends which none the less were a necessity from another point of view. In the first place he had to come to terms with the Gospels, which had arisen in a totally different way from the knowledge imparted to him in the Eleusinian Mysteries. He could not reconcile himself to the way in which the Gospels had arisen. He said to himself: If that which is manifested in the Christ is a genuine inspiration that stems from the Mysteries then it must be possible to find it in the Mysteries, for it must have been incorporated in the Mystery-teachings. He wanted to ascertain if it were possible to continue the ancient Mystery-teachings. In the first place he was only familiar with the Christianity of his time in its exoteric aspect. He decided to make an experiment—not the kind of experiment that relies purely on human expedients (that would have seemed childish to him)—but to undertake an experiment that had a spiritual significance. He reasoned as follows: It has been prophesied that the temple in Jerusalem would be destroyed, not a single stone would remain standing. This has indeed come to pass. But if this prophecy could be discredited, if its fulfilment could be prevented then the mission of Christianity could not be accomplished. At the cost of great capital outlay Julian decided therefore to rebuild the temple in Jerusalem. A large number of workmen was assembled to begin the reconstruction. Now the whole affair must be regarded from a spiritual standpoint; it was not men alone, but gods, whom Julian set out to challenge. And it is an undoubted fact that can be demonstrated historically—in so far as historical facts can be demonstrated, even externally, although internal evidence leaves no doubt of their truth—that each of the workmen engaged on the work of reconstruction had a vision; he saw tongues of flame licking over the place where he was working and was obliged to withdraw. The undertaking was abandoned; but we recognize the high purpose that inspired Julian to undertake this venture.

Julian's experiment miscarried. After he had failed to discredit the prophecy of the destruction of the temple, he decided to approach the problem from another angle. His new plan was no less boldly conceived. The time had not yet come when the evolution of Europe had been influenced by that spiritual current which owed its origin to the fact that one of the greatest Church Fathers, Augustine (note 2), could not rise to a certain idea because at that time he lacked the necessary spiritual development. You know perhaps from your study of history—and I have referred to this on frequent occasions when discussing the Faust legend—that Augustine had originally been a Manichaean. Manichaeism originated in Persia and claimed to understand Christ Jesus better than Rome and Constantinople. This doctrine (unfortunately it is not yet permissible today to unveil the ultimate secrets of this doctrine, even in our present circle) filtered through into Europe in later times in various guises and still survived, though in a corrupt form, in its ramifications in the sixteenth century when the Faust legend was first recorded. By a happy intuition the revival of the Faust legend by Goethe preserved something of the spirit of Manichaeism. Julian thought on the grand scale; his thought embraced all mankind. In the presence of a man such as Julian we realize only too clearly how limited are the thoughts of ordinary mortals. The doctrine of the “Son of Man” will of necessity assume different forms according to our capacity to form conceptions of the real nature of man himself. Our conceptions of the “Son of Man” must therefore depend upon our conceptions of man; the one involves the other. In this respect men differ widely. At the present time people have only the most superficial understanding of such matters.

In Sanscrit the word for man is Manushya. This word expresses the basic feeling which a large number of people associate with the idea of humanity. When we use this vocable to describe man we are referring to the spiritual aspect of man, we are appraising man primarily as a spiritual being. If we wish to express the idea that man is spirit and his physical aspect is only the manifestation of spirit, then we use the word “Manushya”.

From our earlier discussions you know that we can study man from another angle. We can consider him mainly from his psychic aspect. We shall then give more attention to man as soul than to man as spirit; his physical aspect and everything that is related to his external aspect will be of secondary importance. We shall then be able to characterize man from the information derived from his inner life which is reflected in the eye or in the fact that he holds his head erect. If you look into the derivation of the Greek word anthropos you will find that it gives a rough indication of this aspect. Those who characterize man with the word Manushya or some similar vocable see him primarily as spirit, as that which descends from the spiritual world. Those who characterize man with a word resembling the Greek word anthropos (and this applies especially to the Greeks themselves) are expressing his soul nature.

Now there is a third possibility; we can concentrate on the external, the corporeal or somatic aspect, which is the product of physical inheritance. We shall then characterize man with the word homo that signifies (approximately) the procreator or the procreated.

Here are three conceptions of man. Julian who was aware of this trichotomy felt the need to look for a spiritual interpretation of the “Son of Man”. The thought occurred to him: “I have already been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries. Perhaps it is possible to have myself initiated into the Persian Mysteries and into the Mysteries which are in accordance with the doctrine of the Manichaeans. By this means perhaps I may be able to achieve my aim—the continuity of the pagan Mysteries.” This was a momentous thought. Just as Alexander's campaign had deeper motives than the mere conquest of Asia, so Julian's expedition had other motives than the conquest of Persia. He wished to find out whether he could further his objective with the help of the Persian Mysteries.

In order to understand the problem that faced Julian we must ask: What was it that Augustine could not understand in Manichaeism? I have already said that the time had not yet come to reveal the ultimate secrets of Manichaeism but it is possible to give a few indications. In his youth, Augustine was deeply attached to these teachings and they made a profound impression on him. He later exchanged the teachings of Manichaeism for Roman Catholicism. What did he not understand in Manichaeism? Why did he reject it, what was beyond his comprehension in Manichaeism?

The Manichaeans did not cultivate abstract ideas which divorced the world of thought from the world of reality. The Manichaeans and the initiates of the Eleusinian Mysteries were alike incapable of abstract thinking. In earlier lectures I attempted to show the difference between logical concepts and concepts in conformity with reality. The basic principle of Manichaeism was to cultivate only those ideas which are consistent with reality. Not that unreal ideas do not play a part in life; unfortunately they play a large part in life, especially at the present day, and the part they play is disastrous. And so, amongst other things, it was consistent with Manichaeism to form representations that were not purely abstract, but which were sufficiently powerful to intervene in the external world and to play an active part in that world. The conception of Christ Jesus that was commonly held by people at that time would have been quite impossible for the Manichaeans. And what was this conception? They had a somewhat nebulous idea of the Christ who had incarnated in Jesus through whom a change had been brought about in Earth evolution. Ideas about Christ have become incredibly vague, especially in the nineteenth century.

If we are really honest and sincere we cannot say that the notions afforded by Christian dogma about Christ and His mission will take us very far. If Christian ideas are not powerful enough to envisage an Earth which is not the graveyard of humanity, but the seed-bed of a transformed humanity, if we cannot envisage Earth evolution differently from the natural scientists of today who predict that life on the Earth will one day become extinct, then all our conceptions of Christ are vain. For even if we believe that Christ has brought new life to the Earth, it is difficult for us to imagine that matter can be so spiritualized that we can envisage it as capable of being transmuted from its present earthly condition to its future condition. We have need of far more powerful ideas in order to be able to conceive of the Earth's metamorphosis to the Jupiter condition.

I said recently in a public lecture that natural science thinks—or rather calculates—that if the forces of nature as they exist today were to persist for millions of years, then a condition would arise according to Dewar (I mentioned in Lecture Three his lecture before the Royal Institute) when, if the walls of a room were painted with albumen, it would be possible to read the newspaper in its phosphorescent light. And I spoke of the scientist who declared that in the distant future milk would be solid and emit a blue light and so on. These ideas are the inevitable consequence of nebulous thinking that is unable to come to terms with reality. Such calculations are equivalent to deducing from the modifications in the human stomach over a period of four or five years what its condition would be after two hundred and fifty years. I am able to arrive at this conclusion by extending my calculations over a large number of years. The scientist calculates what will be the condition of the Earth a million years hence; on the same principle I can calculate the condition of the human stomach after two hundred and fifty years—only by that time the man will be dead! Just as the geologists calculate the condition of the Earth millions of years ago, so too on the same principle one could calculate, by showing the modifications in a child's stomach over a period of a week or a fortnight, the condition of the same stomach two hundred and fifty years ago—but of course the child would not have been alive at that time. Concepts cannot provide a total picture of reality. Scientific concepts are valid for the period of time between 6000–7000 B.C. and A.D. 6000–7000, but not beyond that time.

We must think of the evolution of man in terms of a totally different time scale. And the Christ Being must occupy a central place in this future evolution. I said therefore on a previous occasion that we must distinguish between what the Middle Ages called “mystical marriage” and what Christian Rosenkreutz called “chymical marriage”. Mystical marriage is simply an inner experience. As many theosophists used to say (and perhaps still say): if one looks within, if one withdraws into oneself one becomes united with the divine Being! This was depicted in such roseate hues that, after an hour's lecture, the members emerged with the firm conviction that if they took firm control of their inner life, if they practised self-discipline, they would experience the first intimations of the divine within. The chymical marriage of Christian Rosenkreutz imagines forces to be active in man which embrace the whole man, which so transform his being that when he is purified from the dross of the physical body he is translated to the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan conditions.

The aim of Manichaeism was the conquest of evil and of matter by thought. Julian was brought face to face with the deeper implications of the problem of evil and the relation of Christ Jesus to this problem. He hoped to find an answer through initiation into the Persian Mysteries and to return to Europe with the solution. But unfortunately he fell by an assassin's hand during the Persian campaign. It can be proved historically that this was the work of an adherent of Constantine. Thus we see that in the course of history the attempt to establish the “principle of continuity” was fraught with tragedy and that in the case of Julian it led into a blind alley.

In the following years the Augustinian principle triumphed—ideas that in any way echoed Manichaeism were forbidden, i.e. the inclusion of material ideas in spiritual thinking. The West therefore was driven to an abstract mode of thinking and in the course of time this mode of thinking permeated the whole of Western Europe. Only a few of the foremost minds rebelled against this tendency and one of the most celebrated of these was Goethe. His whole cast of mind was opposed to abstract theorizing. And one of those who succumbed to it most was Kant. Take, for example, Kant's Critique of Pure Reason—I know that what I am about to say is heretical—and let us look at the main propositions. If you reverse each of these propositions you will arrive at the truth. And the same applies particularly to his theory of space and time. You can equally well reverse every proposition and you will then arrive at conclusions that are valid for the spiritual world. You can gather from this why some people have a professional interest in misrepresenting Goethe (the great opponent of Kant) as I showed in the case of Haller, who wrote: “no created spirit can penetrate into the inner recesses of nature”—a complete distortion of Goethe's conception of nature.

If we bear this point of view in mind, we can appreciate at its true worth Julian's essay which was directed against Pauline Christianity (note 2). It is a remarkable document, not so much for its contents, but for its similarity to certain writings of the nineteenth century. This may seem paradoxical, but the facts are as follows: Julian's polemic against Christianity musters every kind of argument against Christianity, against the historical Jesus and certain Christian dogmas, with passionate sincerity. And when we compare these arguments with the objections raised by the liberal theology of the nineteenth century (note 3) and the later theology of the adherents of Drews against the historicity of Christ, when we consider the whole field of literature of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries which reveals most careful, painstaking and thorough philological investigation, there are endless repetitions, so that one has to consult whole libraries—we find that we can piece together certain guiding principles. The leading critics began to undertake a comparative study of the Gospels and found many discrepancies in the texts. But all these critical methods were already anticipated by Julian. The nineteenth-century criticism offered nothing new that was not already known to Julian. Julian spoke out of a natural creative gift whilst the nineteenth-century criticism displayed enormous industry, great erudition and downright theological sophistry.

Julian therefore was engaged in a titanic struggle. He finally attempted, by reviving Manichaeism, to bring about continuity in the evolution of the pagan Mysteries. Bear in mind how the most enlightened minds such as Goethe felt an instinctive urge to recapture the spirit of ancient Greece! Imagine what would have happened if Julian's policy had been crowned with success! That he was doomed to fail was a necessity of the time. And we shall not understand the reason for his failure if we belittle his great achievements, if we fail to see him as a titanic figure, fighting for a realistic understanding of the relations between man and the universe. And it is of paramount importance today to recall these great moments in the historical evolution of the West. For we are living in an age from which we shall not emerge with a healthy outlook unless we make a fresh assessment of the aims of Julian the Apostate. It was not possible in his time—herein lies his great tragedy—to reconcile the old principle of initiation with the real essence of Christianity. Today this has become possible and we must not fail to translate the possibility into reality if the world and mankind are not to suffer evolutionary decline. People must realize the need for regeneration in all spheres of life and above all the crying need to restore communication with the spiritual world.

First of all we must understand the factors that militate against this necessary regeneration. Today we are afraid of definite, clear-cut ideas which could lead to such an understanding. There is no lack of physical courage today—but we are certainly lacking in intellectual courage! Mankind today is unwilling to face realities and this is the greatest need of our time. For if our age is not to end in futility it must learn to understand the principle of the creative spirit and what it means when it is said that the spirit, when creative, is as powerful a force as the instincts, save that our instincts work in the dark, whilst the creative spirit works in the light of the Sun, i.e. the spiritual Sun. This is what our age must learn to understand. And especially in our own time many forces are still arrayed against any understanding of the creative spirit and are actively engaged in suppressing that knowledge.

Cato's policy was to establish a highly centralized political system. In order to achieve this he felt it was necessary to exile the adherents of Hellenistic philosophy. “They only prate”, he said, “and that has a disturbing effect upon the decrees of the authorities.” And the celebrated Florentine Machiavelli was also of this opinion and gave high praise to Cato because he proposed to banish those who used the weapon of spiritual knowledge in order to raise objections to State decrees. Machiavelli fully appreciated the fact that in the Roman Empire any interference with the structure of the social order was on certain occasions punishable by death. Intercourse with the spiritual world was anathema especially to the Roman Empire and the successor States in Europe. Every effort was therefore made to ensure that the greatest uncertainty should prevail in these matters and they were hushed up as much as possible. If a conception of the Mystery of Golgotha that is both radical and uncompromising gains a firm foothold in the world, then we shall have to modify considerably our mental attitude. This is not to our liking, but it will have to come. And a way must be found to arrive at a real understanding of the nature of Christ. In our next lecture I propose to discuss how we can directly experience the being and nature of Christ today.

We shall see this whole question in wider perspective through a study of two contrasting figures—Constantine who inaugurated the exoteric side of Western culture and Julian the Apostate who, when the times were out of joint (for him), attempted to take up the struggle against the exoteric side of Western evolution. It is a curious phenomenon that if anyone with a slight knowledge—I do not mean of occult facts, but with a real knowledge of those occult facts that can still be found in ancient writings—makes a study of Christian dogma, if, for example, we inquire into the origin of the Mass, or if ritual and dogma are studied in the light of this occult knowledge derived from ancient writings, we discover the most extraordinary things. What lies behind these dogmas and cult acts? Not I alone, but countless authors who have studied these questions from this standpoint have come to the conclusion that in ritual and dogma a large residuum of paganism has been preserved or has survived, so that an attempt was made for example by the French writer Drach (note 4), who was an authority on Hebraism, to demonstrate that the dogma and ritual of the Catholic Church were simply a revival of paganism. And others attempted to show that certain people were at pains to conceal from the faithful the fact that the dogmas and ritual of the Church were imbued with paganism.

Now it would have been a strange phenomenon if paganism in particular had survived quite unconsciously. In that event, we might ask, in what way would the survival of paganism have contributed to the survival of the Roman Empire? And what would have been the position of Julian the Apostate? If many recent writers are right in saying that the Catholic sacrifice of the Mass, for example, is in essence a pagan sacrifice and that Julian had been at great pains to preserve and perpetuate the ancient pagan rites, then to some extent Julian has achieved his aim after all. A study of these two contrasting figures, Constantine and Julian, raises countless problems of the highest importance, “thorny” problems as Nietzsche calls them, problems which are fraught with fateful consequences for us today and which without question will become the central problems of our time.

I propose to return to these problems in my next lecture.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Julian had received a strict Christian education; during his internment in Cappadocia he began to doubt the validity of Christianity and when sent to Athens in 354, the intellectual centre of Greece, he secretly abandoned Christian beliefs. His treatise “Against the Galileans” (referred to here) summarizes his polemical arguments against Christianity. Briefly they are as follows: Knowledge of God is natural to man and does not come by teaching. The story of Eden in the Old Testament is a fable and the account of Creation is inferior to that of Plato. The idea of a jealous God and a chosen people is unacceptable. The Mosaic law is barbarous; the Decalogue common to all nations. No man is better for reading the Jewish scriptures. The New Testament is full of inconsistencies. Matthew and Luke disagree on the genealogy of Jesus. Peter and Paul were hypocrites. Matt. IV, 5, is illogical and in Luke XXII, 42-47, since the disciples were asleep, who could have told him the story of the angel? The Christians were fanatics and cheerfully massacred heretics. By contrast the Greeks were mild and forbearing, they were superior in wisdom and intelligence. Christianity has achieved little or nothing in the fields of science, astronomy, arithmetic and music. The achievements of Plato, Socrates, Aristides, Thales, Lycurgus, Agesilaus and Archedemus, the Sibyls, the Delphic Oracle and the pagan Mysteries surpassed anything that Christianity had to offer.

The formal refutation of Julian's treatise was “Pro Christiana Religione” composed between A.D. 429 and 441 by Cyril, Bishop of Alexandria.

Note 2. Manichaeism and Augustine. Augustine (A.D. 345–410), an African by birth, was a Manichaean for ten years. He became dissatisfied with Manichaeism and when Faustus, a leader of the sect, failed to resolve his doubts he abandoned Manichaean teachings. (See Confessions, Books IV and V.) Augustine repaired to Rome where he was converted by St. Ambrose in A.D. 386. His chief works were directed against the Manichaeans, e.g. Books against the Manichaeans and On the Utility of Believing. The Scriptures were a means to faith and hope and the Canon was the testimony of Christianity in the Church. His dictum, “Better a man's body be destroyed than his soul” leads to the Inquisition. When Christianity became the State religion he distinguished between “Civitas Dei”, which was perfect and in which all men were equal in the sight of God, and “Civitas terrena”, which of necessity was imperfect. It was the devil's domain where sinful men had to submit to the authorities. Augustine was the founder of Western monasticism and monastic spirituality and exercised considerable influence on Pascal, Fenelon and Port Royal. On Manichaeism in general, see F. C. Burkitt, Religion of the Manichees 1925) and H. C. Puesch, Le Manicheisme, son fondateur, sa doctrine (1949).

Note 3. Liberal theology. The chief representatives of Liberal Protestant theology in the nineteenth century were Bauer, founder of the Tübingen school of New Testament research, and Ritschl (1822–89) who rejected metaphysics and mysticism and developed an objective and scientific method of research. The great exponent of the Ritschl school was A. von Harnack (1851–1930) whose History of Dogma and What is Christianity? are regarded as monuments of liberal historiography. Harnack eschewed metaphysical speculation, perfected the scientific-historical method and emphasized the need for source study and the faithful representation of facts. “The Gospel about Jesus does not belong to the Gospel preached by Jesus”, said Harnack. Radical historical research led to Bultmann's “demythologization”, the attempt to liberate the Church's teaching from the mythological language in which it is expressed. Myths, he said, need reinterpretation in terms of modern consciousness. The other burning question of the nineteenth century was: is the Gospel true and how can we know that it is true? Drews, Jensen and Kalthoff in Germany, J. M. Robertson, W. B. Smith and T. A. Jackson in England claimed that the Christ figure was a copy of the cult-god of pagan beliefs under another name.

Note 4. Drach (1791–1865) studied at various Talmudic Schools and was converted to Christianity, 1823. He went to Rome and was appointed librarian of propaganda.

It is most important for the present age and for the future of mankind to realize that our understanding of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha is not dependent upon the findings of the external history that is accepted as scientific today. In order to acquire a knowledge of Christ and the Mystery of Golgotha that carries conviction and is susceptible of proof we must rather look to other sources than those of contemporary historical investigation, even when these sources are the Gospels themselves. I have often stated, and anyone who refers to the relevant literature can verify this for himself, that the most diligent, assiduous and painstaking research has been devoted to Gospel criticism or Gospel exegesis during the nineteenth century. This Gospel criticism has yielded only negative results; in fact it has served rather to destroy and undermine our faith in the Mystery of Golgotha rather than to confirm and substantiate it. We know that many people today, not from a spirit of contradiction but because, on the evidence of historical investigation they cannot do otherwise, have come to the conclusion that there is no justification on purely historical grounds for assigning the existence of Christ Jesus to the beginning of our era. This of course cannot be disproved, but that is of no consequence.

I now propose to discuss whether it is possible to discover other sources than the historical sources which may contribute to an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Before answering the question let us first examine a few facts of occult history.

In tracing the development of Christianity during the early centuries of our era we must bear in mind that it is difficult to comprehend this development unless we reinforce a purely historical enquiry with the findings of Spiritual Science. If we accept, purely hypothetically for the moment, the facts of spiritual-scientific investigation into this period, then a very remarkable picture unfolds before us. As we review this development during the early centuries we realize in effect that the Mystery of Golgotha has been fulfilled not only once—as an isolated event on Golgotha—but, in a figurative sense, a second time on the mighty panorama of history. When we study this period truly remarkable things are disclosed.

The Church of Rome has a tradition of continuity that is reflected in its Church history. This history describes the founding of Christianity, the early Church Fathers, the post-Nicene Fathers and the later Christian philosophers, and the formulation of the particular dogmas by Councils and infallible Popes and so on. History is seen as an unbroken chain, a uniform pattern of unchanging character. It is true that the early Church Fathers have been much criticized from certain angles. But on the whole people are afraid to reject them completely, for in that case the continuity would be broken. History proper begins with the Council of Constantinople in 869 of which I have already spoken. As I have said, history is represented as an unbroken chain, a continuous process. But if a radical gap is anywhere to be found in an apparently continuous process, then it is here. One can hardly imagine a greater contrast than the contrast between the spirit of the early Church Fathers and that of the post-Nicene Fathers and Conciliar decrees. There is a radical difference which is equally radically concealed because it is in the interest of the Church to conceal it. For this reason it has been possible to keep the faithful (today) in ignorance of what took place in the first centuries of the Christian era. Today, for example, there is no clear and reliable evidence, even from leading scholars, of how the Gnosis came to be suppressed. We are equally in the dark about the aims and intentions of such men as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil Origen and others (note 1), including Tertullian, because such fragmentary information as we possess is of doubtful provenance and is derived for the most part from writings of their opponents. For this reason, and because the most fantastic theories have been built on this fragmentary information, it is impossible to arrive at a reliable picture of the early Church Fathers.

In order to have a clear understanding of this problem we must turn our attention for a moment to the causes of this indefiniteness, to all that has happened so that the Mystery of Golgotha could take place a second time in history.

At the time of the Mystery of Golgotha the ancient pagan cults and Mysteries were widespread. And they were of such importance that a figure such as Julian the Apostate was initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries and a long succession of Roman emperors also received initiation, though of a peculiar kind. Furthermore, everything connected with the ancient pagan cults still survived. But these facts are usually dismissed today in a few words by contemporary historians. The events of that early period are portrayed in a very superficial manner; but this superficial portrayal may provide a sufficient justification in the eyes of many for speaking of a second Mystery of Golgotha. But people have not the slightest understanding of the inner meaning of those events.

From an external point of view one can say that in the early Christian centuries pagan temples, with their statues of a splendour and magnificence which are inconceivable today, were scattered over wide areas. These images (of the gods), even into their formalistic details, were a symbolic representation of all that had lived in the ancient Mysteries. Not only was there not a town or locality without abundant representations of symbolic art forms, but in the fields where peasants cultivated their crops were to be found isolated shrines, each with its statue of a God. And they never undertook agricultural work without first putting themselves in touch with those forces which, they believed, streamed down from the universe through the agency of the magic powers which resided in these images. The Roman emperors, with the support of bishops and priests, were concerned to destroy utterly these temples and shrines together with their images. We can follow this work of iconoclasm up to the time of the emperor Justinian in the sixth century. Countless edicts were promulgated ordering the ruthless destruction of these temples and shrines. During these centuries a wave of iconoclasm swept over the world that was unprecedented in the history of mankind; unprecedented because of the extent of the systematic destruction (note 2). Up to the time when St. Benedict with his own hands and the support of his workmen levelled the temple of Apollo on Monte Cassino in order to found a monastery dedicated to the service of the Benedictine Order on this site, and up to the time of the emperor Justinian, it was one of the foremost duties of the Roman emperors (who since Constantine had been converted to Christianity) to eradicate all traces of paganism. Edicts were promulgated whose apparent purpose was to arrest this work of destruction, but in reading them one receives a strange impression. One emperor, for example, issued an edict declaring that all the pagan temples should not be destroyed immediately for fear of inflaming the populace; the work of destruction should rather be carried out gradually, for the people would then accept it without demur.

All the terrible measures associated with this work of destruction are very often glossed over like so many other things. But this is a mistake. Whenever truth is in any way obscured, the path leading to Christ Jesus is also obscured and cannot be found. Since I have already spoken of this earnest love of truth, allow me to refer to a small incident which occurred in my early childhood and which I shall never forget. Such things are most revealing. Unless we wilfully blind ourselves we learn from the history of the Roman emperors that Constantine was not precisely a model of virtue, otherwise he would not have accused his own stepson, without any justification, of illicit relations with his own mother. The accusation was a pure fabrication in order to find a pretext for murder. Constantine first had his stepson murdered on this trumped-up charge and then the stepmother. These were simply routine acts with Constantine. Since however the Church was deeply indebted to him, official Church history is ashamed to portray him in his true colours. With your permission I should like to read a passage from my school text-book on the history of religion which refers to Constantine: “Constantine showed himself to be a true son of the Church even in his private life”—and I have already given you an example of this! “Though often reproached for his irascibility and ambition one must remember that faith is not a guarantee against every moral lapse and that Christianity could not manifest its redemptive power in him because, to the end of his life, he never partook of the Sacrament.” Now examples of this kind of whitewash are a commonplace. They demonstrate how seldom history displays a love of truth. And much the same applies to recent history. Here we find other distortions but we fail to detect them because other interests occupy our attention.

When we read the account of these Imperial edicts (relating to the destruction of the pagan temples) we are also informed that the Roman emperors expressly rejected animal sacrifice and similar practices which are alleged to have taken place in the temples. Now I do not intend to criticize or to gloss over anything, but simply to state the facts. But we must remember that “opposition to animal sacrifice” (from the entrails of which future events are said to have been predicted) was, in fact, a decadent form of sacrifice. It was not the trifling matter that history often suggests, but a profound science, different in character from that of today. The object of animal sacrifice—and it is difficult to speak of these practices today because we find them so revolting that we can only refer to them in general terms—was to stimulate powers which, at the time, could not be attained directly because the epoch of the old clairvoyance was past. Attempts were made within certain circles of the pagan priesthood to revive the old clairvoyant powers. This was one of the methods employed. A more satisfactory method of awakening this ancient atavistic clairvoyance in order to recapture the spirit of primeval times was to revive the particular form of sacrifice practised in the Mithras Mysteries and in the most spiritual form known to the Mysteries at that time. In the priestly Mysteries of Egypt and in Egyptian temples far more brutal and bloodthirsty practices were carried out. When we study the Mithras Mysteries by occult means we realize that they were a means to gain insight into the secrets of the forces operating in the universe through sacrificial rites that were totally different in character from what we understand by sacrificial rites today; in fact they yielded a far deeper insight into the secrets of nature than the modern practice of autopsy which only leads to a superficial knowledge. Those who performed these sacrificial rites in the correct way were able to perceive clairvoyantly certain forces which are present in the hidden depths of nature. And for this reason the real motives for these ritual sacrifices were kept secret and only those who were adequately prepared were permitted to have knowledge of them.

Now when we look into the origin of the Mithras Mysteries we find that they date back to the Third post-Atlantean epoch and so they were already decadent at the time of which we are speaking. In their purer form they were suited to the Third post-Atlantean epoch only. They had reached their high point in this epoch. Through the performance of particular rites they had the power, albeit in a mysterious and somewhat dangerous way, to penetrate deeply into the secrets of nature. The priest performed certain rites in the presence of the neophyte by which he was enabled to “decompound” natural substances (i.e. to resolve them into their constituent parts) in order thereby to arrive at an understanding of the processes of nature. Through the manner in which the fire and water in the organisms interacted on each other and through the manner in which they reacted upon the neophyte who took part in the sacrifice, a special path was opened up which enabled him to attain to a self-knowledge that reached down into the very fibres of his being and thereby arrive at an understanding of the universe.

By participating in these sacrificial rites man learned to see himself in a new light. But this knowledge made considerable allowance for man's weakness. Self-knowledge is extremely difficult to acquire, and these sacrificial rites were intended to facilitate such knowledge and enabled him to feel and experience his inner life more intensely than through intellectual or conceptual processes. He therefore strove for a self-knowledge that penetrated into his physical organism, a self-knowledge that can be seen in the souls of the great artists of antiquity, who, to a certain extent, owed their sense of form to an instinctive feeling for the forms and movements of nature which they experienced in their own organism. As we look back into the history of art, we find there was a time when the artist never dreamt of working from models; any suggestion of working from the model would have been unthinkable. We become increasingly aware that the artist portrayed his visual imaginations in concrete form. Visual imagination is virtually a thing of the past; we hardly dare mention it because words are inadequate to give any real indication of what we mean by it. It is incredible how much times have changed.

Now the Eleusinian Mysteries were a direct continuation of the Mithras Mysteries which were widely diffused at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha, but at the same time they represented a totally different aspect. Whilst the Mithras Mysteries emphasized the attainment of self-knowledge through the physical organism, the Eleusinian Mysteries were quite different from those of the Mithras Mysteries. In the latter the neophyte was thrust deeply into himself; in the Eleusinian Mysteries his soul was liberated from the body so that he could experience outside the body the hidden impulses of the creative activity of nature and the spirit. Now if we ask what man learned from these Mysteries—from the Mithras Mysteries which were already decadent and from the Eleusinian Mysteries that had reached their high point towards the fourth century B.C.—if we ask what benefit man derived from these Mysteries, then the answer is found in the well-known injunction of the Delphic oracle: “Know thyself”. Initiation was directed to the attainment of self-knowledge along two different paths: first, self-knowledge through being thrust inwards so that the astral and etheric bodies were “condensed”, so to speak, and through the impact of the psychic on the physical, man realized: “Now you perceive yourself for what you are; you have attained self-awareness.” Such was the legacy of the Mithras Mysteries. In the Eleusinian Mysteries, on the other hand, he attained to self-knowledge through the liberation of the soul from the body by means of various rites which cannot be described in detail here. The soul thus came in contact with the secret power of the Sun, with solar impulses irradiating the Earth, with the forces of the Moon impulse streaming into the Earth, with the forces of stellar impulses and the impulses of the individual elemental forces—the warmth, air and fire forces and so on. The external elements streamed through man's soul (which had been withdrawn from the body) and in this encounter with the external forces he attained self-knowledge. Those who were aware of the real meaning of the Mystery teachings knew that man could attain to all kinds of psychic experiences outside the body, but he was unable to grasp concretely the idea of the ego. Outside the Mysteries the idea of the ego was a purely abstract concept at that time. Man could experience other aspects of the psychic and spiritual life, but the ego had to be nurtured through Mystery training and needed a powerful stimulus. This was the aim of the Mysteries and was known to the initiates.

Now as you know, there occurred at this time a kind of fusion between evolving Christianity and the Roman empire. I have already described how this arose and how, because of this fusion, the Church was anxious to suppress, as far as possible, those rites I have just described to you, to efface all traces of the past and to conceal from posterity all knowledge of the Mystery practices which over the centuries had sought to bring man, whether in the body or outside the body, in touch with those spiritual forces which help him to develop his ego consciousness. If we wish to make a more detailed study of the evolution of Christianity we must consider not only the development of dogma, but especially the development of ancient cults from certain points of view; this is of far greater importance than the evolution of dogma. For dogmas are a source of controversy and like the phoenix they rise again from their own ashes. However much we may imagine they have been eradicated, there is always some crank who comes along and revives the old prejudices. Cults are far easier to eradicate. And these ancient cults which, in a certain sense, were the external signs and symbols of Mystery practices were suppressed, so that it would be impossible to discover from the survival of ancient rites the methods by which man sought to come in touch with divine-spiritual forces.

In order to get to the bottom of the matter we must take a look at the chief sacrament of the Church of Rome, the sacrifice of the Mass. What is the inner significance of the Catholic Mass? In reality, the Mass and all that is related to it, is a continuation and development of the Mithras Mysteries, blended to some extent with the Eleusinian Mysteries. The sacrifice of the Mass and many of the related ceremonies is simply a further development of the ancient cults. The original ritual has been somewhat transformed; the sanguinary character which the Mithras Mysteries had assumed has been modified. But we cannot fail to note many similarities in the spirit of these two cults, especially if we appreciate certain details. For example, before receiving the Host the priest as well as the communicant must fast for a certain period. This detail is more important for the understanding of the Mystery in question than many of the issues that were so fiercely debated in the Middle Ages. And if the priest, as may well happen, neglects the order to fast before celebrating the Eucharist, then the Communion loses its meaning and the effect it should have. Indeed its efficacy is largely lost because the communicants have not been properly instructed. It can be effective only if suitable instruction has been given to the communicant on what he should experience immediately after receiving the “unbloody sacrifice (sic) of His Body and Blood”. But you are no doubt aware of how little attention is paid to these subtleties nowadays, how little people realize that communion must be followed by an inward experience, that one should experience an inner intimation, a kind of modern renewal of that stimulation which the neophyte experienced in the Mithras Mysteries. This is what really lies behind the Christian cult. And ordination was an attempt by the Church to establish a kind of continuation of the ancient principle of Initiation. But she forgot in many cases that Initiation consisted in giving instruction in the way to respond to certain experiences.

Now Julian's avowed object was to discover how the Eleusinian Mysteries into which he had been initiated were related to the Mysteries of the Third post-Atlantean epoch. What could he learn from these Mysteries? On this subject history tells us little. If we were to embark upon a serious study of how men such as Clement of Alexandria, his pupil Origen, Tertullian and even Irenaeus (note 3), to say nothing of the still earlier Fathers, derive in part from the pagan principle of initiation and came to Christianity in their own way, if we were to enter into the minds of these great souls, we should find that their concepts and ideas were informed by an inner vitality peculiar to them alone, that an entirely different spirit dwelt in them from that which was later reflected in the Church. If we wish to understand the Mystery of Golgotha we must catch something of the spirit of these early Fathers.

Now in relation to the great cultural manifestations men are fast asleep, and I mean this literally. They see the world as if in a dream and we can observe this at the present time. I have often spoken to you of Herman Grimm (note 4), and I must confess that when I speak of him today I am a different person from the person who spoke of him some four or five years ago. After nearly three years of War the decades before the War and the years immediately preceding the War seem like a golden age. All that has happened in those years seems centuries ago. Things have changed so much that one has the feeling that time has been infinitely prolonged. And in like manner the most important things pass unnoticed because mankind is asleep to them.

If today we try to grasp the ideas of ancient writers with the ordinary method of understanding—conventional academic teachers of course understand everything that has been transmitted to posterity—but if one is not one of these enlightened mortals, one may come to the conclusion that it is impossible to understand ancient Greek philosophers unless one has recourse to occult knowledge. They speak a different language; the language in which they communicate their ideas is different from that of normal communication. And this applies to Plato. Hebbel (note 5) was aware of this and in his diary he sketched the outline of a dramatic composition which depicted the reincarnated Plato as a Grammar School pupil who had read Plato with his master, but was unable to cope with Plato although he himself was the reincarnation of the philosopher. Hebbel wanted to dramatize this idea but never carried it out. Hebbel, therefore, felt that even Plato could not readily be understood; one needed further preparation. Understanding in the sense of the accurate grasping of ideas first began with Aristotle in the fourth century B.C. Philosophy before Aristotle is incomprehensible by normal human standards. This explains the many commentaries on Aristotle for, whilst on the one hand he is perfectly intelligible, on the other hand in the formation of certain concepts we have not advanced beyond Aristotle because in this respect he belongs to his age. It is impossible to adopt the thought-forms of another epoch; that is tantamount to asking a man of fifty-six to become twenty-six again in order to relive for a quarter of an hour his experiences as a man of twenty-six. A certain mode of thinking is only valid for a particular epoch and the peculiarity attaching to the thinking of a particular epoch is merely repeated time and time again. It is interesting to note how Aristotle dominated the thinking of the Middle Ages and how his philosophy was revived again by Franz Brentano (note 6) and precisely at this moment of time. In 1911 Brentano wrote an excellent book on Aristotle in which he elaborated those ideas and concepts that he wished to bring to the attention of our present epoch. It is a curious symptom of the Karma of our age that Brentano should have written at this precise moment of time a comprehensive study of Aristotle which should be read by all who value a certain kind of thinking. And let me add in addition that the book is eminently readable.

Now it was the fate of Aristotle's writings to have been mutilated, not by Christianity, but by the Church (though not directly), so that essential parts of his work are missing. Consequently these lacunae must be supplemented by occult means. The most important omissions refer to the human soul. And, in connection with Aristotle, I now come to the question posed by all today: how can I find, by means of inner soul-experiences, a sure way to open myself to the Mystery of Golgotha? How can I direct towards this end the practice of meditation described in my writings, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and elsewhere? To a certain extent Aristotle attempted on his own initiative to awaken within himself the inner experiences which those who pose this question must attempt to undertake. But, according to the commentators, whenever Aristotle is on the point of describing his method of meditation, he breaks off and is silent. It is not that he did not describe his technique, but that the later transcripts failed to record it, so that it was never transmitted to posterity. Aristotle had already embarked upon a specific path, the path of mysticism. He strove to find within his soul that which gives certainty of the soul's immortality.

Now if a man honestly and sincerely practises meditation for a time he will unquestionably attain the inner experience of the immortality of the soul because he opens the doors to the immortal within him. Aristotle never doubted for a moment that it is possible to experience within ourselves something which proclaims: I now feel something within me that is independent of the body and which is unrelated to the death of the body. But he goes even further. He strove to develop this deep inner experience which we know (when we become conscious of it) is connected with the body. He experienced quite definitely—but the passage has been mutilated or bowdlerized—that inner solitude which must be felt by all who wish to arrive at an understanding of the Mystery of Golgotha. Mystical experience inevitably leads to solitude. And when this feeling of solitude overwhelms us we ask: “What have I forsaken that I have become so lonely?”, we shall be obliged to answer: “I have forsaken father, mother, brothers, sisters, I have forsworn the vanities of the world. I am emotionally detached from them.” Aristotle was aware of this. This inner experience can be felt by everyone, it can be systematically developed. In this feeling of solitude we come to realize that we have something within us that transcends death, something that pertains to the ego alone and is unrelated to the external world. Aristotle, too, realized that our contact with the external world is mediated through the physical organs. It is possible for man to experience himself in other ways, but the organs of the body are indispensable in order to experience the external world. Hence the feeling of solitude that overtakes us. And Aristotle realized, as everyone who follows in his steps must realize, that he had experienced his immortal soul which death cannot destroy. He was no longer attached to the finite and transient. “I am henceforth alone with myself” he said, “but my idea of immortality is limited; I realize that after death I shall know utter solitude, that through all eternity I shall be faced with the good and evil deeds that I have perpetrated in life and these will always be before my eyes, and this is all I can attain by my own efforts. If I wish to gain a deeper insight into the spiritual world I cannot rely on my own efforts alone; either I must receive Initiation or be instructed by Initiates.”

All this could be found in Aristotle's writings, but his successors were forbidden to transmit the knowledge. And because Aristotle anticipated this possibility he was regarded to a certain extent as a kind of prophet; he became the prophet of that which was not possible in his day, and which is different today from what it was in Aristotle's time. There is no need to appeal to history; we know from personal experience that times have changed.

Now let us turn our attention once again to this feeling of total solitude which assails us today, to this mystical experience which is completely different from the mystical experiences usually described. People often speak of them complacently and say: “God is experienced within myself.” That is not, however, the full mystical experience. In full mystical experience we experience God in total and utter solitude. Alone in the presence of God man experiences himself. And then he must find the necessary strength and perseverance to continue in this state of isolation. For this experience of solitude is a potent force! If we do not allow ourselves to be oppressed by solitude, but allow it to become an active force in us, then we meet with a further experience—these things of course can only be described, but everyone can experience them—we have the firm conviction that the solitude we suffer is self-created, that we have brought it upon ourselves. We create our gods in our own image. This solitude is not born with us, it is created by us, we ourselves are responsible for it. This is the second experience.

And this second experience leads to the feeling that we share direct responsibility for the death of that which is born of God. When man has suffered the dark night of the soul for a sufficient length of time the divine element in him has been slain by the all-too-human. This has not always been the case, otherwise evolution would have been impossible. There must have been a time when this feeling did not exist. At this moment man begins to feel that he shares responsibility for the death of the divine within him. If time permitted I could explain more fully the meaning of the slaying of the “Son of God”. Remember that mystical experience is not a vague, indefinite, isolated experience; it unfolds progressively; we ourselves experience the death of the Christ.

And when this experience has become a powerful force in us, then (I can express it in no other way) the Christ, the Risen Lord is born in us. For the Risen Lord, He who has suffered death, is first felt as an inner mystical experience and the reason for His death is experienced in the manner already described.

There are three degrees of mystical experience. To find the path leading to the sources of the Mystery of Golgotha is of itself not enough; something more must be added, something that has been grotesquely misrepresented, even concealed, at the present time. The only person who forcefully pointed out what had been concealed from mankind by the nineteenth century was Friedrich Nietzsche in his book On the Uses and Abuses of History. Nothing is more calculated to destroy our understanding of Christ than what is called history today. And the Mystery of Golgotha has never been more thoroughly misrepresented than by the objective historians of the nineteenth century. I am aware that anyone who criticizes the objective history of today is regarded as a fool. I have no wish to denigrate the painstaking philological and scholarly achievements of historical research, but however scholarly or however exact this history may be, it is a spiritual desert. It has no understanding of the things that are of vital importance to the life of man and to mankind as a whole. They are a closed book to modern history.

Perhaps I may be permitted to speak from personal experience in this field, for these things have personal associations. Since my nineteenth year I have been continually occupied with the study of Goethe but I have never been tempted to write a factual history of his life or even portray him in the academic sense, for the simple reason that from the very first I felt that what mattered most was that Goethe was still a living force. The physical man Goethe who was born in 1749 and died in 1832, is not important; what is important is that after his death his spirit is still alive amongst us today, not only in the Goethe literature (which is not particularly enlightened), but in the very air we breathe.

This spiritual atmosphere that surrounds us today did not as yet exist in the men of antiquity. The etheric body, as you know, is separated from the soul after death as a kind of second corpse, but, through the Christ Impulse that informs us since the Mystery of Golgotha, the etheric body is now preserved to some extent; it is not completely dissolved. If we believe—and I use the word belief in the sense which I defined in an earlier lecture—that Goethe is “risen” in an etheric body and if we begin to meditate upon him, then his concepts and ideas become alive in us, and we describe him not as he was, but as he is today. The idea of resurrection has then become a living reality and we believe in the resurrection. We can then say that we believe not only in ideas that belong to the past, but also in the living continuity of ideas. This is connected with a profound mystery of modern times. No matter what we may think, so long as we are imprisoned in the physical body our thoughts cannot manifest in the right way. (This does not apply to our feeling and will, but only to our thoughts and representations.) Great as Goethe was, his ideas were greater than he. That they were unable to rise to greater heights was due to the limitations of his physical body. The moment they were liberated from these limitations of the body and could be developed by someone who has sympathy and understanding for them, they are transformed and acquire new life. (I am referring here to the thoughts which persist to some extent in his etheric body, not to his feeling and will.) Remember that the form in which ideas first arise in us is not their final form. Believe therefore in the resurrection of ideas! Believe this so firmly that you willingly seek union with your forefathers—not with your forefathers to whom you are linked through ties of blood, but with your spiritual forefathers—and that you will ultimately find them. They need not be Goethes, they might equally well be a Smith or a Brown. Try to fulfil the injunction of Christ: do not cling to ties of consanguinity, but seek rather a spiritual relationship. Then the thought of resurrection becomes a living reality in your life and you will believe in resurrection. It is not a question of invoking incessantly the name of the Lord; what matters is that we grasp the living spirit of Christianity, that we hold fast to the vitally important idea of resurrection as a living force. And he who in this way draws support for his inner life from the past, learns that the past lives on in us, we experience in ourselves the continuity of the past. And then—it is only a question of time—the moment arrives when we are aware of the presence of the Christ. Everything depends upon our firm faith in the Risen Christ and in the idea of resurrection, so that we can now say: “We are surrounded by a world of spirit and the resurrection has become a reality within us.”

You may object, however, that this is pure hypothesis. So be it. Once you have had the experience of having been in touch with the thoughts of someone who has died, whose physical body has been committed to the Earth and whose thoughts live on in you, then a time comes when you say: “The thoughts that have newly arisen in me I owe to Christ; they could never have become so vitally alive but for the incarnation of Christ.”

There is an inward path to the Mystery of Golgotha; but one must first abandon so-called “objective” history which in reality is entirely subjective because it deals with surface phenomena and ignores the spirit. Many Goethe biographies have been written which set out to portray Goethe's life with maximum fidelity. In every case the authors, of necessity, stifle something in themselves. For Goethe's way of thinking has been transformed and lives on in a different form. It is important that we should grasp Christianity in the same spirit.

In short, it is possible to have a mystical experience of the Mystery of Golgotha—mystical in the true sense of the word. One must not be content with abstractions, one must be prepared to suffer through the inner experiences I have already described. And if the question is raised: how can I draw near to Christ? (it must be understood that we are referring to the Risen Christ), if we have the patience and necessary perseverance to follow the path indicated, we can be sure of finding the Christ at the right moment. But when we find Him, we must be careful not to overlook what is most important.

I said in an earlier lecture that Aristotle was a prophet and that Julian the Apostate inherited something of the same prophetic gift. Owing to the form which the Eleusinian Mysteries had assumed at that time, he could not discover their true meaning; he hoped to find the answer in the Mithras Mysteries. It was for this reason that Julian embarked on his Persian campaign. He wished to discover the continuity in the Mystery teachings, to find the connection between them. And because this was not permitted he was assassinated.

Now the early Church Fathers sought to experience the Christ after the fashion of the Eleusinian Mysteries. Whether we call them Gnostics or not—the true Gnostics were rejected by the Church, though Clement of Alexandria could justifiably be called a Gnostic—they had a totally different relation to Christ than later times. They sought to approach Him through the Eleusinian Mysteries and accepted Him as a Cosmic Being. They repeatedly raised the question: How does the Logos operate purely in the spiritual world? What is the true nature of the Being whom man encounters in Paradise? What is his relation to the Logos? Such were the questions which occupied the minds of the Gnostics’, questions that can only be answered by those who are familiar with the world of spiritual ideas. When we study the Eleusinian Mysteries (that were extirpated root and branch), it is evident that in the first centuries after the Mystery of Golgotha the Risen Christ was Himself present in the Mysteries in order to reform them. And we can truly say that Julian the Apostate had a deeper understanding of Christianity than Constantine. In the first place, Constantine had not been initiated and had only accepted Christianity in a superficial way. But Julian felt intuitively that Christ could only be found in the Mysteries. It was through Initiation that we must find the Christ; He would endow us with the ego which could not be granted us at that time because we were not ready to receive it.

It was a historical necessity that these Mysteries should be destroyed because they did not lead to the Christ. We today must find access to Hellenism once again, but without the aid of documents. Hellenism must be revived, not of course in its original form, otherwise it becomes the travesty that can be seen in the aping of the Olympiad, for example. It is not a question of aping Hellenism; I am not suggesting any such thing. Hellenism must be renewed from within and unquestionably will be renewed. We must find the path to the Mysteries once again, but within ourselves, and then we shall also find the path to the Christ.

Just as Christ was crucified for the first time on Golgotha, so He was crucified a second time through Constantinism. By suppressing the Mysteries, Christ, as a historical reality, was crucified a second time. For those acts of vandalism which lasted for centuries destroyed not only priceless treasures of art, but destroyed also man's experience of the spiritual world, the most important experience he could have. People had no understanding of what had been destroyed by this vandalism, because they had lost all sense of values. When the temples of Jupiter and Serapis were demolished together with their statues the mob applauded. “It is right to destroy them,” they said, “for it has been foretold that when the temple of Serapis is destroyed, then the Heavens will fall and the Earth will be plunged in chaos. The Heavens however have not fallen, nor has the world collapsed in chaos despite the fact that the Roman Christians have levelled the temple to the ground.” It is true that outwardly the stars have not fallen, nor has the Earth been plunged in chaos. But all that man had formerly known through the experience of the Sun initiation was extinguished. That majestic wisdom, more grandiose than the firmament of ancient astronomy, collapsed along with the ruins of the temple of Serapis. And this ancient wisdom, the last traces of which Julian still found in the Mysteries of Eleusis, where the spiritual Sun and the spiritual Moon had been revealed to him, this wisdom was lost forever. All that the men of ancient times experienced in the Mithras Mysteries and Egyptian Mysteries when, through sacrificial worship, they relived inwardly the mysteries of the Moon and the Earth as they are enacted in man himself when he came to self-knowledge through the “inner compression” of his soul—all this has collapsed in chaos. Spiritually, however, the Heavens had fallen and the Earth was plunged in chaos; for what was lost in the course of those centuries is comparable to the loss that we should suffer if we were suddenly bereft of our senses, when we would know neither the Heavens above nor the Earth beneath our feet. The loss of the ancient world is not the trivial episode recorded in history, but has far deeper implications. We must believe in the resurrection even if we are unwilling to believe that what has disappeared is lost for ever. This demands that we should be resolute in thought and have the courage of our convictions. We realize the imperative need today for the Christ Impulse to which I have so often referred in these lectures.

Through karmic necessity (a necessity from a certain standpoint only) man has for centuries been destined to live a life that was empty and purposeless, to live in a spiritual vacuum, so that through a strong inner urge for freedom he could find the Christ again and in the right way. But he must first rid himself of that self-complacency from which he so often suffers at the present time.

Sometimes this self-complacency assumes most remarkable forms. In the eighties, a Benedictine father, Knauer, gave a course of lectures in Vienna on the Stoics. I should like to read you a passage from one of these lectures. The leading representatives of the Stoic school of philosophy were Zeno (342-270), Cleanthes (331-232) and Chrysippus (282-209); the school therefore flourished several centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. This is what Knauer says:

“In conclusion I should like to say in defence of the Stoics that they strove for a league of nations, embracing the whole of mankind, which would end war and racial hatred. I need hardly say that in this respect the Stoics rose superior to the often inhuman prejudices of their time—and even of later generations.”

A league of nations! I had to read the lecture again. Could it be that my ears had deceived me when I heard Woodrow Wilson and other statesmen talking of a league of nations? For here was the voice of the Stoics, but they said it far better because they had the power of the Mysteries behind them. The inner power which inspired their discourses is now lost, leaving but the shell behind. Only those historians who stand a little apart from the normal species of historian can sometimes see historical events in a new and different light.

And Knauer continued—I withdraw nothing of what I said recently about Immanuel Kant; but it is none the less remarkable that a capable philosopher such as Knauer should have said the following about the Stoa in the eighties:

“Amongst the more recent philosophers”—he is referring to the league of nations idea of the Stoa—“no less a person than Kant has revived this idea and declared it to be a feasible proposition in his treatise ‘On Perpetual Peace. A philosophical outline’, a work that has not received the recognition it deserves. The fundamental idea of Kant is both sound and practicable. He shows that eternal peace must become a reality when the ‘Great Powers’ introduce a genuinely representative system.” In Kant this idea is considerably emasculated, but today it has been still more emasculated so that it is a shadow of its former self. And this nebulous conception is now graced with the name “the new orientation”. And Knauer continues: “Under such a system the wealthy and propertied classes and the professional classes who are the chief victims of war will have the right to decide issues of war and peace. Our constitutions which are modelled on that of England are not genuine representative systems in Kant's opinion. They are dominated by party prejudice and sectional interests which are promoted by an electoral system that is based for the most part on statistical calculations and the counting of heads. The crux of Kant's argument is this: international law must be based upon a federation of independent States which have wide powers of autonomy.”

Is this the voice of Kant or the voice of the “new orientation”? Kant argues his case more vigorously, it is more firmly grounded. I do not propose to read you what follows, otherwise the worthy Kant would incur the displeasure of the censor.

What I have been discussing was the subject of a book by the American author Brook Adams (note 7), The Law of Civilisation and Decay, a study of the importance of evolutionary theory in human history. Brook Adams tried to account for the continual revival of old institutions and forms of life by certain peoples, for example, the revival of the Roman empire by the Teutonic peoples. Surveying the present epoch he finds many nations who have affinity with the Roman empire, but no indications of the peoples who will renew it—certainly not the American people, and in this he was perfectly right. This regenerative power will not come from without; it must come from within through the quickening of the spirit. It must spring from the soul and will only be possible when we grasp the Christ Impulse in all its living power. All these empty phrases one hears on every hand apply to the past and not to the present or future. All this empty talk with its everlasting refrain: “Yes, the old proverb is true: ‘Minerva's owl can only spread her wings in the twilight’ was valid for ancient times.” And to this we reply: “When nations had grown old they established schools of philosophy; they looked back in spirit to what they owed to instinct. Things will be different in the future, for this instinct will no longer exist. The spirit itself must become instinct and from out of the spirit new creative possibilities must arise.”

Reflect upon these words for they are of momentous importance: out of the spirit new creative possibilities will arise! The power of the spirit must work unconsciously within you. And this depends upon the idea of resurrection. That which has been crucified must arise again. This will not come to pass by passively waiting on events, but by quickening the spiritual forces within us, by quickening the creative power of the spirit itself.

This is what I wished to say on the subject of the Mystery of Golgotha at this particular juncture of time.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Clement of Alexandria (301–232 B.C.) was head of the Catechetical School of Alexandria, a training school for catechumens. In the conflict between pistis (faith) and gnosis (knowledge) he favoured the latter and was close to the Gnostics in that he supported Platonism and the allegorical interpretation of the Scriptures. He believed in the idea of the “Disciplina Arcani”, the withholding of higher knowledge from those unfitted to receive it, which was common to all ancient Mystery teaching. Origen (A.D. 186–253) became head of the Catechetical School. Nurtured in neo-Platonism through the influence of Ammonius Saccus. Adjudged to be a heretic by the fifth Ecumenical Council. He accepted the theory of pre-existence, free will and the necessity of grace. He also used symbol and allegory in his exegesis. He wrote commentaries on nearly every work in scripture. His crowning work was Contra Celsum who attacked Christianity on moral and intellectual grounds. Book VI of Eusebius Ecclestical History is devoted to him. See also Appendix I in the perceptive commentary of A. P. Shepherd and Mildred Robertson Nicoll, in The Redemption of Thinking (Hodder & Stoughton).

Note 2. The systematic destruction of pagan temples began under Constantine. Out of expediency the emperors remained neutral in the conflict between Christian and pagan cults. But the Christian monks not only incited the populace to pillage, but were themselves the first to burn and pillage the temples and to ransack trophies, statues and anything of value. It was during the outburst of iconoclasm that the famous library in the temple of Serapis was destroyed in A.D. 391.

Note 3. Irenaeus, born in Asia, heard St. Polycarp in his youth. The date of his death is unknown. His chief work was Adversus Haereses, c.179, an attack upon the Gnostics and the principal heresies.

Note 4. Herman Grimm (1828–1901), son of Wilhelm Grimm who with his brother Jacob collected and edited the Nursery and Household Tales. Herman was an art historian who wrote works on Goethe, Dante, Shakespeare, Raphael and Michelangelo.

Note 5. Hebbel (1813–63), poet and dramatist. Tragedy, according to Hebbel arises out of conflict. Innovators, leaders of new movements, men of original mind, representatives of new principles, though they may lead to the amelioration of society, are doomed to destruction. This was the tragedy of Christ. The first and last representative of a movement, he declared, is either tragic or comic.

Note 6. Franz Brentano (1838–1917). An Austrian philosopher, ordained 1864, but was unable to accept the doctrine of papal infallibility and relinquished his clerical status. Professor of Philosophy in Wurzburg 1872 and taught at the University of Vienna 1874–95. Aristoteles and seine Weltanschauung (1911) was a re-assessment of Aristotelian philosophy. Brentano attempted to revise Aristotle's logic and psychology from the standpoint of empiricism. Brentano believed in the existence of a personal and immortal soul. (See D. Kraus, Franz Brentano, 1919, and H. O. Eaton, The Austrian Philosophy of Values, 1930.)

Note 7. Brooks Adams (1848–1927), also wrote The Dream and the Reality, 1917. Predicted that by the mid-twentieth century the two great Powers in the world would be America and Russia. American prosperity would contribute to the decay of American democracy because great wealth exercises power without responsibility.

In the course of our studies I have spoken of the events in the early development of Western civilization. My aim was to ascertain from these enquiries into the past what is of importance for the present, and with this object in view I propose to pursue the matter in further detail. Our present epoch, as we can see from a cursory glance, is an epoch when only thoughts derived from the Mystery teachings concerning human evolution can exercise effective influence. Now in order to grasp the full implication of this claim we must not only have a clear understanding of many things, but we must also look closely into the needs and shortcomings of contemporary thinking, feeling and willing. We shall then begin to feel that our present epoch has need of new impulses, new thoughts and ideas, and especially of those impulses and thoughts which spring from the depths of the spiritual life and which must become the subject of spiritual-scientific study.

At the present time there is much that fills us with sadness. We must not allow ourselves to be depressed by this mood of sadness, rather should it be something that can prepare us and teach us to work and strive in our present circumstances. I recently came across a publication which I felt would give me the greatest pleasure. The author is one of the few who are receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science and the more is the pity that he was unable to introduce into his writings the fruits of anthroposophical endeavour. The book to which I am referring is The State as Organism, by Rudolf Kjellén (note 1), the Swedish political economist. After reading the book, I must confess that I was left with a feeling of disappointment because I realized that here was a person who, as I said, was receptive to the ideas of Spiritual Science, but whose thoughts were still far removed from the thoughts we stand in need of today, thoughts which must be clearly formulated and become concrete reality, especially today, so that they may enter into the evolution of our time. In his book Kjellén undertook to study the State and its organization, but at no time does one feel that he possessed the ideas or the intellectual grasp which could offer the slightest chance of solving his problem. It is a melancholy experience to be disillusioned time and again—but let us not be discouraged, let us rather brace ourselves to meet the challenge of our time.

Before I say a few words on these matters I should like to call your attention once again to those ancient Mysteries which, as you can well imagine from the statements I recently made about the iconoclasm of the (Christian) Church, are known to history today only in a mangled version. It is all the more necessary therefore for our present age that Spiritual Science should bring an understanding of these Mysteries. I mentioned in my last lecture the unprecedented fury with which Christianity in the first centuries destroyed the ancient works of art and how much that was of priceless value was swept away. One cannot take an impartial view of Christianity unless one is prepared to see this destructive side with complete objectivity. And bear in mind at the same time that the various books which deal with this subject present a particular point of view. Everyone today who has received a minimum of education has a picture of the spiritual development of Antiquity, of the spiritual evolution that preceded Christianity. But how different this picture would be if Archbishop Theophilus (note 2) of Alexandria had not burnt in the year 391 seven hundred thousand scrolls which contained vitally important records of Roman, Egyptian, Indian and Greek literature and their cultural life. Just imagine how different would be the picture of Antiquity if these seven hundred thousand scrolls had not been burnt. And from this you will realize how much reliance can be placed on the history of the past which has documentary support—or rather how little reliance!

Let us now follow up the train of thought which I touched on in my lecture yesterday. I pointed out that the forms of Christian worship were in many respects borrowed from the symbols and ceremonies of the ancient pagan Mystery cults, that the forms of these Mystery cults and symbols had been totally eradicated by Christianity in order to conceal their origin. Christianity had made a clean sweep of the pagan forms of worship so that people had no means of knowing what had existed prior to their time and would simply have to accept what the Church offered. Such is the fate of human evolution. We must be prepared to recognize without giving way to pessimism that the course of human evolution is not one of uninterrupted progress.

I also showed in the course of my lecture yesterday that the rites and rituals of the Roman Church owed much to the Eleusinian Mysteries which had been interrupted in their development because Julian had been unable to carry out his intentions; his plan had failed to materialize. But the rites and sacraments of later years owed still more to the Mithras Mysteries. But the spirit of the Mithras Mysteries, that which justified their existence, the source from which they derived their spiritual content, can no longer be investigated. The Church has been careful to remove all traces of it and to close the door to enquiry. Knowledge of this can only be recovered if we strive to come to an understanding of these things through Spiritual Science. Today I propose to touch upon only one aspect of the Mithras Mysteries (note 3). I could of course speak at greater length about the Mithras Mysteries if I had more time at my disposal, but in order to understand them we must first gradually become conversant with their details.

In order to grasp the true spirit of the Mithras Mysteries whose influence spread far into the West of Europe during the first post-Christian centuries, we must be aware that they were based upon a central core of belief (which was right for the world of Antiquity and perfectly justified up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha), that the community or the individual communities, for example, the folk-communities or other groups within the folk-communities consisted not only of the individual units or members, but that, if they were to have any reality, communities must be imbued with a community spirit which has a super-sensible origin. A community was determined not only by the counting of heads, but for the people of Antiquity it represented the external form, the incarnation, if I may use the word in this connection, of a genuinely existing communal spirit. The aim of those who were received into these Mysteries was to participate in this spirit, to share the thoughts of this group-soul; not to insulate themselves from the community by obstinately pursuing their own egoistic thoughts, feelings and volitional impulses, but to live in such a way that they were receptive to the thoughts of the group-soul. In the Mithras Mysteries in particular the priests maintained that this union with the group-soul cannot be achieved if one looks upon a larger community simply as an external manifestation, for thereby that which lies in the community spirit is in the main obscured. The dead, they claimed, are part of our immediate environment and the more we can commune with those who have long been dead the better we shall order our present life. Therefore the longer these souls had been discarnate, the more beneficial they found it to commune with these souls. And in order to be able to commune with the spirit of the ancestor of a tribe, folk-community or family they found it best to make contact with the ancestral soul. It was assumed that this soul develops further after passing through the gates of death and therefore has a deeper insight into the future destiny of the Earth than those who are living on this Earth in their present physical bodies. Thus the whole purpose of these Mysteries was to establish those dramatic representations which would put the neophyte into touch with the souls of those who had long passed through the gates of death.

Those who were admitted to these Mysteries had to undergo a first stage of initiation which was usually characterized by a term borrowed from the bird-species; they were called “Ravens”. A “Raven” was a first-degree initiate. Through the particular Mystery rites, through the potent use of symbols and especially through dramatic performances he became aware not only of the sensible world around him or of what one learns through contact with one's fellow-men, but also of the thoughts of the dead. He acquired a certain capacity which enabled him to recall memories of the dead and the ability to develop it further. The “Raven” was under the solemn obligation to be conscious in the moment, to be alert and responsive to the world around, to be aware of the needs of his fellow-men and to familiarize himself with the phenomena of nature. He who spends his life in day-dreaming, who has no feeling for the indwelling spirit of man and nature was considered to be unsuitable material for reception into the Mysteries. For only the ability to see life around him clearly and in its true perspective fitted him for the task which he had to fulfil in the Mysteries. His task was to participate as far as possible in the changing circumstances of the world in order to widen the range of his experience, to share in the joys and sorrows of contemporary events. He who was unresponsive or indifferent to contemporary events was an unsuitable candidate for initiation. For the first task of the aspirant was to “reproduce”, to re-enact in the Mysteries the experiences gained through participation in the life of the world. In this way these experiences served as a channel of communication with the dead with whom the Initiates sought to make contact. Now you might ask: Would not a high Initiate have been more suitable for this purpose? By no means, for the first-degree Initiates were eminently suited to act as intermediaries because they still possessed all the feelings, shared all the sympathies and antipathies which fitted them for life in the external world, whilst the higher Initiates had more or less purged themselves of those emotions. Therefore these first-degree Initiates were specially suited to experience contemporary life in terms of the ordinary man and to incorporate it into the Mysteries. It was therefore the special task of the “Ravens” to mediate between the external world and those long dead. This tradition has survived in legend. As I have often stated legends as a rule have deep implications. The Kyffhäuser legend tells how Friedrich Barbarossa who had long been dead is instructed by Ravens, or how Charles the Great in the “Salzburg Untersberg” is surrounded by Ravens that brought him news of the outside world. These are echoes of the ancient pagan Mysteries and especially of the Mithras Mysteries.

When the aspirant was ready for the second degree of initiation he became an adept or “occultist” as we should say today. He was then able not only to incorporate into the Mysteries his experience of the sensible world, but also to receive clairvoyantly the communications from the dead, the impulses which the super-sensible world (this world of concrete reality which the dead inhabit) had to impart to the external world. And only when he was fully integrated into the spiritual life which originates in the super-sensible and is related to the external, sensible world was he considered to be adequately prepared for the third degree, and he was now given the opportunity to give practical expression to the impulses he had received in the Mysteries. He was now singled out to become a “warrior”, one who mediates to the sensible world that which must be revealed from the super-sensible world.

But was it not a gross injustice, you may ask, to withhold vital information from the people and to initiate only a select few? You will only understand the reason for this if you accept what I stated at the outset, namely, that the people were dependent upon a group-soul and were content for these select few to act on behalf of the whole community. They did not look upon themselves as separate individuals but as members of a group. It was only possible therefore to pursue this policy of selection at a time when the existence of a group-soul, when the selfless identification with the group was a living reality.

And when, as a “warrior” the initiate had championed for a time the cause of the super-sensible, he was considered fitted to establish smaller groups within the framework of the larger group, smaller communities within larger groups as the need arose. If, in those ancient times, anyone had taken into his head to found an association on his own initiative, he would have been ignored. Nothing would have come of it. In order to establish a union or association the initiate must become a “lion”, as it was termed in the Mithras Mysteries, for that was the fourth degree of initiation. He must first have reinforced his spiritual life through association with those impulses which existed not only amongst the living, but which united the living with the dead. From the fourth degree the initiate rose to a higher degree of initiation which permitted him through certain measures to take over the leadership of an already existing group, a folk-community in which the dead also participated. The eighth, ninth and tenth centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha are totally different from those of today. It would never have occurred to anyone to claim the right to choose arbitrarily the leader of their community; such a leader had to be an initiate of the fifth degree. Then, at the next higher degree, the initiate attained to those insights which the Sun Mystery (of which he had recently received intimations) implanted in the human soul. Finally he attained the seventh degree of initiation. I do not propose to enter into the details of these later degrees of initiation, for I simply wished to characterize the progressive development of the initiate who owed to his contact with the spiritual world his capacity to take an active part in community life.

Now you know that the group-soul nature has gradually declined in accordance with the necessary law of human evolution. It was at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha that man first developed ego consciousness. This had been prepared for centuries, but the crisis, the critical moment in this development had been reached at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One could no longer assume that the individual had the power to carry the whole community with him, to transfer his feelings and impulses to the entire community in a spirit of altruism.

It would be foolish to imagine that the course of history could have been other than it has been. But sometimes a thought such as the following may prove fruitful: what would have happened if, at the time when the message of Christianity first made its impact on human evolution, the pagan traditions had not been eradicated root and branch, but if historically a certain knowledge (which would be transparent even to those who relied on documents) had been transmitted to posterity? But Christianity was opposed to such a possibility. We will discuss later the reason for this attitude; today I wish simply to register the fact that Christianity was opposed to the transmission of this knowledge. Thus Christianity was confronted by a totally different kind of humanity which was not so much attached to the group-souls as that of former times, a humanity in which the approach to the individual had to be totally different from that of ancient times when the individual was virtually ignored and when men looked to the group-soul for guidance and acted out of the group-soul. Through the fact that Christianity suppressed all documentary evidence of the early centuries the people were kept in ignorance; Christianity in fact consciously fostered ignorance of the epoch when it had first developed. This Christianity borrowed those aspects of the pagan teaching which served its purpose and incorporated them in its traditions and dogmas and especially in its cults or religious ceremonies and then effaced all traces of the origin of these cults. The ancient cults have a deep symbolic meaning, but Christianity gave them a different interpretation. The performance of cult acts or ceremonies was still a familiar sight, but the source of the primeval wisdom from which they derived was concealed from the people.

Take for example the bishop's mitre of the eighth century. This mitre was embroidered with swastikas which were arranged in different patterns. The swastika which was originally the Crux Gammata dates back to the earliest Mysteries, to the ancient times when man was able to observe the activity of the “lotus flowers” in the human etheric and astral organism, how that which was active in the lotus flower was one of the chief manifestations of the etheric and astral forces. The bishop wore the swastika as a symbol of his authority, but its significance was lost and it had become a dead symbol. All traces of its origin had been eradicated. What history tells us of the origin of such symbols is only dry bones. Only through Spiritual Science can we rediscover the living spiritual element in these things.

Now I said earlier that people were consciously kept in ignorance, but the time has now come to dispel this ignorance. And over the years I think that I have said enough and in a variety of ways to show that it is essential at the present time to be alive and alert to these questions. For our epoch is an epoch in which the necessary period of darkness has run its course and when the light of spiritual life must dawn again. It is devoutly to be wished that as many as possible should feel in their hearts that this spiritual light is a necessity for our time and that the failures and endless sufferings of our time are connected with all these questions. We shall realize that superficial judgements are inadequate when we come to speak of the causes of our present situation. So long as we speak only from a superficial standpoint we shall be unable to develop thoughts or impulses which are sufficiently potent to dispel the ignorance which is the source of our attendant ills. It is indeed remarkable how mankind today—but this need not depress us, rather should it encourage us to observe and understand our present condition—is unwilling to face up to the situation because, for the most part, man is as yet unable to perceive what is really necessary for our evolution. It is heartbreaking to see what Nietzsche felt about the prevailing darkness and confusion of our age, a man who suffered deeply from, and was driven to the point of madness by the chaos and confusion of the second half of the nineteenth century. We shall not come to terms with a personality such as Friedrich Nietzsche if we look upon him as someone whom one blindly follows, as so many have done. For he answered these blind followers in the original prelude to the “Gay Science”.

I am sufficient unto myself
I owe allegiance to none,
And I laugh at every master
Who cannot laugh at himself.

That is also the underlying mood of the whole of “Thus spake Zarathustra”. But this did not prevent Nietzsche from being surrounded by many who were merely hangers-on. They, in any case, have nothing positive to contribute to our present situation. But the other extremists—and between these two groups can be found every shade of opinion—are equally of no help, for they say that although Nietzsche had many creative ideas, he ultimately lost his reason and so can be safely ignored. Friedrich Nietzsche is a strange phenomenon; one need not be his willing slave, yet the fact remains that even in his period of mental sickness he was acutely sensitive to the darkness and chaos of the age.

Indeed the account of the distress which Nietzsche suffered in his time provides us with a good yardstick with which to measure the difficulties of our own time. I propose to read two passages from Nietzsche's posthumous writings: “The Will to Power; the Transvaluation of all Values” (note 4) which was written at a time when his mind was unhinged, passages which could have been written today with a wholly different intent than Nietzsche's and could have been written to expose the deeper underlying cause of our present situation. Nietzsche wrote:

“What I am about to relate is the history of the next two centuries. I shall describe what is foreshadowed and from which there is no escape—the triumph of nihilism. This history can be written now, for necessity is already at work here. This future is already presaged by a hundred different omens; this destiny announces its presence everywhere; for the music of tomorrow all ears are pricked. The whole of European culture is slowly moving towards catastrophe in an agony of suspense which increases from decade to decade—restless, violent, precipitate like a river in spate hastening to its ocean bed, and which refuses to reflect and even dreads reflection.”

Judge then of your own reactions in the light of these words from the pen of a man of rare sensitivity at the end of the eighties of the nineteenth century and compare these words with another passage which I will now read to you and which vividly portrays the deep distress he felt and which everyone can experience himself.

“My friends, we had a hard time in our youth; we even suffered from youth as if it were a serious disease. This is owing to the age in which we are born—an age of great internal decay and disintegration which, with all its weakness and even with the best of its strength is opposed to the spirit of youth. Disintegration, that is to say a sense of insecurity, is peculiar to our age; nothing stands on solid ground or on sound faith or belief. People live for the morrow, because the day after tomorrow is uncertain. Our path is slippery and dangerous and the ice that still bears us has become precariously thin: we all feel the mild and ominous breath of the thaw-wind. Within a short space of time the path we are treading will never be able to know the footsteps of man again.”

It is clear that these sentiments were born of a profound insight into the realities of the time. He who would understand the age in which we live and especially the task that faces the individual, he who can look beyond the moment and the day will himself feel what is expressed in those passages and will perhaps say: Nietzsche's mental derangement prevented him from adopting a critical attitude to the ideas which arose in him. None the less these ideas stemmed from an acute sensitivity to the immediate realities of the present age. Perhaps we shall one day draw a comparison between Nietzsche's response to his age and the customary pronouncements of “experts” which do not even touch the fringe of the causes which lie at the root of our present difficult times. We shall then change our attitude and see the necessity for Spiritual Science today. People are unwilling to listen to the teachings of Spiritual Science; but in saying this I have no wish to imply reproach. Far be it from me to attach blame to anyone. The people to whom I am referring are for the most part those for whom I feel great respect and who, in my opinion, would be the first to take to Spiritual Science. I simply wish to point out how difficult it is for the individual to be receptive to Spiritual Science if he is impervious to spiritual appeal, if he succumbs entirely to the Zeitgeist, to the superficial trends of the time. One must be fully aware of this.

At this juncture I can now revert to Kjellen's book, The State as Organism. It is a curious book because the author strives with every fibre of his being to clarify the question: What is the State in reality?—and because he does not believe in the capacity of man's ideas and concepts to understand this question. It is true that the book contains many fine things which have been praised by contemporary critics, but the author has not the slightest idea of the deeper layers of understanding and knowledge which are necessary in order to rescue mankind from its present predicament. I have only time to refer to the central theme of his book. Kjellen raises the question: What is the relation of the individual to the State? And in attempting to answer this question he immediately came up against a difficulty. He wished to depict the State as a reality, as an integrated whole, in other words, as an organism primarily. Many have already described the State as an organism and are then always faced with the question: an organism consists of cells, what then are the cells of the State? Clearly the individual members of the State!—And on the whole Kjellen also shared this view: the State is an organism as the human or animal organism is an organism, and just as the human organism consists of individual cells, so too the State consists of individual cells, of human beings who are the cells of the State.

One can hardly imagine a more misguided or misleading analogy. If we follow up the analogy we shall never arrive at a clear understanding of man. Why is this? The cells of the human organism are juxtaposed, and this juxtaposition has a special significance. The whole structure of the human organism depends upon this juxtaposition. In the organism of the State the individual units or members are not contiguous like the individual cells in the human or animal organism. That is out of the question. In the totality of the State the human personality is something wholly different from the cells in the organism. And even if at a pinch we compare the State with an organism we must realize that we and the whole of political science are sorely mistaken if we overlook the fact that the individual is not a cell; only the productive element in man can sustain the State, whilst the organism is an aggregate of cells and it is they which determine its functioning. Therefore the present State in which the group-soul is no longer the same as in ancient times can only progress through the endeavour or initiative of the single individual. This cannot be compared with the function of the cells. As a rule it is immaterial what we choose to compare, but if we make a comparison between two objects they must be related objects. As a rule it is accepted that analogies are valid to some extent, but they should not be so far fetched as Kjellén's analogy. There is no objection to his comparing the State with an organism; one could equally well compare it with a machine (there is no harm in that) or even with a penknife—doubtless points of similarity can be found here too—but, if the comparison is carried through, it must be consistent. But people are not sufficiently familiar with the principles of logic to be aware of this.

Now Kjellén is perfectly entitled to compare the State with an organism if he so wishes. But if he wishes to make this comparison he must look for the right cells. But they cannot be found because the State has no cells! If we think about the matter concretely the analogy breaks down. I simply wish to point out that one can only carry this analogy through if one thinks in an abstract way like Kjellen. The moment one thinks realistically, one demurs, because the idea has no roots in reality. We find that the State has no cells. On the other hand we discover that the individual States can perhaps be compared to cells and that the sum total of States on Earth can be compared to an organism. A fruitful idea then occurs to us. But first we must answer the question: what kind of organism? Where can one find something comparable in the kingdom of nature where the cells fit into each other in the same way as the individual “State cells” fit into the entire organism of the Earth? Pursuing this idea we find that we can only compare the entire Earth organism with a plant organism, not with an animal organism and still less with a human organism. Whilst natural science is only concerned with the inorganic, with the mineral kingdom, political science must be founded on a higher order of ideas, on the ideas of the plant kingdom. We must look to neither the animal nor the human kingdom and we must free ourselves from mineralized thinking, dead thought forms to which the scientists are so firmly attached. They cannot rise to the higher order of ideas embodied in the plant kingdom, but apply laws of the mineral kingdom to the State and call it political science.

In order to arrive at this fruitful conception mentioned above our whole thinking must be rooted in Spiritual Science. We shall then be able to satisfy ourselves that the whole being of man by virtue of his individuality is far superior to the State, he penetrates into the spiritual world where the State cannot enter. If therefore you compare the State with an organism and the individual member of the State with the cells, then, if you think realistically, you will arrive at the idea of an organism consisting of individual cells, but the cells would everywhere extend beyond the epidermis. You would have an organism with its cells which extends beyond the epidermis; the cells would develop independently of the organism and would be self-contained. You would therefore have to picture the organism as if “living bristles” which felt themselves to be individuals were everywhere projecting beyond the epidermis. Living thinking thus brings us into touch with reality, and shows us the impossible difficulties that must face us if we wish to grasp any idea that is to be fruitful. It is not surprising therefore that ideas which are not impregnated with Spiritual Science have not the capacity to sustain us in coping with our present situation. For how can one reduce to order the chaos in the world if one has no idea of its cause? No matter how many Wilsonian manifestos are issued by all kinds of international organizations or associations and the like, so long as they have no roots in reality, they are so much empty talk. Hence the many proposals which are put forward today are a sheer waste of time.

Here is an example which demonstrates how imperative it is that our present age should be permeated with the impulses of Spiritual Science. It is the tragedy of our time that it is powerless to develop ideas which could reconcile and control the organic life of the State. Hence everything is in a state of chaos. But it must now be clear to you where the deeper causes of this chaos are to be sought. And it is not surprising therefore that books such as Kjellen's The State as Organism conclude in the most remarkable manner. We are now living in an age when everybody is wondering what is to be done so that men may once again live in harmony, when with every week they are increasingly determined to live in enmity and to slaughter each other. How are they to be brought together again? But the science which deals with the question of how men are once again to develop social relationships within the State concludes in Kjellen's case with these words: “This must be the conclusion of our enquiry into the State as organism. We have seen that for compelling reasons the State of today had made little progress in this direction and has not yet become fully aware that this is its function. None the less we believe in a higher form of State which recognizes a more clearly defined rational purpose and which will make determined efforts to achieve this goal.”

That is the concluding passage in his book; but we do not know, we have no idea what will come of it. Such are the findings of a painstaking and conscientious thinking that is so caught up in the stream of contemporary thought that it overlooks the essentials. One must face these problems squarely; for the impulse, the desire to gain insight into these problems only arises when we face them squarely, when we know what are the driving forces in our present age.

Even without looking far beneath the surface we perceive today an urge towards a kind of “socialization”, I do not mean towards socialism, but towards “socialization” of the Earth organism. But socialization—because it must be conscious, and not proceed from the unconscious as in the last two thousand years—socialization, reorientation or reorganization, is only possible if we understand the nature of man, if we learn to know once again the being of man—for that was the object of the ancient Mysteries. Socialization applies to the physical plane. But it is impossible to establish a social order if one ignores the fact that on the physical plane are to be found not only physical men, but men endowed with soul and spirit. Nothing can be achieved if we think of man only in physical terms. You may socialize, you may order social life in accordance with contemporary ideas, and within twenty years everything will be in chaos again if you ignore the fact that man is not only the physical being known to natural science, but a being endowed with soul and spirit. For soul and spirit are active agents and exercise a powerful influence. We may ignore their existence in our ideas and representations, but we cannot abolish them. If the soul is to inhabit a physical body which participates in a social order appropriate to our time it must have freedom of thought and opinion. Socialization cannot be realized without freedom of thought. And socialization and freedom of thought cannot be realized unless the spirit is rooted in the spiritual world itself.

Freedom of thought as an attitude of mind or way of thinking, pneumatology, spiritual maturity and spiritual science—as scientific foundation of all ordinances and directives—these are inseparably linked. We can only discover through spiritual science how these things are related to man and how they can he realized practically in the social order. Freedom of thought, that is, an attitude to one's neighbour that fully recognizes his right to freedom of thought, cannot be realized unless we accept the principle of reincarnation, for otherwise we look upon man as an abstraction. We shall never see him in the right light unless we look upon him as the result of repeated lives on Earth. The whole question of reincarnation must be examined in connection with the question of freedom of thought and opinion. The life of man will be impossible in the future unless the inner life of the individual can be rooted in the life of the spirit. I am not suggesting that he must become clairvoyant, though this will certainly occur in individual cases, but I maintain that he must be firmly rooted in the life of the spirit. I have often explained that this is perfectly possible without becoming clairvoyant. If we look around a little we shall find where the major hindrances lie and in what direction we must look for the source of these obstacles. It is not that people are unwilling to search for the truth—and as I have said, I do not wish to reprove or to criticize—but they erect psychic barriers and are the victims of their many inhibitions.

Often an isolated instance is so instructive that we are able to gain a real understanding of many contemporary phenomena from these symptoms. There is one symptom peculiar to our own time which is most remarkable. It is curious how people who are normally so brave and courageous today, are terrified when they hear that the claims of spiritual knowledge are to be recognized. They are bewildered. I have often told you that I noticed that many who had attended one or two lectures were not seen again for some time. Meeting them in the street I asked why they had never turned up again. “I dare not”, came the reply. “I am afraid you might convince me.” They find such a possibility dangerous and disturbing and are not prepared to expose themselves to the risk. I could cite many other examples of a similar kind from my own experience, but I prefer to give examples from the wider field of public life.

A short time ago I spoke here of Hermann Bahr (note 5) who recently gave a lecture here in Berlin entitled “The Ideas of 1914”. I pointed out how he attempted—you need only read his last novel Himmelfahrt—not only to move a little in the direction of Spiritual Science, but he even tried in his later years to arrive at an inner understanding of Goethe, that is, to follow the path which I would recommend to those who wish to provide themselves with a sound background for their introduction to Spiritual Science. There are very many today who would like to speak of the spirit once again, who would welcome any and every opportunity to revive knowledge of the spirit. I do not wish to lecture or criticize, least of all a person such as Hermann Bahr for whom I feel great affection. Even if it is far from our intention to sermonize, we none the less have the strange feeling that an outlook such as that of Hermann Bahr has contributed to the corruption of thought and has infected human thinking with original sin.

Now in his Berlin lecture Hermann Bahr expressed many fine and admirable sentiments; but many astonishing things come to light. He began by saying that this war had taught us something completely new. It had taught us to integrate the individual once again into the community in the right way, to sacrifice our individualism, our ego centricity for the benefit of the whole. This war has taught us, he said, to make a clean sweep of the past with its antiquated ideas and to fill our inner life with something completely new. And he proceeded to describe the inestimable benefits this war has brought us. I have no wish to criticize, quite the reverse. But after a lengthy disquisition on how the war has transformed us all, how we shall be completely` changed through the war, it is strange to come upon the concluding passage: “Man always cherishes hope of a better future, but himself remains incorrigible. Even the war will leave us much as we are.” As I said before, I have no wish to criticize, but I cannot help being touched by these high hopes. These people are motivated by the best of intentions; they wish to find once again the path to the spiritual. And Bahr therefore emphasized that we had relied too much upon the individual; we had practised the cult of individualism far too long. We must learn once again to surrender to the whole. Those who belong to a nation have learned to merge with the nation, to sacrifice their separativeness. And nations too, he believes, are only totalities of individual characteristics, parts of a greater whole which will later emerge. Thus Bahr sometimes betrays, and especially in this lecture, the paths he none the less follows in order to arrive at the spirit. Sometimes he gives only vague indications, but these indications are most revealing. Ring out the old, the past is dead, is his motto. The Aufklärung wished to found everything on a basis of reason; but all to no purpose, everything has ended in chaos. We must find something that brings us in touch with Reality and saves us from chaos. And in this context Bahr once again makes astonishing revelations:

“Perhaps nations and individuals would then have learned what is most difficult for them to learn—to grant to others the right to individuality that each individual claims for himself, for, in the final analysis, the individuality of others is the precondition of one's own. If we were all alike there would be no distinguishing features. And they would have learned that just as each individual with his distinctive gifts in his own particular field is necessary to the nation, in order through his self-fulfilment to sustain the nation and thus at the same time to be self-sufficient and also to serve the nation, so too the universality of mankind, the common membership of all mankind that reaches to the Divine grows out of nations and transcends nations.”

That is a hint, if not a broad hint, at least it is a clear hint. People are striving to find the way to God, but are unwilling to follow the path that is appropriate to our time. They are looking therefore for a different path which already exists, but it never occurs to them that this traditional path was indeed effective up to 1914 and now, in order to obviate its consequences, they want to return to it again!

The symptoms manifested here are, I think, deserving of quiet examination, for these are the views not of a single individual, but of a vast number of people who feel and think in this way. A book by Max Scheler (note 6) recently appeared with the title Der Genius des Krieges and der deutsche Krieg. It is a good book and I can safely recommend it. Bahr too thinks highly of it. He is a man of taste and well informed and has every reason to commend it. But he also wishes to publicize the book and proposes to write a highly favourable review, a puff to boost Scheler. He wonders how best to proceed. To scandalize the public is not the right approach; some other way must be found to attract their attention. What was he to do? Now Hermann Bahr is a very sincere and honest man and leaves no doubt as to what he would do in such a case. In his article on Scheler he begins by saying: Scheler has written many articles to show how we could escape from our present predicament. Scheler caught the public eye. But, says Bahr, people today do not approve of being told whom to read; it goes against the grain. And so Hermann Bahr characterizes Scheler in the following way: “People were curious about him and yet rather suspicious of him; we Germans want to know above all where we stand in relation to an author. We do not like indefinition.”

Let us have therefore a clear picture. This is not achieved by reading books and accepting their arguments; something more is needed. Bahr now gives a further hint: “Even the Catholics preferred to reserve judgement (on Scheler) lest they should be disappointed. His idiom displeased them. For every mental climate creates in the course of time its own native idiom which gives a particular flavour and meaning to words of common usage. In this way one recognizes who `belongs’, with the result that ultimately one pays less attention to what is said than to how it is said.”

Hermann Bahr decided to announce Scheler with a flourish of trumpets. Now, like Bahr himself, Scheler hints at those remarkable catholicizing endeavours—always tentatively at first, he never commits himself immediately. Now according to Bahr, Scheler does not speak like a genuine Catholic. But Catholics want to know where they stand in relation to Scheler, and especially Bahr himself since he intends to puff Scheler in the Catholic periodical “Hochland”. After all, people must know that Scheler can be safely recommended to Catholics. They do not like to be left in the dark, they want to know the truth.

And this is the crux of the matter. People will know where they stand if they are told that it is perfectly safe for Catholics to read Scheler! The fact that he is exceptionally clever and witty is of no consequence; Catholics have no objection to that. Bahr, however, proposes to hold up Scheler as an outstanding personality in order to boost his importance, but at the same time he does not wish to offend people. First of all he bewails the fact that mankind has become empty and vapid, that man has lost all connection with the spirit; but he must find his way back to the spirit once again. I quote a few passages from Hermann Bahr on Scheler which touch upon this subject:

“Reason broke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life.”

Hermann Bahr lacks the courage to say: reason must now seek contact with the spiritual world. He therefore says: reason must look to the Church once again.

“Reason bloke away from the Church and arrogantly assumed that of itself it could understand, determine, order, command, shape and direct life. It (reason) had scarcely begun to take the first steps in this direction than it took fright and lost confidence in itself. This self-awareness of reason, the consciousness of its boundaries, of the limitations of its own power when bereft of the divine afflatus, began with Kant. He recognized that reason of itself cannot achieve that which by its very nature it is constrained to will; it cannot achieve the goal it has set itself. He called a halt to reason at the very moment where it promised to be fruitful. Kant set boundaries to reason, but his disciples extended these boundaries and each went his own way. Ultimately godless reason had no other choice but to abdicate. It realized finally that it can know nothing. It searched for truth so long until it discovered that either truth was non-existent or that there was no truth to which man could attain.”

Enough has now been said in defence of the modern outlook and all those fine sentiments about the “boundaries of knowledge.”

“Since that time we have lived without truth, believing there is no truth. We continued to live however as if truth must none the less exist. In fact, in order to live we had to live by denying our reason. And so we preferred to abandon reason completely. We committed intellectual suicide. Soon man was regarded simply as a bundle of impulses. He was proud of his dehumanisation. And the consequence was 1914.”

And so Hermann Bahr praises Scheler because of his Catholicizing bent. Then he proceeds to give a somewhat distorted picture of Goethe, for he had been at pains for some time to depict him as a dyed-in-the-wool Catholic. And then goes on to say:

“The modern scientist denied his spiritual birthright. Science abandoned presuppositions. Reason no longer derived from the divine the ‘impulse’ which is imperative for its effectiveness. What other path was open to it? None, save the appeal to the instincts. The man without established values was suspended over an abyss. And the result was—1914.”

“If we are to build afresh it must be from totally new foundations. If we are to bring about a spiritual renewal we must make a complete break with the past. It would be presumptuous to aim at the immediate spiritual rehabilitation of Europe. We must first rehabilitate man and restore his lost innocence; he must become aware once again that he is a member of the spiritual world. Freedom, individuality, dignity, morality, science and art have vanished from the world since faith, hope and love are no more. And only faith, hope and love can restore them. We have no other choice, either the end of the world or—omnia instaurare in Christo” (to renew all things in Christ).

But this “omnia instaurare in Christo” does not imply a search for the spirit, a move towards the investigation or exploration of the spirit, but the inclusion of the nations in the Catholic fold. How is it, Bahr asks, that men are able to think for themselves and yet are able to remain good Catholics? We must look to those who are suited to the present age. And Scheler fits the bill for he is not such a fool as to speak for example of an evolution into the spiritual world, or to specify a particular spiritual teaching. He is not such a fool as to commit himself openly, as is the case with those who speak of the spirit and then suggest: the rest will he added unto you if you enter the Church, i.e. the Catholic Church—for that is implied both by Bahr and Schelerwhich in their opinion is sufficiently all-embracing. In this way conflicting opinions can be reconciled under the umbrella of the Church. None the less people today want to think for themselves and Scheler adapts himself to their thoughts. Indeed, Bahr believes that Scheler in this respect is a master of giving people what they want:

“Scheler attracts attention because he does not gesticulate or raise his voice. Involuntarily people ask who can it be who appears to be so sure of his influence that he does not feel it necessary to raise his voice. It is a favourite device of seasoned orators to open on a quiet note and thus command the silent attention of the audience; the orator must also have the power to hold them spellbound. Scheler can do this in masterly fashion. He so captivates his listener that the listener is unaware whither he is being led and suddenly finds himself at a destination that was wholly unforeseen. Starting from unexpected propositions which the listener innocently accepts, Scheler forces him imperceptibly to conclusions which he would have actively resisted had he been in any way forewarned. In this respect Scheler's art of persuasion is unrivalled. He is a born educator; I know of no one who can lead us so easily but firmly to the truth.”

Indeed it is a special art to be able to take people by surprise in this way. First one makes statements that are unexceptionable; then the argument proceeds slowly and leads to a conclusion at which the audience would have demurred had they been aware of it from the start. How does one account for this, Bahr asks, and what must be done in order to act with the right intentions? In this review of Scheler Bahr gives his honest and candid opinion:

“The question now is whether the average German can grasp the magnitude of the moment and all that it portends. He is animated by the best of intentions, but still fondly imagines that belief is no longer possible for modern man since it has been scientifically refuted. He does not suspect that this `science or dogma of unbelief’ has itself long been refuted scientifically. He knows nothing of the quiet preparatory work in this direction of the outstanding German philosophers of our time—Lotze, Franz Brentano, Dilthey, Eucken, and Husserl.” (note 7).

I now beg you to give special attention to the following:

“The ordinary person still hears in the last faint echo of the Münchausen posthorn, the latest aberration which, unbeknown to him, has already been refuted. Amidst this confusion a calm clear voice will soon be heard which gives no suspicion of the sentimental day dreaming, romanticism or mysticism which fills the ordinary person with unholy dread. And precisely because Scheler pleads the cause of a recovery of faith straightforwardly and unemotionally and in the customary jargon of the ’cultivated man of our time’, he is the man we need today.”

So now we know! Now we know why Bahr approves of Scheler. He (Scheler) cannot be accused of being a visionary or a mystic, for the average German is mortally afraid of them. And woe betide anyone who does not respect this fear, for if he were take it into his head to banish this fear or recognize the need to struggle against it, it would need more than a little courage to venture on such an undertaking.

Because I have great respect and affection for Hermann Bahr I would like to show that he is typical of those who find great difficulty in accepting a spiritual teaching of which our time stands in need. But there is promise of hope only if we overcome that terrible fear, if we have the courage to acknowledge that Spiritual Science is not an idle fancy, that the greatest clarity of thought is called for if we wish to make the right approach to Spiritual Science, for there is little evidence of clear thinking in the few examples which I have quoted to you today from Hermann Bahr and other contemporary writers. Spiritual courage is called for if we wish to develop ideas that are strong and effective. We need not go all the way with Nietzsche, nor need we wholly share the view he expresses in a passage which none the less may attract our attention; but when this sensitive spirit, stimulated perhaps by his illness, expresses his boldest and most courageous opinions we must nevertheless go along with him. The fear of being misunderstood must not deter us. It would he the greatest calamity that could befall us today if we were to be afraid of being misunderstood. We must sometimes perhaps pass judgements like the following judgement of Nietzsche, even though it may not be sound in every detail; that is not important. In his treatise “On the History of Christianity” he wrote:

“Christianity as a historical reality must not be confused with that one root which its name recalls: the other roots from which it has sprung are by far the more important. It is an unprecedented abuse of language to associate such manifestations of decay and such monstrosities as the ‘Christian Church’, ‘Christian belief’ and ‘Christian life’ with that Holy Name. What did Christ deny?—Everything which today is called Christian!”

Although this is perhaps an extreme view, Nietzsche nevertheless touched upon something which has a certain truth; but he expressed it somewhat radically. It is true to the extent that one could say: What would Christ most vigorously condemn if He were to appear in our midst today? Most probably what the majority of people call “Christian” today, and much else besides, which I will discuss in our lecture on Tuesday next.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Rudolf Kjellen (1864–1922), Swedish historian, professor at Upsala. Belonged to the school of “geopolitics”, the doctrine of the interaction of geographical and political factors in the constitution and development of States.

Note 2. Theophilus. Patriarch of Alexandria 385–412. He condemned Origen at the Synod of Alexandria 408. “He deprived the pagans of Alexandria of a temple ... and apparently destroyed other temples. A riot ensued and a number of Christians were slain. With Theophilus at their head the Christians retaliated by destroying the celebrated temple of Serapis on the ruins of which the patriarch erected a church.” (Quotation from the Catholic Encyclopedia, vol. XIV, 1913.)

Note 3. Mithras Initiation. According to R. J. Vermaseren, in Mithras, the Secret God (Chatto & Windus, 1963) he who had acquired sufficient knowledge “could gain successively the title of Raven (Corax), Bride (Nymphus), Soldier (Miles), Lion (Leo), Persian (Perses), Courier of the Sun (Heliodromus) and Father (Pater)”. This book is a classic in the study of Mithraism. There are figures in the text and illustrations.

Note 4. Nietzsche. “The Will to Power and the Transvaluation of all Values.” According to P. Tillich “will” here means “the universal dynamics of all life processes and ‘power’ the affirmation of one's own individual existence. It is the power of the best.” The transvaluation of all values implies that since “God is dead”, i.e. that traditional and ethical values no longer stem from belief in a transcendent authority, man himself must re-create them. The “Übermensch” must be developed. He is the “superior” man physically, mentally and spiritually, the man of self-discipline who has learned to command and obey, to accept responsibility, whose watchword is duty and honour. It is an aristocratic ideal. According to Nietzsche his antitype is mass man, the “herd man” who has succumbed to ideologies that promise happiness and well-being. He is timid, bored, conformist, opposed to tradition and culture. This “slave morality” is utilitarian and keeps only its own advantage in view and prepares the ochlocracy, the “nihilism” towards which we are moving (p. 13 in the English text).

Note 5. Hermann Bahr (1863–1934). Austrian dramatist, novelist and essayist. In his later years he returned to the Church and represented the Catholic school of thought, cf. his novel Himmelfahrt.

Note 6. Max Scheler (1874–1928). Professor of Philosophy at Cologne, 1920–21. His writings have a strong theistic flavour and he was a subtle advocate of Catholicism.

Note 7. Lotze (1817–81), Dilthey (1833–1911), R. Eucken (1846–1929), Husserl (1859–1938) were philosophers of idealism. They were opposed to the mechanistic scientific philosophy of the age and pleaded the cause of ethical idealism.

It might seem at first sight that in the centuries immediately following the Mystery of Golgotha mankind had not been touched by the light of spiritual illumination; that this was the normal condition of mankind and increasingly so up to the present day. This is not so, however. If we wish to see these things in perspective we must distinguish between the prevailing spirit of mankind and that which occurs here and there in the life of mankind and may play a decisive part in the different spheres of life. It would be most discouraging for many today to be told of the existence of a spiritual world, but that the doors to this world were closed to them. And there are many at the present time who have come to this depressing conclusion. The reason for this is not far to seek. Where there is a clear possibility of gaining insight into the spiritual world they refuse to commit themselves unreservedly. Nor have they the courage to pass an objective judgement on this issue. It may seem therefore—but in reality it is only apparently so—that today we are far removed from those early times when the spiritual world was revealed to the whole of mankind through atavistic clairvoyance, or from the later times when the few could find access to the spirit through initiation into the Mysteries. We must draw together certain strands which link early periods of human evolution with the present if we wish to arrive at a full understanding of the mystery of man's destiny and especially of those phenomena we have discussed in these lectures in connection with the nature of the Mysteries. I should like to select an example from recent times which is accessible to all and which will lend encouragement to those who are faced with the decision of choosing paths leading to the spiritual world. From the many examples at our disposal I would like to take an example which demonstrates at the same time how these phenomena are none the less misjudged from the materialistic point of view of the present day—and will also be misjudged in the immediate future.

No doubt you have all heard of Otto Ludwig (note 1) who was born in 1813, in the same year as Hebbel and Richard Wagner. Otto Ludwig was not only a poet—some may feel perhaps that he was not in the front rank of poets, but that does not concern us at the moment—but he was a man given to introspection, who sought self-knowledge and who succeeded in penetrating into the inner life which is veiled from the majority today. Otto Ludwig describes very beautifully what he experiences in the process of poetic composition or when he reads the poetry of others and surrenders to its appeal. He then realizes that he does not read or compose like other men, but that an extraordinary ferment is set up within him. And Otto Ludwig gives a beautiful description of this in a passage I will now read to you because it reveals a piece of self-knowledge of a typically modern man who, in the course of this self-revelation, speaks of things which our present materialistic age regards as the wildest fantasy. But Otto Ludwig was no visionary or idle dreamer. By nature he was perhaps introspective, but if we take into consideration the information we have about his life, we shall find that alongside this introspective tendency there was something eminently sane and balanced in his make-up. He describes his own creative experience and his response to the poetry of others in these words:

“I experience first of all a musical impression which is transformed into colour (note 2). Then I see one or more figures in various postures executing formalized gestures, singly or facing each other, the whole resembling a copper engraving on parchment, coloured paper or, more precisely, like a marble statue or sculptural group on which the sun falls through a veil of that colour. I experience this colour phenomenon after reading poetry which has stirred me deeply. If I put myself in the mood which Goethe's poetry evokes I see a deep golden yellow passing over into golden brown. When I read Schiller I experience a brilliant crimson; with Shakespeare every scene is a particular nuance of the particular colour I associate with the whole drama. Strangely enough the image or the group evoked is not usually a representation of the denouement, sometimes it is only a characteristic figure in some moving posture which is immediately joined by a succession of other figures. At first I know nothing of the plot or content of the drama, but ever fresh miming figures, seemingly three-dimensional, are rapidly added, now from the beginning, now from the end of the initial dramatic situation until I experience the whole drama complete with all its scenes. The whole passes before me in rapid succession; meanwhile I remain passive and a kind of physical anxiety grips me. I can then reproduce at will the content of the individual scenes as they unfold; but I find it impossible to condense the narrative content into a brief account. Next the gestures are accompanied by speech. I write down what I can recall, but, once the mood forsakes me, what I have noted down becomes a dead letter. Then I proceed to fill in the gaps in the dialogue, but for this purpose I must cast a critical eye over what I have written.”

Here then we have the remarkable case of a man who experiences crimson-red on reading Schiller, or golden yellow passing over into golden brown on reading the dramas or poems of Goethe, who experiences a colour sensation with every drama of Shakespeare; who, when he composes or reads a poem sees figures like those of a copper engraving printed on a parchment-coloured background, or three-dimensional miming figures on which the sun falls through a veil which diffuses the light that evokes the total mood.

Now we must understand this experience in the correct way. It is not yet a clairvoyant perception, but it is a step towards spiritual vision. In order to have a right understanding of this mood from the standpoint of Spiritual Science we must realize that Otto Ludwig was no stranger to spiritual vision. For if he were to advance further along this path he would not only experience these visions, but, just as physical objects are visible to the physical eye, spiritual beings would be visible to his spiritual eye and he would know them as an inner experience. Just as we see scattered light when we gently rub our eyes in the dark, light that seemingly radiates from the eye and fills the room, so from his inner life Ludwig radiates impressions of colour and tone. As he rightly says, he experiences them first as musical impressions. He does not exploit them in order to gain spiritual insight; but we perceive that he is mature enough spiritually to embark on the path leading to the spiritual world.

It is no longer possible to deny that there exist people who are aware that “spiritual vision” is a reality, the vision that the neophytes learned to develop in the Mysteries in the way described in earlier lectures. For the real purpose of these ceremonies was primarily to call attention to the eye of the soul, to awaken man to the fact of its existence. That the phenomena which I have just described to you are not rightly understood today is evident from the observations of Gustav Freytag (note 3). When speaking of Otto Ludwig, he says:

“The work of this writer and indeed his whole makeup, was akin to that of an epic poet of the time when, in the early dawn of nations, the poetic figures were visioned by the poet as living Imaginations imbued with colour and sound.”

This statement is perfectly correct, but has nothing to do with poetic composition. For the experiences of Otto Ludwig were not only shared by poets in ancient times, but by all men, and were shared in later times by those who had been initiated into the Mysteries irrespective of whether they were poets or not. These experiences have therefore no connection with poetic invention. Behind the barrier which the materialist of today has erected in his own soul there is to be found that which Otto Ludwig describes. It is found not only in the poet, but in every man today. The fact that he was a poet has nothing to do with the phenomenon of poetic vision, but is something that accompanies it. One may be a far greater poet than Otto Ludwig and that which one is able to describe may remain entirely in the subconscious. It is present in the substratum of the subconscious, but need not manifest itself. For poetry, indeed art as a whole today, is something other than the conscious fashioning of clairvoyant impressions.

I quote the case of Otto Ludwig as an example of a man—and men of his type are by no means rare today—who stands on the threshold of the spiritual world. If one practises the exercises given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, that which already exists in the soul is raised into consciousness, so that one learns to use it or to apply it consciously. It is important to bear this in mind. The problem is not so much that it is difficult to reach the hidden depths of the soul, but that people today lack the courage to embark upon a spiritual training; and that for the most part those who would willingly do so from a heartfelt need to know and to understand, none the less feel constrained to admit this need, albeit somewhat shamefacedly in their own intimate circle, but conceal it when they later find themselves in the company of contemporary intellectuals. What we should characterize today as the right path, perhaps because we live in the Michael Age since 1879, need not of necessity be regarded as the only right path. Looking back over the recent past it is possible that many may have attained a high degree of clairvoyance, genuine clairvoyance; there is no need for us therefore either to recognize fully or to accept this clairvoyance unreservedly, nor to regard it as something dangerous and to be rejected.

There are certainly many factors which for some time have undermined our courage to accept the validity of clairvoyance, and for this reason the assessment of Swedenborg (who has often been mentioned in your circle) has been so strange. He could act as a stimulus to many, in that people might see in him an individuality who had lifted to some extent the veils that concealed the spiritual world. Swedenborg had developed a high degree of Imaginative cognition which is a necessity for all who would penetrate to the spiritual world. It was indispensable to him; it was simply a kind of transition to higher stages of knowledge. And it was especially his clairvoyant sense for Imaginative cognition that he had developed. But precisely because this Imaginative cognition was stirring and pulsating in him he was able to make observations about the relations between the spiritual world and the phenomenal world, observations which are highly significant for those who seek to clarify their ideas about clairvoyance by studying the development of particular personalities. I should like to take Swedenborg as an example in order to illustrate how he came to self-understanding, how he thought and felt in order to keep his inner life attuned to the spiritual world. He was not motivated by egoism in his search for the spirit. He was already fifty-five years old when the doors of the spiritual world were opened to him (note 4). He was therefore a man of ripe experience; he had received a sound scientific training and had long been active in this field. The most important scientific works of Swedenborg have just been published in many volumes by the Stockholm Academy of Sciences and they contain material that may well determine the course of science for many years to come. But people today have learned the trick of recognizing a man such as Swedenborg (who was the leading scientist of his day) only in so far as they agree with him; otherwise they label him a fool. And they perform this trick with consummate skill. They attach no importance to the fact that from the age of fifty-five Swedenborg bears witness to the reality of the spiritual world—a man whose scientific achievement not only compares favourably with that of others—in itself no mean feat—but who, as a scientist, stood head and shoulders above his contemporaries.

Swedenborg was particularly interested in the question of the interaction of soul and body. After his spiritual enlightenment he wrote a superb treatise on this subject. The content was approximately as follows: In considering the interrelation of body and soul there are three possibilities. First, the body is the decisive factor; sense-impressions are mediated by the body and react upon the soul. The soul therefore is to some extent dependent upon the body. The second possibility is that the body is dependent upon the soul which is the source of the spiritual impulses. The soul fashions the body and makes use of the body during its lifetime. In this case one must speak not of a physical influence, but of a psychic influence. The third possibility is as follows: body and soul are contiguous, but do not interact; a higher power brings about a harmony or agreement between them just as two clocks which are independent of each other agree when they show the time. When therefore an external impression is made upon the senses, a thought process is set up within the soul, but both are unrelated; a corresponding impression is made upon the soul from within by a higher power, just as an impression is made upon the soul through the senses from without. Swedenborg points out that the first and third possibilities are impossible for those who are able to see into the spiritual world, that it is evident to the spiritually enlightened that the soul by virtue of its inner forces is related to a spiritual sun in the same way as the (physical) body is related to the physical sun. And he also shows that everything of a physical nature is dependent upon soul and spirit. He throws fresh light upon what we called the Sun mystery (when speaking of the Mysteries), that mystery of which Julian the Apostate had a dim recollection when he spoke of the sun as a spiritual being. It was this which was the cause of his hostility to Christianity because the Christianity of his day sought to deny Christ's relation to the sun. Through Imaginative cognition Swedenborg restored the Sun mystery as far as was possible for his time.

I have placed these facts before you in order to show what Swedenborg experienced inwardly in the course of developing his spiritual knowledge. His reflections upon the question I have just touched upon were embodied in a kind of philosophical treatise—the kind of treatise written by one who has insight into the spiritual world, not the kind of treatise written by the academic philosopher who is devoid of spiritual vision. At the conclusion of his treatise Swedenborg speaks of what he calls a “vision”. And by this vision he does not imply something he has conjured up, but something he has actually perceived with the eye of the spirit. Swedenborg is not afraid to speak of his spiritual visions. Furthermore he recounts what a particular angel said to him because he is certain of the fact. He no more doubts it than another doubts what a fellow human being has told him. He said: “I was once ‘in the spirit’; three Schoolmen appeared to me, disciples of Aristotle, advocates of his doctrine that attributes a physical influence to all that streams into the soul from without. They appeared on the one side. On the other side appeared three disciples of Descartes who spoke of spiritual influences upon the soul, albeit somewhat inadequately. And behind them appeared three disciples of Leibnitz who spoke of the pre-established harmony, i.e. of the independence of body and soul, of dissimilar monads existing and moving together in a state of absolute harmony pre-established by God. And I perceived nine figures who surrounded me. And the leaders of each group of the three figures were Leibnitz, Descartes and Aristotle, suffused in light”. Swedenborg spoke of this vision as one speaks of an event in everyday life. Then, he said, from out of the abyss there rose up a spirit with a torch in his right hand and as he swung the torch in front of the figures they immediately began to dispute amongst themselves. The Aristotelians defended, from their standpoint, the primacy of physical influences, the Cartesians defended spiritual impulses, and likewise the Leibnitzians defended, with the support of Leibnitz himself, the idea of preestablished harmony. Such visions may describe even the smallest details. Swedenborg tells us that Leibnitz appeared dressed in a kind of toga and the lappets were held by his disciple Wolf. Such details always accompany these visions in which such peculiarities are very characteristic. These figures, then, began to dispute amongst themselves. They all had a good case—and any and every case can be defended. Thereupon, after prolonged conflict, the spirit appeared a second time. He carried the torch in his left hand and lit up their heads from behind. Then the battle of words was really joined. They said: “We cannot distinguish which is our body and which is our soul.” And so they agreed to cast three slips of paper into a box. On the one slip was written “physical influence”, on the second, “spiritual influence” and on the third, “pre-established harmony”. Then they drew lots and drew out “spiritual influence” and said: “Let us agree to recognize spiritual influence.” At that moment an angel descended from the upper world and said: “It is not fortuitous that you drew out the slip of paper labelled ‘spiritual influence’; that choice had already been anticipated by the powers who in their wisdom guide the world because it accords with the truth.”

This is the vision described by Swedenborg. It is open to anyone to regard this vision as of no importance, perhaps even as naive. The salient question however is not whether it is naive or not, but that he experienced it. And that which at first sight seems perhaps extremely naive has profound implications. For that which in the phenomenal world appears to be arbitrary, the vagary of chance, is something totally different when seen symbolically from the spiritual angle. It is difficult to come to an understanding of chance, because chance is only a shadow-image of higher necessities. Swedenborg wishes to indicate something of special importance, namely that it is not he who wills it, but “it” is willed in him. This vision arises because “it” is willed in him. And this is an accurate description of the way in which he arrived at his truths, an accurate description of the spirit in which the treatise was written. How did the Cartesians react? They sought to demonstrate the idea of spiritual influence on purely human and rational grounds. It is possible to arrive at the spirit in this way but that seldom happens. The Aristotelians were no better than the Cartesians; they defended the idea of the spiritual influence, again on human grounds. The Leibnitzians were certainly no better than the other two for they defended the idea of “pre-established harmony”. Swedenborg rejected these paths to the spirit; he did everything possible to prepare himself to receive the truth. And this waiting upon truth, not the determination of truth, this passive acceptance of truth was his aim and was symbolized by the drawing of the slips of paper from the box. This is of vital importance.

We do not appreciate these things at their true worth when we approach them intellectually. We only appreciate them in the right way when they are presented symbolically, even though intelligent people may regard the symbol as naive. Our response to symbols is different from our response to abstract ideas. The symbol prepares our soul to receive the truth from the spiritual world. That is the essential. And if we give serious attention to these things we shall gradually understand and develop ideas and concepts which are necessary for mankind today, ideas which they must acquire by effort and which appear to be inaccessible today simply because people are antipathetic towards them—and for no other reason—an antipathy that springs from materialism.

The whole purpose of our investigations was to study the course of human evolution, first of all up to a decisive turning-point—and this turning-point was the Mystery of Golgotha. Then evolution continues and takes on a new course. These two courses are radically different from each other. I have already described in what respects they differed from each other. In order fully to understand this difference let us recall once again the following: in ancient times it was always possible for man without special training of his psychic life (in the Mysteries this was connected with external ceremonies and cult acts) to be convinced of the reality of the spiritual world through the performance of these rites and ceremonies and thereby of his own immortality, because this certainty of immortality was still latent in his corporeal nature. After the Mystery of Golgotha it was no longer possible for the physical body to “distil” out of itself the conviction of immortality; it could no longer “press” out of itself, so to speak, the perception of immortality. This had been prepared in the centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha. It is most interesting to see how Aristotle, this giant among philosophers, made every effort a few centuries before the Mystery of Golgotha to grasp the idea of the immortality of the soul; but the idea of immortality he arrived at was a most remarkable conception. Man, in Aristotle's opinion, is only a complete man when he possesses a physical body. And Franz Brentano, one of the best Aristotelians of recent time, says in his study of Aristotle that man is no longer a complete man if some member is lacking; how can he be a complete man when he lacks the whole body? Therefore, to Aristotle, when the soul passes through the gates of death it is of less significance than it was when in the body here on Earth. This shows that he had lost the capacity still to perceive the soul, whilst on the other hand the original capacity to accept the immortality of the soul still persisted. Now, strange to relate, Aristotle was the leading philosopher throughout the Middle Ages. All that can be known, said the Schoolmen, is known to Aristotle and as philosophers we have no choice but to rely upon him and follow in his footsteps. They had no intention of developing spiritual powers or capacities beyond the limits set by Aristotelianism. And this is very significant, for it explains clearly why Julian the Apostate rejected the Christianity that was practised by the Church during the age of Constantine. One must really see these things from a higher perspective. Apart from Franz Brentano, one of the leading Aristotelians of our time, I was personally acquainted with Vincenz Knauer, a Benedictine monk, whose relationship to Aristotle as a Roman Catholic was identical with that of the Schoolmen. In speaking of Aristotle he sought to discover at the same time what could be known of the immortality of the soul by purely human knowledge. And Knauer gave the following interesting summary of his opinion:

“The soul, that is, in this connection, the departed spirit—i.e. the soul of man that has passed through the gates of death—finds itself, according to Aristotle, not in a more perfect state, but in a highly imperfect state, inappropriate to its destiny. The image of the soul is by no means that which is often employed, namely, the image of a butterfly which after shedding its chrysalis takes wing. Rather does the soul resemble a butterfly whose wings have been torn off by a cruel hand and now crawls helplessly in the dust in the form of a miserable worm.”

It is very significant that those who are well versed in Aristotle admit that human knowledge could arrive at no other conclusion. And a certain effort therefore is demanded of us to resist the consequences of this attitude of mind. The materialism of the present time is unwittingly influenced by the Conciliar decree of 869 which abolished the spirit and declared that man consisted of body and soul only.

Modern materialism goes even further; it proposes to abolish the soul as well. That of course is the logical sequel. We need therefore both courage and determination in order to find our way back again to the spirit in the right way. Now Julian the Apostate who had been initiated into the Eleusinian Mysteries was aware that a specific spiritual training could lead to the realization that the soul is immortal. This Sun mystery was known to him. And he now became aware of something that filled him with alarm. He was unable to grasp the fact that what he feared so much was a necessity. When he looked back to ancient times he realized that directly or indirectly through the Mysteries man was guided by Cosmic Powers, Beings and Forces. He realized that this may happen on the physical plane, that it is ordained from spiritual spheres because men have insight into these spiritual spheres. In Constantinism he saw a form of Christianity emerge which modelled Christian society and the organization of Christianity on the original principles of the Roman empire. He saw that Christianity had infiltrated into that which the Roman empire had intended for the external social order only. And he saw that the divine-spiritual had been harnessed to the Imperium Romanum. And this appalled him; he was unable to bring himself to admit that this was a necessity for a brief period. He realized that there was wide disparity between the mighty impulses of human evolution and what happened historically. I have often called attention to the need to bear in mind the golden age of the rise of Christianity before the era of Constantine. For at that time powerful spiritual impulses were at work which had been obscured solely because man's independent search for knowledge which he owed to the Christ Impulse had been harnessed to the Conciliar decrees.

If we look back to Origen and to Clement of Alexandria we find men who were open-minded, men still imbued with the Greek spirit: yet they were also conscious of the significance of what had been accomplished through the Mystery of Golgotha. Their conception of this Mystery and of the crucified Christ is considered to be pure heresy in the eyes of all denominations today. In reality the great Church Fathers of the pre-Constantine age who are recognized by the Church are the worst heretics of all. Though they were aware of the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for the evolution of the Earth, they gave no indication of wishing to suppress the path to the Mystery of Golgotha, the gate to the Mysteries or the path of the old clairvoyance, which had been the aim of the Christianity of Constantine. In Clement of Alexandria especially we see that his works are shot through with great mysteries, mysteries which are so veiled that it is even difficult for contemporary man to make head or tail of them. Clement speaks of the Logos for example, of the wisdom that streams through and permeates the Universe. He pictures the Logos as music of the spheres fraught with meaning, and the visible world as the expression of the music of the spheres, just as the visible vibration of the strings of a musical instrument is the expression of the sound waves. Thus, in the eyes of Clement, the human form is made in the image of the Logos; that is, to Clement the Logos is a reality and he sees the human form as a fusion of tones from the music of the spheres. Man, he says, is made in the image of the Logos. And in many of Clement's utterances we find traces of that supernal wisdom that dwelt in him, a wisdom illuminated by the Christ Impulse. If you compare these utterances of Clement of Alexandria with the prevailing attitude today then the claim to recognize a man such as Clement of Alexandria without understanding him will appear as more than passing strange.

When it is said that the aim of Spiritual Science is to follow in the main stream of Christianity, to be a new flowering of Christianity to meet the needs of our time, then the cry is raised—the ancient Gnosis is being revived! And at the mention of Gnosis many professing Christians today begin to cross themselves as if faced by the devil incarnate. Gnosis for today is Spiritual Science; but the more developed gnosis of the present time is different from the gnosis known to Clement of Alexandria. What were the views of Clement of Alexandria who lived in the latter half of the second century? Faith, he says, is our starting-point—the orthodox Christian of today is satisfied with faith alone and asks no more. Faith, according to Clement, is already knowledge, but concise knowledge of what is needed; gnosis however confirms and reinforces what we believe, is founded on faith through the teaching of Our Lord and so leads to a faith that is scientifically acceptable and irrefutable. In these words Clement of Alexandria expresses for his time what we must realize today. Christianity therefore demands that gnosis, the Spiritual Science of today, must actively participate in the development of Christianity. But the modern philistine protests: “We must distinguish between science (which he would limit to sense experience) and faith. Faith must have no part in science.” Clement of Alexandria however says: To faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love, and to love the “Kingdom”. This is one of the most profound utterances of the human spirit because it bears witness to an intimate union with the life of the spirit. First we are nourished in faith; but to faith is added gnosis, that is, knowledge or understanding. Out of this living knowledge, i.e. when we penetrate deeply into things, there is first born genuine love through which our Divine inheritance operates. Mankind can only be the vehicle of the influx of the Divine as it was in the “beginning” if to faith is added gnosis, to gnosis love and to love the “Kingdom”. We must look upon these utterances as bearing witness to the deep spirituality of Clement.

Difficult as it may seem we must make the true form of Christian life once again accessible to mankind today. It is important to see certain things for what they are today and we shall then know where to look for the real cause of our present tribulations (i.e. the War of 1914). The effect of these calamities is such that, as a rule, no attempt is made to discover what really lies behind them. When, for example, an Alpine village is buried beneath an avalanche, everyone sees the avalanche crash down; but if we want to discover the cause of the avalanche we must look for it perhaps in an ice-crystal where the snow-slip began. It is easy enough to observe the destruction of the village by the avalanche, but it is not so easy to provide tangible evidence that the disaster was caused by an ice-crystal. And so it is with the great events of history! It is evident that mankind is now caught up in a terrible catastrophe; this is the conflagration that has overwhelmed us. We have to look for the sparks—and they are many—which first set the conflagration alight. But we do not pursue our enquiries far enough in order to ascertain where the conflagration first began. Today we are afraid to see things for what they are.

Let us assume that we wish to form an opinion about a certain field of science. Usually we rely upon the opinion of the specialist in that particular field. Why is his opinion accepted as authoritative? Simply because he is an expert in this field. Generally speaking it is the specialist or university professor who determines what is accepted as scientific today. Let us take a concrete case. I am well aware that it does not make for popularity to call a spade a spade, but that is no matter. But unless an increasing number of people is prepared to get to the root of things today we shall not overcome our present tribulations. Let us assume that a leading authority says the following: people are always talking about man in terms of body and soul. This idea of the dualism of body and soul is fundamentally unsatisfactory. That we still speak of body and soul today is due to the fact that we are dependent on a language that is already outmoded, which we have inherited from an earlier epoch when people were far more stupid than today. These people were so foolish as to believe that the body and soul were separate entities. When we speak of these matters today we are compelled to make use of these terms; we are victims of a language which belongs to the past. And our authority continues: we have to accept body and soul as separate entities, but this is quite unjustified. Anyone speaking from the present standpoint and wholly uninfluenced by the views of ancient times would perhaps say: let us assume here is a flower and here is a man. I see his form and complexion, his external aspect, just as I see that of the flower. The rest must be inferred.—Now someone might come along and object: that is true, but the man in question also sees the flower in his soul. But that is pure illusion. What I really receive from the perception of a flower or a stone is a sense-impression and the same is true of the man in question. The idea that an inner image persists in the soul is pure illusion. The only things we know are external relationships.

You will say that you can make nothing of this argument! And a good thing too, because it is a farrago of nonsense, it is the acme of stupidity. This crass stupidity is supported by all kinds of careful laboratory investigations into the human brain and sundry clinical findings and so on. In short the man is a fool. He is in a position to provide good clinical results because laboratories are at his disposal; but the conclusions which he draws from these findings are pure nonsense. Men of this type are a commonplace today. To say these things does not make for popularity. The cycle of lectures which has appeared in book form by the man I am referring to—strangely enough his name is Verworn, [original note 1] I take this to be pure coincidence—is called “The Mechanism of the Spiritual Life”. It would be about as sensible to write about the “ligneousness of iron” as about “the mechanism of spiritual life”.

Now if this is typical of the intellectual acumen of our most enlightened minds it is not in the least surprising that if those disciplines which are far from being accurate at least in relation to external facts—and in this respect Verworn is capable of accurate observation because he describes what he sees, but unfortunately muddies everything with his own foolish ideas—that if those disciplines which are unsupported by external evidence such as political science, for example, are exposed to the scientific mode of thinking, then the greatest nonsense results. Political science should be supported by thoughts that are rooted in reality, but lacks these thoughts for reasons I have indicated in my last lecture. And people are forcibly reminded of this fact.

I referred earlier in this lecture to Kjellén, one of the leading Swedish thinkers. His book The State as Organism is ingenious; towards the end of the book he puts forward a remarkable idea, but neither he, nor others today, can make anything of it. He quotes a certain Fustel de Coulanges (note 5), author of La Cité antique, who showed that when we analyse pre-Christian political and social institutions we find that they are entirely founded on religious rites and observances; the entire State has a social and spiritual foundation. Thus people are willy-nilly brought face to face with the facts, for I pointed out in my last lecture that the social order stemmed from the Mysteries and had a spiritual origin. In studying the body politic or political science people are faced with these questions but are at a loss to understand them. They can make nothing of what even history reports when they can no longer rely upon documents.

And still less can they make anything of the other idea which I indicated as a new path to the Christ. This idea which we find especially in the Mysteries and in Plato's writings, that remarkable echo of the Mystery teachings must arise once again. The central figure of Plato's dialogues is Socrates surrounded by his disciples. In the debate between Socrates and his disciples Plato unfolds his teachings. In his writings Plato was in communion with Socrates after the latter's death. Now this is something more than a literary device. It is the continuation, the echo of what was practised in the Mysteries where the neophytes were gradually prepared for communion with the souls of the dead who continue to direct the sensible world from the spiritual world. Plato's philosophy is developed out of his communion with Socrates, after the death of Socrates. This idea must be revived again and I have already indicated what form it must take. We must get beyond the dry bones of history, beyond the mere recording of external events. We must be able to commune with the dead, to let the thoughts of the dead arise in us once again. It is in this sense that we must be able to take seriously the idea of resurrection. It is through personal inner experience that Christ reveals Himself to mankind. It is by following this path that the truth of the Christ can be demonstrated. But this path demands of us that we develop the will in our thinking. If we can develop only such thoughts as are suited to the observation of the external world we cannot arrive at those thoughts which are really in touch with the dead. We must acquire the capacity to draw thoughts from the well of our inmost being. Our will must be prepared to unite with reality, and then the will which is thus spiritualised by its incorporation in our thinking will encounter spiritual beings, just as the hand encounters a physical object in the external world. And the first spiritual beings we encounter will, as a rule, be the dead with whom we are in some way karmically connected. You must not expect to find guidance in these abstruse matters from a set of written instructions which can be carried about in one's waistcoat pocket. Things are not as simple as that. One encounters well-intentioned people who ask: How do I distinguish between dream and reality, between phantasy and reality? In the individual case one should not attempt to distinguish between them in accordance with a fixed rule. The whole soul must be gradually attuned so that it can pass judgement in the individual case, just as in the external world we seek to pass judgement irrespective of the individual case. We must develop a wider perspective in order to form a judgement about the particular case. The dream may be a close approximation to reality, but it is not possible in the individual case to state categorically: this is the right and proper way to distinguish a mere dream from reality. Indeed what I am saying at the moment may not apply in specific cases, because other points of view must be taken into consideration. It is important to develop in ourselves the power to discriminate in spiritual matters.

Let us take the familiar case of a person who is dreaming or who imagines he is dreaming. Now it is not easy to distinguish between dream and reality. People who study dreams today follow in the footsteps of Herr Verworn. He says that one can undertake an interesting experiment. He quotes the following example. Someone taps with a pin on the window of a house where the occupant is asleep. He is dreaming at the time, wakes up and says he had heard rifle-fire. The dream, according to Verworn, exaggerates. The tappings of the pin on the window-pane have become rifle-shots. Verworn explains this in the following way: we assume that in waking consciousness the brain is fully active. In dream consciousness the brain activity is diminished; only the peripheral consciousness is active. Normally the brain plays no part; its activity is diminished. That is why the dream is so bizarre and why, therefore, the tappings of the pin turn into rifle-fire. Now the public is highly credulous. They are first told in the relevant passage in Verworn's book that the dream exaggerates and then, later on, they are told (not precisely in the words I have used) that the brain is less active and therefore the dream appears bizarre. The reader has meanwhile already forgotten what was told in the first place. He is unable to relate the two statements and simply says: the State has appointed an expert in these matters and so we must accept his word. Now, as you know, belief in authority is taboo today. He who does not hold these views about the dream may none the less feel that the following way of thinking might well be the right approach. Let us assume you are dreaming of a friend who is dead. You dream, or believe you are dreaming that you are sharing some situation in common with him—and then you wake up. Your first thought on awakening is of course: but he died some time ago! But in the dream it never occurred to you that he was dead. Now you can find many ingenious explanations of this dream if you refer to Verworn's book, The Mechanism of the Spirit. But if this is a dream, and a dream is only a memory of everyday life, you will have difficulty in understanding why the foremost thought in your mind, namely the death of your friend, plays no part in the dream when you have just experienced a situation which you know for certain you could not have shared with him when alive. You are then justified in saying: I have now experienced with X something I could not have experienced in life, something that I have not only not experienced, but which would have been impossible in our normal relationship. Assuming that the soul of X, the real soul, which has passed through the gates of death is behind this dream-picture, is it not self-evident that you do not share his death experience? There is no reason why X's soul should appear to be dead since it still lives on. If you take these two factors into consideration—perhaps in conjunction with other factors—you will conclude: my dream-picture veils a real meeting with the soul of X. The thought of death never occurs to me because the dream is not a memory of everyday life: in the dream I receive an authentic visitation from the deceased (i.e. X). I now experience the visitation in the form of a dream-picture, a situation which could not have arisen under the normal circumstances of everyday life. Furthermore the thought of death never occurs to me because the soul of the deceased persists. And then you have every reason for saying: when I experience this apparent dream I inhabit a realm where physical memory does not operate—and what I am about to say is most important—for it is characteristic of our physical life that our physical memory remains unimpaired. This memory does not exist to the same extent, nor is it of the same nature in the world of spirit which we enter at death. The memory which we need for the world of the spirit we must first develop in ourselves. The physical memory is tied to the physical body. Therefore anyone who is familiar with the super-sensible realm knows that the physical memory cannot enter there. It is not surprising that we have no memory of the deceased; but we are aware that we are in communion with the living soul of X.

Those who are acquainted with this fact maintain that what we call memory in the physical life is something totally different in the spiritual life. Anyone who has succumbed to the impact of Dante's great work, the “Divine Comedy” will never doubt, if he has spiritual discernment, that Dante experienced spiritual visions, that he had insight into the world of the spirit. He who comprehends the language of those who were familiar with the world of the spirit will find convincing proof of this in Dante's introduction to the “Divine Comedy”. Dante was well versed in spiritual knowledge; he was no dilettante in matters of the spirit; he was, so to speak, an expert in this field. He was aware that normal memory does not operate in the realm where we are in communion with the dead. He often speaks of the dead, of how the dead dwell in the “Light”. In the “Divine Comedy” you will find these beautiful lines on the theme of memory:

“O Light supreme, by mortal thought unscanned,
Grant that Thy former aspect may return,
Once more a little of Thyself relend.

Make strong my tongue that in its words may burn
One single spark of all Thy glory's light
For future generations to discern.

For if my memory but glimpse the sight
Whereof these lines would now a little say,
Men may the better estimate Thy might.”

(Paradiso. Canto XXXIII) [original note 2]

Thus Dante was aware that it is impossible with normal memory to grasp that which could originate in the spiritual world. There are many today who ask: why should we aspire to the spiritual world when we have enough to contend with in the physical world; the ordinary man seeks a practical answer to the problems of this life!—But have these people any reason to believe that those who were initiated into the Mysteries in ancient times were any less concerned with the physical world? The initiates knew that the spiritual world permeates the physical world, that the dead are unquestionably active amongst us even though people deny it. And they knew that this denial merely creates confusion. He who denies that those who have passed through the gates of death exercise an influence on this world resembles the man who says: “Nonsense! I don't believe a word you say”—and then proceeds to behave as if he did believe it. It is not so easy, of course, to give direct proof of the havoc that is wrought when the influx of the spiritual world into the physical world is not taken into account, when people act on the assumption that this interaction can be ignored. Our epoch shows little inclination to bridge the gap that separates us from the kingdom where the dead and the higher Beings dwell. In many respects our present epoch harbours a veritable antipathy towards the world of the spirit. And it is the duty of the spiritual scientist who is really honest and sincere to be aware of the forces that are hostile to the development of Anthroposophy. For there are deep underlying reasons for this hostility and they stem from the same sources which are responsible for all the forces which are today in active opposition to the true progress of mankind.

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Original Notes:

Note 1. In the German text there is a play upon the word. If pronounced with an open “0” and a rolled “R” it gives the word verworren, i.e. muddle-headed or confused.

Note 2. Translation by Dorothy L. Sayers and Barbara Reynolds, Penguin Classics, 1962.

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NOTES BY TRANSLATOR

Note 1. Otto Ludwig (1813–65). Best known for his realist novels Der Erbförster and Zwischen Himmel and Erde, genre painting with careful observation of detail. He coined the term “poetischer Realismus”. His “Shakespeare Studien” showed preoccupation with dramatic theory. During his process of poetic creation he experienced a spectrum of colours and forms, known as “synaesthesia”.

Note 2. “Synaesthesia” had first been foreshadowed by E. P. A. Hoffman in Kreisleriana. The hearing of a word or sound evokes a sensation of colour varying in accordance with the quality of the sound (cf. Baudelaire's sonnet “Correspondances”—“les parfums, les couleurs et les sons se repondent” and Rimbaud's sonnet “Voyelles” in which a definite colour-value is ascribed to each of the five vowels). F. W. H. Myers described synaesthesia as follows: “When the hearing of an external sound carries with it, by some arbitrary association of ideas, the seeing of some form or colour.”

Note 3. Freytag (1816–95). Author of realistic novels which extolled the virtues of the German middle class—Soll and Haben, Die Ahnen.

Note 4. Swedenborg (1688–1772), engineer, scientist, philosopher and theologian. In his Arcana Caelestia he wrote: “... it has been granted me now for some years to be constantly and continuously in the company of spirits and angels, hearing them speak and speaking with them in turn. It has been given to me to hear and see the wonderful things which are in the other life ... I have been instructed there in regard to different kinds of spirits; the state of souls after death ... and especially concerning the doctrine of faith which is acknowledged in the universal Heaven.”

Note 5. Fustel de Coulanges (1830–89). Originator of the scientific approach to history. His Cité antique showed that ancient institutions derived from religious beliefs common to primitive peoples. It was a study of the part played by religion in the political and social evolution of Greece and Rome.

From everything we have heard in the foregoing lectures it is clear that the essence of the Christ Event may be indicated in the following way.—The stage of evolution denoted by an ascent of the human soul to the realms of the Spirit was attainable in pre-Christian times only within the Mysteries, and through the dimming of the degree of Ego-consciousness then present in man. This stage of evolution was to receive an impulse—the fruits of which still lie, for the most part, in the future—whereby on rising into the spiritual world a man can retain the full Ego-consciousness that is normally his on the physical plane alone. This advance in evolution, made possible by the Christ Event, is truly the greatest advance that has ever taken place or ever will take place in the history of the Earth and of humanity. Whatever else may develop in Earth-evolution in this connection will simply be an elaboration of the mighty impulse given by the Christ Event.

Let us now ask: What was it that was to be brought about by that Event? There was to be a repetition, in a particular case, of certain happenings connected with the secrets of the ancient Mysteries. It was, for example, part of those secrets—and to some extent it is still the same to-day—that on penetrating into his own physical body and etheric body a man experienced in his astral body the temptations of which we spoke yesterday. And in the Greek Mysteries a candidate for Initiation had perforce to encounter all the difficulties and dangers approaching those who pour themselves out into the Macrocosm.

These experiences encountered in one or another mode of Initiation, were undergone by a great and sublime Individuality, by Christ Jesus, as a pattern for mankind. The impulse thus given made it possible for men in the course of their future evolution gradually to achieve the development resulting from Initiation.

What happened formerly in the Mysteries may be described in the following way.—Although Ego-consciousness was dreamlike and dim, certain experiences were nevertheless undergone by the candidate in his inner life of soul. Egoism was aroused in him, making him wish to be independent of the external world. But as was said yesterday, every human being is and must always be dependent on the external world, for the simple reason that he cannot create his means of nourishment by magic or dispense with what he acquires through his physical body. Because this is so he is exposed to the illusion of believing that what is acquired merely through the physical body constitutes the world and its glory. This experience was undergone by every pupil, every candidate for Initiation, but in a condition different from that in which it was undergone at the very highest level by Christ Jesus. Therefore if someone were to describe what happened to a candidate in the ancient Mysteries and then write of the same experiences in the life of Christ Jesus, there would in certain respects necessarily be similarity in the descriptions. For what had come to pass was that happenings formerly shrouded in the secrecy of the Mysteries had now moved to the arena of world-history.

Occurrences such as the following were very frequent in antiquity, especially in the last centuries before the appearance of Christ.—Suppose some painter or scribe, having been told about a certain rite enacted during an Initiation, set to work to portray or describe it. Such a painting or description might well bear a resemblance to the account of the Christ Event given in the Gospels. We can therefore imagine how in many centres of the ancient Mysteries the candidate for Initiation, having completed certain preparations, was bound with outspread arms and hands to a kind of cross in order that his soul might be released from his body. He remained in this condition for a time, undergoing the experiences already described. All this might have been painted or related in writing, and then some scholar, finding it to-day, might assert that what was undergone in the Mysteries had been founded on some older tradition; he might then add that the Gospels themselves are simply repetitions.

Statements to this effect are very widespread. In the book Christianity as Mystical Fact I have explained the sense in which secrets of the ancient Mysteries come to light in the Gospels, and that the Gospels, fundamentally, are repetitions of the descriptions of Initiation in the Mysteries. Why, in relating events in the life of Christ, was it possible to describe the processes enacted in the Mysteries? It was possible because everything that took place in the Mysteries in the inner life of the soul, had become historic fact; because the Christ-Jesus-Event was a re-portrayal of symbolic rites enacted during the process of the old Initiation, but fulfilled now at the higher level of full Ego-consciousness. This fact must always be kept in mind. The similarity of episodes in Christ's life—as narrated in the Gospels—with procedures in the Mysteries will certainly be realised by those who are convinced that such procedures became historic reality through His coming, although they were enacted on an entirely different level of consciousness.

The following could also be said.—Those destined to witness the Christ Event in Palestine observed the fulfillment of the Essene prophecy and were aware of the Baptism by John, the Temptation and what followed it, the Crucifixion, and the ensuing happenings. They could say to themselves: Here is a life lived through by a sublime Being in the body of a man. What are the all-important points in this life? Certain things take place as external events and they are identical with experiences undergone in the Mysteries by candidates for Initiation. We need therefore simply turn to the canon of a Mystery-rite and there we should find the prototype of a process that may now be described as an historical fact!

Here, then, is the great secret. What had formerly been shrouded in the darkness of temple-sanctuaries, perceptible—but only in its effects—to those in the outer world possessed of spiritual vision, was now enacted as the Christ Event on the stage of world-history itself. It must of course be realised that in the days of the Evangelists, no biographies were produced of the kind familiar to us to-day. In a biography, let us say, of Goethe, of Schiller, or of Lessing, every detail of their lives is probed into and every scrap of information collected, usually resulting in a mass of unimportant data purporting to convey the essentials of a life-history. Whereas all these details hinder one from discerning the points that really matter, the Evangelists were content to describe what was of central and fundamental importance in the life of Christ Jesus, namely that in this life there was a repetition of the process of Initiation—but enacted here in the great setting of world-history. Is it any wonder that in our time numbers of people have been taken aback by a certain disconcerting development which comes home to us even more forcibly in the light of the following facts.—

Myths and sagas have come down to us from the past. Anyone who understands their origin and character will realise that many of them are narratives of happenings in the spiritual worlds, seen by ancient clairvoyance and clothed in imagery of the sense-world; other myths again are portrayals of happenings in the Mysteries. For example, the myth of Prometheus, among many others, is partly a presentation of acts performed in the Mysteries. We often find the scene described of Zeus with a god of lower rank who is destined, according to the Greek account, to be his tempter. Zeus standing on a mountain being tempted by Pan—this theme is portrayed in many and various ways. What was the purpose of such imagery? It was meant to give expression to the process of man's descent into his inner being, where he encounters his own lower nature, his egoistic Pan-nature, when he penetrates into his physical and etheric bodies.

The ancient world is full of accounts of experiences undergone by a candidate for Initiation along the path leading into the spiritual world, and in the myths and sagas these accounts are given artistic form.

Scholarship of to-day which fails to penetrate below the surface—and this is what bewilders many people who either cannot or will not recognize the facts—declares when it finds the story of Pan tempting Zeus on a mountain that this shows clearly that the story of the Temptation told by the Evangelists is merely the repetition of an allegory already familiar to them. Scholars then draw the conclusion that there is nothing of unique importance in the Gospels, which appear to them to be compilations pieced together from ancient mythology in order to present a fictitious figure called Jesus Christ. In a certain widespread movement in Germany there were many vapid discussions as to whether Christ Jesus ever lived at all. And with a really grotesque lack of understanding—although with ostentatious erudition—all the sagas and myths alleged to contain earlier parallels of the Gospel scenes were enumerated. It is useless to-day to attempt to give an idea of the actual state of affairs, although it is well known to those who are conversant with these matters. But spiritual movements in our time develop along very strange lines!

I should not have spoken of these things if it were not constantly necessary to take a stand against arguments levelled by ostensibly profound scholarship against the facts and expositions of Spiritual Science.

The real truth of these matters is what I have presented in these lectures. Accounts originating in the Mysteries are necessarily recapitulated in the Gospels, but the secret of Initiation is now connected with an Individuality altogether different. The intention is to show that the experiences formerly undergone in a condition of dimmed consciousness were passed through by this Individuality, this Being, without any loss of Ego-consciousness. Therefore when it is said that the Gospels contain hardly anything for which there is no earlier parallel, we need not be surprised but we must realise that in former times it was a matter of the human being having to rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, because the Kingdoms of Heaven had not then already ascended to Ego. The really new thing was that what could formerly only be experienced in other realms, and through a kind of attenuation of the Ego, could now be experienced in Malkhut in the ‘Kingdom’, with the Ego erect and self-supporting.

Hence after Christ Jesus had undergone the experience described in St. Matthew's Gospel as the Temptation, He began to preach of the ‘Kingdom.’ What was the gist of His teaching? It was this: What a man formerly attained through suppressing his Ego and receiving other beings into himself, is now and henceforward to be attained in full Ego-consciousness.—That is the essential point. Hence it is not repetition of events connected with Initiations only that are repeated in the life of Christ, but the vital point in the ‘preaching of the Kingdom’ is this: Everything promised to those who were formerly admitted into the Mysteries or who accepted their teachings, is now offered to those who learn to experience in themselves the reality of the ‘I’, the Ego, in the way prefigured for mankind by Christ.

Everything, therefore, even features of the doctrine, must necessarily appear again in some form. But it must not surprise us that emphasis was laid upon the difference between the old teachings and the new, that it was stressed: What could not, in former times, be attained through the Ego, can now be attained by the Ego itself—in full, consciousness! Let us suppose Christ had wanted to draw attention to the great truth that in former times, according to teachings that had reached them from the Mysteries, men had always looked up to the Kingdoms of Heaven, saying: Blessedness can stream down to us from there—but it does not penetrate into our Ego.—In those circumstances it would have been necessary for Christ still to uphold what was formerly said about the Divine Father-Source of existence, for contact with it was indeed attainable when Ego-consciousness was dimmed, and it was the nuances only that needed to be changed. He would have had to speak to the following effect: If you were formerly bidden to look up to the realms of the Divine Father-Source of existence and wait until His radiance streamed upon you, it may henceforward be said that not only does His radiance stream down to you, but whatsoever is willed on high must penetrate into the deepest core of the human Ego and , be willed there also.

Again, let us suppose that each single phrase in the Lord's Prayer had existed previously, and that the only one needing to be altered was to the effect that when in former times men looked up to the Divine Father-Spirit in the Heights everything there remained unchanged, shining down into the earthly realm.—Christ would now have had to say that the heavenly realm must come down to the Earth where the Ego has its dwelling-place; and the will that is fulfilled above in the Heavens must also be fulfilled upon the Earth.—It follows that those who are possessed of deeper insight and perceive the finer shades of difference, will not be in the least surprised that the phrases used in the Lord's Prayer may also have existed in ancient times. A superficial thinker, however, will not notice these fine shades of difference, for in so far as he does not understand the purpose of Christianity he fails to perceive their importance! And when he finds that these phrases were current in earlier times, he will say: ‘There you have it; the Gospels record the Lord's Prayer—but it was already in existence before they were written!’ The essential shades of difference, however, have escaped him.

You can now realise what a vast difference there is between genuine understanding of the scriptures and extern al study. The important factor is for those who discern the new shades of meaning to compare them with the old. The scholar who lacks the deeper understanding and fails to perceive these shades of difference will continue to insist that the Lord's Prayer had already been in existence before the time of Christ.

Attention must be paid to these things and mention made of them here because anthroposophists ought to be able to some extent to make a stand against the dilettante learning that makes its superficial interpretations and its voice heard to-day and by way of innumerable channels in newspapers and periodicals comes to be accepted as ‘science’.

Let me say something further in connection with the Lord's Prayer. There was once a certain individual who set out to collect from every available ancient tradition, from every relevant passage in Talmudic literature, sentences bearing some sort of resemblance to those of the Lord's Prayer. Mark well: the compilation produced by this learned scholar is nowhere to be found originally in this form; the single sentences have been taken piecemeal from one document or another. Carrying this method to the point of absurdity, we might also say: The first sentences of Faust were put together by Goethe in the same way! It might be possible to produce evidence that in the 17th century there was a student who had failed in his examination and afterwards said to his father: Have I not studied jurisprudence with toil and sweat! And another who had failed in his medical examination said: Have I not studied medicine with toil and sweat! And from this the first sentences in Faust are supposed to have been composed. It is an absurdity, but the principle and method are exactly the same as those of the trend in Gospel criticism to which I allude.

The following sentences, pieced together as stated, are sup-posed to have produced the Lord's Prayer:

‘Our Father which art in Heaven; O Lord Our God, hallowed be thy name, and let the remembrance of thee be glorified in heaven above, and upon earth here below. Let thy kingdom reign over us now and for ever. The holy men of old said: remit and forgive unto all men whatsoever they have done against me. And lead us not into temptation, but deliver us from the evil thing. For thine is the kingdom, and thou shalt reign in glory for ever and for evermore.’¹

The Lord's Prayer is alleged to have been compiled from these sayings which, as I said, were collected from many sources. But the nuance that would indicate the unique significance of the Christ Event is entirely lacking. Nowhere is it said that the Kingdom of Heaven is to come down. The words are ‘Let thy kingdom rule over us now and for ever’—not: Thy Kingdom shall come to us! That is the essential point, but superficial scholarship entirely fails to perceive it. And although these sayings came not from one source but from records in many archives, the words of salient importance in the Lord's Prayer are nowhere to be found: ‘Thy will be done on Earth as it is done in Heaven.’ That is to say, the Ego itself is to participate actively. There you have an example of the difference between superficial research and really thorough and conscientious research which pays attention to every detail. The findings of conscientious research are available, if only people will take account of them.

I have purposely read you these sentences which are quoted in Robertson's book. It has now been translated into German as a kind of modern gospel, in order that it may become widely known; for until now, a certain Professor² who has given a number of lectures on the subject of whether Jesus actually lived, was obliged to read it in English. The book has quickly become famous and the translation of it has meant that people need no longer make the effort to read it in a language not their own. It has been possible for a Professor at a German Academy to travel about lecturing on the question: ‘Did Jesus live?’—and then, on the basis of the facts I have mentioned, to give the answer that there is no documentary evidence whatever to prove that a personality such as Jesus ever lived. Robertson's book is also recommended as an excellent work of reference. Anthroposophists should, however, be warned that they will hear many other things from these investigations into New Testament texts, and I want still to speak of something particularly characteristic.

The book attempts to show that versions of the Lord's Prayer existed not only in the Talmud but also in chronicles of great antiquity. To strengthen the contention that the Lord's Prayer was a compilation of phrases previously in existence and needed no Christ to utter it for the first time, the book quotes certain lines from a prayer in the Chaldaic language, inscribed on tablets, invoking Merodach, the ancient Babylonian god. Listen to this passage which occurs in a footnote:³

‘In the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society for October, 189x, Mr. T. G. Pinches published for the first time a translation of a tablet found at Sippara in 1882, in which there occur, in an invocation of Merodach, the lines: “May the abundance of the world descend into thy (the city's) midst; may thy command be accomplished in time to come... may the evil spirit dwell outside of thee.” ’

And the learned scholar who was so deeply impressed by this passage, adds: ‘Here we have prayer norms, on the lines of the Lord's Prayer, dating perhaps from 4000 B.C.’

Can you detect any similarity between the Lord's Prayer and these sentences? Nevertheless the author of the book regards them as prayer-norms of which the Lord's Prayer is simply a copy! Such things are accepted to-day as the findings of genuine research.

There is another reason for bringing this to the notice of anthroposophists, for they must be able to reassure their consciences which might well be troubled by hearing that something or other has been established by external research, or by reading in newspapers or journals of the discovery of a tablet in Asia proving that the Lord's Prayer was already in existence 4,000 years before Christ. A very necessary question would be: Upon what basis has this been proved?—I am trying to show you the kind of foundations underlying many things that are said to-day to be ‘scientifically established’. Such examples are everywhere to be found and it is well for anthroposophists to realise the worthlessness of much that is so often held against Spiritual Science.—But we will proceed.

The all-essential point is that Christ Jesus inaugurated an evolutionary process based upon the human Ego, upon the retention of fill Ego-consciousness. The Initiation of the Ego—that was what He inaugurated. We can say that the Ego, the is the kernel of man's whole being, that all human nature to-day centres in the Ego, and that what was brought through the Christ Event to the Ego, and hence into the world, can also lay hold of, all the other members of man's being. But this, naturally, will have to take place in a very particular way and in keeping with the evolution of humanity.

These lectures show clearly what it is that can be developed. Properly speaking, knowledge of the surrounding physical-material world acquired by man not through the senses alone but also through the intellect using the brain as its instrument, has been possible only since times shortly preceding the Christ Event. Before then, men were endowed with a kind of clairvoyance. As you know from my lectures, this was the case from the early epochs of Atlantis onwards. But the faculty that was still universal and functioning in full strength during the first epochs of post-Atlantean evolution, gradually declined. Until the time of the Christ Event, however, there were still many human beings who in intermediate states of consciousness between waking life and sleep, were able to gaze into and participate in happenings of the spiritual world. Such participation did not merely mean that a man endowed with clairvoyance to a slight extent was able to assert: ‘I know that behind everything physical and material there is the spiritual, for I actually see it.’—This was not all. Human nature in ancient times was such that it was possible, without difficulty, to enable a man to partake in the happenings of the spiritual world, To-day it is very arduous, relatively speaking, to undergo the true esoteric training leading to the attainment of clairvoyance. Natural clairvoyance manifests to-day as a last remnant, a heritage from olden times, in somnambulistic and kindred conditions. These conditions cannot be regarded as regular in our age; but in the distant past they were normal and could be sublimated and enhanced by certain measures.—Something else, too, was connected with this.

To-day, people are not guided by true history and what they happen to believe decides what is or is not historical fact. But however strongly it may be doubted, the truth is that up to the time of Christ, processes of healing, for instance, could be made effective by inducing clairvoyance. In the present age, when humanity has descended more deeply into the the physical world, this is no longer possible. But in those earlier times it was still easy, by applying certain specific measures, to enable the soul to become clairvoyant and to penetrate into the spiritual world. And because the spiritual world is health-giving, in itself and sends its forces into thc physical world, it was possible to bring about healings in this way. In a case of illness certain processes were put in motion, enabling the person concerned to see into the spiritual world. And the streams of the spiritual world flowing down into his whole being had a curative effect. This indeed was the usual method of healing. (The ‘temple healing’ spoken of nowadays is sheer dilettantism.) The fact that souls have lost the clairvoyance that was universal in former times, signifies an advance in evolution. But the earlier clairvoyant condition could be so sublimated that healing forces streamed from the spiritual into the physical world and in the case of certain illnesses cures could be effected, We need not therefore be surprised when it is said by the Evangelists that as a result of the Christ Event not only those possessed of the old clairvoyance would be able to reach the spiritual world, but also those who, owing to the evolution of humanity, had lost contact with it.

In ancient times the riches of the spiritual world were revealed to men's clairvoyant vision. Now, however, it could be said: Evolution has progressed and those who can no longer gaze into the spiritual world have become poor in spirit, beggars for the spirit. But because, through Christ, the forces of the Kingdoms of Heaven can now flow into the Ego, even when the Ego is functioning on the physical plane, those who have lost the old clairvoyance and the riches of the spiritual world, they too can experience the spirit in themselves and be blessed. Hence the momentous words: From now onwards, not only those who through the old clairvoyance are rich in the things of the spirit are blessed; but those too who are beggars for the spirit, are blessed; for when the path has been opened for them by Christ the Kingdoms, of Heaven flow into their Ego.

In earlier times the nature of the human physical organism was such that even in the normal state the soul was able to some extent to emerge from the body; this meant that a man became clairvoyant, rich in the treasures of the spirit. The densification of the physical body—for which, admittedly there can be no anatomical proof—meant that man could no longer be rich in the things of the spiritual world, of the Kingdoms of Heaven. In describing existing conditions, one would have to say: Man has become a beggar for the spirit; but the powers brought down by Christ enable him to experience within him-self the Kingdoms of Heaven.—That, then, is what might be said in reference to the processes of the physical body.

If it were a matter of describing what actually took place in man as an Ego-being, one would have to show how each of his members could be blessed inwardly, in a new way. The new truth relating to the physical body is expressed in the words: Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit; for within themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

In regard to the etheric body, this could be said: In the etheric body lies the principle of suffering. Only a living being can suffer as the result of injury to the etheric body—an astral body must, of course, be there as well—but the seat of the suffering must nevertheless be looked for in the etheric body. To express the new truth applying to healings brought about in earlier times through forces streaming from the spiritual world, one would have to say: Those who suffer can henceforth find consolation not only by passing out of their bodies and thus being linked with the spiritual world as was formerly the case; if they now establish a different relationship with the world they can find consolation within themselves, because through Christ a new force has been imparted to the etheric body. Hence concerning the etheric body it could be said: Those who suffer can now be blessed not only through reaching a spiritual world and in a clairvoyant condition allowing the forces of that world to stream upon them; now, if they can find the path to Christ, to the new truth, they can find within themselves consolation for all suffering.

And what would have to be said about the astral body? In former times, when a man was striving to subdue the emotions, passions and egoistic impulses of his astral body, he turned his gaze to higher spheres, pleading that strength might be vouchsafed to him from the Kingdoms of Heaven; through certain measures to which he was then subjected, the harmful instincts of his astral body were quelled. But now the time had come when through Christ's Deed he was able to receive into his Ego the power to curb and tame the passions and emotions of his astral body. The new truth relating to the astral body would therefore be expressed as follows: Blessed are those who have become meek through the power of their own Ego; for it is they who will inherit the Earth! This third Beatitude is indeed profound. Let us study it in the light of what we have learnt from Spiritual Science.—The astral body was incorporated into human nature during the Old Moon period of evolution. The Luciferic beings who had gained influence over man, established themselves in his astral body, and in consequence of this he could not, at the beginning, hope to reach his highest earthly goal. As we know, the Luciferic beings had remained at the Old Moon stage and prevented man from progressing in the right way along his path of development. But now that Christ had come down to the Earth and the Ego gould be filled with His power, it was possible for man to fulfil the essential principle of Earth-existence, inasmuch as he could now find within himself the power to curb the astral body and expel the Luciferic influences. Hence it could be said: He who curbs his astral body, he whose own inner strength keeps him from being moved to anger without the consent of his Ego, he who is inwardly serene and at the same time strong enough to keep his astral body in check—such a man will fulfil the purpose of Earth-evolution. Infinite light is thus shed by Spiritual Science on the third Beatitude.

How will man succeed in bringing about the sublimation and beatification of the other members of his nature through the Christ-power within him? He will succeed if his soul and body alike are laid hold of worthily by the power of the Ego. Concerning the Sentient Soul we can say : If a man desires to experience the Christ within himself, he must develop in his Sentient Soul a longing as strong as the instinctive longing he otherwise feels in his body and calls hunger and thirst. He must be capable of thirsting after the things of the soul with the same intensity as the body hungers and thirsts for food and drink. What man can develop through the Christ-power within him has always been referred to as ‘thirst after righteousness’. And when he fills his Sentient Soul with the Christ-power, he can find within himself the possibility of satisfying his thirst after righteousness.

The fifth Beatitude, as might be expected, is especially note-worthy, for it concerns the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Anyone who has studied the book Occult Science, or Theosophy, and has also followed what has been said for years in lectures, knows that the three members of the human soul—Sentient Soul, Intellectual or Mind-Soul and Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul) are held together by the Ego is present in the Sentient Soul in a dull condition; in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul it lights up and only then does man become wholly and completely man. Whereas in the lower members of his being, in the Sentient Soul too, he is ruled by divine-spiritual Powers, he becomes a self-dependent being in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul. Here the Ego flashes up and is active. Therefore when the Intellectual or Mind-Soul has received into itself the CHrist-power, this cannot be expressed in the same way as in the case of the lower members of human nature. In the lower members—physical body, etheric body, astral body and Sentient Soul too—man is connected with certain divine Beings who penetrate into these members, and whatever qualities he develops there are carried up again to these divine Beings. But whatever evolves in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul will be an essentially human attribute when it develops the Christ-quality. When a man begins to be conscious of the working of the Intellectual Soul, this makes him less and less dependent upon the divine-spiritual Powers around him. When he takes the Christ-power into himself he can unfold in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul those qualities which pass like to like, which are not besought from Heaven but which go forth from and return again to the same being. We must therefore feel that something streams from the qualities of the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and that something of a like character a truly wonderful way the fifth Beatitude points to this very quality. The wording here differs from that of all the other Beatitudes, and although the various translations are not particularly good, they have not been able entirely to conceal the essential point.—Blessed are the merciful: for they shall obtain mercy.'‘What streams forth streams back again—these words convey the true meaning when understood in the light of Spiritual Science.

With the sixth Beatitude, relating to the Spiritual Soul, we come to that principle in man in which the real nature of the the Ego, comes fully into expression; ascent to the spiritual world can now take a new form. As we know, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul came to active expression in the epoch when Christ appeared. We are living now in the epoch when the Spiritual Soul must come to expression and when man is to rise again to the spiritual world. Whereas consciousness of self first lights up in man in the Intellectual or Mind-Soul, in the Spiritual or Consciousness-Soul his ‘I’ unfolds to the -full extent and now ascends again into the spiritual world. A man who takes the Christ-power into himself will find the way to his God when he pours his ‘I’ into the Spiritual Soul. In experiencing Christ in his Ego at the level of the Spiritual Soul, he will find his God.—Now it has been said that the expression of the Ego in the physical body is the blood; the blood has its centre in the heart. Therefore the sixth Beatitude will have to indicate that through the quality imparted to the blood and to the heart, the Ego can experience God. What are the words? ‘Blessed are the pure in heart: for they shall see God.’ Again this is not an entirely adequate translation but it suffices.

Spiritual Science sheds light upon the whole structure of these wonderful words spoken by Christ Jesus to his intimate disciples after the Temptation. The further Beatitudes relate to the development of the higher members of man's being: Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Therefore the words do no more than indicate what man will experience in the future and what only a few chosen ones are able to experience at the present time.

The seventh Beatitude relates to the Spirit-Self : Blessed are they who draw to themselves the Spirit-Self as the first purely spiritual member of their being; for they will be called the children of God.—The first member of the higher triad has entered into them. They have received the Divine into themselves and have become an outward expression of the God-head.

But it is now clearly shown that only chosen ones, only those who fully understand what the future is to humanity as a whole can succeed in unfolding the Life-Spirit. What men of the future, having received Christ into themselves in the fullest sense, will call the ‘Life-Spirit’ is now within the reach of a few individuals only. But because they are chosen individuals, the others are unable to understand them and they are persecuted. With reference, therefore, to those who are persecuted because as individuals they represent a stage that belongs only to the future, the words are uttered: Blessed are they which are persecuted for righteousness' sake: for in themselves they find the Kingdoms of Heaven.

And the last Beatitude concerns the closest, most intimate disciples only; it refers to the ninth member of Man's being: Spirit-Man.—‘Blessed are ye, when men shall revile you, and persecute you... for my sake.’

And so these wonderful utterances relating to the nine members of man's being show how the ‘I’, when filled with Christ, works in the different members and brings them blessedness. In the verses following the account of the Temptation, the Gospel of St. Matthew expresses with majestic grandeur the effect of the Christ-power in the ninefold nature of man, first in the present and then in the immediate future, when those into whom the Spirit-Self already shines are called ‘children of God’—although of these there are only a few specially blessed ones. What is so wonderful is that the indications are quite definite when concerned with members of man's being that have already developed, but become indefinite in the later utterances which relate to the distant future.

But once again we have an example of superficial scholar-ship. Suppose someone were investigating the question of whether similar utterances are also to be found elsewhere and whether the Evangelists might have strung them together from other sources. And suppose this investigator had no notion of the all-important point—that the Beatitudes apply to the Christ-filled Ego! Failing to notice the wonderful enhancement indicated in the utterances, he might well quote the following—and indeed two or three pages later in the book already mentioned,⁴ in a chapter entitled ‘The Beatitudes’, reference is made to an ‘Enoch’—who is not the usual (Ethiopic) Enoch—and nine so-called ‘Beatitudes’ are cited. The author admits that the original record can be assigned to the first period of the Christian era but he considers that the utterances we have characterized as being so profound could have been copied from the following nine 'Beatitudes’ of the 'Slavonic' Enoch:⁵

1. Blessed is he who fears the name of the Lord, and serves continually before his face.

2. Blessed is he who executes a just judgment, not for the sake of recompense, but for the sake of righteousness, expecting nothing in return: a sincere judgment shall afterwards come to him.

3. Blessed is he who clothes the naked with a garment, and gives his bread to the hungry.

4. Blessed is he who gives a. just judgment for the orphan and the widow, and assists every one who is wronged.

5. Blessed is he who turns from the unstable path of this vain world, and walks by the righteous path which leads to eternal life,

6. Blessed is he who sows just seed; he shall reap sevenfold.

7. Blessed is he in whom is the truth, that he may speak the truth to his neighbour.

8. Blessed is he who has love upon his lips, and tenderness in his heart.

9. Blessed is he who understands every word of the Lord, and glorifies the Lord God.

Certainly there is beauty in these sayings. But when you study their whole construction and realise that they simply set forth a few principles suitable for any epoch but not specifically for the one of drastic transformation due to the inauguration of the power of the ‘I’—then, if you still think it possible to place these Slavonic sayings on a par with the Beatitudes of St. Matthew, you will not be far removed from those who make superficial comparisons between the various religions of mankind and whenever they come across similarities at once insist that there is uniformity, ignoring what is of essential importance.

To understand these things is to realise that human evolution progresses, that humanity advances from stage to stage, and that a man is not born in a new physical body in a later millennium in order to repeat experiences already undergone, but to experience in what respects humanity has advanced in the intervening time. That is the purpose alike of history and of human evolution. And of this the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks on every page!

• 1. See p. 417, in Christianity and Mythology, by John M. Robertson. Second edition. First published in 1900 by Watts & Co. London. It is stated that this compilation was made more than two centuries ago by the Rev. John Gregorie, from the Jewish Euchologues.
• 2. Dr. Arthur Drews.
• 3. Op. cit. pp. 418-
• 4. Christianity and Mythology, p. 422.
• 5. From the Book of the Secrets of Enoch, trans. from the Slavonic by W. R. Morfill, and edited, with introd. notes, by R. H. Charles. (Clarendon Press, 1896).

We have heard in these lectures that through the coming of Christ Jesus the forces of the human Ego were to be gradually endowed with those faculties which in the ancient Mysteries could be acquired by man only through the suppression, the dulling, of his Ego. In all ancient Initiations there was the possibility of rising into the spiritual world, into the Kingdoms of Heaven. But owing to the character of human evolution in pre-Christian times, man's Ego could not ascend into the Kingdoms of Heaven in the same state or condition in which it confronts the physical-material world. Two conditions of the human soul must therefore be distinguished. The one is the condition familiar to the normal man of to-day as prevailing between the times of waking and going to sleep, when his Ego perceives and is aware of the objects of the material world. In the second condition there is no definite consciousness of Ego-hood. It was in this latter condition that in the ancient Mysteries man was transported into the Kingdoms of Heaven. According to the preaching of John the Baptist and then of Christ Jesus Himself, these Kingdoms of Heaven were, to be brought down to the Earth in order that mankind might receive an impetus for development enabling men to experience the higher worlds while maintaining full Ego-consciousness. It was thereby only natural that those who recorded the Christ-Jesus-Event should have described the different processes undergone by a candidate for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries, but that at the same time an indication should be given of a new element, showing that now it was not a matter of the second condition of soul but of a new condition in which the Ego is fully conscious.

In the lecture yesterday we studied the nine Beatitudes at the beginning of the Sermon on the Mount from this point of view. Still more could be said about the contents of the present text of St. Matthew's Gospel which was translated, not always without ambiguity, from the Aramaic language into Greek. But even in the Greek text of the Gospel one can detect, in the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount too, definite indications of what a man formerly experienced while his Ego was suppressed and in a dulled condition. Whereas he was once able to say: ‘When I suppress my Ego and pass into the spiritual world, I shall grasp certain fundamental truths’—in the future this will be possible while retaining full Ego-consciousness. To understand what this implies it is essential to know something more about the use of names or designations in olden times. They were not chosen as they are to-day, but always with consciousness of the reality involved. And the expressions used in the Sermon on the Mount show clearly that Christ Jesus felt Himself to be the bringer of Ego-consciousness at a higher stage than that hitherto attained, and able to experience the Kingdoms of Heaven as an inner reality. He therefore brings home this contrast to the souls of His disciples: ‘In earlier times too it was said that revelations come from the Kingdoms of Heaven. But from now onwards you will experience these things when you let your Ego itself speak, in what your Ego says to you.’—Hence He constantly repeated words: ‘I say unto you!’—for Christ Jesus felt Himself to be ' the Representative of the human soul which comes to expression when uttering the words: ‘I say it,’ ‘I say it with my full Ego-consciousness.’ This utterance, which occurs many taken in a trivial sense. It calls attention repeatedly to the new impulse inculcated through Christ Jesus into the evolution of humanity. Read the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount—With this in mind and you will feel that Christ Jesus wished to say: Hitherto you could not call upon your Ego; but now, through what I have brought to you, you will be able gradually to acquire the treasures of the Kingdoms of Heaven through your own inner power, through the power of your own ‘I’.—The whole spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is pervaded by the new impulse of human Egohood; and it is the same when the narrative leads on to the so-called ‘healings’.

As everyone knows, these acts of healing have been the subject of widespread discussions. The point most often emphasised is that the Gospels are speaking here of miracles. But let us go more closely into this. In the lecture yesterday I said that people of to-day entirely disregard the changes and metamorphoses undergone by human nature in the course of evolution. If you were to compare a physical body of the time of Christ, let alone earlier, with one of the modern age, a very significant difference would be revealed, a difference that cannot, it is true, be established by anatomy, but certainly by occult investigation. You would find that the physical body has solidified, has become denser; at the time of Christ Jesus it was much more pliable. Above all, man's vision was such that he perceived things he no longer perceives to-day and moreover possessed some knowledge of certain forces working in and shaping the body. The muscles, for example, made a very distinct and much stronger impression on a more delicate faculty of perception. This kind of vision was gradually lost. Childish theories connected with the history of art point to old drawings where the lines indicating the muscles are very conspicuous and regard this as exaggeration and a sign of the artist's lack of skill. The reason is that originators of those theories do not know that such drawings were based on actual observation—a faculty that was right and proper in ancient times although it would be out of place in the modern age. But be that as it may, we will concern ourselves now with the characteristics of human bodies that were once quite differently constituted.

In those early times the power of the soul and of the spirit had a much more immediate influence on the human body than was the case later on, when the soul had lost power over the body because of its greater density. It was therefore far more possible in those early times for healing to be brought about by forces of the soul. With its far greater power, the soul was able to permeate a disordered body with the forces of healing drawn from the spiritual world, so that harmony might again be established. In the course of advancing evolution this power of the soul over the body had been gradually diminishing. Processes of healing in olden times were therefore spiritual processes to a far greater extent than was the case later on. Those who were regarded as doctors were not doctors in the modern, physical sense, but most of them were healers who worked upon the body by way of the soul. They purified the soul,instilled healthy feelings, impulses and will-forces into it through the spiritual influences they were able to bring to bear. This might have taken place either in the condition of ordinary waking life, in the so-called ‘temple sleep’, or in something akin to it—which at that time simply meant inducing a state in which a man became clairvoyant. In studying conditions of civilization at that time, therefore, it must be realised that those who were strong enough in soul to draw upon forces they had themselves acquired, were able to make a very real effect upon the souls of other men and therewith upon their bodies. So too, those who were in some way permeated with spirit and from whom forces of healing were known to radiate into their surroundings, were also called ‘healers’. As a matter of fact, not only the Therapeutae but the Essenes too, in a certain sense, would have to be called healers. Moreover in a certain dialect current in Asia Minor among those associated with the birth of Christianity, the word ‘Jesus’ was the translation of the expression ‘spiritual healer’. ‘Jesus’ expresses ‘spiritual physician’ and it is a fairly correct interpretation.¹ This is an indication of what was associated with names and designations in an age when men still felt that they pointed to certain realities.

But now let us throw our minds back to the civilization of those times. A person speaking of conditions of life as they then were, would have said: There are men who have been admitted into the Mysteries where, by sacrificing some degree of their Ego-consciousness, they can establish connection with certain forces of soul-and-spirit which then radiate into the environment through them; such men become healers. Supposing that such a man had become a follower of Christ Jesus, he would have said: Wondrous things have come to pass! Formerly those alone could become healers of the soul who had received spiritual forces into themselves in the Mysteries; but there has now been among us One who was a healer while maintaining full Ego-consciousness, who had not undergone the procedures of the Mysteries.—The fact that spiritual healings had taken place would not have astonished such a man, neither would the story of a spiritual healer narrated in the Gospel of St. Matthew have struck him as indicating anything particularly miraculous. His attitude would have been: What is wonderful about such men being spiritual healers? It is quite natural that they should be I—Accounts of such healings would not have seemed miraculous in those days. But the point of real significance is indicated when the writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew speaks of One who had imparted a new power to mankind, who by drawing upon forces of his Ego—with which healing was not formerly possible—had actually healed the sick. So you see, the Gospels are speaking of something altogether different from what is usually thought. Many proofs, historical evidence too, could be presented in verification of what Spiritual Science establishes from occult sources.

If the statement just made is true, it must have been realised in the days of antiquity that under certain conditions the sight of the blind could be restored by spiritual influence. Attention has rightly been called to early portrayals of these things. The author referred to yesterday, John M. Robertson, mentions that there exists in Rome a figure of Aesclepius standing in front of two blind men, and Robertson naturally concluded that it indicated an act of healing and that the writers of the Gospels incorporated this into their narratives. The important point in this example is not that spiritual healings were miracles but that the aim of the artist was to indicate that Aesclepius was an Initiate who had acquired powers of healing through the suppression of his Ego-consciousness in the Mysteries. The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew, however, wished to make it clear that although in the case of Christ Jesus healings were not achieved in this way, the impulse that was once active in Him must in time be acquired by all mankind, and can be acquired through the power of the Ego itself. This is beyond the reach of men to-day because the power is not to be instilled into humanity until a somewhat distant future. But what was accomplished by Christ at the beginning of our era will take root, and men will gradually become capable of bringing it to expression. This will happen and it was what the writer of St. Matthew's Gospel wished to convey in his narratives of the healings.—And so, speaking out of occult consciousness, I can say: The writer of the Gospel of St. Matthew had no desire to depict any ‘miracle’ but something entirely natural, entirely understandable. He wanted also to show that such healing was brought about in a new way. That is the strict truth of these matters. The Gospels have indeed been badly misunderstood!

How may we expect the narrative to continue? We have heard that what took place in the life of Christ Jesus in the form of the so-called Temptation was a descent into all the experiences undergone by a man when he penetrates into his physical body and etheric body. In the case of Christ, the forces streaming from the physical body and etheric body were able to work in the way that comes to expression in the Sermon on the Mount and in the healings that follow it. The power of Christ Jesus now worked as the power of an Initiate in the Mysteries would have worked, namely, by attracting pupils and disciples. And here again it was inevitable that Christ Jesus should attract disciples in His own unique way.

To understand the chapters in the Gospel of St. Matthew following the Sermon on the Mount and the accounts of the healings, preparation is necessary in the form of a certain knowledge of occult facts which we have acquired through the years. We know that when a man is being led upwards through Initiation into the higher worlds, he develops a kind of Imaginative vision, a vision consisting of true Imaginations. Those who were around Christ Jesus had necessarily to acquire not only the faculty of listening with a certain measure of understanding to utterances as majestic as those of the Sermon on the Mount, but of participating intelligently in the acts of healing performed by Christ Jesus; it was also necessary that the mighty power working in Him should gradually pass over to those who were His closest friends and disciples. This too is indicated in the Gospel. It is first of all shown how, after the Temptation, Christ Jesus is able to give a new form to the ancient teachings and to perform healings through a new impulse. But then it is shown how He worked upon His disciples in a new way, how the fullness of power incorporated in him affected the disciples and followers around Him. How is this shown? By the fact that for unreceptive, insensitive men, what He represented had also to be given expression in words. But the effect of His influence upon those who were receptive, whom He had Himself chosen and guided, was different. Imaginations arose in them and they attained the next stage of higher knowledge. The power emanating from Christ Jesus therefore worked in two ways: the effect upon those who were not His chosen disciples was that they heard His words and accepted them as theory; the effect upon the others whom He had chosen because they had witnessed the manifestations of His power and to whom, because of their special karma, He could transmit that power, was that Imaginations were awakened in their souls and insight pointing to a higher stage on the path into the spiritual worlds. This is indicated in the saying that those who are ‘without’ hear parables only—that is to say, pictures, are presented to them, symbolic images of happenings in the spiritual world. But to the others He said: You understand the meaning of the parables and the words that guide you into the higher worlds.—These verses must not be interpreted in a shallow sense but recognized as guidance whereby the disciples were led upwards into the spiritual worlds.

And now we will go into the question of how the disciples could be led into the higher worlds. To understand what I am now going to say needs not only attentive listening but also a certain goodwill, fortified by the spiritual-scientific knowledge you have already acquired. I want to convey as clearly as possible the real meaning of the happenings described in the next chapters of the Gospel of St. Matthew.

We will once more remind ourselves that there are two modes of Initiation. The process in one is that a man descends into his physical body and etheric body, learns to know his own inner nature and comes into contact with the forces that work creatively in him. And in the other mode of Initiation a man is led out into the spiritual world, into the Macrocosm. Now we know that this—as regards what actually happens, not as regards consciousness—takes place every time a human being goes to sleep; his astral body and Ego, withdrawn from his physical and etheric bodies, pour into the world of stars and absorb its forces—hence the designation, astral’ body. Through this form of Initiation a man is able not only to survey happenings on the Earth but to expand into the Cosmos, to gain knowledge of the world of the stars and absorb its forces, But the condition that can only gradually be attained by man (in Initiation) was present in the,Christ in the form consonant with His special nature after the Baptism by John. In Him, however, it was not comparable with the state of sleep; it was present in Him when He was not sleeping but was awake in his physical body and etheric body. He was able to unite Himself with the forces of the world of stars and carry those forces into the physical world.

What Christ Jesus brought. about can therefore be described as follows.—Through the force of attraction exercised by the physical and etheric bodies that had been specifically prepared for Him, He drew down through His very nature the power of the Sun, of the Moon, of the Stars, of the whole Cosmos connected with our Earth. And the deeds He performed became channels for the health-bestowing, strength-giving life otherwise streaming from the Cosmos through man when he is outside his physical and etheric bodies during sleep. The forces with which Christ Jesus worked were forces which streamed down from the Cosmos through the power of attraction exercised by Hi body and streamed forth again from this body to His disciples. Receptive as they were, the disciples now rightly began to feel: Verily Christ Jesus is a Being through whom the forces of the Cosmos are brought to us as spiritual nourishment; they pour upon us.

But the disciples themselves lived in two states of consciousness, for they were not yet men who had reached the highest stage of development; it was through Christ that the attainment of a higher stage was made possible for them. The two states of their consciousness may be compared with those of waking life and sleep. The magical power of Christ was able to work upon the disciples in both states of consciousness, not only by day, when He was actually near them, but also during sleep when they had left their physical and etheric bodies. Whereas in the ordinary way man's being expands into the worlds of stars unknowingly, Christ's power was now with the disciples and they actually beheld these worlds; they knew too: Christ's power gives us nourishment from the worlds of stars.

But these two states of consciousness in which the disciples lived had still another effect. In every human being—in a disciple of Christ Jesus too—we must pay attention both to what he is as a man in the immediate present and to the potentialities within him for future incarnations. In each and all of you lie the rudiments of what will present itself to the world in a quite different form when it appears again in a new incarnation during a future epoch of civilization. And if through these potential faculties that are already within you, you were to become clairvoyant, vision of the immediate future would arise as a first manifestation of super-sensible sight. Among the first clairvoyant experiences—provided they were genuine and pure—would be those concerning happenings of the immediate future.—This was the case in the disciples. In their normal waking consciousness Christ's power streamed into them and they could say: In our waking hours Christ's power takes effect in us in a way befitting our normal day-conscious-ness.—But what happened to them while they were sleeping? Because they were disciples of Jesus and the Christ-power had worked upon them, they always became clairvoyant at certain times during sleep. They did not, however, see what was taking place in the present but what would come to pass in the future. They plunged as it were into the ocean of astral vision and foresaw what was to happen to man in future time.

Thus the disciples lived in these two states of consciousness. Of the one they could say: In our waking state Christ brings us from the great Universe the forces of the cosmic worlds, communicating them to us as spiritual nourishment. Because He is an embodiment of the Sun's power, He brings down to us everything revealed by Zoroastrianism when understood in the light of Christianity. He is the intermediary for the powers which the Sun can send forth from the seven day-constellations of the Zodiac, From thence streams the nourishment for the day-consciousness. Of the night-consciousness the disciples could say: In this condition we become aware of how, through the power of Christ, the Sun that is invisible during the night while passing through the other five constellations sends the heavenly food into our souls.

With their Imaginative clairvoyance the disciples could feel: In our waking state we are united with the power of Christ, with the power of the Sun. This power transmits to us what is meet and right for men of the present (i.e. the fourth) epoch of civilization. And in the state of sleep the power of Christ conveys the strengthening forces of the nocturnal Sun from the five night-constellations. But this applies to the epoch that is to follow our own—to the fifth epoch of civilization.—That is what the disciples experienced. In what way could it be expressed? We shall go further into this in the next lecture. I want now to speak briefly about the following.—

In ancient terminology, human beings en masse were referred to as a ‘thousand’ and when it was desired to particularise, a specific number was added. For example, men of the fourth epoch of civilization were the ‘fourth thousand’ and those whose mode of life was already that of the fifth epoch were the ‘fifth thousand.’ These were simply termini technici. Hence the disciples could say: During the waking state we are aware of what Christ's power transmits to us from the Sun-forces radiating from the seven day-constellations; we receive the nourishment that is destined for men of the fourth epoch, the ‘fourth thousand’. And in our clairvoyant state during sleep we are made aware, through the forces radiating from the five night-constellations, of what applies to the immediate future, to the ‘fifth thousand.’—Food that is destined for men of the fourth epoch, that is to say for the ‘four thousand’, comes down from Heaven through the seven day-constellations, the seven ‘heavenly loaves’; and men of the fifth epoch—the ‘five thousand’—are fed through the five night-constellations, the five ‘heavenly loaves.’ The point of division between the day-constellations and the night constellations is indicated by specific mention of the constellation of Pisces, the Fishes.

A secret is touched upon here. Indication is given of something deeply significant, namely the magical intercourse of Christ with His disciples. Christ makes it clear to them that He is not speaking of the old leaven of the Pharisees but is bringing down heavenly food to them from the Sun-forces of the Cosmos. On one occasion He has at His disposal only the seven loaves of the seven day-constellations, and on another the five loaves of the five night-constellations. And between the day-constellations and the night-constellations stands the constellation of Pisces, the Fishes, indicating the division. Indeed in one place, for the sake of even greater clarification, mention, is made of two fishes.

These profundities in the Gospel of St. Matthew, lead back to the proclamation made by Zarathustra, who first pointed to the Sun-Spirit and was also one of the first missionaries to explain to those who were receptive, the mystery of the down-streaming, magical power of the Sun.

But what do glib expounders of the Bible say about these things? At one place in St. Matthew's Gospel they find a passage concerning the feeding of four thousand people with seven loaves, and at another a reference to the feeding of five thousand with five loaves, and they regard the second account as mere repetition. They say: The transcriber of the original text copied carelessly, as often happens. So on one occasion it is said that four thousand people were fed with seven loaves and on another that five thousand were fed with five loaves. After all, that sort of thing may well happen when a copyist is negligent!—I have no doubt that similar things may occur when books are being written in the modern age, but the Gospels did not by any means come into existence in that way! When a narrative occurs a second time there is deep meaning in it. But because accounts in the Gospel of St. Matthew harmonise with the indications given a century before the appearance of the Christ by Jeschu ben Pandira, the great Essene teacher, in order that when He came He might be understood—because this is so we must go deeply into the indications given in this Gospel if we are to grasp the truths it contains.—But let us continue.—

The power of Imaginative, astral vision streamed from Christ to His disciples. This too is quite clearly indicated. One might well say: he who has eyes to read, let him read!—as in earlier days, when it was not customary to write everything down, it was said: he who has ears to hear, let him hear!

He who has eyes to read, let him read the Gospels carefully. Is there any indication that this power of the Christ-Sun was revealed to the disciples in one way by day and in another by night? There is indeed. In an important place in St. Matthew's Gospel the following is said.—

In the fourth watch of the night—therefore between three and six o'clock in the morning—while the disciples were sleeping, they saw, walking on the sea, a figure whom they took at first to be a spirit—that is to say, the nocturnal Sun-power reflected through Christ. The actual hour is indicated because it was only at a particular time that the disciples could be made aware that this power from the Cosmos could stream to them through the mediation of Christ. Constant references to the position of the Sun and its relation to the constellations, to the heavenly loaves, indicate that through the presence of Christ Jesus in Palestine, through this one personality a.nd individuality, a means existed whereby the powers and forces of the Sun could penetrate into our Earth. It is upon this cosmic nature of Christ, this penetration of cosmic forces into the Earth through Christ that emphasis is everywhere laid.

Christ Jesus was to initiate in a particular way those of His disciples who were specially fit for it, so that they would be able not only to see the spiritual worlds with Imaginative vision, as it were in astral pictures, but actually to hear what was taking place in those realms—this, as we know, indicates ascent into Devachan.

Hence, having been transported into the higher worlds, these disciples would now be able to find in those worlds the personality known to them on the physical plane as Christ Jesus. They were to become clairvoyant in regions higher than the astral plane. This was not possible for all the disciples; it was possible only for those who were the most receptive to the power that could stream from Christ: these disciples were Peter, James and John. The Gospel of St. Matthew therefore relates how Christ led the three disciples to surroundings where He could guide them beyond the astral plane into the world of Devachan, where they could behold the spiritual Archetypes, first that of Christ Jesus Himself and—in order that they might be aware of the conditions under which He was working—also of two Beings who were connected with Him: Elias and Moses. Elias was the ancient prophet who, reincarnated as John the-Baptist, was also the forerunner of Christ Jesus. The scene takes place after the beheading of John, when he was already in the spiritual worlds. The disciples also beheld Moses, another spiritual forerunner of Christ.

Such an experience was only possible when the three chosen disciples were transported to the level of spiritual vision higher than that of astral vision. And the fact that they rose into Devachan is clearly indicated in St. Matthew's Gospel, for it is said that they not only beheld Christ filled with the power of the Sun but extra words are added: ‘And His face did shine as the Sun.’ It is also said that the three figures—Christ, Elias, Moses—were talking together. An ascent has therefore taken place into the realm of Devachan; the disciples hear the three talking together. (Matt. XVII, 1-13.)

Everything, therefore, is faithfully described and tallies with the characteristics of the spiritual world revealed to spiritual-scientific investigation. There is never any contradiction between the findings of this investigation and true accounts of the deeds of Christ. It was He Himself who led the disciples into the astral world and then into Devachan, the realm of spirit.

Christ Jesus is graphically depicted in the Gospel of St. Matthew as the vehicle, the bearer, of the Sun-power once proclaimed by Zarathustra. It is faithfully related in this Gospel that the Spirit of the Sun—Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd—of whom Zarathustra could only declare that He lived in the Sun, had lived on the Earth through the instrumentality of Jesus of Nazareth and had united Himself with the Earth in so real a way that through a single life in a physical body, etheric body and astral body, He became an impulse in Earth-evolution and as time goes on will become even more deeply united with it. Expressed in other words, this means: Egohood was once present in a Personality on the Earth in such full measure that if men receive Christ into themselves in the sense indicated by St. Paul, they will themselves acquire in the course of successive incarnations the forces and power of this Egohood. As they pass from incarnation to incarnation during the rest of earthly evolution, men who imbue their souls with the power of that Personality who once lived on the Earth, will rise to greater and greater heights. At that time, chosen ones were able with their physical eyes to behold Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Once in the course of the Earth's evolution, and for the sake of mankind, Christ, who formerly could only be revealed to men's vision as the Spirit of the Sun, descended and united Himself with the forces of the Earth.

Man is the being in whom the power of the Sun was to be present in its fullness—the power of the Sun that was once to descend and work in a human physical body. This was the inauguration of the, epoch during which the forces outpoured from the Sun will flow in ever greater measure into men as they live on from incarnation to incarnation, and—as far as the earthly body permits—gradually permeate themselves with the Christ-power. Obviously, this is not possible in the case of every physical body, just as it was only that very special body, prepared through the two Jesus figures in the complicated way described and then brought by Zarathustra to a very lofty stage of development—it was in that body only that the Christ could live in His fullness once!

Men who so resolve will permeate themselves with the Christ-Power, first inwardly,then outwardly. Thus humanity in the future will not only understand the nature of the Christ but will be filled with His Power. In the Rosicrucian Mystery Play² many of you have been shown what form this increasing experience of Christ will take in the evolution of humanity on the Earth. The seeress Theodora is to be regarded as a personality who has developed the power of seeing into the future, of perceiving the near approach of a period when a few human beings to begin with, and then greater and greater numbers, will be able, not only through spiritual training but through the stage of earthly evolution reached by humanity in general, actually to see the figure of Christ—but now in the etheric, not in the physical world. In a more distant future Christ will be seen in a form again different. Once and once only He was to be seen in physical form by men living on the physical plane. But the Christ Impulse would not have taken effect had it not worked in a way that would ensure its own further development.

We are approaching a time—this must be taken as a communication—when Christ will be visible to the higher faculties of men. Before the end of the twentieth century a few human beings will actually develop the faculties of Theodora; and those whose spiritual eyes are open will have the same experience that came to Paul at the gate of Damascus—an experience possible for him because he was ‘born out of due time’. Before the twentieth century has run its course, a number of people will experience Christ as Paul experienced Him and, like Paul, will need no Gospels or ancient records to convince them of the reality of Christ, for through their own inner experience they will recognize Him in the etheric world.

Christ now reveals Himself in etheric form as He revealed Himself to Paul, foreshadowing what would later come to pass. To us falls the task of emphasizing one aspect of the Christ Event, namely that He who once lived as Christ Jesus in a physical body will appear before the end of our epoch in an etheric form—as He appeared to Paul. If men develop their faculties to higher and higher stages they will learn to know the nature of Christ in its fullness; but to appear a second time in a physical body would mean that no progress had been made, for then His first appearance would have been in vain, would not have ensured the development of higher forces in human nature. The outcome of the Christ Event is that these higher faculties will unfold in men and that through them Christ will be seen in the sphere where He is working. Ours is the mission, if we understand the struggles of the present time, to point to this event in our own age, as the great Essene teacher, Jeschu ben Pandira, once pointed prophetically to the Christ who would come as the Lion born from David's line—thus again referring to the power of the Sun, in the constellation of Leo. And if—I say this merely as an indication—it were to be the happy fate of humanity that Jeschu ben Pandira—who was inspired at that time by the great Bodhisattva, the future Maitreya Buddha—should incarnate again in our epoch, he would consider the task of supreme importance to be that of pointing to the etheric Christ in the etheric world; and he would emphasize that the Christ came once, and once only, in a physical body.

Let us suppose that Jeschu ben Pandira—who was stoned to death approximately a hundred and five years before the Christ Event in Palestine—were to reincarnate in our time and announce the imminence of a revelation of Christ, he would point to the Christ who cannot appear in a physical body but is to become manifest in an etheric form, as He was revealed to Paul at Damascus. By this very teaching Jeschu ben Pandira could be recognized, assuming him to be reincarnated. It is also essential to recognize Essenism in its new form, to realise that from the one who in future time will be the Maitreya Buddha, we have to learn how the Christ will be revealed in our epoch, and that it behooves us to guard against harbouring false conceptions of Essenism due to its possible recrudescence in the present age.

There is a sure sign by which Jeschu ben Pandira could be recognized, were he to reincarnate in our epoch. The sign is that he would certainly not declare himself to be the Christ. If anyone were to come forward in our time claiming to bear the same power that was in Jesus of Nazareth, he could, by this very claim, be recognized as falsely identifying himself with the forerunner of Christ who lived a hundred years B.C. Such an assertion would be the surest possible sign that he is not an incarnation of that forerunner; a false prophet would be masquerading in him were he to claim any relationship with Christ.

The danger in this domain is very great, for in our time humanity fluctuates between two extremes. On the one side it is emphasized that modern man is unwilling to recognize spiritual forces working in the world. It has already become a truism, referred to constantly in newspapers, that our race has neither the insight nor the strength of mind to acknowledge any original spiritual power when there is evidence of it in some personality. This is one defect of our times. It is quite true that a reincarnation of the greatest possible significance might take place in our epoch and be unrecognized or treated with indifference. And the other defect is no less apparent—it is one which our epoch has in common with many others. Just as on the one side spiritual Individualities are undervalued and unacknowledged, on the other side there is present among men the liveliest tendency to deify individuals, to place them upon specially lofty pinnacles. Think of all the communities to-day, each with its special Messiah. Everywhere there is a tendency to deify, to idolize. It is, of course, a symptom that has been repeatedly evident in the course of the centuries.

Maimonides, for example, tells of a false Christ who appeared in France in 1137; he attracted many followers but was afterwards condemned to death by the public authority. Maimonides also relates that forty years earlier a man appeared in Cordova, in Spain, proclaiming himself to be the Christ. Again he relates that at the beginning of the twelfth century a false Messiah who pointed to one still greater, appeared in Fez, in Morocco. Finally it is reported that in the year 1147 there appeared in Persia an individual who did not, it is true, actually proclaim himself to be Christ, but who suggested something of the kind. And the most blatant phenomenon of all is the one of which I have already spoken: the appearance of Shabbethai Zebi in Smyrna, in the year 1666.

By observing that individual who declared himself to be a reincarnation of Christ, we can study in all detail the nature of a false Messiah and his effect upon the environment. At that time the proclamation went out from Smyrna that a new Christ had arisen in Shabbethai Zebi. Do not ever imagine that the movement connected with him was insignificant. People journeyed to Smyrna from all over Europe, from France, Spain, Italy, Poland, Hungary, the south of Russia, North Africa and Central Asia, to make contact with the alleged new-born Christ. It was a great world-movement. And if anyone had said to the people who regarded Shabbethai Zebi as a new Christ—until he finally betrayed himself, until the hoax was seen through—that he was not the true Christ, they would have fared badly, they would have gravely offended against a dogma rooted in a very large number of human beings.

Such things are signs of the other defect that constantly makes itself evident, perhaps not in definitely Christian regions, but certainly in others. A strong need is felt to announce the appearance of Messiahs in earthly incarnation. In Christian countries such occurrences are usually confined to small circles; although ‘Christs’ are to be found there too.

What matters is that through spiritual-scientific knowledge and enlightenment, through the unerring insight into facts that occultism is able to impart, both these pitfalls shall be avoided. If a person understands the relevant teachings, this will be possible; and then he will acquire insight into a most profound historical fact of modern times. It is that when we penetrate more deeply into the spiritual life we can participate in a renewal of Essene teaching which through the mouth of Jeschu ben Pandira once prophesied the Christ Event as a physical happening. And if Essene teaching is to be renewed in our days, if we are resolved to shape our lives in accordance with the living spirit of a new Bodhisattva, not with the spirit of a tradition concerning a Bodhisattva of the past, then we must make ourselves receptive to the inspiration of the Bodhisattva who will subsequently become the Maitreya Buddha. And this Bodhisattva will inspire us by drawing attention to the near approach of the time when in a new raiment, in an etheric body, Christ will bring life and blessing to those who unfold the new faculties through a new Essene wisdom. We shall speak entirely in the sense of the inspiring Bodhisattva who is to become the Maitreya Buddha and then we shall not speak of how the Christ is to become perceptible on the physical plane—in the manner of some religious denominations. We are not afraid to speak in a different sense because we recognize it to be the truth. We have no bias in favour of any oriental religious teaching but we live only for the truth. With the knowledge gained from the inspiration of the Bodhisattva himself we declare what form the future manifestation of Christ will take.

• 1. A learned and interesting account of the semantic interaction between the Greek word iaomai (‘heal’) and the Hebrew Jeshua (transliterated into Greek as Iesus), which was both a proper name and a word meaning ‘saviour’, will be found in Hastings' Dictionary of Christ and the Gospels (title: Jesus).
• 2. The Portal of Initiation, Scene I See also two lectures entitled The True Nature of the Second Coming, given in Carlsruhe and Stuttgart, 25th January and 6th March, 1910.

The Temptation is presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew as an account of a particular form of Initiation. The story is followed by indications of what Christ Jesus was to mean, firstly to His disciples. Not only was He to be the expounder of the ancient teachings in an entirely new form but a living force—if this word may be used—a health-giving force for men. This is demonstrated in the healings.

In the lecture yesterday we went on to consider a subject which, if it is to be understood, calls for a certain measure of goodwill arising from spiritual-scientific knowledge acquired through the years. We spoke of the unique, living quality of teaching imparted through the transmission of forces from Christ Jesus into the souls of His disciples. An attempt was made to express a great mystery in words of human language and to indicate the nature of the teaching given by Christ Jesus to His disciples. We may think of Christ Jesus Himself as a focal point, a focal centre, as it were, for forces that were to stream from the Macrocosm into the conditions of life on the Earth and into the souls of the disciples. Such forces could be marshalled only by powers that were concentrated in Christ Himself. Through Him, forces which otherwise stream into man unconsciously during sleep, streamed to the disciples as illuminating, life-giving forces of the Cosmos itself. To characterize these forces in any detail is of course only possible by studying the difference in cosmic constellations, and it is this mystery, as presented in the Gospel of St. Matthew, to which we shall give attention to-day. In the first place, however, it must be realised that the disciples had inevitably become wiser in regard to conditions on Earth because thc powers and forces of Christ Jesus had poured upon them. In diverse ways and degrees they had become more mature, had acquired more living wisdom.

A very significant phenomenon in the development of one of the disciples is presented to us, but to be understood it must be contemplated in a vast setting. And here the fact must be kept firmly in mind that the individual man himself progresses together with evolving humanity. In the post-Atlantean era we have passed through incarnation after incarnation in the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egypto-Chaldean and the Greco-Latin civilization-epochs, in order to receive some-thing from the environment and the prevailing conditions of the times. That is how progress is made.

What does development through the epochs of human evolution really mean? From elementary Anthroposophy we know of the different members of man's being: physical body, etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual or mind-soul, spiritual or consciousness-soul. The higher members still to be developed are Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man. Something quite definite is achieved for each of these members in thc several epochs of post-Atlantean civilization. Thus in the first epoch, forces enhancing the capacities of the etheric body were instilled into man. Such forces had been implanted in his physical body during the last periods of the Atlantean era and the first gifts to be bestowed in the post-Atlantean era were those imparted to the etheric body during the epoch of ancient Indian culture. During the epoch of ancient Persia, forces were implanted in man's astral body, or sentient body; during the Egypto-Chaldean and Greco-Latin epochs in the sentient soul and intellectual or mind-soul respectively; and we are living now in the age when the forces connected with this line of progress are gradually to be instilled into the spiritual or consciousness-soul. No very great advance has yet been made in this respect. In the future sixth post-Atlantean epoch the forces of the Spirit-Self will be implanted in human nature, and in the seventh epoch those of the Life-Spirit. And then we glimpse a far, far distant future, when Spirit-Man, or Atma, is to be inculcated into normal human nature.

We will now think of this process of development in relation to the individual human being. Those who knew the truth of these things from the Mysteries always pictured man as we must picture him now and as the disciples too had to learn to picture him through the enlightenment that had come to them from Christ Jesus. In a human being—either as he is to-day or also as he was at the time of Christ Jesus—there are rudiments or seeds, just as there are in a plant; they are already present when the plant has developed only leaves, and not yet flower and fruit. Looking at such a plant we know that although it now has leaves only, there already lie within it the germinal beginnings of flower and fruit, and that these will develop if growth proceeds in the normal and regular way. As surely as flower and fruit will grow out of the plant although at first it has green leaves only, as surely will the consciousness-soul arise in the human being—who in the days of Christ Jesus had developed only the sentient soul and the intellectual or mind-soul. The consciousness-soul then prepares to receive the Spirit-Self, in order that the highest triad may come as a new divine-spiritual gift to man. Therefore we can say: Through the contents and qualities of his soul, man's development is like that of a plant which, to begin with, has green leaves only but subsequently both flower and fruit. Out of sentient soul, mind-soul and spiritual or consciousness-soul, man unfolds something like a flower of his being, holding it in readiness to receive a divine power that comes down to him from above—this power being the Spirit-Self which enables him to reach further stages along the path leading to the heights of evolution.

In men who were living at the time of Christ Jesus the intellectual or mind-soul had developed in the perfectly normal way as their highest soul-principle; but although the intellectual or mind-soul was not able to receive into itself the Spirit-Self, there was to develop, as the child of the intellectual soul, the spiritual or consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self could descend.

What was the expression used in the Mysteries when referring to this flower that was to unfold from man's own nature? How was this growth defined in the environment of Christ Jesus when it was a matter of indicating that the disciples were to make a true advance in their development? Translated into our language, the expression used was ‘Son of Man’. The Greek has by no means the restricted meaning of our ‘son’ as ‘son of a father’ but signifies the successor of a living being, an entity that evolves from a living being like the blossom or flower of a plant on which hitherto there have been leaves only. Hence in the era before normally developed men had unfolded the consciousness-soul as the flower of their nature they had nothing of the ‘Son of Man’ in them. But there must always be some who are in advance of their generation, who already bear within them in an earlier epoch the knowledge and potentialities of a later one. In the fourth epoch—when normally only the intellectual or mind-soul had developed—there would always have been some among the leaders of men who, although their outward appearance was similar to that of others, had already unfolded the seed of the spiritual or consciousness-soul into which the Spirit-Self sends its radiance.—And there were indeed such ‘Sons of Men’. Hence it behooved the disciples of Christ Jesus to recognize and learn to understand the nature of these leaders.

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To test how far this was understood by His intimate disciples, Christ Jesus asked them: Tell me, of which human beings it can be said that they are ‘Sons of Men’ in this generation?—That is approximately how the question would have to be formulated in accordance with the original Aramaic text of St. Matthew's Gospel. (I have already said that although the Greek version, if it is thoroughly understood, is certainly better than that produced by any modern scholarship, a great deal was inevitably obscured in the process of translation from the Aramaic original.) We must picture Christ Jesus standing before His disciples and asking them: Which individuals of the previous generations in the Greco-Latin epoch are held to have been ‘Sons of Men’? The disciples then spoke of Elias, John the Baptist, Jeremias, and other prophets. Through the power transmitted to them by Christ the disciples knew that those leaders of men had been the recipients of forces enabling them to become bearers of the ‘Son of Man’. On the same occasion, the disciple who is usually called Peter, gave still another answer.

To understand this answer we must keep firmly in mind what has been said in these lectures about the mission of Christ Jesus as indicated in the Gospel of St. Matthew, namely that through the Christ Impulse it was possible for men to develop Ego-consciousness in the fullest sense, to bring to blossom what is implicit in the am'. In other words : even in the actual process of Initiation, men were in future to retain all along the paths leading into the higher worlds the full Ego-consciousness normally possessed only on the physical plane. This was made possible through Christ's existence on the Earth. We can therefore say: Christ Jesus is the representative, the embodiment, of the power which imparts to mankind full consciousness of the ‘I am.’

I have already called attention to the fact that the interpretations of the Gospels put forward by rationalists, let alone by declared sceptics, do not usually emphasize the points of real significance. It is insisted that certain phrases in the Gospels and other books of the Bible were in existence previously, for example the Beatitudes. But the shade of meaning that was not there previously—and this is the gist of the whole matter—is that what could not then be attained by the human being in full Ego-consciousness, could now be attained by him through the Christ Impulse! This is of the very greatest significance. I have spoken of each Beatitude and have shown that the words of the first should be: ‘Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit’—because a man is poor in spirit who on account of the advancing evolution of human consciousness can no longer look into the spiritual world with the old clairvoyance. But to such men Christ gives this consolation and enlightenment: Although they can no longer see into the spiritual world with the organs of the old clairvoyance, vision of the world will now be possible through their own Ego, for through themselves they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven! So too the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are they that mourn.’ They will no longer be dependent upon the faculty of the old clairvoyance for reaching the spiritual world, for they will now achieve this by developing their own Ego. But in order that this may come to pass the Ego must take into itself more and more of the power that was anchored once on Earth in a unique Being—in Christ.

Men of the modern age ought really to give a little thought to the following.—It is not for nothing that Greek words of vital importance occur in every Beatitude: Thus the first sentence, ‘Blessed are they who are beggars for the spirit’, should be followed by the words: ‘In themselves’—or ‘through themselves’—‘they will find the Kingdoms of Heaven.’ The words, ‘In themselves’ are always accentuated, in the second sentence, in the third, and so on.

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Forgive me if by a trivial analogy I now call attention to something of importance at the present time. People will have to resolve not to apply the word ‘auton’—as in our automobile—to machines only or to take it in an entirely external sense. They will have to understand in a spiritual sense too the quality or activity implied by ‘self-engendered activity’. Our contemporaries would do well to take this admonition to heart. They welcome ‘self-engendered activity’ in machines, but they should also learn what this activity implies in regard to inner experience which in all the Mysteries was beyond the reach of Ego-consciousness until the time of the Christ Event. Through self-engendered activity, man himself is now able by degrees to become a creator. And this is what the men of to-day will learn to under-stand if they fill themselves with the Christ Impulse.

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Keeping this in mind we shall realise that another question put by Christ Jesus to the disciples was of very special importance. He had first asked: Who among the leaders of a former generation could be called a ‘Son of Man’?—and the disciples had spoken of certain individuals. He then put a further question, wishing to bring them gradually to the point of understanding His own nature, of understanding what He represented in regard to Egohood. This is implicit in the other question: ‘But whom say ye that I am?’ (Matt. XVI, 15). (Special importance must in every instance be attached to the words ‘I am’ in the Gospel of St. Matthew.) The answer given by Peter showed that he now recognized Christ not only as a ‘Son of Man’ but as the ‘Son of the living God’—and this translation can well be retained.

What is the difference between ‘Son of the living God’ and ‘Son of Man’? To understand this, certain facts already known to us must be elaborated.

As man evolves, the spiritual or consciousness-soul develops in him; in the consciousness-soul the Spirit-Self can become manifest. But when the consciousness-soul has developed in a man, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man must as it were come towards him, in order that this opening flower of his being may receive the higher triad. This ascent of man can also be likened to the development and growth of a plant.

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Man's being comes to flower in the spiritual or consciousness-soul and Spirit-Self or Manas, Life-Spirit or Budhi, and Spirit-Man or Atma, stream towards him. This may be likened to a process of spiritual fertilization from above. Whereas man grows upwards from below with the other members of his being, unfolding the flower that is the ‘Son of Man’, if he is to progress even further and acquire full Ego-consciousness there must come to him from above the gift of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. And who is the representative of this gift from above, pointing to what man's nature will be in a far, far distant future? The first gift received is the Spirit-Self. He who receives the Spirit-Self coming from above—of whom is he the representative? He is the representative, the Son, of the God who lives, the Son of the Life-Spirit, the Son of the living God!

And now Christ Jesus asks: What is it that must come to men through my impulse?—It is the life-giving, Spirit-principle from above! Thus a distinction must be made between the Son of Man who has grown upwards from below the Son of God, the Son of the living God, who comes down from above. But the difficulty of this question for the disciples will be apparent to you when you realise that they were the very first to receive what the simplest of men since the time of Christ Jesus have received through the Gospels. It was only the living forces of Christ Jesus that enabled the disciples to assimilate all this teaching. The faculties they had already developed were not capable of answering the question: Of whom am I myself the representative? The Gospel then records that one of the disciples, Peter by name, gave the answer: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!’ At the moment of its utterance, this was an answer that did not issue from Peter's normal spiritual faculties.

Let us try to picture the scene vividly.—As He gazed at Peter, Christ Jesus realised the great significance of the fact that there should have come from this mouth an answer pointing to an immeasurably distant future. And then, perceiving the actual range of Peter's consciousness and of powers sufficiently developed to enable him to give such an answer through his intellect or through faculties acquired at stages leading to Initiation, Christ Jesus was bound to affirm: This answer does not spring from Peter's conscious knowledge; it is those deeper powers, only gradually transformed by man into conscious powers, that arc speaking here.

Through transforming the forces of our astral, etheric and physical bodies we rise to Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. This is an elementary teaching of Spiritual Science. The forces We shall eventually unfold in the astral body as Spirit-Self are already within the astral body, but they are there by the grace of divine-spiritual Powers; their development is not due to our own efforts and activity. So too there is divine Life-Spirit within our etheric body. Hence Christ says to Peter: It is not what is in your consciousness at this moment that spoke from your mouth, but something you will develop only in the future, something that is indeed within you but of which as yet you know nothing. What is part of your flesh and blood is not yet capable of uttering the words: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ Divine-spiritual powers lying deeply below the threshold of consciousness—indeed the very deepest powers in human nature—were speaking out of you at that moment.—It was the mysterious higher Powers in Peter—called by Christ the ‘Father in Heaven’—the Powers out of which Peter had indeed been born but of which he was not yet conscious, that spoke out of him. Hence the saying: ‘This has been revealed to you by the Father in Heaven, not by what you are at present as a man of flesh and blood.’

In these circumstances Christ was bound to say to Himself: ‘In Peter I have a disciple whose whole constitution is such that the Father-power within him has not yet been touched by forces already engendered by consciousness, by the operations of spiritual activity; this subconscious power is so strong in Peter that it can be his sure foundation when he surrenders himself to it. This is the important quality in him. It is also present in every human being, but will be raised into the conscious state only in the future. If what I have to impart to mankind, if that for which I am the impulse, is to unfold and lay hold of men, it must be founded upon the utterance made through the mouth of Peter: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God!’ Upon this rock in human nature, unharmed as yet by the surging waves of consciousness, upon the Father-power voicing itself in those words, I will build what must spring with ever-increasing strength from my impulse.’—

When this foundation is established, the humanity embodying the Christ Impulse will arise.—This is implicit in the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build that which can create a community of men faithful to the Christ Impulse!’

Glib discussions and debates about these words in St. Matthew's Gospel take place to-day, for nearly all over the world they are the subject of controversy. They must indeed not be taken lightly. They can be understood only when their meaning is drawn from the depths of the wisdom that is the wisdom of the Mysteries.

And now something else is indicated, namely that Christ Jesus does indeed build upon the deeper, subconscious power in Peter. Immediately afterwards He begins to speak of what is about to befall, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The moment has already passed when the deeper nature in Peter was speaking; he now gives utterance to what has already become conscious in him. Now he cannot understand what Christ means, cannot believe that suffering and death are to ensue. And when the Peter who has developed his own conscious faculties is speaking, Christ must reprove him, saying: This is not uttered by a Divinity within you but by faculties you have developed in yourself as a human being; what these faculties have here produced is worthless, for its source is delusion; it comes from Ahriman, from Satan!—This is implied in the words: ‘Get thee behind me, Satan. Thou art an offence unto me; for thou savourest not the things that be of God but those that be of men.’ (Matt. XVI, 23). Christ uses the word ‘Satan’ for Ahriman, whereas elsewhere in the Bible the word ‘Devil’ applies to everything of a Luciferic nature. Christ uses the right word for the delusion to which Peter succumbs.

Such is the truth. But what does modern Bible exegesis make of these episodes? It has realised that Christ Jesus cannot have said to Peter at one minute: ‘You alone have recognized that a God is standing before you!’ and have called him ‘Satan’ the next. So some critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated at a later time and is therefore a falsification.—The fact of the matter is that the meaning attributed to this by modern philological research makes current opinion on the subject quite worthless. Only on the basis of a fundamental understanding of the Bible is it possible for any authentic statement to be made about the origins of the texts in question.

But between the two sayings I have quoted there is another, intelligible only in the light of an ancient, yet ever, new Mystery-teaching: that man as he is on Earth—not only the individual but every community of men—is a mirror-image of processes in the Macrocosm. Mention was made of this when we were speaking of the genealogy of Jesus of Nazareth. It was explained that the meaning of the words spoken to Abraham was: ‘Thy descendants shall be an image of the order of the stars in heaven.’ The order of the twelve constellations and of the movement of the planets through the Zodiac was to be repeated in the twelve tribes and in the history of the Hebrew people through three times fourteen generations. Thus in the sequence of the generations and the special heredity resulting from the blood-ties in the twelve tribes, there was to be an image of macrocosmic conditions. Such was the declaration made to Abraham.

At the moment when Peter, whose deeper nature had been able to understand that the Christ Impulse signified the down-flow of spiritual power through the Son of the living God—at that moment Christ knows that He can speak to those around Him of the beginning of something new arising on the Earth. Whereas it had been declared to Abraham that the image of cosmic conditions was to be formed by blood-kinship, this image was now to be replaced by one formed by relationships of an ethical, moral and spiritual character, giving expression to what man can attain through his Ego. When men understand, as the deeper nature in Peter understood, what the Christ truly is, they will not establish communities and institutions based entirely on the blood-tie but communities where the bond of love is woven from soul to soul. Just as in the blood of the Hebrew people and in the threads running through the generations, that which was ordained to be bound together in the human race was bound together and that which was ordained to be loosed was loosed according to the pattern of the Macrocosm, so there was now to arise through the conscious Ego, in the form of ethical, moral and spiritual relationships, the force that either looses the ties between human beings or binds them together in love. Human institutions were now to be created or harmonized by the conscious Ego. This is the meaning of the words spoken by Christ Jesus in continuation of the answer He had given to Peter: ‘Whatever you bind on Earth—whatever thc deeper nature in you binds—that shall be bound in Heaven, and whatever the same deeper nature in you looses on the Earth below, shall also be loosed in Heaven’ (see Matt. XVI, 19).

In ancient times the all-important factor in associations among human beings was blood-relationship. But men must now grow to the stage where the ties of real significance are of a spiritual, moral and ethical character. From this it follows that a community must mean something for an individual who has been a contributory factor in the founding of it. In the sense of Anthroposophy, we can say: the karma of the individual must be merged with the karma of communities. This will be known to you from what has been said in recent years. The idea of karma is not repudiated when I give something to one who is needy, nor when the karma. of an individual is shouldered for him by the community. The community can help to bear the fate of the individual. In other words, the following may happen in the moral sphere. A single member of a community commits a wrong. This will quite certainly be inscribed in his personal karma and be worked out in the great setting of world-existence. But someone else may come forward and say: ‘I will help you to work out this karma!’—The karma must be fulfilled, but the other person can help; whole communities can help the one who has committed a wrong. The karma of an individual may be so interwoven with the community that the community, regarding him as a member, deliberately shoulders§ the burden of his destiny, feeling for him and resolving that his lot shall be ameliorated. The attitude of the community may be: You, as an individual, have done wrong, but we will enter the lists for you; we take upon ourselves whatever will bring about the adjustment of your karma!—If ‘church’ is substituted for ‘community’, this means that the church assumes the obligation to take upon itself the sins of the individual, to share the burden of his karma. It is not a matter of what is to-day called ‘forgiveness of sins’, but of a real bond, an acceptance of the burden of sins. And the essential point is that the community consciously accepts this burden.

If the ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are understood in thiS sense, every case of forgiveness of Sins would entail an obligation on the part of the community. Thus a web is spun by the threads of individual karma being woven into the karma of the whole community. And this web, through what Christ brought down from the heights of the Spirit, is to be an image of the order prevailing in Heaven; that is to say, the karma of the individual is not to be bound with the collective karma in any fortuitous way but so that the community as an organism shall become an image of the order prevailing in Heaven.

This scene of Peter's avowal now begins to reveal an infinitely profound meaning to those who have a dawning understanding of it. It denotes the founding of thc humanity of the future—a humanity based upon the Ego-nature in man. What takes place in this intimate conversation between Christ and those who were closest to Him is that Christ transmits the power He Himself has brought from the Macrocosm to what the disciples are to establish. And from this point onwards the Gospel of St. Matthew recounts how the disciples are led upwards, step by step, to the stage where the powers of the Sun and of the Cosmos gathered together in the Christ Being can flow into them. We know that one form of Initiation is an expansion into the Macrocosm. And because Christ Himself is the impulse in this Initiation, He leads His disciples out into the Cosmos. While an individual aspirant is undergoing the process of this Initiation he passes consciously into the Macrocosm, gathering knowledge of it by degrees. Christ descends as it were from the Macrocosm, makes manifest its instreaming forces and conveys them to thc disciples.

In one part of the lecture yesterday I indicated how this takes place. Let us picture the scene as graphically as possible. While a man is asleep his physical and etheric bodies lie in the bed while his astral body and Ego pass out into the Cosmos and the forces of the Cosmos pour into these members of his being. If Christ were now to approach, He would be the One who consciously draws these forces to the sleeping man and illumines him. This is exactly what happens in a scene described in the Gospel. The disciples are in a ship in the fourth watch of the night. Then they see that the figure they had at first taken to be a spirit, is Christ, who enables the forces and power of thc Macrocosm to flow into them. How He leads the disciples to the stage where they can receive the forces of the Macrocosm is clearly portrayed.

The next scenes in St. Matthew's Gospel show how Christ leads the disciples step by step along the path taken by every would-be Initiate. It is as if Christ Himself is treading this path, leading His disciples by the hand to Initiation.—I will now say something that will enable you to realise how the disciples are led stage by stage into the Macrocosm.

Many things previously beyond man's ken become known to him through visions of the spiritual world, through clairvoyant faculties. Thus, for example, he is able to recognize the actual processes operating in the growth of plants. A materialist will say of a plant: Here I have a flower—let us say it is a fruit-bearing plant—and a seed will form in it. The seed can be extracted and laid in the soil; the grain eventually dissolves and a new plant, again bearing seed, appears. And so the process continues. Something passes over from the dissolving grain of seed into the new plant.—A materialist cannot possibly think otherwise than that something material, however minute, passes over. But it is not so. The truth is that in respect of its material, its substance, the old plant is entirely destroyed. A jump (Sprung) takes place and the new plant is an entirely new formation—in respect of material substance an absolutely new formation.

Facts of the very greatest importance are recognized and understood when this remarkable law is grasped. Jumps do actually occur in material conditions. This was expressed in the Mysteries in a very definite way. It was said: In passing into the Cosmos the aspirant for Initiation must at a certain stage acquire knowledge of the forces that bring about these ‘jumps’. Now certain processes in the Cosmos can be understood if the constellations are used as means of indication. The constellations are then like letters of a script. When we pass into the Cosmos in a particular direction we come to know the jumps that occur from forefather to successor—whether it be in the plant, animal or human kingdoms, or even in the realm of planetary existence. At the transitions of Saturn-evolution to Sun-evolution, of Sun-evolution to Moon-evolution, of Moon-evolution to Earth-evolution, everything material passed away. The spiritual remained and it was the spiritual that brought about the jumps. In small things and in great it is the same.

Two symbols have been used for this principle, one ancient and of a more pictorial, imaginative character, and another rather newer. You can find the newer symbol in calendars. As evolution advances, the past curls inwards like a vortex and the new phase emerges as a second vortex, unfolding from within outwards and leading on further. But the new phase is not actually joined to the old; between the end of the old phase and the beginning of the new there is a little ‘jump’ or ‘gap’ and only then does the process of evolution continue.

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In the above figure we have two intertwining vortices and between them a little gap. This is the zodiacal sign of Cancer, symbolizing the process of growing out into the Macrocosm and the birth of a new shoot in some phase of evolution.

This principle was also represented by another symbol. Strange as it may seem to you, the symbol was an ass and its foal, the forefather and his offspring. This was meant to represent the actual transition from one condition to the other. Ancient delineations of the constellation of Cancer often consist of the figure of an ass and its foal. To know this is by no means without importance. It helps us to understand that another significant transition takes place when a man is rising to the stage leading into the spiritual world but must then be prepared for entirely new revelations. The stellar symbol correctly indicates this by portraying how when the physical sun passes through the constellation of Cancer and reaches the zenith, it descends again. And when the aspirant for Initiation first makes the ascent into the spiritual world and has acquired knowledge of its forces, he brings them down again in order to turn them to the service of humanity.

The Gospel of St. Matthew and the other Gospels too, tell how Christ Jesus presents this truth to the disciples. The way in which the story is told indicates that He is not using words alone but is presenting to them the Imagination, the living picture, of what He Himself is accomplishing as He approaches the height to which evolving humanity must in time ascend. He uses the image of the ass and its foal; that is to say, He guides the disciples towards an understanding of what corresponds in the spiritual life to the constellation of Cancer. This is a picture of something that has come to pass in the living, spiritual relationship between Christ and His disciples. So great is its majesty and its splendour that it cannot be expressed in the words of any human language but only through Christ Himself initiating the disciples into the conditions prevailing in the spiritual world and creating in physical conditions images of the Macrocosm He leads them to the point where the powers of one who is initiated become, in turn, of service to mankind. He is standing at the height that can only be indicated by the image of the Sun at the zenith of the sign of Cancer! No wonder that this chapter (XXI) of the Gospel of St. Matthew points to the supreme height now reached in Christ's earthly life, triumphantly proclaimed by the words: ‘Hosanna in the highest!’ Everything is ordained to the end that through what has here come to pass the disciples may grow to the stage where through the powers working in them there may unfold in men what Christ Jesus has brought into the evolution of humanity.

The story of the feast of the Passover is nothing else than an account of the living influx of the power that was to stream into the disciples, first as teaching and then into humanity as if by magic, as an outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha. It is in this light that the continuation of the story, in the Gospel of St. Matthew is to be understood. Then we shall also realise that the writer of the Gospel was perpetually conscious of the need to point to the contrast between the living teaching brought from cosmic heights and imparted to the disciples, and the teaching suitable for those who were not yet ready to receive the forces of Christ Jesus Himself. Hence the utterances in the conversations with the Scribes and Pharisees which we shall be studying tomorrow. To-day, however, we will remind ourselves that after Christ Jesus has guided His disciples as far as possible along the path leading to the goal of all aspirants for Initiation, He holds out thc prospect that if they tread this path they themselves will pass into the spiritual world, into the Macrocosm. He tells them that they have within them the qualities necessary for subsequent Initiation, that Initiation is in store for them and that they will find the way into that world where they will recognize Christ more and more clearly as the Being who fills all spiritual space and was imaged in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ says to His disciples that they are approaching this Initiation, that they will become Initiates of humanity. He reminds them too that individual Initiation can be attained only if by dint of patience and endurance the inner nature is allowed to mature.

What is it that must grow in man's inner nature as its forces increase in strength and he develops a higher form of clairvoyance? His qualities must mature to the stage where he can receive into himself the forces of Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man. But when the power that makes him an Initiate, a participant in the Kingdoms of Heaven, will stream into him from above, depends upon the moment when he can become fully mature; it depends upon the karma of the individual. Who knows when the moment has come? It is known only to the very highest initiates, not to those at lower stages of Initiation. For any individuality who is ready to reach the spiritual world, the hour comes when he does so. Assuredly the hour comes, but in such a way that he is not aware of it—it comes like a thief in the night !

How does a man reach the spiritual world? In the ancient Mysteries—and in a certain respect it is so in the new—there were three stages of Initiation into the Macrocosm. When the first stage had been attained by the aspirant, the powers of the Spirit-Self became active in him and now he was not only a new man but had become one whose nature was said to be that of an ‘Angel—that is to say, a Being of the Hierarchy immediately above man. In the Mysteries of ancient Persia, a man possessing the powers of the Spirit-Self was called a ‘Persian’ because he was no longer a separate individual but belonged to the Angel of the Persian people. At the next stage of Initiation the Life-Spirit awakens. A man who had reached this stage was called a ‘Sun Hero’ in the Persian Mysteries, because he had developed to thc stage where he could receive the spiritual forces of the Sun streaming towards the Earth. But such a man was also called a ‘Son of the Father’. And one with whom Atma, or Spirit-Man, had made contact was called ‘Father’ in the ancient Mysteries. The three stages of Initiation were: Angel, Son or Sun Hero, Father.

Only the very highest Initiates, they and they alone are able to judge when the moment of Initiation can be reached. Hence Christ speaks to the following effect.—Initiation will be attained if you go forward on the paths along which I have led you. You will rise into the Kingdoms of Heaven, but the hour is known neither to the Angels in whom the Spirit-Self is working, neither to the Son in whom the Life-Spirit has awakened, but only to the very highest Initiates, those in whom the Father-principle is active.

Here again the words of St. Matthew's Gospel (XXIV, 36) are in absolute conformity with the tradition originating in the Mysteries. And we shall find that the proclamation of the Kingdom of Heaven is nothing else than the prediction to the disciples that they will experience initiation. Christ Jesus indicates this very clearly in the text of the Gospel of St. Matthew. If the relevant passage is correctly interpreted it is quite evident that Christ is referring to certain teachings in circulation at that time on the subject of reaching the Kingdoms of Heaven. Men had taken this in the material sense, believing that it applied to the whole Earth, whereas they ought to have known that the Kingdoms of Heaven are reached by a few individuals only, through their Initiation. In other words, the opinion was held by some that the Earth would be transformed in a material sense into Heaven. And Christ draws special attention to this by speaking of the coming of those who would proclaim it. He calls them false prophets and false Messiahs! How strange it is that even to-day a few so-called Gospel critics spread the fable that the prospect of an approaching material Kingdom of God was a teaching given by Christ Jesus Himself ! Anyone able to read the Gospel of St. Matthew correctly knows that Christ Jesus was referring to a spiritual happening within the eventual reach of one who is approaching Initiation, but in the course of Earth-evolution becoming accessible to all those members of humanity who cleave to Him and in attaining higher stages of development bring about the spiritualisation of the Earth itself.

This aspect too must give us deeper insight into the structure of St. Matthew's Gospel. We shall then feel profound reverence for a Gospel from which, as from no other, we can learn unmistakably how the disciples of Christ Jesus were the first to receive teaching that was directed to the Ego itself. We picture Christ's disciples standing around Him and perceive how the forces of the Cosmos are working through the human body He bore. We picture Him guiding His disciples in a way that enables them to acquire the knowledge accessible to all who are approaching Initiation. We hear of human situations formed around Him. This is what makes St. Matthew's Gospel seem so near to us in a human sense. Through this Gospel we learn to know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ; we learn to know what Christ accomplished through His descent into the nature of Man. Even happenings in the heavenly worlds are presented in terms of human situations and relationships in the Gospel of St. Matthew.

In the final lecture tomorrow these things will be considered not only from the aspect of Initiation but from other aspects as well.

When we think of the evolution of humanity advancing from stage to stage as described by Spiritual Science, we shall attach the very greatest significance to the fact that man, incarnating again and again in the course of the different epochs, gradually reaches higher degrees of perfection, until he is finally able to kindle into activity within himself powers befitting the various stages of planetary evolution. On the one side we see man ascending gradually towards his divine goal. But he would never be capable of reaching the heights intended for him if Beings whose paths of development in the Universe have differed from his own, did not come to his aid.

From time to time—for so it may be expressed—Beings from other spheres enter into and unite with earthly and human evolution in order to lift man to their own heights. Even during the earlier planetary embodiments of our Earth, even during Old Saturn, sublime Beings—the Thrones—sacrificed their will-substance in order that the earliest beginnings of the physical human body, might be established. This is only one example of what has taken place on a vast scale. But Beings whose development has advanced beyond that of man do indeed descend to his realm and unite with Earth-evolution by dwelling for a time within a human soul. It is also sometimes said that these Beings ‘assume human form’, or more simply, that they appear as an aspiring power in the soul of a man who since he is ensouled by a god, is able to achieve more in evolution than is possible for others. To hear of such things goes against the grain at the present time when the tendency is to reduce everything to one level and to apply materialistic ideas universally. Only a rudiment has persisted of the conception just referred to. The suggestion that a man is the vehicle of a Being from higher realms would be regarded as sheer superstition nowadays. But a rudiment at least of this truth has been preserved, even in this materialistic age, although it takes the form of a subconscious belief in what is deemed miraculous. People still believe that ‘geniuses’ appear here and there. Even normal modern consciousness recognizes men of genius who stand out from the masses and of whom it is said that they possess faculties differing from those of ordinary human nature. A belief in ‘geniuses’ persists even to-day. But there are also circles where such belief has been abandoned; the very existence of men of genius is refuted because materialistic thinking has lost all sense of the realities of the spiritual life. Nevertheless belief in genius is quite widespread and if this belief is not empty credulity it will admit that a power different from that of the ordinary human faculties comes to expression through a man of genius who is striving to give an impetus to evolution. If attention were given to teachings cognizant of the truth about men of genius, it would be realised when such a person appears suddenly to have become an embodiment of infinite goodness, greatness and strength, that this is a case where a spiritual power has descended and taken possession of the centre from which such Beings must work, namely from the inmost nature of man himself.

It should be clear to an anthroposophist from the outset that there are these two possibilities: the ascent of man to spiritual heights in the course of his evolution, and the descent of divine-spiritual Beings into human bodies or human souls. A passage in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play¹ points to the fact that when something of importance is to take place in the evolution of humanity, a divine Being must as it were unite with and permeate a human soul. This is a necessity of evolution.

To understand this in relation to the spiritual evolution of our planet, we will remind ourselves that in very early times of its existence the Earth was still united with the Sun. In a remotely distant past the Sun separated from the Earth. Anthroposophists know that this was not merely a separation of Earth-substance and Sun-substance in the material sense, but a separation of divine-spiritual Beings who were connected with the Sun or with the other planets. After the separation of the Sun from the Earth, certain spiritual Beings remained united with the Earth, whereas others remained united with the Sun; these latter were Beings who, because their development had progressed beyond the stage attainable in earthly conditions, could not complete their further evolution on the Earth. Thus certain spiritual Beings remained even more closely connected with the Earth, whereas other Beings sent their influences and forces from the Sun into earthly existence. After the separation of the Sun there are, as it were, two arenas—the Earth with its Beings and the Sun with its Beings. The spiritual Beings who can be helpers of man from a higher sphere are those who transferred their arena of activity from the Earth to the Sun. And from thence—from the Sun-sphere—come the Beings who from time to time unite with earthly humanity in order to lead the evolution of the Earth and of Man to further stages.

In the myths of many peoples there are constant references to ‘Sun Heroes’—Beings who work from spiritual spheres into the evolution of humanity. A man who is permeated by a Sun Being is of far greater significance than his exterior appearance at first reveals. The exterior appearance is an illusion, is maya, and the real Being is behind the maya—only to be divined by one who is able to look into the very depths of a nature such as this.

In the Mysteries there was, and there still is, knowledge of this twofold aspect of the evolutionary course of humanity. Distinction has always been made between divine Spirits who come down from the spiritual realm and men who strive upwards from the Earth towards Initiation into the secrets of spiritual reality. What, then, is the nature of the Being we call Christ?

In the lecture yesterday we learnt that ‘Christ, the Son of the Living God’ is a Being who descends. If we were to use a term current in oriental philosophy, we should call Him an ‘Avatar’—a descending God. But it is only from a definite point that we can speak of Him as a descending Being. As such He is described by all the four Evangelists, Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John. At the moment of the Baptism by John this Being came down from the realm of Sun-existence to the Earth and united with a human being. We must realise that according to the views of the four Evangelists, this Sun Being is the greatest Avatar of all, the greatest of all other Sun Beings who have ever descended. Hence it is to be expected that a specially prepared nature in humanity must grow towards His level.

All four Evangelists tell of the Sun Being, of the ‘Son of the living God’, who comes to man to help his evolution forward, but only the writers of the Gospel of St. Matthew and St. Luke tell of the man who developed to the stage where he could receive this Sun Being into himself. From these Gospels we learn that for thirty years the man in question prepared for the great moment when he could become the vehicle for the Sun Being. And because the Being we call Christ is so universal, so all-embracing, the preparation of the bodily sheaths able to receive Him could not be a simple process. Very specially prepared physical and etheric sheaths were needed to receive the descending Sun Being.

From our study of the Matthew Gospel we have learnt how and whence these sheaths were produced. But from these physical and etheric sheaths derived from the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people and prepared for the Sun Being, neither the astral body nor the actual Ego-bearer could be directly unfolded. For this purpose a special measure was necessary, achieved through its instrumentality of a different Being—namely, the Nathan Jesus, whose early history is narrated in the Luke Gospel.² Then, as we heard, the Jesus of the Matthew Gospel and the Jesus of the Luke Gospel became one. The Zarathustra-Individuality, as an Ego, first entered into the bodily sheaths of the Jesus described in the Matthew Gospel; when this Jesus was twelve years old, the Zarathustra-Ego passed over into and continued to live in the Nathan Jesus of the Luke Gospel, in order, within that body, to enrich the astral body and Ego-bearer with the qualities attained in the specially prepared physical and etheric bodies of the Jesus of the Matthew Gospel. The higher members in the Nathan Jesus were then able to mature and in his thirtieth year to receive the Being descending from above.

In relating the course of these events, the writer of the Matthew Gospel directed his attention primarily to the question: What physical body and what ether to make it possible for the Christ Being to tread the Earth? And his knowledge enabled him to answer this question in the following way.—In order that the suitable physical body and the suitable etheric body might be produced through heredity it was necessary that all the qualities once laid as rudiments in Abraham should develop to the full extent through the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people. Then, continuing to answer the question, he said to himself: A physical body and an etheric body of this calibre could become a fitting instrument only if indwelt by the greatest Individuality—Zarathustra—who prepared mankind to understand the Christ. This instrument could harbour the Zarathustra-Individuality for as long as it made development possible, that is to say, until the twelfth year, and the Individuality had then to pass out of the body of the Matthew-Jesus into the body of the Luke-Jesus. The writer of the Matthew Gospel then turned his attention away from the circumstances with which he was at first concerned, to the Luke-Jesus, and followed the life of Zarathustra (in the body of that Jesus) until the thirtieth year. That was the time when Zarathustra had brought the astral body and Ego-bearer to the stage where he could offer up all the members in order that the Sun Spirit coming down from above might take possession. All this is indicated in the scene of the Baptism by John.

If we think again of the separation of the Earth from the Sun³ remembering that Christ was the supreme Leader of the Beings who withdrew from the Earth at that time, we shall realise that there are Beings whose influence spreads only gradually on the Earth, just as it is only in course of time that Christ's influence has been able to make itself felt on the Earth. But something else as well was connected with the separation of the Sun. Here we must remind ourselves that in respect of substance, the old Saturn-evolution was comparatively simple. It was an existence in fire or warmth. On Old Saturn there was as yet no air or water, no light-ether—which first appeared during the Old Sun-evolution. Then during the Old Moon-evolution the watery element was added as a further condensation on the one side, and the sound-ether as a further refinement or rarefaction on the other. During Earth-evolution there was a condensation to the solid or ‘earth’ element, and rarefaction to what we call the life-ether. On Earth, therefore, we have warmth, air or gas, water, and the solid or earth element; and as states or rarefaction: light-ether, sound-ether, and life-ether, this last being the most highly rarefied ether of which we can have any knowledge.

With the separation of the Sun, not only did its material part leave the Earth, but its spiritual part too. After a time the spiritual part returned to the Earth gradually—but not completely. I spoke of this in Munich in the lectures on the ‘days of creation’⁴ and will make only a brief reference to it here. Of higher states of rarefaction, man on Earth perceives only the warmth-ether, and light. What he perceives as sound or tone is a materialization of the real sound which lies in the sound-ether. By sound-ether is meant the bearer of what is called the ‘Harmony of the Spheres’, perceptible only to clairaudience. True, the Sun in its now ‘physical’ state sends its light to the Earth, but this higher state is also present in it.

I have said that those who have knowledge of these things are aware of the meaning of Goethe's words at the beginning of Faust:

The sun, with many a sister-sphere,
Still sings the rival psalm of wonder,
And still his fore-ordained career
Accomplishes with tread of thunder....

These words point to the Harmony of the Spheres, to what lies in the sound-ether. But this can be experienced by man only when he rises to its level through Initiation or when a Being of the Sun descends in order to convey it in the form of actual experience to one chosen to be instrumental in promoting the development of other men. For such an individual the Sun begins to sound and the Harmonies of the Spheres to be audible.—

Above the sound-ether is the life-ether. And just as the word, the meaning, is contained in mere sound as its inner content, as a higher soul-reality, so too, ‘meaning’ and ‘word’ are bound up with the life-ether. ‘Word’ or ‘meaning’ are in this sense identical with what was called ‘Honover’ in later Persian times and the ‘Logos’ by John the Evangelist. Sound or tone filled with meaning belongs essentially to the Sun, and the Beings of the Sun.

In early post-Atlantean times, Zarathustra was among the blessed ones whose ears were not deaf to this articulate, resounding Sun and its Beings. It is no myth, but a literal truth, that Zarathustra too had developed to the stage where he received his teaching through the ‘Sun Word’. The glorious teachings given by the old Zarathustra to his pupils were possible because Zarathustra himself was an instrument through Whom the tone, the very meaning and essence of the Sun Word resounded Hence the Persian legend speaks of the Sun Word proclaimed through the mouth of Zarathustra, of the mysterious Word concealed behind the Sun. The legend is speaking there of the astral body of the Sun, of Ahura Mazda—the Sun Word, the '‘Logos’ in Greek translation.

In those ancient times a personality even of the exalted rank of Zarathustra was not initiated to the stage of being able consciously to receive the message that was to be conveyed to mankind; such a personality was ensouled by a higher Being to whose level he had not yet actually risen. Zarathustra could teach as he did because the Sun Aura was revealed to hi, because Ahura Mazdao resounded within him, because the Sun Word, the great Aura, the Light of Worlds, was proclaimed through him. Ahura Mazdao, the great Aura, was the outer, corporeal nature of the Sun God whose influences were being sent to man in advance, before this Being was actually on the Earth. The Sun Word was then a more inward power.—

Zarathustra spoke to those who were his pupils in somewhat the following way.—‘You must realise that behind the physical light of the Sun there is spiritual light. Just as behind physical man there is his astral body, his aura, so behind the Sun there is the great Aura. The physical Sun is to be regarded as the light-body of a Being who will one day descend to the Earth; it is the outer, bodily raiment of this Being that is perceived through clairvoyant vision and within this bodily raiment there is soul. Just as soul expresses itself through sound or tone, so does the Sun Word, the Sun Logos, speak through the Sun Aura’... And Zarathustra could give this promise to mankind.—One day the great Aura, the Being of Light, will come from divine-spiritual spheres, and the soul of that Being will be the Sun Word.—This was the prophetic wisdom, uttered for the first time by Zarathustra, concerning the coming of the Sun Aura and of the Sun Word.

From epoch to epoch the tradition was preserved in the Mysteries that the coming of the Sun Word, the Sun Logos, had been prophesied to mankind and this was always the hope and the great consolation of those who longed for a nobler and better life. And the less exalted Sun-spirits who linked themselves with the Earth and were actually messengers of the Sun Word—they too were able to give more and more definite teachings about the Spirit of the Sun, the Sun Word, the Sun Aura.

This was the one side of the Mystery-tradition as it lived on through the epochs. The other side was that it behooved men to know both in theory and by dint of effort that they could grow nearer to the Being who was to descend to the Earth. But in pre-Christian times it was not possible to believe that any weak individual man could without further ado approach the greatest of the Sun Beings, the Leader of the Sun Spirits, the Christ. It was not possible for an individual to achieve this through any form of Initiation. Hence the Gospel of Matthew describes how all the vital elements in the blood of the Hebrew people were assembled in order to make it possible for such a human being to come into existence. And on the other side, the Gospel of Luke shows how the best and highest qualities attainable by earthly man were ‘filtered’ through the seventy-seven successive stages in order to produce the body capable of receiving the greatest Being who was ever to descend to the Earth.

The position in the Mysteries was as follows.—Some of those who needed to be instructed or influenced were weak human beings; by no means all of them were capable of grasping the nature of the goal to be attained by humanity or by an individual. Hence those who were to be initiated into the secrets of the Mysteries were divided into classes and the secrets were approached in different ways. The special teaching given to some individuals concerned the outer life and what they must achieve in order to become fitting instruments or ‘temples’ for the descending Sun Being. But there were other pupils of the Mysteries who were taught how the soul must learn in stillness and inner quietude to understand and experience the nature of a Sun Spirit. Can you picture that in the Mysteries there were pupils whose particular task it was to order their outer life in accordance with definite principles and that from early childhood onwards their bodily development was guided in a way that would enable them to become bearers, temples, for a descending Sun Spirit? This was what happened in olden times and it happens in the modern age too, only it escapes the notice of materialistic observers.

Let us suppose that the time is approaching when a sublime Being is to descend from spiritual realms in order again to give a stimulus to human evolution. Those who participate in the Mysteries must wait in expectation for this to happen; their task is to interpret the signs of the times. In calmness and patience, without ostentation, they must wait for a God to descend from heavenly heights and give an impetus to mankind. But it is also their task to observe humanity, to watch for a personality who can be directed and made fit to be the vehicle, the temple, for such a Being. If the Being who is to descend is very exalted, the personality who is to be the temple must be under guidance from earliest childhood. This actually happens, only it is not perceived. Later on, however, in accounts of the lives of such men, certain similar features become apparent. Even if there are differences in the external circumstances of their lives, a certain underlying similarity is evident. Looking back over history we find individuals here and there whose lives, even outwardly, have taken a somewhat similar course. There is no denying this and it has not escaped the notice of certain modern researchers. In current, though not very profound academic writings, tables of similarities in the biographies of such individuals are presented. Professor Jensen (of Marburg), for example, has collected similarities in the life-histories of Gilgamesh, Moses, Jesus, Paul. The tables set out certain comparable features in the lives of each of these individuals and are very convincing. No wonder the materialistic mind of to-day is taken aback by the remarkable similarities. Very naturally the conclusion drawn is that one myth was copied from another, that the writer of the life of Jesus copied from the life-history of Gilgamesh, that the life-history of Moses is nothing but a paraphrase of an ancient epic. And the final conclusion reached is that none of them—neither Moses, nor Jesus, nor Paul—existed as physical personalities! People usually have no inkling of the point to which materialistic interpretations are carried by research today.

The truth is that this similarity in such life-histories is simply due to the fact that personalities into whom a divine Being is to be received must be under direction and guidance even in childhood. Nor will this be a surprise to those who have any insight into the deeper course of the evolution of humanity and of the world. Hence not only comparative mythology but all attempts to find similarities in the myths are really nothing but child's play and lead nowhere. What useful purpose is served by establishing that similar traits are to be found in the lives of the Germanic Siegfried and some Greek or other hero? It goes without saying that this will be so. The important thing is not the covering but the Individuality within the covering! It is the Individuality who is of salient importance, not the particular course taken, let us say, by Siegfried's life. But these things can be established only through occult research.

The point to bear in mind is that men destined to become vehicles, or temples, for a Being who is to lift humanity to a higher level are under very definite leadership and that there will necessarily be similarities in the course and in the fundamental features of their lives. Hence since ancient times directives were always given in the Mystery-centres concerning such men. Directives of the same kind also existed in the communities of the Essenes with reference to Christ Jesus: for example, what the nature must be of those Beings who as the Solomon Jesus and the Nathan Jesus were to provide the temple for the sublime Sun Being, the Christ.

But there were different classes, different kinds of Initiates; aspirants for Initiation were not all of them initiated into everything. To some it was made especially clear what ordeals must be undergone by one who was expected to become a worthy vehicle for a divine Being. And there were others to whom it was made known how a divine Being acts when revealing himself in a man—to put it rather trivially, when revealing himself as a ‘genius’. Again, people fail to perceive to-day that geniuses too show undoubted similarities. Biographies nowadays are not written from the vantage-point of the spirit. If an attempt were made to describe the genius of Goethe, let us say, from such a vantage-point, remarkable similarity would be found, fog example, with the genius of Dante, of Homer, of Aeschylus. But when modern biographies are being written, notes are collected of trivial details in the external lives of such men. That is what interests people. So we have a prolific collection of notes on the life of Goethe but as yet no true presentation of what Goethe really was. Men declare—actually as the outcome of tremendous arrogance—that they are incapable of following the development of genius in the human personality; the tendency is to drag the first, youthful authors of certain poetic works into the limelight and then talk in lordly style about the elemental freshness and originality manifested in their early years, whereas in later life these qualities have been lost and the authors in question have become old. What really lies behind this is that in their arrogance people are willing to understand poets in their youth but are not willing to keep pace with the experiences undergone in later life. Great pride is taken in having remained young; age is despised and people have no inkling that it is not the old who have become ‘old’ but that they themselves have remained children! This is a widespread evil. But as it is so deeply rooted we need not wonder that there is little understanding of the fact that a divine Being can take possession of a human personality and that the way in which such a Being manifests in the different human personalities is fundamentally the same.

Because the acquisition of such knowledge entailed much arduous effort, pupils in the Mysteries were divided into classes. It is not to be wondered at that in certain sections of the Mysteries teaching was given as to how a man prepares himself to grow to the level where contact with the divine Being is possible, whereas in other classes the teaching concerned the actual descent of the Logos, the Sun Word, the essence of Light in the Aura of the Sun Being.

In the case of Christ, the descent was infinitely complex and it could be no surprise if more than four men had been needed to understand such a momentous event. But there were four who made efforts to do so. Two of them, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, were at pains to portray the nature of the personality who grew towards the descending Sun Being. Matthew concerned himself particularly with the physical body and the etheric body, Luke with the astral body and Ego-bearer. Mark, on the other hand, described the Sun Aura, the spiritual Light that pervades cosmic space and streamed into the figure of Christ Jesus. Hence his Gospel begins immediately with the Baptism, when the Light of Worlds descended. The Gospel of John describes the soul of the Sun Spirit, the Logos, the Sun Word, the inner aspect. The Gospel of John is therefore the mostly deeply inward of the four.

The facts were apportioned and the complex Being of Christ Jesus described from four sides. All four Evangelists tell of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth. But each of these four writers of the Gospels is impelled to adhere to his starting-point, from whence came the clairvoyant insight enabling him to give some description of this complex Being.—And now we will repeat what has been said in order to impress it more firmly upon our minds.

Matthew directs his gaze to the birth of the Solomon Jesus and follows the gradual preparation of the physical body and etheric body, perceiving how these sheaths are discarded by Zarathustra and how the qualities and faculties he had acquired in the physical body and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus are carried over by him into the Jesus of the Luke Gospel. The writer of the Matthew Gospel must then extend his gaze to what had not concerned him at the beginning. But his attention is directed first and foremost to the features that had formed his starting-point: the destinies of the faculties that passed over from the Solomon Jesus into the Nathan Jesus. His gaze is directed less to the pristine purity of the astral body and Ego-bearing principle in the Luke Jesus and more to what had passed over from the Jesus with whom he is chiefly concerned. And when the writer of the Matthew Gospel is speaking of the Sun Being who has descended, again he is more mindful of the faculties possessed by Jesus of Nazareth because the physical body and etheric body had been developed by the Solomon Jesus. These faculties and qualities were naturally still perceptible in Christ, and the writer of the Matthew Gospel describes with particular exactitude this aspect of Christ Jesus which was of primary importance to him and upon which his attention had been focused at the outset.

The writer of the Gospel of Mark directs his attention from the beginning to the Sun Sprit descending from heaven. His gaze is focused, not upon any being of an earthly nature, but upon the Sun Spirit who lived and worked in the physical body. The physical figure on the Earth is only the means whereby the indwelling Sun Spirit can be portrayed. Hence Mark draws special attention to ho the forces and powers of the Sun Spirit take effect. Therefore although in the Gospel of Matthew and Mark a great deal seems to be identical, their standpoints are different. Matthew deals more especially with the aspect of the sheaths and draws particular attention to the later manifestations of qualities and faculties that were already potentially present in early life; and he writes in a way that reveals the effects produced by these qualities. The writer of the Mark Gospel, on the other hand, uses the physical figure of Jesus merely as a means of showing what can be wrought on Earth by the Sun Spirit. This is everywhere apparent. If you want to understand the Gospels in detail, you must bear in mind that the attention of each Evangelist turns ever and again to the aspect with which he was primarily concerned.

The writer of the Luke Gospel, as would be expected, has particularly in mind the astral body and Ego-bearing principle, that is to say, not what the Being experiences as an outer, physical personality, but in the astral body as the bearer of feelings and sentient perceptions. The astral body is also the bearer of creative faculties, of compassion, of mercy. Bearing as He did the astral body of the Nathan Jesus, Christ Jesus was the very embodiment of these qualities. Thus the eyes of Luke are directed from the beginning to all the manifestations of compassion, to whatever Christ Jesus is able to accomplish because He bears the astral body of the Nathan Jesus.

And the gaze of the writer of the John Gospel is focused upon the very highest Power that can work on the Earth, upon the inmost being and nature of the Sun Spirit, brought down through the instrumentality of Jesus. John is not concerned primarily with the physical body; his eyes are turned to the Highest, to the Sun Logos; and the physical Jesus is for him simply a means for perceiving how the Sun Logos works and acts in humanity. His gaze too is fixed upon those things with which he was concerned at the beginning.

The physical body and the etheric body are sheaths out of which we pass during sleep. Both these members of human nature contain forces outpoured by divine-spiritual Beings who for millions upon millions of years have been working at the building of this temple—the temple of the physical body. We have lived in this temple since the Lemurian epoch, causing its steady deterioration. But it came to us originally as a product of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon periods of evolution. Divine beings were living and weaving in it. We an say of our physical body that it is a temple built by the Gods who have fashioned it out of solid matter to be our dwelling-place.

The etheric body contains the finer substances of man's constitution but owing to the Luciferic and Ahrimanic influences they are imperceptible to him. Elements belonging to the Sun are also present in the etheric body; into it resounds the Music of the Spheres, that which is perceptible behind the physical as a manifestation of the Gods. Hence we can say: Beings of exalted rank lie in the etheric body, Beings who are akin to the Sun Gods—The physical body and the etheric body, therefore are to be regarded as the most perfect members of human nature. When, during sleep, we have passed out of them, when they have fallen away from us, they are pervaded and worked through by divine Beings.

As he had done from the beginning, the writer of the Matthew Gospel was bound to give his chief attention to the physical body in the case of Christ Jesus too. But the first physical body was no longer in existence, having been abandoned, as we have heard, in the twelfth year of life.⁵ The divine element, the forces and powers, had passed (together with the Zarathustra-Individuality) from that body into the other physical body—the physical body of the Nathan Jesus. The perfection of this physical body of the Being now to be known as Jesus of Nazareth was due to the fact that it was filled with the forces and powers that had passed into it from the body of the Solomon Jesus. Let us now picture the writer of the Matthew Gospel turning his gaze to the dying Jesus on the Cross. His gaze had always been directed to the aspect most important to him, to what he had taken as his starting-point. At the Crucifixion the spiritual forsakes the physical body and therewith also the divine forces that had been taken over into it. The writer of the Matthew Gospel directs his gaze to the separation of the inner nature of Christ Jesus from this divine element in His physical constitution. The words that always rang out in the ancient Mysteries when the spiritual nature of a man emerged from the physical body in order to have vision in the spiritual world, were these: ‘My God, my God, how thou hast glorified me!’—The writer of the Matthew Gospel, with his attention fixed on the physical body, changes these words to: ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ Thou has gone from me, hast abandoned me (XXVII, 46).—The chief attention of the writer of the Matthew Gospel has been fixed upon this aspect.

The writer of the Mark Gospel describes the coming of the outer forces and powers of the Sun Aura, ho the Sun Aura, the body of the Sun Being, unites with the etheric body. The etheric body was in the same situation as our etheric body is during sleep. As in our own case the outer forces pass out with us when we sleep, so did they at the physical death of Jesus. Hence the same words are found in the Gospel of Mark (XV, 34).

The writer of the Luke Gospel also directs his attention at the death of Christ Jesus to what was his concern at the beginning: the astral body and the Ego-bearing principle. Hence the words he uses are different. His chief attention is directed to the astral body in which at this moment compassion and mercy and love reach their greatest intensity. Hence the words: ‘Father forgive them; for they know not what they do’ (XXIII, 34). These words of love that could issue only from the astral body to which the writer of the Luke Gospel has been pointing from the beginning. And it is upon these qualities of humility and resignation to God's will which have here reached their greatest intensity and issue from the astral body, that Luke directs his gaze at the end. Hence the words in the Gospel: ‘Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit.’ (XXIII, 46).

The John Gospel describes what must be fulfilled by man in Earth-existence: the ordering of existence according to the Sun Word. Hence his gaze is directed mainly to the ordering of life as proclaimed fro the Cross of Golgotha. He describes how in this hour Christ institutes a brotherhood of a higher kind than that based on blood-kinship. Brotherhood in its earlier forms arose from ties of blood. Mary was the mother of the child through blood-relationship. But soul united with soul in love—that is what was instituted through Christ Jesus. To the disciple whom He loved He gives, not the one who was the mother by blood, but He gives him the one who is his true mother in the spirit. And so the words resound from the Cross with their new meaning: ‘Behold thy son!’—‘`Behold thy mother!’ (XIX, 26, 27). The principle inherent in the life-ether by which the ordering of life is determined and community of a new kind established—that is what streamed into the Earth through Christ's Deed.

There is one supreme reality, the reality of Christ Himself behind everything the Evangelists describe. But each of them writes from the viewpoint he adopted at the beginning. Each had necessarily to direct his seership to what his particular preparation enabled him to understand; and the rest passed him by.

We shall now admit that it is not because this momentous event is described from four different sides that it seems full of contradictions; on the contrary, we realise that we can in some measure come to understand it only through being able gather the four sides into a whole. Why it is that Peter's avowal stands in the Matthew Gospel only and not in the others then seems entirely natural.

Mark describes Christ as the Sun Power, as the universal, cosmic Power working into the Earth—but in a new way. He is therefore speaking of the direct effects wrought by the Sun Aura. And the Luke Gospel describes the inmost nature of Christ Jesus especially, therefore, the astral body, the factor of individuality, how man lives entirely within himself; it is there that he functions in his own essential nature. The urge to cultivate a communal life where a man enters into relationship with other men des not lie primarily in the astral body, but in the etheric body. Hence there is no opportunity or inducement for Luke to write about the founding of any community. And certainly there is none in the case of the writer of the John Gospel who is concerned first and foremost with the Ego-nature.

On the other hand there is every inducement for the writer of the Matthew Gospel who is telling of Christ Jesus as Man, to describe happenings that are possible because God was once present in a human being. What God as Man among men can establish in the way of relationships between human beings, in the way of communities—this would necessarily be described by the Evangelists who tells of Christ Jesus in His essentially human aspect. The attention of this Evangelist has from the beginning been focused upon how Christ works as Man through the faculties derived from the physical body and etheric body. If we have insight into these things it will seem quite natural that the words which have given rise to so much controversy occur only in the Matthew Gospel: ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church’, i.e. my community.

A survey of the endless discussions that take place about these words among theologians of every shade of opinion invariably brings evidence of peculiar and characteristic reasons for their acceptance or rejection, but nowhere of any understanding of their deeper meaning. Those who reject them do so because the external community of the Roman Catholic Church is founded upon them. They may have been misused in this sense but that is no proof that they were, as is sometimes alleged, inserted deliberately for the benefit of the Roman Church. Nor do those who contest their implications really know what to advance against their validity, because they do not perceive the possible distortions and misinterpretations. The theologians find themselves facing a strange dilemma. So one of them declares that the Mark Gospel is the earliest of the four; that the Gospels of Matthew and Luke were copied from it and additions made; furthermore, that because the writer of the Matthew Gospel was particularly intent upon promoting the idea of community, he inserted the Words ‘Thou art Peter, and upon this rock I will build my church.’

In the case of many passages the traditional texts do not help because it is impossible to be certain of exactly what they contain. But the words of Peter's avowal in the Matthew Gospel are among the least disputed of any, because there is no philological reason whatever for calling them into question—as there is in the case of many others owing to the complicated history of the tradition behind them. ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ ‘Thou Peter, and upon this rock I will build my community; and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ No objection can be made.to these words—nor indeed is ever made—from the standpoint of philology, for there is no text to justify it. There may have been hopes that a basis for objections would be forthcoming from recently discovered texts, but it so happens that the passage in question is indecipherable in these texts, the relevant portion being very corrupt. That at any rate is the verdict of philology. Naturally we must rely here upon the reports of those who have actually examined the documents.

This particular saying, therefore, cannot even be considered to be a variant of another. According to philology itself these words are among the most authentic of all and in view of the whole character of the Matthew Gospel we can well understand why they occur in it. In this Gospel Christ Jesus is depicted as Man. Once we have this clue we shall by able to apply it everywhere and we shall understand the Matthew Gospel. We shall also understand the parables told by Christ Jesus to His disciples and to those outside His immediate circle.

In the lecture yesterday we heard how man evolves from below upwards: how as a flower of his human nature he unfolds the spiritual or consciousness-soul and develops to the stage where he encounters the Christ Impulse. The five members of human nature—etheric body, astral body, sentient soul, intellectual of mind-soul, consciousness-soul—developing through the five civilization-epochs, evolve from below to higher stages. A man can mature and so imbue them with the content which, when the time comes enables them to be permeated by the Christ Impulse. Humanity evolves in such a way that in future time all men can become partakers of Christ. But they must develop these five members to the appropriate stage. If they fail to do so they will not be ready to receive the Christ. If through their different incarnations they make no efforts to develop these members to the stage where they can receive the Christ, such men cannot be united with Him, even if He comes for they have ‘no oil in their lamps’.—that is, in the five members of their being. Those who have poured no oil into their lamps are depicted in a wonderful and beautiful parable as the five foolish virgins who have not trimmed their lamps in time and cannot therefore unite with Christ; the five, however, who have provided oil for their lamps are able to unite with Him when the hour has come. All the parables that are based on numbers shed profound illumination upon the impulses given by Christ to men.

And further.—Christ brought it home to those who concerned themselves with His teaching from outside that they, too, were accustomed not to regard everything merely in its material actuality but as a sign or token of something different. He wanted to call attention to their characteristic way of thinking. He asked for a coin and pointed to the image of the Caesar upon it. This was done in order to make the people realise that the coin gives expression to something quite apart from the metal itself, namely, the fact of being subject to a particular rulership, a particular ruler. ‘What in this coin pertains to Caesar, render unto Caesar’—and that lies in the image, not in the metal. ‘But learn’—so He wished to imply—‘learn also to regard man as the bearer and temple of the living God. Regard a man exactly as you regard a coin; learn to perceive in a man the image of God and then you will know that he belongs to God.’

In all these parables there is a meaning far deeper than the trivial one that is commonly accepted. And the deeper meaning is discovered when it is known that Christ did not use parables in the way they are so often used in our journalistic age. Christ draws them from human nature itself, giving them in such a form that if a man were to think them out and apply them to his own being, he would be compelled to adopt the attitude appropriate in each particular domain. It had to be demonstrated to man how his thinking must be carried over from one domain to another when it was desirable to show him that certain methods of thought may lead to absurdity.

Here is an example.—When, for the first time, people began to invent all kinds of ‘Sun myths’ in connection with the Buddha, Christ, and others, this finally exceeded the limit of what a certain man could tolerate. Finding the same kind of thing still happening, this man said the following.—‘There is no end to what can be done through this method of applying the imagery of myths and stellar constellations to some important event. If someone comes forward and, in order to prove that Christ Jesus never lived, points out that the story of Christ's life is simply a Sun myth, it can also be proved by the same method that no Napoleon ever existed. Nothing is easier than to say: in ‘Napoleon’ there is contained the name of Apollo, the Sun God. ‘N’ as a prefix to a name in Greek does not detract from but enhances its significance: hence Napoleon—N'Apollo—is actually a kind of super-Apollo. Further remarkable similarities can be discovered. Dr. Drews, the Professor of Philosophy, who has discovered, forsooth, that Jesus never existed, has found similarity in names such as Jesus, Joses, Jason, etc. Again, remarkable assonances can be found between the names of Letitia, the mother of Napoleon, and Leto, the mother of Apollo. Going still further, one can say: Around Apollo, the Sun, there are twelve constellations; around Napoleon there were twelve Marshals who are nothing but symbols of the zodiacal constellations around the Sun. Moreover the hero of the Napoleon myth has six brothers and sisters—making seven. There are seven planets.—Conclusion: Napoleon never existed !’

This is a very witty satire on the symbolic interpretations that are so fashionable nowadays. People never really learn; if they did they could not fail to realise that according to the methods that are again being applied to-day it has long since been proved that Napoleon never lived. Humanity never learns; for by using the same arguments proof is obtained that Jesus never lived either!

These things show how necessary it is to approach with due preparation—with inner preparation too—what the Gospels tell us about the greatest event in history. Let us also realise that in this very respect it is easy for anthroposophists to go wrong. Playing with symbols derived from the stars has been by no means unknown even in the Anthroposophical Movement. In this course of lectures particularly, when I have spoken of the greatest event in the evolution of humanity in connection with its revelation in the language of the stars, my desire has been to show how this language of the stars was used in the true and right way when the happenings were really understood.

And now let us turn our thoughts to the culminating event narrated in the Gospels. I have already spoken of the Baptism and the history of the life and death of Christ Jesus as representing two stages of Initiation, and I will now add only the following.—Christ Jesus had led His disciples to the stage where they were able to see how the innermost core of man's being passes out into the Macrocosm; they saw through death and beyond death. The Resurrection must never be thought of in the usual, rather trivial sense. Think only of the words in the Matthew Gospel and also in the John Gospel where the truth of Paul's subsequent declaration is confirmed, namely that at Damascus he had seen the Risen Christ. He says expressly that he himself had seen what other brethren, the twelve and the five hundred, had also seen. Paul, as well as the others, had seen Him after the Resurrection. (I. Cor. XV, 4-6.)

This is clearly indicated in the Gospel story. Mary Magdalene, who had seen Christ Jesus only shortly before, sees Him after the Resurrection and supposes Him to be the gardener. It would have been impossible not to recognize Him had there been no change in His appearance. You would not believe anyone who told you that he would not have recognized the same person he had seen only a few days before. Quite evidently there had been a transformation. Close study of the Gospels will show clearly that as a result of the Mystery of Golgotha and of all the happenings in Palestine, the eyes of the disciples were opened and they beheld Christ as the Spirit weaving and working through the world; they knew Him as he was after the physical body had been given over to the Earth but they knew too that He would now remain with the Earth, working as powerfully as He did while in the physical body.

This too is brought out in the Matthew Gospel, in words that may well be considered the most significant of any to be found in ancient records. It is made absolutely clear that Christ was once present in a human physical body, that this event was not an event only, but an active cause, an impulse. The Sun Word, the Sun Aura, once spoken of by Zarathustra as a reality outside and beyond the Earth, became through the Christ-Jesus-life a power that is and will remain united with the Earth. Something different from anything that had been present before that life was now united with the Earth:

It behooves anthroposophists to understand this and therewith to realise that it was the Risen Christ who could reveal Himself to the clairvoyant vision of the disciples as the Spirit now pervading Earth-existence. Hence He could say: ‘Go ye therefore and teach all nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the Son, and of the Holy Ghost: Teaching them to observe all things whatsoever I have commanded you: and lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world’ (i.e. to the end of the Earth's days).

Spiritual Science should enable us to understand that since that time the Sun Aura has been united with the Earth Aura and that this can be seen by one whose eyes of spirit are opened; furthermore that this Sun Aura in the Earth Aura which became visible to Paul, can also be ‘heard’ when the inner ears are open and the Sun Word becomes audible, as it did to Lazarus—the one initiated by Christ Jesus Himself. Spiritual Science exists in order to prepare us to know this in all reality. Spiritual Science is an interpreter of what has come to pass in the spiritual evolution of the world and for this reason will strive to give effect to what Christ Jesus Himself wished to establish, according to the Matthew Gospel.

A beautiful saying in this Gospel is usually quite wrongly translated. In its true form, the saying is: ‘I have not come to send peace away from this Earth but to send away the sword!’ The most beautiful message of peace has in the course of time been distorted into its very opposite! (Matt. X, 24). Christ entered into the spiritual sphere of Earth-existence in order gradually to rescue it from elements that bring about discord and disharmony in mankind. Spiritual Science will establish peace when it is truly Christian, in the sense of bringing about the unity of religions. It can unite not only those in regions immediately around us but can establish peace over the whole Earth, because it understands the nature of the deed wrought by the greatest Bringer of peace. It is certainly not in accordance with Christ's will that fanatical men and women should journey from one part of the Earth to another in attempts to force a narrow, hide-bound Christianity upon human beings who have no aptitude for its teachings when these are presented in a form appropriate for a different people. Proposals to carry Christian teaching to the East in the form it has assumed in some particular region are apt be very mistaken. As anthroposophists we know well that Christ does not belong to the ‘Christians’ only; we know that He is the same Being whom Zarathustra called Ahura Mazdao and the seven Rishis of ancient India, Vishva Karman. We in the West realise that even if in the East men use different names, it is in reality Christ of whom they are speaking.

Our aim is to understand Christ in a way that keeps abreast of the evolution of humanity, of progress among men We realise that no records or forms of knowledge in which Christ is repudiated can shed any light upon His life and nature, but those alone which consciously bear within them His own living influence. If in the truly Christian sense we speak to other, non-Christian peoples of Vishva Karman, of Ahura Mazdao, we know well that they understand us although no name is forced upon them, and that of themselves they will eventually come to understand Christ. We have no wish to force the name of Christ upon them. For if we are not only anthroposophists but occultists too, we are well aware that names in themselves are of no account, that it is the Being alone who of importance. Could we for one moment persuade ourselves that it would be permissible to call the Christ Being by a different name, we should not hesitate to do so. For to us it is the truth that matters and not any predilection due to the fact that we inhabit a particular area of the Earth and belong to a particular people. Let it not be thought that Christ can be understood by means which His influence has not reached. Christ can indeed be found by other nations, but He Himself must be the source of the means for understanding Him.

No reproach should be cast on anthroposophists for being unwilling, in their study of Christianity, to make use of methods and forms not derived from Christianity itself. Christ cannot be understood through oriental terminology; those who use such nomenclature may believe that they understand Him but they do not. What would it mean if in the domain of Theosophy we were expected to hold the oriental view of Christ? We should be obliged to reject the idea of having Christ brought from the East! Such a measure would force us to take the West over to the East and to form our conception of Christ accordingly. This cannot and must not be, not because of aversion but because the oriental concepts, with their more ancient origin, are not capable of yielding any real understanding of Christ. Such understanding is possible only when it is known that Christ belongs to the line of evolution into which Abraham was born and the Moses. But into Moses there passed part of the being of Zarathustra. We have thus to look for Zarathustra in the events resulting from his influence upon Moses. Nor must we look for Zarathustra in the ancient Zoroastrian writings, but where he was reincarnated in Jesus of Nazareth. Account must always be taken of evolution! In the same way we must not seek the Buddha where he lived, and from being a Bodhisattva rose to Buddhahood six hundred years B.C., but where he is described by the Luke Gospel, shining down from the heights of the spiritual world into the astral body of the Nathan Jesus.⁶ There we see the Buddha at a later stage of his activity.

This shows us how the religions work together in order to ensure that mankind shall progress. It is not enough to lecture about anthroposophical principles; what matters is to transform them into feeling; nor should we talk of tolerance and at the same time be intolerant because of predilection for some particular religion. We are truly tolerant only when we measure each religion by its own standard and understand the fundamental character of each.—Naturally, when we speak of the different systems of religion having worked together to bring Christianity into existence, this is not due to our own particular viewpoint. The truth is that in those lofty heights where the great spiritual Beings are at work, events have been different from those caused by the actions of adherents of particular religions on the Earth. For example a Council was summoned in Tibet to establish an orthodox doctrine connected with the name of the Buddha at the very time when the real Buddha had descended from higher spheres in order to let his inspiration flow into the astral body of the Jesus of the Luke Gospel. What happens again and again is that adherents of a religion on the Earth cling to what has continued as an aftermath on Earth. The work of the Gods has, however, been carried meanwhile to further stages in order that progress may be possible for humanity. Progress is best achieved when men endeavor to understand their Gods, to keep pace with the progress made by the Gods who are looking upon them. From this realisation there should grow in us a living understanding of the Gospels.

In our study of the three Gospels we have found something different in each of them. Cosmology of an intimate kind will be revealed when the time comes for us to study the Mark Gospel.⁷ This is because a conception of Ahura Mazdao working through all the realms of space can be yielded by study of the Mark Gospel, just as the secrets of blood-relationship, the link connecting the individuality through heredity with the people from whom he has sprung, have been presented to us in the Matthew Gospel.

I beg you to think of what I have put before you in these lectures as one aspect only of the great Christ Event, for by no means everything has been said. The time may not yet have come to say, even to a very few, what it is possible to say about these profound mysteries. The best outcome of our studies will be that we do not only grasp these things intellectually but make them part of the very fibres of our soul-life, part of our life of feeling and of our hearts, and allow them to live there. If the words of the Gospels are imprinted in our hearts and we truly understand them they become powers and forces which fill our whole being and engender great inner strength. And we shall find that this strength remains with us through life.

To-day, when I have to bring these lectures on the Matthew Gospel to a conclusion, I want to speak in the way I am accustomed to speak at the end of our Summer courses, but in special connection with this text which among original Christian records gives the most beautiful presentation of the human aspect of Christ Jesus.

What is it that strikes us particularly about the Matthew Gospel, where from the very beginning the manhood of Christ Jesus is brought into prominence? Great though the distance assuredly is between an ordinary man on the Earth and the one who was able to receive the Christ Being into himself, nevertheless the Matthew Gospel shows us—when we accept it with all humility—the dignity of man and what he may become. For although our own nature maybe far, far removed from that of Jesus of Nazareth, we may yet say to ourselves that the human nature we bear is able to receive into itself the Son of God, the Son of the living God. Herein lies the promise that the Son of God will henceforth remain united with spiritual Earth-existence and that when Earth-existence has reached its goal all men will be filled with the substance and being of Christ in so far as they themselves have inwardly desired this. We need humility to harbour such an ideal. For if we harbour it without humility it gives rise to arrogance, to pride; we think only about what we can be as men reminding ourselves all too seldom of how little we have hitherto achieved. This ideal must be approached with humility. Then it appears so great, so mighty, so majestic, so impressive in its brilliance, that in itself it is an exhortation to humility. And when we are aware of the truth of this ideal, no matter how meagre our forces may be they will bear us to ever higher stages along the path to our divine goal.

In The Portal of Initiation indications are to be found of the intensity and crescendo of feelings that arise along this path. In the second scene, Johannes Thomasius is shattered in soul under the impression of the words: ‘O man know thyself !’ And then, in the ninth scene, of the words: ‘O man, experience thyself!’ he is transported in exultation to cosmic realms. This brings home to us once again the majesty and grandeur of the figure of Jesus in the Matthew Gospel; humility fills us and our own insignificance becomes doubly apparent. But through the inner truth and reality revealed to us we are rescued from the abyss that seems to stretch between our own littleness and what we should and can become. If at times we feel overwhelmed when contemplating the stature of the Gods in a man, we shall nevertheless, as human beings, feel something of the divine Impulse, some¬thing of the '‘Son of the living God', by turning our minds to Christ Jesus who as the highest representative of the ‘I', Himself exhorts us in words that will ring through all ages to come: ‘O man, experience thyself !’

If we understand the human aspect of Christ Jesus as presented in the Matthew Gospel—and that is why it is closer to us than the other Gospels—there will stream from it courage in life, strength, hope in all our labours. This will be the very best proof that we have understood what these words were intended to convey.

• 1. The Portal of Initiation, Scene 3. (Translation by Adam Bittleston in the American edition, 1961. Rudolf Steiner Publications Inc. Englewood, New Jersey, U.S.A.) Benedictus is speaking:
  
  “ A great step forward in world history
  can only be achieved
  if divine beings unite with man's condition.
  Only then can spirit eyes unfold
  which should develop in the human souls,
  when first a power of heaven has placed the seed
  within one human being.
  ................................
  I had to join a deed of heaven
  unto a human destiny."
• 2. See the Course on The Gospel of St. Luke.
• 3. To be able to picture these cosmic happenings in greater detail, the reader is advised to turn to Occult Science—an Outline, chapter IV, p. 103 onwards.
• 4. See Genesis: Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation, pp. 34-59.
• 5. See also Lecture Five: The Gospel of Luke, p. 106
• 6. See The Gospel of St. Luke, Lectures Two and Five.
• 7. The following two lecture cycles were subsequently given by Rudolf Steiner:
  
  Background to the Gospel of St. Mark, 13 lectures, Berlin and other cities, October 1910 to June 1911.
  
  The Gospel of St. Mark, 10 lectures, Basle, September, 1912.