The Rudolf Steiner Archive

The gradual endowment of the human ego-forces with the knowledge of the Mysteries. The Beatitudes. The Healings. The Heavenly Bread. The new Essene teaching

We showed in the last lecture that what Christ Jesus means for human evolution is the gradual equipment of the human ego with those forces and capacities formerly only possible of attainment in the Mysteries of the past, when the ego was to a certain extent suppressed. In all ancient initiations it was possible to rise up into the spiritual worlds, into what we called the Kingdoms of Heaven, but with human nature constituted as it was in pre-Christian times, this could not be done while within the ego or while the nature of the ego remained as it was on the physical plane. We have, therefore, to distinguish two conditions of the human soul; one, recognized to-day as normal during waking life, when the objects of the physical plane are perceived by means of the ego; another, in which the ego is clouded, and there is no clear consciousness. It was during this latter condition of his soul that man was exalted to the Kingdoms of Heaven in the days of the ancient Mysteries.

These Heavenly Kingdoms were now to be brought down to earth—first, in accordance with the preaching of John the Baptist, and then in accordance with that of Christ Jesus Himself; so that man might receive an impulse to a more far-reaching development, and be able in his normal ego-consciousness to experience the higher worlds. It was, therefore, not only natural that all the statements concerning incidents in the life of the Christ Jesus should reproduce what a candidate for initiation experienced in the ancient Mysteries; but that ‘at the same time it should be emphasized, that there was to be a difference; these things were to take on a new colouring—a new condition of soul was to arise, a condition in which the ego would be fully conscious.

It was from this point of view that in the last Lecture we considered the nine Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount. Still further elucidation of what is found in the present text of the Gospel of Matthew might be given, for in the translation from the Aramaic language into Greek much has been obscured. Yet even in the obscure Greek text, and especially in the later part of the Sermon on the Mount we are aware of clear reference being made to what it was possible to experience formerly through suppression of the ego. If formerly men felt: ‘When my ego was darkened I could enter the spiritual world and in this condition I was able to grasp this or that fundamental fact;’ in future it will be possible for them to do this while retaining full consciousness.

Full understanding of this presupposes some knowledge of something I have already mentioned: the way in which names were used in ancient times. Formerly names were chosen, unlike those of to-day, to indicate the essential nature of the thing designated. And it is clearly shown in all the designations employed in the Sermon on the Mount that Christ felt it was He Himself Who had raised the ego-consciousness to a higher plane than had been hitherto attainable, so that henceforth it would be able to experience within itself the Kingdoms of Heaven. Therefore He placed before the souls of His disciples this contrast ‘Formerly, this or that was revealed to you from the Kingdoms of Heaven; but henceforth ye will be aware of these things when ye listen to what your “I” says to you.’ Hence the ever-recurring expression, ‘I say unto you,’ showing how Christ felt Himself to be representative of every human soul. This is expressed in the words, ‘I say it!’ ‘I, in full consciousness.’ The expression, ‘I say unto you,’ words found all through the Sermon on the Mount, should not be taken lightly. They are the repeated reference to a new impulse that was being implanted in humanity through Christ Jesus. Read in this way the continuation of the Sermon on the Mount, and you will feel that Christ wished to say: ‘Until now, ye were unable to appeal to your own ego, but henceforth, through My gift, through the power of your own inner being, of your own ego, ye will be able gradually to gain the Kingdoms of Heaven.’ The whole spirit of the Sermon on the Mount is pervaded by this new impulse, so also is that which follows, leading on as it does to the so-called miracles of healing.

The ‘healings’ by our Lord, and more especially the ‘miracles,’ have been the subject of a vast amount of discussion, as is well known. Great stress has been laid on the fact that miracles are spoken of in the Gospels. We will now consider these more closely. Yesterday I pointed out to you that man quite underestimates to-day the changes that have taken place in his being during the course of evolution. A comparison in the finer, not the coarser sense, between a physical body of the time of Christ or earlier, and one of to-day, reveals a real difference. This difference, which is not apparent to ordinary science, can be established by occult investigation. The physical body at the beginning of our era was more plastic than it is to-day. It is now denser and more contracted. in those days the powers of perception were such that men knew of certain forces working in and moulding all bodies, so that the muscles were more clearly revealed. Knowledge of this was gradually lost. Childish nonsense in the history of Art points to old drawings, where the formation of the muscles seems exaggerated, and supposes that this indicates the ancient artist's lack of skill. People who criticize such drawings are unaware that they are the result of actual observation, which was quite correct for those days but false in ours. This is, however, of less concern to us at the moment than the main fact, which is, that bodies were then constituted differently.

The power of the soul and of the spirit had a far greater more momentary influence on the human body at one time than was later the case. As the body became denser the soul lost power over it. Therefore, healing through the soul was formerly more possible than it is to-day. The soul had then far more power to permeate a disordered body with active health-giving forces drawn from the spiritual worlds, and to restore it to harmony from within itself. With the progress of evolution the power of the soul over the body declined. Healing became less and less a spiritual process. The physicians of those times, unlike those of to-day, were healers who worked on the body by influencing the soul. They purified the soul by their spiritual influences, filling it with healthy perceptions, impulses, and will-power. These were exercised either under the ordinary conditions of physical perception or through ‘temple sleep,’ which was but a means of rendering men clairvoyant. In considering that ancient culture, we are obliged to say that those who were strong of soul and able to draw upon their own acquired resources could influence the souls of others, and through them their physical bodies to a considerable degree. These men, who were filled with spirit, so that they radiated healing forces, were called ‘Healers.’ Fundamentally, not the ‘Therapeutæ’ only, but also the Essenes, should be regarded as Healers. We can go further: in a certain dialect of Asia Minor, where a language was spoken by those associated with the origin of Christianity, the word they employed, which we translate as ‘spiritual healer,’ was ‘Jesus,’ and means ‘Spiritual Physician.’ That is the actual meaning of ‘Jesus.’ It is the correct translation when one has a feeling for the value of words, and throws light on what was felt to exist in such names at a time when names still meant something.

A man who spoke in accordance with the feeling of those times would have said: ‘There are men who have gained entrance to the Mysteries; who, by means of a certain sacrifice of their ego-consciousness, can touch certain psycho-spiritual forces which then stream from them, so that they become ‘healers’ of others. Suppose such a man had become a disciple of Christ Jesus he might then have said, ‘Strange things have come to pass in our day! Formerly only those could heal who had received spiritual forces through a suppressed ego-consciousness induced in the Mysteries—but now there is One among us Who has become a healer without undergoing the procedure of the Mysteries, and without suppression of His ego-consciousness.’

It was not the performance of miracles that was exceptional, or that spiritual healings took place as described in the Gospel of St. Matthew. This did not strike people as especially wonderful, nor did it seem especially miraculous in those days. A man might then have asked: What is wonderful in spiritual healing being performed by such people? It is quite comprehensible! What is wonderful is what the writer of the Gospel of Matthew says: ‘Here is One Who has brought a new and living force into human nature which enables Him to heal by the impulse of His own ego; by such means healings could not be performed formerly.’ So something quite different from what was usual is here described in the Gospels. The results of occult investigation here put forward by Spiritual Science may be verified in countless ways, and can indeed be proved by historical research.

One instance will serve by way of illustration. If the statements just made be true, then it must have been realized in olden times that under certain conditions the blind could receive their sight through spiritual influences. Attention is directed and justifiably to old pictures representing this. Even J. M. Robertson writes of a picture in Rome which represents Aesculapius standing before two blind men, and he draws the natural conclusion that it represents an act of healing. He then supposes that the writers of the Gospels incorporated this in their narratives. The important point here is not that spiritual healings were miracles, but that the artist desired to depict Aesculapius as an initiate who had acquired his healing powers through the suppression of his ego-consciousness in the Mysteries. But the writer of the Gospel of Matthew wishes to emphasize something else; he wishes to point out: ‘Christ did not perform His healings in this way, but the living force that worked in Him as an original and isolated example, is to be acquired gradually by the whole of humanity; every man will in time be able to do these things through the power of his ego.’ Not yet, but in the distant future, this power will come to life in man. What has been accomplished by Christ at the beginning of our era will slowly and gradually dawn and men will become capable of bringing it to expression. It was this that the narrator of the Gospel of Matthew desired to emphasize. Speaking out of occult consciousness I can say: This writer did not specially intend to describe a ‘miracle,’ but something natural and comprehensible, only he wished to show that it was accomplished in a new way. This is what is found when the results of true investigations by means of spiritual science are presented; we see how profound are the misunderstandings that have entered into the Gospels. How does the story continue?

So far we have seen that what happened in the life of Christ through the ‘Temptation’ was a descent into all these experiences passed through when a man sinks down into his physical and etheric body; and that the forces radiating from His physical and etheric bodies worked as is told in the Sermon on the Mount, and as is revealed in the subsequent healings. In what follows we recognize that the power of Christ Jesus worked and attracted to Him pupils, in the same way as they were attracted to Initiates of old; but, as was natural, these were attracted to Him in a way peculiarly His own.

If the Gospel of Matthew is to be understood from this point onwards, we must recall by way of preparation certain facts of Occult Science acquired through years of study. We must recall that a disciple who truly treads the path of initiation, acquires a kind of imaginative perception, a perception that lives in imaginations. Those who dwelt much in the presence of Christ Jesus had not only to acquire the power by which they could hearken to such magnificent utterances as those of the Sermon on the Mount, they had not only to participate in healings accomplished through Him, but the mighty force active in Christ Jesus had gradually to pass over to those who were His most intimate friends and disciples. This too is revealed. First it is shown how, after the Temptation, Christ was empowered to disclose a new meaning in the ancient teaching, and to carry out the ancient healing by means of a new impulse. Next we are told how the force that was incorporated in Him in fullest measure affected His disciples and those most clearly associated with Him.

How are we shown this? By the fact, that what He stood for was communicated to the unreceptive in words, but to those who were receptive and were chosen by Himself, the action was different. In these chosen ones it worked so that it endowed them with imaginations, it stirred in them the first stage of higher knowledge. What proceeded from Christ Jesus acted therefore in a twofold manner on those who were ‘outside or without’ so that they heard His words, and with them acquired a kind of theory; on the others, who had felt His power, and were chosen because, on account of their Karma, they were specially open to receive this power, it awakened imaginative cognition, a knowledge which in a certain way led them a stage higher towards the spiritual world. This is expressed in the words, ‘Those who are outside hear only in parables;’ meaning they could receive facts concerning the spiritual worlds expressed in images; but to His chosen ones He said, ‘Ye can receive the deeper meaning of the parables—the language that leads to the things of the higher worlds.’ Nor must these words be taken other than literally.

Let us now consider seriously how the disciples were led into the higher worlds. At any rate to understand what I now have to say not only listeners are needed but also a certain amount of goodwill, permeated with understanding gained in the study of occult science. I may then be able to convey to you what is really meant by what follows in the Gospel of Matthew. To do so we will again recall the two sides of initiation: The first where man descends into his physical and etheric body, thus learning to know his own inner being, and is led to the forces that are creative in himself; and the other side where he is led into the spiritual world, to expansion into the macrocosm. Now we know that in reality, though unconscious of it, man withdraws his astral body and ego from his physical and etheric body during sleep, and pours them into the starry universe so that he may absorb its forces—hence the name astral (starry) body. The result of this form of initiation is not merely a conscious understanding ofthings on earth, but a participation in, and a pouring of the self into, the cosmos: a reception of forces flowing in from the cosmos, and a knowledge of the starry world. All this that has to be striven for and slowly acquired by us was, on account of His special nature, already in the Christ from the time of the Baptism in Jordan. It was in Him not only in a condition that resembled sleep, but during His waking hours when within His physical and etheric bodies. He could even then unite His Being with the forces of the stars, and bring their forces down into the physical world.

What was brought to pass by Christ Jesus may therefore be described as follows: Through the attraction of His specially prepared physical and etheric bodies, and through His whole nature, He drew down to earth the forces of the sun, moon, and stars, and of the cosmos generally, in so far as it is related to our Earth. The deeds accomplished by Him were accomplished through the agency of those health-giving, life-endowing cosmic forces which otherwise stream down into man during sleep. The forces through which the Christ worked were forces streaming down from the cosmos through His bodily attraction, they streamed from His body on to His disciples. The disciples now began to be receptive, so that they rightly felt: This Christ Jesus Whom we see before us is a being, through Whom the forces of the cosmos come to us like spiritual nourishment; this force pours over us!

But the disciples were themselves in a twofold state of consciousness—for they had not yet attained that highest state of human development, but only reached up to a higher development through Christ. They themselves lived continually in a twofold state of consciousness that may be compared with the sleeping and waking of ordinary men; and because they were in this alternating condition it was possible for them, in the one state as well as in the other, to come under the influence of the magical power of Christ. The power of Christ acted upon them alike by day when they were with Him and by night when they were outside the physical and etheric bodies. But while men are normally unconscious of their starry environment during sleep, the disciples were aware of the Christ-force about them; it was visible to them. They knew that it was His force that nourished them from the starry universe.

This twofold consciousness produced yet another effect on the disciples. In everyone, including the disciples, we have to recognize both the man of the present and also that which he bears within him as the seed for future incarnations. The seed of what will flower in you in future epochs in an entirely new way is already present in each one of you. If this power which already exists in you were to develop to clairvoyance, it would reveal itself by a sort of early clairvoyant experience, and this would take the form of a vision of the immediate future. If these first experiences are pure and true, things concerning the more immediate future are seen. This was the case with the disciples. In normal consciousness the Christ-force streamed into them so that they said: ‘When we are awake the force of Christ flows into us as it does in normal waking consciousness.’

But how was it when they slept? Because they were the disciples of Jesus and as the power of the Christ had worked in them they became clairvoyant at certain times during sleep; they did not then see what was taking place at the time, but they could participate in the future. They plunged, as it were, into the sea of astral visions and beheld prophetically things that would happen in the future.

The disciples lived therefore in two conditions of consciousness. During the day they felt that Christ brought to them from cosmic space the forces of cosmic worlds that He passed this on to them as spiritual nourishment; that because He was Himself the power of the Sun, He brought to them what is represented by the Christian acceptance of the teaching of Zarathustra. Christ passed on to them the forces the Sun had to bestow through the seven day-time constellations. There below was their day-time nourishment. During the night the disciples were aware that through the power of Christ, the invisible night-time Sun poured heavenly nourishment into their souls as it passed through the remaining five constellations.

Thus in their imaginative clairvoyance they felt: ‘We are united with the Christ-force, with the Sun-force; it sends to us what is right for the men of the present period, that is, the men of the Fourth Epoch of civilization; in the other state of consciousness, that of the night, the Christ-force imparts to us the gifts of the night-time Sun, as the power of the five night constellations.’ But this was appropriate only to the age that was coming, the Fifth Epoch of civilization. This is what the disciples experienced. How could this be expressed?

We shall have more to say of this in the next Lecture meanwhile I wish to speak of something else. In ancient times a crowd or mass of people was described as a ‘thousand,’ and when it was intended to particularize, a number was added descriptive of the most important characteristic of this crowd. The people of the fourth period of civilization were therefore described as the ‘fourth thousand’ while those who already lived in accordance with the Fifth Epoch were called the ‘fifth thousand.’ These were simply technical terms. The disciples knew therefore, that during the day they received, through Christ from the seven day-constellations, the nourishment suitable for the Fourth Period of civilization, that is, for the fourth thousand. And they knew that in their imaginative clairvoyant consciousness of the night they perceived through the five night-constellations what pertained to the epoch that was coming—that of the fifth thousand. The people of the Fourth Epoch, or the fourth thousand, were nourished from Heaven by the seven heavenly loaves—the seven day-time constellations; the people of the Fifth Epoch, or the five thousand, were fed from Heaven by the five night-constellations. At the same time the division between the constellations of the day and those of the night is always indicated by fishes—the twelfth sign of the Zodiac.

Here an important secret is touched on; it refers to an important procedure in the Mysteries—the magic intercourse between Christ and His disciples. Christ makes this clear when He tells them He does not speak of the old leaven of the Pharisees, but that He brings down to them heavenly food from the Sun-forces of the cosmos although on one occasion He had only the seven day-time constellations to draw from—the seven day-time loaves—and on the other the five constellations of night, the five night-time loaves. The division between being always provided by ‘the fishes’—indeed on one occasion two fishes are expressly mentioned, thus indicating His meaning even more clearly.

Who can doubt, when they catch in this way but a glimpse of the profound depths of the Gospel of Matthew, that it is concerned with revelations reaching back to the time of Zarathustra, and that this had to be so, for Zarathustra was the first who taught of the Spirit of the Sun, the first who brought realization of the magic Sun-force that would one day stream down to earth upon those capable of receiving it.

What do the superficial expounders of the Gospels say about these things? They find in the Gospel of Matthew a description of the feeding of the four thousand with seven loaves of bread, and on another occasion the feeding of five thousand with five loaves. They regard the second account merely as a repetition of the first, and the difference in numbers as the error of the negligent copyist. Doubtless such a thing can happen in the making of modern books. The Gospels, however, did not arise in this way. If an account appears twice in them there is a profound reason for it. It is because the profound facts of the Gospel of Matthew are in accordance with the teachings given out by the great Essene Jesus ben Pandira a hundred years before the coming of the Christ-Sun, in order that when He did come He might be understood, that we must strive really to search out the profundities of this Gospel. But to continue.

Christ, in the first place, allowed the forces of Imaginative, or astral vision, to stream forth from Him into the disciples, who absorbed them to the measure of their capacity. This is clearly shown. One might say: Let him who has eyes to read, read. As in earlier days when things were not all written down, it was said: Let him who has ears to hear, hear! So we say: Let him who has eyes to read, read the Gospels! Is it anywhere indicated that this force of the Christ-Sun appeared differently to the disciples by day from how it did by night? Yes, this is clearly indicated.

In an important passage of the Gospel we read that in the fourth watch of the night—that means between three and six o'clock in the morning—the disciples, who were slumbering, saw what they first took to be an apparition walking on the water. This was the nocturnal Sun-force reflected from the Christ. Even the exact time is given, because only at a certain time could it be revealed to them how this force streamed down to them from the cosmos through such a Being. That Christ Jesus walked in Palestine, and that in the wanderings of this Person, this single Individual, the means existed by which the Sun-forces were able to work within our earth, is clearly shown by the fact that reference is always made in the Gospels to the position of the Sun with regard to the constellations—the heavenly bread. This cosmic-nature of the Christ, this activity of the cosmic forces through the Christ, is everywhere insisted upon.

Further, the disciples most fitted to receive it had to be specially initiated by the Christ, so that they could perceive the spiritual world not only imaginatively as in astral pictures, but so that they might see and also hear what took place there. (This has often been spoken of as the ascent into Devachan.) This initiation was to enable them to develop the capacity by which they could identify the personality known to them on earth as Christ Jesus, when, through the spiritual progress they had made, they saw Him on the spiritual plane. They were to become clairvoyant in a region still higher than that of the astral plane.

Not all the disciples were capable of this. It Was possible only for those most receptive of the force emanating from Christ. According to the Gospel of Matthew, these were Peter, James, and John. Therefore it tells how the Christ guided these three to where He could lead them beyond the astral realm into the realms of Devachan. Here they could see certain spiritual archetypes; first, Christ Jesus Himself; and then, because they were able to perceive the relationship in which He stood to the others, the ancient prophet Elias, he who later reincarnated as John the Baptist the forerunner of Christ Jesus. They were able to see Elias (for the scene took place after John's execution and withdrawal into the spiritual world), and they also saw Moses, his spiritual predecessor. This whole experience was only possible because the three chosen disciples had been exalted to spiritual, not only to astral vision. The Gospel clearly indicates that they attained to Devachan, for it tells us that they not only beheld the Christ filled with His Sun-force—expressed in the words: ‘His countenance shone like the Sun,’ but it also tells us that they heard the Three conversing together. This fact indicates an ascent into Devachan, they not only saw but also heard. This whole scene is in strict accordance with the investigations of Spiritual Science. Nowhere do we find any contradiction between these investigations and what is revealed in the Gospels, when it describes how Christ Himself led His disciples first into the astral realm and then into Devachan, the realm of the spirit.

The Gospel of Matthew clearly identifies Christ Jesus as the mighty Bearer of the Sun-force once foretold by Zarathustra. In it He is faithfully described as the Power of the Sun, the Spirit of the Sun—Ahura Mazdao or Ormuzd. Stress is laid on the fact that the Being, of whom Zarathustra could only declare that He dwelt in the Sun, had, through the instrumentality of Jesus of Nazareth, descended to earth; He has dwelt upon the earth and united Himself with it. Through this one life in a physical, etheric, and astral body, He has become an impulse for earthly evolution, and has gradually united Himself more and more with that evolution. In other words An ego-nature was once present in such measure on earth within one personality that it has enabled those who followed it, who received the Christ or who accepted Him in the sense in which Paul accepted Him, gradually to acquire the power of this ego-nature in their following incarnations. When people pass from one incarnation to another, and if during the remainder of their time on earth they permeate their souls with the power of the Personality Who lived at that time, they will rise to ever greater and greater heights of attainment.

At one time those destined for it were able to behold the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth with their physical eyes. It had once in the course of earthly evolution to come to pass that the Christ, Who formerly could only be perceived as the Spirit of the Sun, descended and united Himself with the forces of earth for the sake of all mankind. Man is the being in whom the fulness of the flooding Sun-force is to live; that force, that on one definite occasion descended and lived within a physical body. This event marks the beginning of the era during which the Power of the Sun is to stream forth into man. It will flow gradually, and ever increasingly, into those who fill themselves from incarnation to incarnation with the Christ-force, so far as their earthly bodies will allow of it.

It must be understood that not every physical body can experience the Christ just as it was only that special body prepared in the complicated way we have described, through the two Jesus-forms, and then brought to a high state of perfection by Zarathustra in which the Christ could live once in His fulness. Only once. Those who devote themselves to it will be able to fill themselves with the Christ-force, first inwardly, then ever more outwardly. The future will bring not only understanding of this force, but people will be able to fill themselves with it. What the acceptance of Christ will mean for a human evolution on earth I have endeavoured to show you in the ‘seer-nature’ of Theodora in the Rosicrucian Mystery Play. She must be regarded as one who had developed the power of seeing into the near future, of seeing how we are advancing towards a time, not far distant, when at first a few, and then gradually more and more, will be able to see the form of Christ; not solely as the result of spiritual training but as a natural development of our present stage of evolution. They will perceive Him, not in the physical, but in the etheric world—and in a remoter future they will behold Him in yet another form. Once it was possible for people dwelling on the physical plane to see Him in His physical form; this had to be experienced once.

The Christ-impulse would, however, fail of its mission if it were not always active and evolving. We are approaching a time when man will be able to behold the Christ with his higher powers—this should be regarded as a message. It will happen that before the expiration of the twentieth century a limited number of people will become ‘Theodoras,’ which means that their eyes will be opened spiritually, and they will experience what Paul experienced before Damascus. Paul's vision was possible because he was ‘born out of due time,’ he was a premature birth. People like Paul have no need of Gospel or record in order to know Christ. Christ will appear to them in the etheric clouds, and they will know Him from inner experience as He is.

This is a kind of Second Coming of the Christ, but in an etheric garment, the garment in which He revealed Himself to Paul as a shadowing forth of what was to come. It is our task to emphasize most particularly that the very nature of the Christ-Event carries with it the implication that He Who came in a physical body as Christ Jesus at the beginning of our era, would appear again before its close; this time clothed in an etheric garment as he appeared to Paul on the way to Damascus. When by exalting his nature man acquires ever higher capacities, he will come to know the fulness of the nature of Christ. A second coming of Christ in a physical body would mean that no progress had been made since His first coming, that this had failed to bring about the development of higher powers in man. For the result of the Christ-Event is the development in man of these higher powers, and with these new powers Christ can be seen in the spiritual world whence His powers come.

Having an understanding of the historical struggle of our time it is our duty to speak of this fact, just as the great Essene teacher, Jesus ben Pandira, spoke prophetically of the Christ as ‘the Lion Who was to come forth from the line of David,’ thus referring to the Sun-Force that was to stream from the constellation of Leo. Could humanity but have the good fortune (I desire to give this only as an indication) of seeing the reincarnation in our time of that Jesus ben Pandira who was inspired by the great Bodhisattva destined to be the Maitreya Buddha, he would recognize as his most important mission this teaching concerning the etheric Christ, the Christ Who would appear in etheric clouds, and he would impress on his hearers the fact that once and once only could the Christ appear in a physical body. Let us suppose that this Jesus—the son of Pandira—who was stoned to death in Palestine a hundred years before our era were to be reincarnated in our time and that he announced the coming of Christ; he would not tell of His coming in a physical body but in an etheric garment, similar to that seen by Paul. By teaching this fact, Jesus ben Pandira would be recognized for what he was. The other most essential thing that we shall have to understand from him who will one day be the Maitreya Buddha is what might be called the new Essene teaching. We shall learn from him how Christ will appear in our time, and he would especially warn us against false conceptions concerning this rebirth of the Essene teaching. There is one sure sign by which we would be able to recognize Jesus hen Pandira were he to be born again in our day. He would not declare himself to be the Christ. Anyone who in our day declared his power to be the same as that which abode in Jesus of Nazareth would, by this very assertion, stamp himself as a false representative of that forerunner of Christ, who lived a hundred years before His day in Palestine. By such a declaration he would reveal himself as a false prophet. The danger here is very great. In our time men fluctuate between two extremes. On one hand, it is vigorously asserted of the modern man that he is incapable of recognizing the spiritual forces operating in humanity. We hear it constantly said by the man in the street that our generation is lacking in the gift or in the power to recognize any original spiritual force, even were it to manifest itself. That is one ugly fact of our age, though unfortunately true, that the reincarnation of mighty individuals might take place in it, yet be unrecognized, or passed by with indifference. And there is another fact no less sinister, common to our age and to many others. While spiritual individuals are unappreciated and unrecognized, others are exalted to the skies. There is the liveliest tendency to deify individuals. On every hand we find communities each with its special Messiah. Everywhere the need for deification is felt. This has always been the case; it emerges again and again in the course of centuries.

Maimonides tells of a false Christ who appeared in France in 1137, who had numerous followers and was condemned to death by public authority. He also relates how forty years earlier a man appeared at Cordova and proclaimed himself to be the Christ. Again, twenty-five years earlier, at the beginning of the twelfth century, a false Messiah appeared at Fez in Morocco, who hinted at yet a greater one. Finally about 1147 in Persia there was one who did not proclaim himself to be the Christ, but taught of a Christ. But the worst appearance of all was one I have already mentioned, that of Shabbathai Zewi in 1666 at Smyrna. He declared himself to be the reincarnation of the Christ. We can most clearly observe in him and in the effect he had on his environment, the nature of a false Messiah. His was no narrow movement; news of the appearance of a new Christ spread, and people travelled from all parts of Europe to see him; from Spain, France, and Italy; from Poland, Hungary and Southern Russia, from Northern Africa, and Central Asia. It was a great world movement, and created a great sensation, and it would have boded ill for anyone who ventured to deny that Shabbathai Zewi was the Christ. Such a denial before Shabbathai Zewi betrayed himself and was exposed, would have brought the doubter up against a dogma held by a very great number of people.

This is the other ugly fact that constantly makes its appearance, perhaps not in Christian circles, but certainly in others. A need is felt to allow Messiahs to appear in earthly form. In Christian countries this happens for the most part in small circles, but in them ‘Christs’ are to be found. What mainly concerns us is: that through Spiritual Science, through scientific explanations, and a clear understanding of the facts revealed by occult means, it is possible to avoid both kinds of error. Real understanding of Spiritual Science prevents such errors, and makes it possible to understand in some small way the most profound historical facts of modern times. It enables us, when we enter more deeply into spiritual life, to accept what resembles a kind of revival of the Essene teaching which first foretold the coming of Christ, through the mouth of Jesus ben Pandira, as an event of the physical world.

If the Essene teaching is to be revived in our day, if we strive to live according to the living spirit of a new Bodhisattva, and not in the tradition of an ancient one, we must make ourselves receptive to the inspiration of that Bodhisattva who will one day appear as the Maitreya Buddha. This Bodhisattva will inspire us and draw our attention to the time drawing near when the Christ will appear in a new form in an etheric body. He will bless, and endow with light, those who through the new Essene wisdom are developing new forces in preparation for His return in etheric raiment.

We are now speaking entirely in the sense of that inspiring Bodhisattva who is to be the Maitreya Buddha; we know therefore that we are not speaking in accordance with any religious confession. We are not speaking of a return of Christ that will be perceptible on the physical plane. It is a matter of indifference to us that we are obliged to differ from such a teaching; we know, however, that our teaching is true. We have no prejudice in favour of any form of Oriental religious teaching, but live only for the truth, and we declare the manner of the future coming of the Christ to be in the form we have learned from the inspiration of the Bodhisattva himself.

The advent of instructing and life-giving powers from the cosmos through the Christ. Their transmission to the disciples. Their awakening. The avowal of Peter. The Son of Man—the Son of the living God. The founding of new communities on the basis of moral and spiritual relationships. Leading forth of the disciples into the Macrocosm by the Christ. The inpouring of the power of the Sun-Word through the mystery of Golgotha. The gradual growth upwards into the Kingdoms of Heaven

Following on the story of the ‘Temptation,’ which we might describe as the impulse towards a new initiation, comes the teaching given by Christ to His disciples. This was a teaching in a completely new form. What He gave them was not so much by way of instruction, but as a force, a health-giving force for mankind. This is demonstrated in His acts of healing.

Yesterday we made a transition in our studies, such as presupposes, as I said, the goodwill to understand—the goodwill that is the result of intensive work in spiritual scientific knowledge which has been received in the course of years. We have endeavoured to put a mighty mystery into human language, and to make comprehensible the nature of the instruction given to the disciples. Christ Jesus was a kind of focal point, a living centre for forces passing from the macrocosm into the earthly sphere, and thence into the souls of the disciples. Such a concentration of forces was only possible through the special powers appertaining to the nature of Christ Jesus. Forces, formerly only bestowed on men while unconscious in sleep, now streamed down to the disciples through the being of Christ Jesus from universal space, as the illuminating, life-giving forces of the cosmos itself. Details concerning these forces, which are enlightening forces in connection with world-existence, can naturally only be given by referring to the constellations, and we propose to deal with these mysteries to-day in so far as they throw light on the Gospel of Matthew.

In the first place we have to realize how the disciples increased in knowledge regarding earthly conditions, because the forces of Christ Jesus had streamed into them. They had to develop in themselves, to grow in their lives, and in living wisdom, in the most varied ways. An instance is given of the peculiar nature of this development in one of the disciples or apostles, but we can only understand this important and outstanding event in the life of the apostle when we show it in its comprehensive setting. We have to realize that a man himself advances within human evolution as a whole.

It is not in vain that we pass from one incarnation to another; neither is it in vain that we have incarnated in post-Atlantean civilizations—the Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, and Graco-Latin—in order that we might garner experiences from our surroundings. These are stages in the great school of life, each giving its appropriate experiences and promoting development. We pass gradually through them all. In what does human development through the different epochs consist?

According to the elementary teachings of Anthroposophy, mankind is formed of different members; these we call the physical body, etheric body, and astral body. With the astral body is associated the sentient soul; then the rational or intellectual soul; and then the consciousness or spiritual-soul. Beyond these are the higher principles of human nature towards which man is evolving; they are spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. Now, in the course of each of the post-Atlantean periods, something definite was given for these different members of human nature. In the first epoch, the ancient Indian period of civilization, man had added to him an increase in the capacities of his etheric body whereby it became something more than it had been before. What was implanted in him in this respect as regards his physical body already had a beginning during the last part of the Atlantean period; but he only received these enhanced powers into his etheric body during the post-Atlantean period. Thus it was during the period, known as the ancient Indian that the etheric body received these gifts. Then during the Persian civilization similar forces were implanted in his astral or sentient body; and during the Egypto-Chaldean period he received those suited to his sentient-soul; during the Greco-Latin period—the fourth age of post-Atlantean culture—the forces of the rational-soul were imprinted in man; and now, in the fifth period, we are living in an age in which the forces belonging to these lines of progress are gradually to be impressed on the spiritual-soul. As yet humanity has made but little progress with this.

Following on this age will come the sixth post-Atlantean age, which is to witness the impressing of the forces of the spirit-self on human nature; and the seventh age will see that of life-spirit. Beyond this our vision reaches out to a far distant future, in which the spirit-man or Atma will be impressed on normal humanity.

Let us now consider human evolution in relation to the individual man, for this is how it was viewed in the Mysteries; man was always considered from this aspect by those who knew somewhat of the true relationship of things. It was thus the disciples had gradually to learn to know him, in the light of the life-giving, illuminating force that streamed into them from Christ Jesus. When we observe mankind—either at the present time, or at the time of Christ Jesus—we must recognize that rudiments lie in men just as plants contain seeds, even when only in leaf and before the blossom and fruit is formed. In looking at such a plant we can say: As surely as this plant which so far only possesses green leaves has within it the germ of both flower and fruit, so man, who at the time of Christ Jesus possessed only sentient and intellectual-soul, holds within him the germ of the spiritual-soul, which then opens itself to the spirit-self, in order that the higher triad, as a new spiritual gift from God, may flow into him from above. Thus we can say: Man unfolds through the content and qualities of his soul in the same way as a plant unfolds in turn green leaves, blossoms, and fruit. In developing his sentient-soul, intellectual-soul, and spirit-soul man develops something that corresponds to the flower of his being, and lifts this up to receive the inpouring of the Divine Spirit from above, so that by receiving the spirit-self he may rise to ever further heights of human evolution.

At the time Christ Jesus walked on earth the normal man had developed the rational-soul as his highest principle; this was not as yet capable of receiving into it the spirit-self; but out of the same man as now had developed to the rational soul the spiritual-soul would evolve as his child—as the consummation of his being, which later would become the receptacle for the spirit-self.

What is to unfold out of the whole nature of man, and come forth from him like a blossom? How was this described in the Mysteries, and in the circle where Christ Jesus spoke to His disciples of their further development? Translated into our language it was called the ‘Son of Man.’ The Greek

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The disciples had to grow to an understanding of the nature of these leaders of humanity. It was to test their understanding of this that Christ asked His more intimate disciples, ‘Tell me, of what beings, of what men in this generation, can it be said that they are “Sons of Men?”’ So runs the question according to the Aramaic Script—for though the Greek translation from the Aramaic Script when read aright is certainly better, yet something has been lost in it also. We have to picture Christ Jesus standing thoughtfully before His disciples and saying, ‘What is the general opinion concerning the men who, in previous generations of this Greco-Latin period, were called “Sons of Men”? Who were they?’ And the disciples spoke to Him of Elias, of John the Baptist, of Jeremiah, and other prophets. They were able to answer thus through the illuminating forces that came to them from Christ. They knew that these leaders of men had developed powers by which they had given birth within themselves to the ‘Son of Man.’

On the same occasion, the disciple who is usually called Peter gave a different answer. In order to understand this answer we must allow what we have heard in recent lectures concerning the mission of Christ Jesus, according to the Gospel of Matthew, to sink deeply into our souls. It was there explained that through the Impulse of Christ it has become possible for men to develop full ego-consciousness—that what lies within the ‘I am’ can blossom fully through His Impulse. In other words Men will be able in time to enter the higher worlds—may even attain to initiation—while retaining their ego-consciousness, the only state of consciousness considered normal for men in the physical world to-day. This has become possible through the life of Christ Jesus on earth. He is the representative of the force that gives complete consciousness of the ‘I am’ to man.

I have already explained that interpretations of the Gospels given by free-thinkers, or by opponents of the Gospels, do not as a rule even mention the facts of greatest moment. They point continually to certain sequences of words found there, which they say are also to be met with elsewhere; as when they assert the previous existence of the contents of the Beatitudes. But there is something that has never existed before, and on this we lay stress what had previously been impossible of attainment through ego-consciousness had now become possible through the impulse imparted by Christ. This is a point of inestimable importance.

We have already analysed the Beatitudes, and said that the first should read ‘Blessed are the beggars in respect of the spirit,’ those who as a result of human evolution are poor in spirit, who, having lost the old clairvoyance, are unable to look into the spiritual worlds; but comforting them Christ explains, ‘Even though ye have lost the old clairvoyance and can no more through it see into the spiritual world, ye shall now be able to view these worlds through the powers of your own individual ego, for: “Within yourselves ye shall find the Kingdoms of the Heavens!”’ Similarly with the second Beatitude: ‘Blessed are those who mourn.’ Blessed are ye who no longer require to see into the spiritual world with the help of the old clairvoyance, for you will develop your ego so powerfully that through it you will attain to the spirit-world. But to do this your ego must gain more and more of the power which Christ, by His unique nature, has once and for all time firmly united with the earth.

It would be well if men would really ponder these things a little. It is not without purpose that each of the Beatitudes in the Sermon on the Mount contains a very important Greek word

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Forgive me if I now refer to something of great importance to our day by employing a rather trivial example. We must learn to use the Greek word

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Keeping this in mind we can see how important the second question was that Christ put to His disciples. After asking them: Who among the leaders of former generations could be described as ‘Sons of Men,’ He questioned them further, and wished gradually to bring them to an understanding of His own nature, to an understanding of that ego-nature of which He was the representative. Hence He asked, And what think ye that I am? On every occasion you see how special stress is laid on the ‘I am’ in the Gospel of Matthew. Then Peter answered Him, and showed by his answer that he now recognized the Christ not only as a ‘Son of Man,’ but as the ‘Son of the living God.’ This brings us to a consideration of the difference between these two phrases, ‘Son of Man’ and ‘Son of the living God.’ In order to understand them, we must enter more fully into some facts already dealt with.

In the course of his development man evolves the spiritual-soul so that in it the spirit-self may appear. When he has evolved the spiritual-soul,¹ the upper triad, spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man come to meet him, so that the opening flower of his being can receive into it this upper triad from above. This may be illustrated graphically to resemble the unfolding of a plant (see overleaf).

When a man has made himself receptive by developing his spirit-soul, the higher triad, spirit-self or Manas, life-spirit or Budhi, and spirit-man or Atma, draw near; this may be likened to a spiritual fructification coming towards him from on high. While with the other principles of his being he grows upwards from below, unfolding the blossom of the ‘Son of Man,’ there must come to meet him from on high, so that he may gain his ego-consciousness, that which brings with it spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man.

Who is the representative of the gift which comes down to man from above and is indicative of the nature of humanity in the far future? Who is this? The first gift that comes to man is the ‘spirit-self.’ Of whom is he the representative who receives this gift coming from on high? It is the Son of God, He Who lives, the life-spirit, the Son of the Living God!

So in the scene to which we have just referred Christ Jesus asked the question, ‘What is to come to men through My impulse?’ The answer is, ‘The life-giving Spirit- Principle from on high!’

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So we have to distinguish the Son of Man who evolves upwards from below, and the Son of God—the Son of the living God, Who comes down to meet him from above. These must be distinguished. We can understand what a difficult question this was for the disciples. Especially so because they were receiving for the first time those things which the simplest of mankind have had implanted in them through the Gospels from the beginning of the Christian era; things which first reached the disciples through the living, instructing forces of Christ Jesus. Through powers such as had previously been developed by them, no answer could be given to the question: ‘Whose representative am I Myself?’ To this question one of the disciples—Peter—answered: ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God.’ This was an answer which—if we may say so—did not spring from the normal spiritual powers of Peter at that moment.

Let us try to picture this scene vividly. Christ Jesus, looking at Peter, said to Himself: ‘It means much that such an answer should have come from this mouth; for it is an answer that points to the distant future.’ Then having gazed into Peter's consciousness, and seen how far he had progressed, seen that through his intellect, or the powers that initiation had evoked in him, he was able to give such an answer, the Christ was bound to say ‘This answer has not sprung from Peter's conscious knowledge; here spoke. those deeper forces that are inherent in all men, but which will only gradually become conscious forces in them.’

We bear within us physical body, etheric body, astral body, and ego; we are rising towards spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man through transmutation of the powers of the lower bodies. This is an elementary lesson of Spiritual Science. The forces that we shall one day evolve in our astral body as spirit-self are already there, only they have been put there by divine spiritual powers and have not been evolved by us. It is the same as regards our etheric body, which already contains within it a divine life-spirit. Therefore, looking at Peter, Christ said: ‘What spoke to me is not what is within thy consciousness at the present time, thou hast spoken from out of something that will certainly be evolved within thee at a future time, but of which at present thou knowest nothing. What at the present time is within thy flesh and blood could not have spoken, so that the words: “Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God” could have sprung from it. In these words divine spiritual forces spoke, forces lying deep below the threshold of consciousness, in the profoundest depths of human nature.’ The mysterious Higher Powers that at this moment spoke through Peter, Christ calls the ‘Father in Heaven.’ These were the forces out of which he was born, but of which he was not as yet conscious. Hence Christ's words: ‘The man of flesh and blood thou art at present did not reveal this unto thee, but the Father which is in Heaven revealed it.’ But Christ had something further to say to Peter. He had to say to Himself: ‘In Peter I have a disciple before me, whose nature is so constituted, that through the forces that have already evolved consciousness in him, and through the whole manner in which spiritual forces have worked in him the Father-force has remained intact; this subconscious, human force has remained so strong in him that when he surrenders himself to it he can build thereon. This is the most important thing in Peter.’ And Christ might have gone on to say: ‘What is present in Peter is present in all men, but they are not sufficiently advanced either to be aware of it or to make conscious use of it; the power to do so will only be developed in the future. If that which I am to give to man, if that for which I am the impulse, is to develop further and become a part of him, it must be founded on the consciousness which spoke through the mouth of Peter in the words: “Thou art the Christ,. the Son of the living God”; on this rock in human nature which the surging waves of consciousness as at present evolved have not yet destroyed, and which, as Father-force has just made itself heard, I will build that which will emerge with ever-increasing strength as the result of my impulse.’

When men have constructed this foundation, what the Christ-impulse can become for humanity will be revealed. This is contained in the words: ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock I will build what a certain number of men, a community, can reveal when they confess the Impulse of Christ.’

Such words must not be passed over as lightly as are the discussions which at this moment are the subject of violent controversy. They can only be understood when reconstructed out of the depth of that wisdom which is the same as the wisdom met with in the Mysteries.

The sentence that follows shows clearly that Christ Jesus built on this deep subconscious force in Peter. For immediately afterwards He speaks of the events that are about to take place, and of the Mystery of Golgotha. The moment, however, had already passed when the more deeply lying forces spoke in Peter. It is the conscious Peter who now speaks, who fails to understand Christ, and cannot believe that suffering and death are to follow. So when the conscious Peter speaks (he who had already developed conscious powers within himself) Christ has to correct him, saying: ‘It is not God Who now speaks in thee but that which thou hast evolved within thee as man; the source from which it comes is of no value, but is a vain deception, for it comes from Ahriman—that is Satan!’ This is contained in the words, ‘Remove thyself from Me, Satan, thou offendest Me, for thou considerest not the things that are divine, but those that are human.’ Christ compares Peter to Satan, employing the word used to designate Ahriman. Whereas in other parts of the Bible the word ‘devil’ stands for everything Luciferic, Christ here makes deliberate use of the word ‘Satan,’ for it was to the Ahrimanic form of deception that Peter had succumbed.

These are the facts. What do modern critics of the Bible make of them? They say: It is most unlikely that Christ Jesus would stand before Peter one minute saying, ‘Thou alone hast grasped the fact that a God confronts thee,’ and immediately afterwards call him ‘Satan.’ So the critics conclude that the word ‘Satan’ must have been interpolated by someone later, and is therefore incorrect. The truth is that current opinions concerning the deeper meaning of these words when gained only through philological research are worthless, unless preceded by an actual understanding of the Biblical records. An understanding of the actual facts of the Bible is necessary before anyone can speak of the historical origin of corresponding documents.

Between the two sayings that have just been considered there is another. This we can only understand if we call to mind a very ancient, yet ever new teaching of the Mysteries: The teaching that man as he exists on earth—and not only man himself but each group or class of men—is a reflected image of cosmic happenings. This has already been explained by me when referring to the descent of Jesus of Nazareth. We saw the true meaning of the promises made to Abraham: ‘Thy descendants shall be a copy of the order of the stars in Heaven.’ The order of the Heavens as seen in the twelve Constellations, and the paths of planets through these twelve Signs of the Zodiac, were to be repeated in the twelve tribes, and in all that the Hebrew people experienced during three times fourteen generations. In the sequence of the generations, and in their special inheritance through the blood-tie within the twelve tribes, we have to see a copy or reflection of cosmic relationships. This was told to Abraham.

In the moment when Peter stood before the Christ, and our Lord knew that in his deeper nature he had really understood what was given to man with the Christ-Impulse—that it meant the down-flowing of spiritual power through the ‘Son of the living God’—Christ knew He could now inform those standing round Him that something new was about to begin on earth, that a new model could now be given to them. As in the cosmic relationship of the heavens Abraham had been given an image of blood relationship, so now an image for an ethical and spiritual relationship was provided; a model for what man would be able to attain to through his ego. When people come to understand what the Christ is, as the higher nature of Peter understood it, they will cease to establish relationships and communities that depend only on the blood-tie, but will consciously weave bonds of love from soul to soul. This means that as in the blood of the Jewish people, in the threads stretching through the generations, people were bound together in accordance with a macrocosmic model, and were also liberated from each other through the same heavenly ordinance—from this time forth a force was to arise out of the conscious ego that would separate man from man, or bind them to each other in love, in accordance with moral and spiritual relationships. Regulations affecting humanity will be made or harmonized by the conscious ego. This is contained in the words spoken by Christ in continuation of His answer to Peter when He said: ‘What thou bindest on earth—what the deeper nature in thee binds—is the same as is bound in Heaven; and what this nature loosens here below is also loosened in Heaven.’

In ancient times the whole meaning of human union lay in relationship through the blood-tie; but men in future will develop more and more towards moral, intellectual, and spiritual ties. It follows, that what they form in the way of communities shall mean something to them. Or, to express this in anthroposophical language, we might say: The individual karma of a man will have to be associated with the karma of the community.

From the teachings of Spiritual Science during recent years you can gather that it does not contradict the idea of karma for me to give something to a poor man, so it does not contradict the idea of karma that a man's individual karma should be affected by that of the community to which he belongs. The community can share in the lot of the individual. Karma maybe so connected that the community as a whole bears the karma of the individual. In moral relationships the following may happen: An individual member of a community may commit some wrong; this will most surely be written in his karma, and must be worked out in the great inter-relationships of the whole world. But suppose another case: Suppose a man were found willing to help another to bear his karma. The karma would have to be fulfilled, but the man might be helped. Groups or associations of people can help a wrong-doer in the same way. The karma of an individual can be so interwoven with that of a community that—because it recognizes him as one of themselves—it can consciously accept his destiny, and in sympathy desire his improvement. Their attitude might be—‘You, as an individual, have done wrong, but we will stand by you. We will take over that in your karma, which is conducive to your betterment.’ If for ‘community’ the word ‘church’ be substituted, then it means that the Church lays upon itself the duty of accepting the sin of the individual and of sharing the burden of his karma. This does not refer to ‘forgiveness of sins’ in the usual meaning of the words, but to a real bond, to ‘a taking upon them’ of the sins, and the community must be conscious of its acceptance of the debt.

When ‘binding’ and ‘loosing’ are understood in this sense there must be with every forgiveness of sins a recognition by the community of the responsibilities arising out of it. In this way a web is woven in which the threads of individual karma are woven into the karma of the whole community; and this web shall become a reflection of the order in heaven through the gift brought down to Earth by Christ from spiritual heights. This means that individual karma shall be bound up with universal karma after the pattern of the order in the spiritual worlds, and this in no haphazard way, but so that the whole social organism may become a reflection of the heavenly order.

Hence for those who begin to understand it, this scene of the ‘confession of Peter’ acquires an infinite depth of meaning. It was so to say the founding of future humanity on the basis of their ego-nature. What happened in this confidential conversation between Christ and His more intimate disciples was that the power brought down by Him out of the macrocosm He passed on to that which they were to establish.

From this point onwards the Gospel of Matthew shows how the disciples were led upwards step by step towards that which they were able to receive of the forces of the Sun, and of the cosmos, through the medium of the Christ-being.

You know that one side of initiation is an expansion into the macrocosm, and because Christ is the impulse to this initiation, in the instructions He gives His disciples, He leads them out into the cosmos. As the individual who experiences initiation consciously expands into the macrocosm gradually acquiring wisdom from it, so the Christ descends from the macrocosm, revealing on every hand the forces active there, and these He passes on to His disciples.

How this takes place I have already explained. Let us once more picture the scene. A man falls asleep; on the couch lie his physical and etheric bodies, while his astral body and ego pass out into the cosmos so that these members absorb the forces of the cosmos. If the Christ now approaches this man, He is the Being who attracts these forces consciously to the sleeper, thereby illuminating him. This actually happened; a scene is described in which we are told how the disciples journeyed by sea in the last watch of the night, how they then saw that what they at first took to be an apparition was the Christ, Who enabled the forces of the macrocosm to flow into them. We are shown, in a way apparent to anyone, how Christ conducted these cosmic forces to the disciples.

In what follows in this Gospel we are shown how, scene by scene, step by step, Christ guided the disciples towards initiation. It is as if He experienced this Himself and led them as by the hand along the path that all initiates must tread. I will tell you one thing which clearly shows the gradual leading of them into the macrocosm.

When a living perception of the spiritual world has been gained, when the powers of clairvoyance have been awakened, it brings with it knowledge of things previously quite unknown. One learns, for instance, the real connections in the progressive stages of the growth of a plant. A materialist says of a flower (one that bears fruit): ‘Here is a flower, in it seeds will develop, these can later be gathered and planted in the earth where they will decay and a new plant will appear; this in turn will again bear seeds—and so it goes on from growth to growth. Materialistic thought cannot but suppose some part of the seed, however small, passes over into the new plant. But this is not the case. In respect of its material part, the whole of the old plant is destroyed. A leap occurs, so far as the material part is concerned; the new plant is of entirely new material. Actually a new formation has taken place.

Most important connections in the world are understood as soon as this very remarkable law is grasped and applied to the whole macrocosm; when we have learnt that as regards material conditions leaps or springs do actually occur. This was expressed in a special way in the Mysteries. It was said there: The disciple for initiation must learn at a certain stage through expansion into the cosmos to know the forces that cause these ‘leaps.’ Now a man learns something from the cosmos in whichever direction he advances, and this is expressed in a language taken from the stars. The stars are in this case used as letters. If our development advances in a certain direction we become aware of the ‘leap’ that takes place between an ancestor and a descendant, whether this be in the realm of plants, of animals, or men, or in the realm of planetary existence; such, for instance, as the transition from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun-existence where everything material perished. What is spiritual endures what is material perishes. The spirit was the cause of this ‘leap.’ In the same way, spirit brought about the transition from ancient Sun to Moon, from Moon to Earth. In small things as in great, the law is the same. Two symbols are used to express this fact, one is an ancient one more of a pictorial imaginative script and the other more modern. The modern form is frequently found in calendars. As evolution advances, what is past curls up within itself in the form of a spiral, and the new evolution comes forth as a new spiral out of the old, unfolding from within. But between the end of the old and the beginning of the new there is a little ‘gap,’ only then does evolution advance.

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We see this represented in the above figure; here are two interlaced spirals, and, in the centre between them, a little ‘gap.’ This is the sign of ‘Cancer,’ the fourth Sign of the Zodiac, and symbolizes the growing outwards into the macrocosm, and also the starting point of a new shoot within an evolution.

There is another symbol which represents this same connection. Strange as it may seem, the symbol of an ass and its foal was used to express the connection between an ancestor and his descendant, and was intended to represent the actual point of transition from one condition to the other. In old drawings the sign of Cancer is frequently represented in this way. It is not unimportant for us to know this. It is an important teaching towards the understanding that a similar important transition also occurs when we rise to the macrocosm; that when man enters the spiritual world an entirely new illumination is associated with it. This is expressed quite correctly when in accordance with the language of the stars it is said that the physical Sun, having passed through the Constellation of Cancer and reached its highest point, descends again. Much the same happens when the disciple for initiation who has made his first ascent into the spiritual worlds learns of the forces there. When he has acquired knowledge concerning these forces he turns, and bears them down again, so as to make them serviceable to humanity.

The Gospel of Matthew, as well as the other Gospels, tells how Christ Jesus brought about this ‘leap’ in the development of the disciples; and by the way this is told we are shown that He did not influence them by words alone, but that He induced in them imaginative perception—a living image of what He Himself was accomplishing, that exalted state that is the goal of human evolution. To this end He made use of the symbol of the ass and its colt; which means that He guided His disciples towards an understanding of what in spiritual life corresponds to the sign of Cancer. This was the expression of something that occurred in the living spiritual relationship of Christ to His disciples, and was of such majesty, such grandeur, that no human words, whatever the language, were found adequate to express it. The only way that Christ could convey the meaning of it to His disciples was to lead them into the spiritual world, and then to create in physical conditions, an image or reflection of events in the macrocosmic world. For this purpose He led them to the point where the forces of those who had been initiated could become of service again to mankind. He then stood at the summit of His power, and this is shown when He tells the: His sun stood at its zenith, in the sign of Cancer No wonder, therefore, that at this point the Gospel of Matthew informs us that the life of Christ, as regards His earthly existence had reached its climax! This is mightily demonstrated in the cry: ‘Hosanna in the Highest!’ Here each tone is chosen so as to show how the disciples are led on towards maturity; so that through what took place in them humanity as a whole might attain that which through the Christ has been brought into its evolution.

The story of the Passover that follows is nothing else than the actual living inflow of that magic force, which first, in the form of teaching, and later as the outcome of the Mystery of Golgotha, was to enter humanity. With this in mind it becomes clear why the writer of this Gospel always felt it necessary to emphasize the contrast between the living teaching heard by the disciples coming to them from the heights of cosmic existence, a teaching suited to them; and the other teaching given to those who stood outside, who were not sufficiently ripe to receive the Christ-force itself. This difference will be dealt with in the next lecture in connection with the conversation of the Scribes and Pharisees. Just now we would remind you that Christ Jesus, having led the disciples to the point of initiation, showed them that by following this path they would themselves be able to experience expansion into the spiritual world of the macrocosm. He explained that they had already experienced the preliminaries of initiation, that the way was open, to where they could become more and more able to recognize the true nature of Christ as the Being Who fills all spiritual spaces, Whose reflection had been in Jesus of Nazareth. Christ Jesus told His disciples that they must progress in ripeness for initiation so that they might become initiates for humanity. He taught them further that they could only attain individual initiation if with patience and perseverance they furthered this inner ripeness.

What had to increase in strength in man's inner being, if his inner nature was to evolve clairvoyant higher forces? The as yet undeveloped attributes of his being had to ripen, so that he could become capable of receiving into himself the forces of spirit-self, life-spirit, and spirit-man. As to when this would happen, when the power from above which leads to initiation and makes of a man a participator in the Kingdoms of the Heavens dawns in him, depends on the degree of ripeness he has attained; it depends on the karma of the individual. Who can tell when this moment is at hand? Only the highest Initiates. It is not known to those on lower stages of initiation. The hour of man's attainment comes to those who are ripe for entry into the spiritual world. It must surely come; but it comes like a thief in the night.

But how does this expansion into the spiritual world come to pass? In the ancient Mysteries, and to a certain extent in the new, there were three stages of initiation into the macrocosm. The first stage brought knowledge of all that could be perceived through the spirit-self. The Initiate was then not only a man in the new sense, but he had attained to what, in the language of the Hierarchies, is called ‘Angel-nature’—the nature of the Hierarchy next above man. Thus in the Persian Mysteries a man who had advanced to this stage at which he had expanded to the Macrocosm, when the spirit-self was active in him was called either a Persian (since he was no longer an isolated being but belonged to the Angel of the Persian nation) or he was simply called an Angel, one whose nature was divine. The second stage is that in which the life-spirit had awaked in like manner; at this stage a man was called a ‘Sun-hero’ in the old Persian Mysteries, for he had then advanced to the point where he could draw into himself the spiritual forces of the Sun, when these forces had approached the earth. Such a man might also be called ‘Son of the Father.’ And he who had won to the heights of the third stage, the stage of Atma, or spirit-man, was called in the ancient Mysteries ‘the Father.’ These were the three stages of initiation—‘Angel,’ ‘Son or Sun-hero,’ and ‘Father.’

Only the highest initiates can judge when initiation is about to awaken in man. Hence Christ said: ‘Initiation will come when you have travelled further along the way on which I have led you; you will then ascend to the Kingdom of Heaven; but the hour of your arrival is known neither to the Angels (those initiated with the spirit-self, nor to the Son (those initiated with life-spirit), but only to the highest Initiates, those initiated with the Father.’ Here once more the language of the Gospel of Matthew conforms absolutely with the tradition of the Mysteries.

And we shall see as the Gospel continues how all that Christ tells His disciples concerning the Kingdom of Heaven is merely a prediction of what they are to experience in initiation. Examining carefully the sentences dealing with this subject, it is easily seen that Christ is referring to a certain teaching common at that time—concerning the way in which the Kingdom of Heaven was to be attained. People had accepted this attainment of the Kingdom of Heaven in a material sense, believing it applied to the whole earth, whereas they ought to have known that this was only possible to certain individuals, those who had passed through initiation. Some people really expected that the earth would be transformed into Heaven in a material way. Christ refers directly to this when He says that certain people who will appear and announce this teaching are lying prophets and false Messiahs. It is amazing to find expounders of the Gospels who even to-day spread this false doctrine of the material heavenly kingdom, and declare it to be the teaching of Christ Himself. Anyone who really knows how to read the Gospel of Matthew knows that Christ refers to a spiritual event, towards which those seeking initiation grow. In the course of earthly evolution it will, however, be possible for all humanity—for all who follow Christ—to grow to this condition—inasmuch as the earth itself is spiritualized.

When from this side also we have looked more deeply into the whole form and content of the Gospel of Matthew, our reverence for it deepens enormously. This is more especially the case in respect of the teaching Christ gave to His disciples from the standpoint of the ego—the ‘I.’ In none of the other Gospels is this given so clearly. We can picture the Christ, with His disciples gathered round Him, and can see how cosmic forces work through the agency of His human body; we can see the disciples learning of initiation as He leads them by the hand, and we catch a glimpse of the human conditions of His environment. All this makes the Gospel of Matthew a most human production. Through it we really learn to know the man Jesus of Nazareth, the bearer of the Christ; we recognize all that came to pass through the descent of Christ into human nature. Yes, in the Matthew Gospel even heavenly events are clothed in garments that are truly human.

How this is the case in other things not only in those relating to initiation will be dealt with in the next—the last lecture.

• 1. Spiritual-soul is sometimes called consciousness-soul.

The upward development of man, and the descent of divine beings into human souls and bodies. The four points of view of the Evangelists in accordance with the Initiation of each. The Baptism in Jordan and the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of Initiation. The Resurrection revealing Christ as the Spirit of earthly existence. The Sun-Aura in the Earthly-Aura. The divinity of Man. Human quality of the Gospel of Matthew

Studying the evolution of mankind in accordance with spiritual science, and watching its progress step by step, we are bound to acknowledge that the most important fact of this evolution is that man, because he incarnates again and again in different epochs, advances to ever higher degrees of perfection, and thus gradually reaches the goal where he has developed, in his inner being, certain active powers corresponding to the different stages of planetary development. We see, on one hand, the man who progresses upwards, who keeps his divine goal before him, but who would never be able to evolve to the heights he should attain if beings whose whole path of evolution is different did not come to his assistance. From time to time beings from other spheres enter our earthly evolution and unite with it, so as to raise men to their own exalted realms. Even as regards earlier planetary conditions we may express this in a wide sense by saying: Already during the Saturn stage of evolution, exalted beings—the Thrones—offered up their will-substance so that from it the earliest beginnings of man's physical body might be formed. This is but a general example; but beings whose evolution is far in advance of that of men, have ever bent down to them and united with their evolution, by dwelling for a time within a human soul. Such beings have ‘assumed a human form’ as is often said, or to put it more trivially, have entered a human soul as an inspiring power, so that a human being who has been ensouled in this way by a god might accomplish more in human evolution than he could otherwise have done.

Our age, permeated as it is with materialistic conceptions, levelling everything, does not accept such facts willingly; indeed I might say that it retains only the crudest notion of accepting the descent of beings from higher regions, beings who enter into man and speak to him. Modern people regard such beliefs as the wildest superstition. Rudiments of such beliefs have, however, remained to our day, though people are for the most part unaware that they hold them; they have retained, for instance, a belief in the occasional appearance of persons of ‘genius.’ Men of genius rise high above the great mass of mankind even in the opinion of ordinary individuals, who say of such persons: Other qualities have come to fruition in their souls than are to be found in average humanity. Such ‘geniuses’ are at least still credited. But there are also circles where there is no longer such belief; the materialistic thought of to-day discredits them, it has (no belief in facts concerning the life of the spirit: Belief in genius does, however, continue in wide circles, and if this is not to be an empty belief we must acknowledge that in a genius through whom human evolution has been advanced, a power, other than the ordinary power of men, works through a human agency. Looking to the teaching that knows the true facts concerning men of genius, one realizes that when such men appear who seem as if suddenly possessed by something extraordinarily good, or great, or powerful, that a spiritual power has descended and taken possession of the place from which this being of power must now work, namely, the inner nature of the man himself.

To people who think in accordance with Anthroposophy it should be clear from the beginning that there are two possibilities; the upward evolution of men to spiritual heights, and the descent from above of divine, spiritual beings into human bodies or human souls.

In one part of my Rosicrucian Mystery Play it is pointed out that whenever something important is to take place in human evolution a divine being must unite with a human soul and permeate it. This is a necessity of human evolution.

To understand this in connection with our spiritual evolution on earth, we must recall how in the time of its early beginnings the Earth was united with the Sun, from which it is now separated. Anthroposophists know, of course, that this does not refer merely to a separation of the substance of the Earth from the substance of the Sun, but with the going forth of divine beings who were associated with the Sun or with the other planets.) After this separation of the Sun, certain spiritual beings remained connected with the Earth, while others remained with the Sun, because they had evolved beyond earthly connections, and could not complete their further cosmic evolution on the Earth. Thus we have the fact that one kind of spiritual being remained connected with the Earth, while other spiritual beings sent their active forces down to Earth from the Sun. After the departure of the Sun from the Earth we have, as it were, two spheres of activity, that of the Earth with its beings and that of the Sun with its beings. The Spiritual Beings who served mankind from a higher sphere are those who chose the Sun as their dwelling-place, and from this realm come the beings who have united themselves from time to time with earthly humanity so that they might aid the further evolution—both of Earth and man.

In the myths of various peoples we constantly find reference to such ‘Sun-heroes’ who have descended from spiritual realms to participate in human evolution; and a man who is filled by such a Sun-being is something far more than from outward seeming he would appear to be. The outward appearance of such a man is deceptive—it is Maya; but behind the Maya is the real being who can only be guessed at by those who can penetrate to the profoundest depths of such a nature. In the Mysteries people knew, and still know, of this twofold fact concerning the path of human evolution. People distinguish now, as they distinguished in the past, divine beings who descend to Earth from spiritual spheres, and men who strive upwards from the Earth towards initiation into spiritual mysteries. ‘With what kind of Being then are we concerned in the Christ?

In the last lecture we learnt that in the designation, ‘Christ, the Son of the living God,’ we are concerned with a descending Being. If we wish to describe Him by a word drawn from Oriental philosophy He would be called ‘an Avatar,’ a God who had descended. But we have only to do with such a descending Being from a certain moment; and we must accept what is described by all four Evangelists, by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, as such an appearance. At the moment of the Baptism of John, a Being descended to our Earth from the realms of Sun-existence and united with a human being. Now we have to realize clearly that according to the meaning of the four Evangelists this Sun-Being was greater than any other Avatar, than any other Sun-Being who up to that time had ever come to Earth. They, therefore, take trouble to explain that a specially prepared being had to advance from the side of humanity to meet this great descending Being.

All four Gospels, therefore, tell of the Sun-Being—the ‘Son of the living God’—who came towards men to aid their further progress; but only the Gospels of Matthew and Luke speak of the man who evolved towards this Sun-Being so that he might receive Him into himself. They narrate how the human being for thirty years prepares for the moment when he can receive the Sun-Being into himself. Because the Being we call the Christ is so universal, so all-comprising, it did not suffice that the bodily sheaths that were to receive Him should be prepared in any simple way. A quite specially prepared physical and etheric sheath had to evolve, meet for the reception of this descending Being. Whence these came we have seen in the course of our study of the Matthew Gospel. But out of this same being whose physical and etheric sheath had been prepared in accordance with the teaching of Matthew, out of the forty-two generations of the Hebrew people, there could not spring an astral garment or a bearer of the ego suited to that Sun-Being. For this, special arrangements were necessary, and these were carried out by means of another human being. This being we read of in the Gospel of Luke, where the writer of that Gospel describes the early years of the so-called Nathan Jesus. There we read of how the two became one.

This mystery occurred when the ego-entity, forsaking the body of the twelve-year-old Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Matthew tells, namely, the Zarathustra individuality, passed into the Nathan Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. In this body he continued to dwell, carrying on in it the further development of those qualities acquired through his having assumed the physical and etheric sheaths of the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew. In this body his higher principles ripened, until in his thirtieth year they were ready for the reception of the mighty Being who descended into them from higher worlds.

When seeking to describe the whole course of these events as related in the Gospel of Matthew we should have to say The writer first directs his attention to answering the question: What kind of physical and etheric body could serve such a Being as the Christ for His life on earth? And because of what the writer had experienced he could answer: In order that a suitable physical and etheric body could be prepared it was necessary that they should pass through forty-two generations of the Hebrew people so that the attributes laid down in Abraham might be fully developed. He could then continue to answer the question further by telling us: Such a physical and etheric body could only provide a fitting instrument if the greatest individuality humanity had so far produced for the comprehension of the Christ—that is the Zarathustra individuality—made use of them up to his twelfth year, at which time he had to leave this body and enter another. This was the body of the Jesus of whom the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells. From this point, the writer of the Gospel of Matthew, turning from that to which he had given his attention at first, deals exclusively with the Jesus of whom we read in the Gospel of Luke, and follows the life of Zarathustra until his thirtieth year. The moment had then come, when the astral body and ego-bearer had been so far evolved by Zarathustra that he could sacrifice them to the mighty Being—the great Sun-spirit—who descended from spiritual spheres and took possession of them. This was the moment of the baptism by John in Jordan.

If we recall once more the time when the earth was separated from the sun, and the beings whose supreme Leader is the Christ withdrew from the earth, we must say There were beings who let their influences spread gradually over the earth, just as the Christ, in the course of time, has allowed His influence to be felt on earth. But we must not forget something else, which is, that the nature of ancient Saturn as regards substantiality was relatively much simpler than that of the planetary bodies that arose later. It consisted of fire or warmth, there was neither air nor water there, neither was there light-ether. This light-ether came with the Sun-evolution. Then, when later this passed over into the Moon-evolution, the watery element appeared as a further densification, on one hand, and sound or tone-ether as a further refinement on the other. Solid substance was added to these during the evolution of the Earth; this condition arose as a further densification; life-ether being added at the same time as a further refinement. We have therefore on the earth—warmth, air or gaseous substance, water or fluid substance, and solids or earthly substance. Opposed to these as finer conditions we have light-ether, tone-ether, and life-ether, this last being the finest etheric condition known to us.

Now with the departure of the Sun from the Earth, not only the material part of the Sun left but the spiritual part left also. It was only later, and by degrees, that this returned to the earth, and it did not return entirely. I spoke of this at Munich when lecturing on the Six Days of Creation, so I will only touch on it here.

Of the higher etheric substances man is only aware of warmth and light-ether. What he perceives as ‘sound’ is but a reflection, a materialization, of the real tone that is in tone-ether. When tone-ether is spoken of we refer to the bearer of what is known as ‘The harmony of the spheres,’ and is only to be heard clairaudiently. The Sun certainly sends its light to the earth, in so far as this is physical, but a higher condition also lives in the Sun. People who know of these things do not speak in empty phrases when with Goethe they say:—

‘The sun-orb sings, in emulation,
Mid brother-spheres, his ancient round:
His path predestined through Creation,
He ends with step of thunder-sound.’

FAUST—Prologue in Heaven.

This refers to sphere-harmony, to that which lives in the sound-ether, and can only be heard by man when he has attained initiation, or when a Sun-being descends in order to hold intercourse with one who has been chosen to become an instrument for the further evolution of others. For such a one the Sun begins to resound, and the sphere-harmonies to be heard.

Above the tone-ether lies the life-ether. Just as the ‘word’ lies within mere tone, as something possessing an inward soul-like content, so associated with the meaning of the life-ether is that which in later Persian times was called ‘Honover.’ The writer of the Gospel of John calls this the ‘Logos,’ which as meaning-filled tone belongs to the Being of the Sun.

Among those blessed ones whose nature did not remain entirely deaf to this ‘resounding Sun,’ we have to reckon Zarathustra, who lived in the early part of our post-Atlantean civilization. It is no myth, but a fact that can be proved documentarily, that Zarathustra received instruction through the ‘Sun-word.’ He had become capable of hearing this. For what was the overwhelmingly majestic teaching given by the original Zarathustra to his pupils?

We might describe it thus: Zarathustra was an instrument through whom the sound, the meaning of the Sun-Word itself spoke. A Persian legend tells how the ‘Sun-Word’ spoke by the mouth of Zarathustra, how the secret or hidden word behind the Sun spoke through him. This legend, in referring to the astral body of the Sun, speaks of ‘Ahura Mazdao,’ but also of the ‘Sun-word,’ translated later into Greek as the ‘Logos.’

When thinking of this ancient Zarathustra, we realize that even so exalted a person could not in those early times have been initiated so as consciously to receive what he could afterwards pass on to others, but that he must have been ensouled by a Higher Being.

Zarathustra could teach of Ahura Mazdao, because the Aura of the Sun enfolded him, because the Spiritual-Being, Ahura Mazdao, resounded in him, because the World-Light—the great Aura—spoke through him. He was, as it were, the external bodily garment of the Sun-god, who thus sent His influence in advance down to man, though not as yet on earth Himself. At that time the Sun-word was more inward.

It might be said—speaking altogether in the sense of Zarathustra—that he taught his disciples: ‘You must understand that behind the physical sunlight there is a Spiritual Light, just as behind physical man there is something astral—his aura—so behind the sun there is the “Great Aura”. You must regard the physical sun as the light-body of a Being who will one day come to earth it is the external bodily form of something known to clairvoyant perception, and has an inner soul-nature within it. Just as the soul expresses itself in sound, so the Sun-word—the Logos—makes itself known by means of the Sun-Aura!’

Zarathustra gave to mankind the promise that one day the Light-being would come down from the spheres of the Great Aura, and that the soul of this Being would be the Sun-word. This is something we find for the first time in Zarathustra; it is the source from which his teaching springs. In it we have to see a prophetic wisdom, which tells of the coming of the Sun-aura and the Sun-word.

This teaching continued to live from epoch to epoch in the mysteries. It was the great consolation and hope of those who within human evolution longed for higher things. And the less exalted Sun-spirits, those associated with the earth, were able ever and again to give more precise teaching concerning the Spirit of the Sun-light, or Sun-aura, for they were really messengers of the Sun-word.

This was one side of the Mystery-tradition that passed down through the ages. The other side was, that men should learn to know, and by practice should be able to evolve upwards to meet, that which was to descend to earth. In pre-Christian times it was not yet possible for men to believe that without something further a feeble individual could evolve to meet the Sun-being, the Leader of the Hosts of the Sun, the Christ. It was not possible for anyone to attain this by any form of initiation. Hence the Gospel of Matthew describes how all the life-giving forces of the Hebrew people were called upon to produce such a man. On the other hand the Gospel of Luke explains how through seventy-seven successive stages the best that human nature could attain to was, as one might say, filtered, in order that a fitting body might evolve to meet the greatest Being Who was to come down to the earth.

In the Mysteries, as was natural, the men who had to be instructed, who had to be worked on, were ordinary feeble men, and were quite unable to grasp what it was that now faced humanity or that might be attained by single individuals. Therefore, those who were to be initiated were graded into different classes, and they approached the secrets of the Mysteries in different ways. Some, for instance, were taught more how men should live in the external world, what they ought to do there in order to fit themselves to become a temple for the descending Sun-being.

There were other pupils of the Mysteries who were instructed more in what was to evolve in the stillness of the soul if it wished to gain an understanding, a feeling for and perception of the Sun-spirit. Is it not natural that there should have been certain pupils whose task it was, so to direct their outer lives, so to be trained from childhood that their bodies became temples for the descending Spirit? This was the case in olden times; it is also the case to a certain extent to-day, but the ordinary materialistic consciousness passes it by.

Suppose the time drew nigh when some great Being was to descend from spiritual realms to give humanity a forward impulse in evolution.

Those who serve the Mysteries have to await such a moment; they have to interpret the signs of the times. In quiet and retirement, and without making any disturbance, they awaited the moment when a God is to come down to Earth to give an upward impulse to humanity. It was their duty also to watch humanity carefully, to see if among men there were any who could be trained and guided to fit them to receive such a Being into themselves. When the descending Being is of exceptional greatness such a man would have to be trained and prepared from earliest childhood that he might be a temple fit to receive Him. This also happens, and is also unnoticed. If the life of these men is described, it is found that they follow certain fundamental rules; even in outer concerns there is a certain resemblance in their lives. When we glance back over the course of human evolution we have to allow that here and there we find individuals whose lives take a similar course—even as regards external biographical facts. This cannot be denied, and has even been remarked on by those carrying out more recent research. Popular but not very profound works have been produced lately showing similarities in the lives of such persons. In the writings of Prof. Jensen (Marburg) you find, for instance, comparisons between the lives of the ancient Babylonian Gilgamesch, Moses, Jesus, and Paul. The tables are beautifully drawn up; he takes certain incidents from the lives of these individuals and compares them, with the result that quite wonderful resemblances are revealed, puzzling to the materialistic mind. The conclusions drawn are natural; it is stated that in these biographies one myth is copied from the others, that the writers of the Life of Jesus copied the biography of Gilgamesch, that the story of the life of Moses is but an old Epic, served up in a new form, and the final conclusion arrived at is: none of them has existed as a physical personality, not Moses, nor Jesus, nor Paul. People have no idea how far these so-called ‘researches’ lead them in respect of materialistic explanations.

Similarity of this kind in the biographies of great individuals rests on nothing more than the fact that in childhood they were already trained to become the bearers of a Divine Being; this causes no astonishment when we understand the deeper lying paths of human and universal evolution. Not only comparisons with Mythology, but all those searchings after similarities in regard to mythical sources is, in fact, fantasy. It leads nowhere. What does it benefit us to prove resemblances in the life of Siegfried to some Greek hero? They do certainly contain similarities. But the appearance of a house is not what matters, but who lives in it! It matters not that such and such things occurred in the life of Siegfried, but who the individuality was that dwelt in him.

Such things can, however, only be established with the help of occult research. What we have to bear in mind is that the lives of men who were to become fitting temples for higher Beings coming to the aid of humanity were guided in a special way, and that their lives show therefore a similar course as regards certain fundamental features.

In the temples of the Mysteries there have always been precepts regarding what had to come about with such men. Similar precepts were preserved by the association of the Essenes concerning Christ Jesus; telling what the nature of those human beings had to be who as the Solomon and the Nathan Jesus evolved upwards towards the great Sun-being, the Christ.

But those seeking initiation were not initiated into everything. There were different classes and degrees of initiates. Thus to some it was shown with special clearness what a man had to undergo who was evolving towards the God, so that he might be worthy to receive the God into himself. To others it was given to know how a God acted when He revealed Himself in a man; or to put it trivially, when he revealed Himself as a ‘genius.’ It is not generally remarked to-day that genius is apt to reveal itself in similar ways when appearing in different people. Nowadays people do not write biographies from out the spirit. If the genius of Goethe were to be described from the aspect of the spirit, a wonderful similarity would be found for instance between his genius and that of Dante, Homer, and Aeschylus. People do not now write biographies, but stick placards and tickets on a person and repeat all kinds of trivialities concerning the person's external life, which interests most people much more. So we are presented with a vast accumulation of ticketed rubbish concerning the life of Goethe, but not a real account of what Goethe actually was. Mankind to-day declares itself to be in some respects, and actually with pride, incapable of describing the evolution of genius in a human personality. There is a desire to-day to bring to light the earliest efforts of our great poets, stressing the fact that in the freshness and originality of their early works something elemental lived which is lost to the man in later life. But the real fact underlying this is that in their arrogance men only wish to understand the young poet, and not to take part in all he goes through in later life. Men pride themselves on the fact that they understand ‘youth,’ they trouble little about the ‘old,’ and have no idea that it is not the old who have become ‘old,’ but that they themselves have remained mere children.

This evil is widely spread. Seeing it is so deeply rooted, we need not wonder at the little understanding there is of the fact that a divine being can enter into a human personality, and that the life-course of such divine beings in any person and in any age must be fundamentally the same.

As there was necessarily much to be learnt as regards these profound relationships, this domain of knowledge was divided into classes. In a certain division of the Mysteries, teaching was given concerning the preparation of a man so that he might rise towards a divine being, whereas in others teaching was given concerning the descent of the inner Light-being, the Logos, the Sun-word, contained in the Aura of the Sun-being. In Christ we see this gradual descent in its most complex form. We need not wonder if more than four men had been needed for the understanding of these mighty facts; four, however, took it as their task. Two of these, the writers of the Gospels of Matthew and of Luke, undertook to relate the nature of the personality who grew towards the descending Sun-being—Matthew telling of this in respect of the physical and etheric bodies, Luke in respect of the astral-body and the bearer of the ego.

Mark on the other hand does not concern himself with that which advanced towards the Sun-being; but tells us of the Sun-Aura, the great body of light, the Spiritual Light whose power and activity streamed through space and was active within the form of Christ Jesus. He therefore begins his Gospel with the Baptism of John, when the Light of the World came down to earth. In the Gospel of John we are told of the soul of this Sun-spirit—of the Logos or Sun-word—its most inward essence. This is why the Gospel of John is the most inward of all the Gospels. The facts are distributed, and the complicated nature of Christ Jesus described from four different sides. All the four Evangelists tell of the Christ in Jesus of Nazareth, but each of them feels constrained to keep to the point from which he makes his start, the point concerning which he first attained clairvoyance so that he might be able to describe this very complicated Being.

It is well that we should review this once more, so that it may really penetrate the soul. Matthew's attention is directed to the birth of the Jesus of the Solomon line he describes the development of the forces of the physical and etheric bodies, and tells how these sheaths were later discarded by Zarathustra, and how he passed on to the Jesus of the Nathan line all he had acquired while in the physical and etheric body of the Solomon Jesus. Matthew has then to trace further what he does not describe at the beginning, the fate of all that which as qualities and consequences had passed over from the Solomon Jesus to the Nathan Jesus. His attention is not so much directed to what was elemental in the nature of the astral body and ego-bearer of the Nathan Jesus, but to that which had been passed on to him from his own, the Solomon Jesus. And as he describes the Sun-being Who came from above, he is mainly concerned with telling of the qualities that could only be possessed by Jesus because he had an etheric and astral body that had been built up by the Solomon Jesus. These qualities could naturally be remarked in the Christ, for they were there, but that part of Christ Jesus which had attracted his attention from the first, he continues to describe most exactly, for this was for him the most important.

The writer of the Gospel of Mark tells from the first of the great descending Sun-spirit; he describes no earthly Being; that which walked the earth in human form provided for him only the means by which the nature of the Spirit that worked within it might be revealed. He draws our attention to the facts that appeal most to him, namely, the way in which the forces of the Sun-spirit worked. Hence many of the things related in the Gospels of Matthew and of Mark are the same, but they are told from different points of view. The first describes more the character of the sheaths, showing especially how qualities which were apparent in later years had already been present in early youth, and describing these so that we see how they worked. The writer of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, only makes use of the physical Jesus in order to reveal to us the earthly activities of the Sun-spirit. This he does to the smallest detail. If you wish really to understand the Gospels in these details you must bear in mind that the Evangelists fixed their attention on that which had attracted them from the beginning

Hence the writer of the Gospel of Luke keeps his eyes fixed on what is important to him, namely, the astral body and the bearer of the ego. What Christ Jesus experienced as a physical person does not interest him so much, but rather the feelings and perceptions of the astral body and the ego-bearer. All tenderness and compassion come from the astral body, and Christ Jesus could only be the Being of compassion He was, because He possessed the astral body of the Nathan Jesus. So this writer draws attention from the first to the compassion of Christ Jesus, and all the things He could accomplish, because He bore within Him this special astral body.

The writer of the Gospel of John turns his attention to the most exalted Power working on earth—the inner force of the Sun-Spirit, brought down through the instrumentality of Jesus. Neither does the physical life interest him particularly, but he looks to the Highest, to the pure Sun-Logos; the physical Jesus is for him only the means by which he can trace the relationship of the Sun-Logos to man. That which attracts his attention in the beginning, holds it to the end.

When we look on sleeping humanity we see our external sheaths, our physical and etheric bodies. In these two members live all the forces that have come to us from divine beings who, through mi1licns and millions of years have worked at erecting this temple of the physical body. In this temple we have lived since Lemurian times, and have defiled it ever more and more. It was constructed for us originally during the Saturn, Sun, and Moon ages of evolution. In it divine beings have lived and worked constructively. Looking at our physical body we can say: This is a temple provided for us by the gods; gods who have constructed this temple for us out of solid substance. And in the ether body we have that which contains the finer substances of our being; we are only unable to see these because through the influences of Lucifer and Ahriman we have become incapable of doing so. In this ether body lives also that which appertains to the Sun in it resound the actively formative Sphere-harmonies which the gods perceive behind all purely physical nature. So of the ether body we can say: Exalted Beings live in it, Gods that are closely related to the Sun-Spirits.

In this way we must regard our physical and etheric bodies as the most perfect members of our being. When we have forsaken them in sleep, when they slip from us, they are at once filled with the life and activity of divine beings.

The writer of the Gospel of Matthew keeps the physical body of Christ Jesus before him as his main object through all the Gospel, as it was his main object from the first. The materially physical body, however, no longer existed, this had been given up in its twelfth year; but the divine part—its forces—passed over into the other physical body, that of the Nathan Jesus. The reason why the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth was so perfect was that he had filled it with the forces he derived from the body of the Solomon Jesus.

Let us now try to picture in what way the writer of this Gospel regarded the Jesus dying on the cross. He had always kept his attention fixed on that which it was his special mission to describe, that of which he tells in the beginning; but now the spiritual part forsakes the physical body, and what is godlike departs with it. So the attention of the writer of the Gospel is directed to the separation of the inner being of Christ Jesus from this Divinity in His physical nature. And the ancient cry which was always heard in the Mysteries when the spiritual nature of a man forsook his physical body to gaze into spiritual worlds—‘My God, my God, how hast thou glorified me!’—is altered by Matthew; so that with his attention fixed on the physical body he says, ‘My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me!’ ‘Thou has gone from me! This is what he exclaims. It is on this ‘forsaking’ that the writer of the Gospel of Matthew fixes his attention at this moment.

The author of the Gospel of Mark, on the other hand, describes the approach of the external forces of the Sun-Aura, and tells how the Sun-Aura, the body of the Sun-Being unites with the etheric body. This etheric body is in the same situation as ours when we sleep. As our external powers go forth from us when we sleep so they went forth from Jesus at His physical death. Hence we find the same cry in the Gospel of Mark.

The writer of the Gospel of Luke also directs his attention at the death of Christ Jesus to that which claimed it in the beginning: to the astral body and ego-bearer. Therefore he does not make use of the same words. His attention is directed mainly to other facts, to facts connected with the astral body, which at this moment attained its climax of compassion and love. Hence he renders the cry as ‘Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do!’

This is an expression of tenderness that could only come from such an astral body as the writer of the Gospel of Luke directs our attention to from the first; and the highest development of humility and devotion resulting from this is what claims his attention at the last. Therefore he gives the last words of Christ Jesus as ‘Father, into Thy hands I commend My Spirit!’

John tells us of what, though certainly derived from the earth, was to be realized by man in the ordering of the earth, the meaning of earthly organization as it is contained in the Sun-Word. His attention is, therefore, directed mainly to what, as organization, was accomplished from the Cross on Golgotha. He describes to us how at this moment the Christ establishes a higher Brotherhood than that of blood-relationship. The former brotherhood arose through the blood. Mary was the mother of the child according to the blood. But that which was to unite soul with soul in love was inaugurated by Christ Jesus.

He gave to the disciple whom He loved not his mother according to the blood, but He gave to him his true mother in Spirit. Thus, renewing old bonds which had been lost to humanity, the words heard from the Cross come down to us in a new sense: ‘Behold thy Son!’ and ‘Behold thy Mother!’

That which as organizing quality lay here at the foundation of a new kind of fellowship is contained in the Life-ether, which organizes life, and which streamed into the earth in the Deed of Christ. Thus, behind all that the Evangelists tell us, we have a single act—the Deed of Christ; but each tells of it from the point of view which he took up from the beginning. The reason is that each of the Evangelists was absorbed in what his clairvoyant vision revealed to him and which he was fitted to receive; the rest passed him by. We now realize that this all-comprehensive event, which is described to us from four sides, is not full of contradictions. Once we are able to gather these different points of view into one we learn to understand it just because it is so described. It then also seems quite natural that the confession of Peter, with which we dealt in the last lecture, is only found in the Gospel of Matthew, and not in the others.

Mark describes the Christ as the Sun-Force, as a universal cosmic force at work in the world, which is now to work in a new way. It is the majestic power of the Sun-Aura in its elemental activity of which he tells. Luke, in speaking of the inner nature of Christ Jesus, describes preferably the astral body, the single human individual, man as he lives in himself; for it is in the astral-body that man lives in himself, here in his deepest individuality, here he develops within his inner self. Man does not form fellowships primarily by means of his astral body; the community-building capacity by which he enters into relationship with other men appears in the etheric body. Luke has, therefore, no inclination to tell us of the founding of any fellowship. Neither has the writer of the Gospel of John, who describes to us the ego-being. But Matthew, who describes Christ Jesus as man, has special inducement to speak of those human relationships established by the God Who once and only once dwelt within a human form. He is constrained to lay special stress on the relationships, the fellowships that God, as man, was able to establish among men, a relationship which could be regarded as a ‘Community,’ as an association in which many dwell together. The human aspect of Christ Jesus is what he describes, because this was the aspect to which he turned his attention in the beginning, and he shows how Christ worked as man through the physical and etheric body he had assumed.

When we have gained an inner understanding of this, we find it natural that the expression which has stirred up so much controversy, ‘Thou art Peter, and on this rock will I establish my community’ could only be found in the Gospel of Matthew. When we look at all the discussions of modern theologians of most varied schools concerning these words, we really only find particular and unique reasons for accepting them or rejecting them; nowhere, however, do we find an understanding for their deeper meaning. Those who reject them do so because the external community of the Catholic Church upholds them; for the external organization of this church is founded on them. That they are misused in this sense is no proof that they were originally introduced to support the Catholic Church. Those who reject them do not really know what to bring forward against them, for they do not see the misinterpretations. These gentlemen are in a strange position. Some state that the Gospel of Mark is the original Gospel, that to it was then added those of Matthew and Luke, which, they say, are to some extent copied and enlarged from it, and that it had occurred to the writers of the Gospel of Matthew, and of Luke, to insert these words. They specially state this with regard to the Gospel of Matthew, because they say he wished to support the idea of the community by inserting the words: ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock I will found my community.’

In any case parts of the text are of little help in the rendering of certain passages, because it is impossible to say regarding some ancient texts that this or that is the word actually used; but as regards these words in the Gospel of Matthew it is a fact that they belong to what is most certain in it, for here we have no possible philological reason for doubt. Many sayings may be open to doubt in such complicated communications, but from the standpoint of philology no objections can be brought against these two statements ‘Thou art the Christ, the Son of the living God,’ and the other, ‘Thou art Peter, on this rock will I build my community, and the gates of hell shall not prevail against it.’ No text exists to which objections can be made in respect of these sayings. Perhaps it was hoped that from texts more recently discovered some contradiction of these words might be found, but the passages to which I refer are not found in these texts, portions of which are very much perished.

This at least is the outcome of philological research. Naturally you must rely on what is reported by those who have seen these documents. Of this passage we can state that no other rendering of it is possible, and from the whole nature of the Gospel of Matthew we can well see that this must be so. Christ Jesus is here described as a man. Once we have this key we can understand the Gospel of Matthew and we can also understand the parables told by Christ Jesus to His disciples and to those who were outside his immediate circle.

In the last lecture we showed how man evolves upwards from below until he unfolds the spiritual-soul like a blossom, until he has developed so far that the Christ-impulse comes to meet him.

The five principles of human nature which developed in man during the five epochs of civilization—the ether body, astral body, sentient-soul, rational-soul, and spiritual-soul evolve upwards from below. These can be so used, trained, and developed that they acquire what makes it possible for them—when the time is ripe—to be permeated by the Christ-impulse. In future ages all humanity will be able to develop so that they can participate in the Christ, but they must first develop fittingly these five principles of their being from below. If this is not done, if through succeeding incarnations they do not concern themselves with the development of these principles, then the Christ can come to them; but they cannot unite themselves with Him. They have no oil in their lamps These five. principles may be left without oil. Those who have poured no oil into their lamps are represented very beautifully in the parable of ‘the five foolish Virgins.’ Those who had not attended to their lamps in time could not unite themselves with Christ; but the other five who had put oil in their lamps could in the right hour do so.

All the parables founded on numbers are profoundly illuminating as regards the impulse brought by Christ to men.

Further, He makes it clear to those who regard His teaching outwardly, that many external thing must not be considered merely in a material sense, or in the most obvious way, but rather as symbols for something else. He wishes to point out to them the nature of their own thoughts. He asks for a coin, and showing them the likeness of Caesar imprinted on it, points out that something more is expressed by the coin than is merely contained in the metal, namely, its connection with a certain ruler, with a certain Empire. ‘What in this belongs to Caesar, render to him; it is his, and is contained in his likeness on the coin, not in the metal itself.’ ‘But learn,’ He also wished to teach them, ‘to regard men, and what is in them, in a like manner, for they are the temples of the living God. Look on men as you would look on a coin, learn, that in them you see the image of God; you will then know that they belong to God.’

All these parables have a much deeper meaning than the trivial one generally accepted. We learn this when we know that Christ did not make use of parables as is customary in the literature of the day. In making use of them He directs them to the whole nature of man, obliging people when they think them out to apply them to their whole nature, not to its separate parts. In this way He shows how, if they are to be shown that something is irrational, they must learn to pass with their thoughts from one realm to another.

For example, people have thought out all kinds of Sun-myths in connection with Buddha, Christ, and others. It became at last too much for one person. He said therefore: ‘With these methods of applying Myths and Constellations to any great event, it is possible to do anything. If someone comes and points out that in the life of Christ we have a Sun-myth, in order to show that Christ Jesus never lived, one can also assert by such methods that Napoleon never lived, and can easily prove it. We might say: In the name of Napoleon we have a rendering of “Apollo”, the initial “N” does not represent a negative in Greek but an intensification; hence Napoleon is N'Apollo—a kind of “Super-Apollo”. The resemblance can be carried still further by the individual who sets out to prove the non-existence of Jesus. A resemblance is found by the German Prof. Drews between the names Jesus, Joses, Jason, etc., etc. Marvellous connections can also be discovered between the name of Napoleon's mother, Letitia, and Leto, the mother of Apollo; further, that Apollo—the Sun—had twelve constellations around him; Napoleon had twelve Marshals, who are nothing more than symbolic expressions for the Zodiacal signs surrounding the sun. It is not unimportant that the hero of the Napoleon myth had six brothers and sisters, he making the seventh, just as the planets are seven in number. Behold, therefore, Napoleon did not live!

This is a very clever satire on the symbolic explanations so frequently employed. Men never really learn, otherwise they would have known that according to these methods—which they even employ to-day—it would have been proved long since that Napoleon, for example, never lived. But humanity never learns, for according to the same methods it is proved again to-day that Jesus never lived.

Such things show how necessary it is that we should not approach what the Gospels have to tell concerning the greatest Event in all the world, without preparation. We must realize also that it is exactly here that Anthroposophy ma so easily go wrong. For even our movement is by no means free from playing with all kinds of Symbolism drawn from the world of the stars.

I wished, therefore, especially in this cycle of lectures, where I have spoken of the greatest Event in human evolution as having been revealed in the language of the stars, to point out the true way in which this language is employed when what is referred to is really understood.

With this preparation, let us approach the scene in which the Gospels culminate. I have already referred to the baptism and the history of the life and death of Christ Jesus as two stages of initiation. To this I have only to add that after He had led His disciples to.the point where they could perceive the going forth of the innermost being of a man into the Macrocosm, where they could see beyond death, He accomplished a resurrection before them, but not in the trivial sense in which it is often understood. This took place absolutely as told in the Gospel of Matthew. Let us take the words just as they stand—and as clearly stated also in the Gospel of John—and understand that what Paul says is true when he tells us: Through what he had experienced on the way to Damascus, he had seen the Christ, as the Risen One!

Paul lays special stress on the fact that what was revealed to him was the same as was revealed to the other brethren, to the twelve, and to the five hundred also, at one time. The Christ was seen by him, as others saw him after the resurrection. This is amply indicated in the Gospels, where we read that Mary of Magdala, who had seen the Christ a few days before, seeing Him after the resurrection takes Him to be the gardener, for she finds no resemblance to Him she had known before. If He had really looked as He had a few days before, it would have been impossible for in this case it would have been an abnormal fact.

No one would believe you if you said that you could not recognize someone you had seen a few days before, if he reappeared in the same form a few days later. We have, therefore, to realize clearly that a change had in fact taken place. Reading the Gospels closely we arrive at the necessary conclusion, that through all that had taken place in Palestine, through the Mystery of Golgotha, the eyes of the disciples had been opened, and that they were able to recognize the Christ as He was, as the Spirit penetrating, and working, through the whole world. They recognized Him for what He was, after He had given over His physical body to the earth, and saw that He remained just as powerfully active for the earth as He had been before.

All this is made amply clear to us in the Gospel of Matthew, in words perhaps the most remarkable to be found in any document. We are clearly shown that the writer of this Gospel desires to inform us: Christ appeared once upon a time in a human physical body, but this event is not merely an event, it is an Impulse—an Original Cause. It has results, it has an effect.

The Sun-Word or Sun-aura, of which Zarathustra once spoke as being outside the earth, has through the life of Christ Jesus become united with the earth, and has remained so. Before this, what was later united with the earth was not so united with it.

It is fitting that we Anthroposophists should understand this fact. We then also understand that it was the risen Christ Who revealed Himself to the eyes of the disciples, now become clairvoyant, and showed them how as Spirit He was now interwoven with the earth and could say to them: ‘Go forth and make disciples of all the nations, baptizing them in the name of the Father, the Son, and the Holy Spirit, and teaching them to observe all things whichsoever I commanded you! and lo! I am with you always, even unto the end of the Earth-age!’

It is the mission of Spiritual Science to help us to understand what was then beginning; that the Aura of the earth has been united with the Sun-Aura, and that it can be seen by those whose spiritual eyes are opened, that this Sun-Aura, in the Earth-Aura, which was visible to Paul, can also be heard when our inward ears are opened to hear the Sun-word as it was heard by Lazarus, he who had been initiated by Christ Jesus Himself.

The purpose of Spiritual Science is to interpret these facts to us. It has also to interpret for us what has taken place with regard to the spiritual evolution of the world. In doing this Spiritual Science actually establishes that which Christ Jesus desired to establish, and does so in the sense of the Gospel of Matthew.

There is one very beautiful saying in the Gospel of Matthew that is generally wrongly translated. The saying: ‘I am not come down to remove peace from earth, but to remove the sword.’ This most beautiful message of peace has unfortunately in the course of time been changed into its very opposite. In order gradually to deliver the earth from that which brings strife and disharmony among men, the Christ-Being had impressed Himself—His own nature—on the spiritual life of the Earth. Spiritual Science will establish peace when, in this sense, she has become so truly Christ-like that she unites all religions. She can then unite not only what is in our immediate neighbourhood, but when the act of the greatest of all Peacemakers is understood, she can establish peace over the whole earth.

It is certainly not in accordance with the greatest Peacemaker that fanatical people should go from one part of the earth to another and impose a narrow Christian teaching on a people whose conditions make such a teaching unsuitable in the form it has taken among another people.

Great mistakes were made when teaching concerning Christ was carried over to the East in our time, and imposed on people here and there.

It has often been pointed out to you as Anthroposophists that the Christ does not belong only to Christians; that in reality the same being was referred to by Zarathustra when he spoke of Ahura Mazdao, and by the seven Indian Rishis when they spoke of Vicva Karman. We live in the West, and we know that it is Christ who is spoken of, when in the East other words are used. We strive to understand the Christ so that this understanding is in accordance with human evolution—with the further progress of humanity. And we clearly realize that neither discernment nor revelation can give us information concerning Christ which turns men from Him, that only those things vouchsafe information to us concerning Him, which consciously bear within them the living content of Christ Himself. And we know when we speak in the right way of Vicva Karman and Ahura Mazdao to those who deny Christ—when we do not force names on them—that they can attain of themselves to an understanding of the Christ. We do not wish to force the Christ on them in name, we realize clearly when we are not only Anthroposophists but Occultists that names mean little, that it is the Being that matters. Were we convinced but for a moment that we could express the being who is in the Christ by any other name we would do so What we are concerned with is the truth, not with our prejudices because of living in one corner of the earth and belonging to one people. It must not be said of us that we understand the Christ through means not fitted to an understanding of Him, because outside His influence, this would be impossible for anyone. Christ can be found also by other nations, but He must be sought by means derived from Himself. People should not reproach Anthroposophists for wishing to study Christianity in forms not derived from Christianity itself. Christ can not be comprehended by Oriental names. He is not understood through them at all; such people look close past Him, thinking perhaps that they have seen Him.

What does it mean when people put forward the objection that we view Christ from a theosophical or oriental standpoint? Have we to deny that the Christ came to us from the East? We have no such wish, but people seek in this way to force us to take the West to the East, and to form a conception of Christ in accordance with the East. This must not and cannot be, not from any aversion, but because Eastern ideas, which have a very ancient origin, cannot reach out to grasp the idea of Christ, and because the Christ can only be absolutely and entirely understood through that line of evolution into which first Abraham and then Moses entered. But the being of Zarathustra passed on into Moses, and we have to seek him there, to where his influence has extended.

Further, we must not seek Zarathustra in the ancient Zarathustrian literature, but where he reincorporated in Jesus of Nazareth! We must consider evolution!

In the same way we must not look for the Buddha as he was six hundred years before our era, but where the writer of the Gospel of Luke tells us he is to be found, where his light streamed from on high, after he had evolved from Bodhisattva to Buddha, and shone down into the astral body of the Jesus of the Gospel of Luke. Here the Buddha is to be found, and here we learn to know him in his further progress.

It can be seen from this how religions absolutely agree, and work together to bring about the advance of humanity. It is not a matter of preaching the tenets of Anthroposophy, but that we place them in a setting of living feeling—that we do not merely talk of tolerance and remain intolerant because we have a prejudice in favour of one religious system or another. We are only tolerant when we measure each with its own standards and understand each for itself.

It is certainly not our fault nor the fault of our special prejudices that many religious systems have apparently co-operated to bring Christianity about. In spiritual realms, where the great spiritual beings have worked, things have progressed in a different way from on Earth, where those who confess these various religions are active. Some of these earthly confessors, for example, summoned a conference in Tibet to establish an orthodox teaching in the name of Buddha at the very time when the actual Buddha had come down to inspire the astral body of the Jesus spoken of in the Gospel of Luke. So it always is. The confessors of a faith hold fast to that which has continued working on earth; meanwhile divine beings have carried the work on further so that mankind may advance. Humanity makes most progress when men try to understand their Gods, when they try to advance with them. Such a thought ought to give us a living feeling, a living understanding, of what we glimpse in the different Gospels.

You have seen that in studying the three Gospels so far dealt with we have to recognize something different in each of them. When to these we shall have added the study of the Gospel of Mark we shall find that it reveals a very intimate knowledge of Cosmology. Ahura Mazdao, who is active in all space, can be described in a right connection in this Gospel, just as the secret concerning the blood, concerning the connection of the individual with the race from which he has sprung is described in the Gospel of Matthew.

Accept what I have ventured to describe in these lectures as one side of the great Christ Event, and realize that far from everything has been said concerning it. The time is perhaps not yet come when all that might be said concerning this Great Mystery can be said, even in small circles such as ours. The best result that can come from the presentations of these facts is that we accept them not only with our understanding and intellect, but that we associate them with the innermost phases of our soul life—with the deepest feelings of our hearts—and there let them live on.

The words of the Gospels are words that, when we receive them into our hearts and really understand them, become powers; powers that fill us and develop a marvellous life-force within us. To-day, when I have to say the final words in connection with this course of lectures on the Gospel of Matthew, I should like to say something I have frequently said before, and which I should like especially to associate with this humanly beautiful document of our Christian records—the Gospel of Matthew.

What strikes us most when reading the Gospel of Matthew which from the very first brings before us the manhood of Christ Jesus?

Though recognizing the great difference between any other earthly man and that man who could receive the Christ, yet in all humility we would say that what strikes us most forcibly is the value of man, what he is worthy of. Then, although our nature is far far removed from that of the nature of Jesus of Nazareth, we may yet venture to say: We bear our human nature within us, and this human nature shows itself to be such that it can receive into it the Son of God, the Son of the living God; so that from this acceptance the promise can spring that the Son of God will from this time forward remain connected with the earth, and that when the earth will have reached its goal all men will be permeated with the substance and nature of Christ, in so far as they have desired to receive this into themselves. We have need of humility if we are to cherish such an ideal. If not so cherished it develops pride and conceit in us; we then think only of what we may become as men, and do not sufficiently keep in mind how little we have so far to show. This ideal must be experienced with humility. When understood in this way it rises before us with such majesty and power, and is so overwhelming in its splendour that we are forced to be humble. Our humility need not overwhelm us, however, for we have the Reality of this ideal before us, and when we understand the Reality, however small our power may be, yet it will bear us ever higher and higher towards our Divine Goal.

The Rosicrucian Mystery Play strikes the entire scale in tones as we need them in ascending progress—firstly in the second scene where Johannes Thomasius stands shattered under the overwhelming impression from the words, ‘O man, know thou thyself;’ secondly, where in the ninth scene, under the impression of the words, ‘O man, feel and experience thou thyself;’ he feels exultingly raised to the wide spaces of Heaven. Keeping this before us, and with help from it, we can understand the majesty and grandeur which meets us in the Jesus of the Gospel of Matthew, revealing as it does our own littleness and demanding our humility, but at the same time pointing to the inner truth and inner reality which lift us out of all that seems like an abyss of our own littleness, compared with what we should be and can become.

If frequently we are conscious of feeling crushed when comparing what we are with the human divine greatness that can be in man, yet if we have but the goodwill we can experience something of the divine Impulse coming from the ‘Son of the living God,’ we can call to mind Christ Jesus, who Himself exhorts us, here where as men we experience the ego of which He is the most exalted Representative, crying to us in clear-cut tones for all the ages to come, ‘O man, experience thyself.’

When we understand the humanity of the Gospel of Matthew in this way—and hence it is the Gospel which lies most near to us—there streams to us from it the courage to live, the power and hope to stand fast, whatever our life-work may be. If we do so, we shall have best understood what it was intended that these words should convey to us.

Now that we are resuming activities in the Berlin Group it is well to think for a short time of the studies in which we have been engaged since last year.

You will remember that about a year ago, in connection with the General Meeting of the German Section, I gave a lecture to the Berlin Group with the title: The Sphere of the Bodhisattvas¹ In that lecture on the mission of the Bodhisattvas in the world my purpose was to introduce the subject to which our main attention was to be directed in the Group meetings last winter. Our study was concerned with the Christ-problem, particularly in relation to the Gospel of St. Matthew and also in relation to the Gospels of St. John and St. Luke. And I indicated that at some later date we should be preparing for a still deeper study of the Christ-problem in connection with the Gospel of St. Mark.

In these studies we were not attempting a mere exposition of the Gospels. I have often spoken of this in perhaps rather extreme terms, and made it clear that Spiritual Science would still have been able to describe the events in Palestine even if there had been no historical records of them. The real authority for what we have to say about the Christ Event is not to be found in any written document but in the eternal, spiritual record known as the Akasha Chronicle, decipherable only by clairvoyant consciousness. I have often explained what this really means. We compare what has first been learned from spiritual investigations with what is recorded in the Gospels or in other New Testament sources about the events in Palestine. And in the end we recognise that in order to read the Gospel records as they should be read, we must first—without reference to them—have investigated the mysteries connected with the happenings in Palestine, and that precisely because of this independent approach the value we attach to the Gospels and the reverence we feel for them, greatly increase.

But if we take into account not only the immediate interests of our present gathering but also the fact that contemporary culture needs a new understanding of the recorded sources of Christianity, we shall expect Spiritual Science not merely to satisfy our own intellectual difficulties about the events in Palestine but also to translate into the language of present-day culture what it says about the significance of the Christ Event for the whole evolution of humanity. It would not do to limit ourselves to the contributions made in previous centuries towards an understanding of the problem and the figure of Christ. If that were sufficient for the cultural needs of the modern age we should not find so many people unable to reconcile their sense of truth with accepted Christian tradition and who in one way or another actually repudiate the accounts of the events in Palestine as they have been handed down and believed in for centuries. All this makes it clear that modern culture needs a new understanding, a new enunciation, of the truths of Christianity.

Among many other aids to the investigation of Christian truths one is particularly effective. It consists in extending our vision and our feeling and perception beyond the horizons within which, in recent centuries, man has had to seek an understanding of the spiritual world. Here is a simple indication of how these horizons can be widened.

Goethe—to take as an example this master-spirit of recent European culture—was, as we all know, a man of titanic genius. Many studies have helped us to understand what depths of spiritual insight lay in Goethe's personality and to see that we ourselves can attain a high level of spiritual understanding through contemplating the texture of his soul. But however good our knowledge of Goethe may be, however deeply we steep ourselves in what he has to offer, there is something we shall not find in him, although it is essential if our vision is to be broadened in the right way and our horizon widened for our most urgent spiritual needs. There is no indication that Goethe had any inkling of certain things we can learn about and benefit from to-day—I mean, the concepts of the spiritual evolution of humanity which first became accessible to us in the nineteenth century through interpretations of documentary records of the spiritual achievements of the East. We there find many concepts which, far from making an understanding of the Christ-problem more difficult, if rightly applied help us to realise the nature of Christ Jesus. I therefore believe that there could be no better introduction to the study of the Christ-problem than an exposition of the mission of the Bodhisattvas—as they are named in Oriental philosophy. They are the great spiritual Individualities whose task it is from time to time to influence evolution. In Western culture there had for centuries been no knowledge of concepts such as that of the Bodhisattvas: yet only by mastering such concepts can we acquire some measure of knowledge of what Christ has been for mankind, what He can be and will continue to be.

So we find that study of an extensive phase of the spiritual development of mankind can be fruitful for the civilisation and culture of our own time. From another point of view as well it is important, when reviewing past centuries, to emphasise clearly the difference between men living at the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries and men living in the eighteenth or nineteenth centuries, as well as the fact that until about a century ago very little was known in Europe about Buddha and Buddhism. Finally, we must remember that the impulse leading to the goal of our endeavours is the feeling we have when we confront great spiritual truths. For what really matters is not so much the knowledge that someone may wish to acquire, but rather the warmth of feeling, the power of perception, the nobility of will, with which his soul confronts the great truths of humanity. In our Groups the prevailing tone and atmosphere are more important than the actual words spoken. These feelings and perceptions vary greatly but the most important of all is reverence for the great truths and the feeling that we can approach them only with awe and veneration; we must realise that we cannot hope to grasp a great reality through a few concepts and ideas casually acquired and co-ordinated.

I have often said that we cannot accurately visualise a tree that is not actually in front of us if we have drawn a sketch of it from one side only, but that we must go round it and sketch it from many different sides. Only by assembling these different pictures can we obtain a complete impression of the tree. This analogy should make clear to us what our attitude should be to the great spiritual truths. We can make no progress at all in any real (or apparent) knowledge of higher things by approaching them from one side only. Whether or not there is truth in the particular view we may hold, we should always be humble enough to recognise that all our ideas are, and cannot help being, one-sided. If we intensify such a feeling of humility we shall welcome all ideas which throw light on any possible aspect of the great facts of existence. The age in which we are living makes this necessary, and the necessity will be increasingly borne in upon us. Consequently we no longer shut ourselves off from other views or from paths to the supreme truths which may differ from our own or from that of contemporary thought. During the course of the last few years, in considering the fruits of Western culture, we have tried always to maintain the principle of true humility in knowledge. I have never had the audacity to attempt to give one single survey of the events which comprise what we call the Christ-problem. On the contrary, I have always said that we were approaching the problem now from one point of view, now from another. And I have always emphasised that not even then has the problem been exhausted but that much further patient work is necessary.

The reason for studying the four Gospels separately is that we can then approach the Christ-problem from four different standpoints. We find that the four Gospels do, in fact, present four different aspects, and we are reminded that this stupendous problem must not be approached from one side only but at least from the four directions of the spiritual heavens indicated by the names of the four Evangelists: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John. If this is done we shall come increasingly to understand the problems and the great truths which are needed for the life of the human soul; and on the other hand, we shall never say that the one form of truth we may have grasped is the whole truth.

All our studies this last winter have been directed towards evoking a mood of humility in knowledge. Indeed without such humility no progress in the spiritual life is possible. Again and again I have laid stress upon the basic qualities essential for any progress in spiritual knowledge, and anyone who has followed the lectures given here week by week will confirm this.

Progress in spiritual knowledge—this is of course one of the basic impulses of our Movement. What does it mean to the soul? It fulfils the soul's worthiest needs and longings and provides the support which everyone conscious of his true humanity requires. Moreover this support is completely in line with the intellectual needs of the present day.

The progress in knowledge made possible by Spiritual Science should throw light on things which cannot be investigated by our ordinary senses but only by the faculties which belong to man as a spiritual being. The great questions about man's place in the physical world and what lies beyond the manifestations of the senses in this world, the truths concerning what lies beyond life and death—these questions meet a profound need, indeed the most human of all needs, of man's soul. Even if for various reasons we hold aloof from these questions and succeed for a time in deceiving ourselves by maintaining that science cannot investigate them, that the necessary faculties do not exist, nevertheless in the end the need and longing to find answers to them never disappear. The origin of what we see developing in the course of childhood and youth, the destination of what lies harboured in our soul as our bodily constitution begins to wilt and wither, in short, how man is connected with a spiritual world—these questions arise from a deep human need and man can dispense with the answers to them only when he deceives himself about his true nature.

But because these questions spring from so deep a need, because the soul cannot live in peace and contentment if it does not find the answers, it is only natural that people should look for an easy, comfortable way of finding them. Although many people would like to deny it, these questions have become particularly urgent in every domain of life, and what a variety of paths to the answers are offered to us! It can be said without exaggeration that the path of Spiritual Science is the hardest of them all. Many of you will admit that some of the sciences to-day are very difficult, and you will hesitate to tackle them because you are frightened by what you will have to master if you are really to understand them. The path of Spiritual Science may appear to be easier than, let us say, that of mathematics or botany or some other branch of natural science. Yet in the strictest sense the path of Spiritual Science is more difficult than that of any other science. This can be said without exaggeration. Why, then, does it seem easier to you? Only because it stirs the interests of the soul so forcefully and makes so compelling an appeal. It may be the most difficult of all the paths along which man is led into the spiritual world to-day, but we should not forget that it will lead to the highest within us. Is it not natural that the path to the highest should also be the hardest? Hence we should never be frightened by or blind to the inevitable difficulties of the path of Spiritual Science.

Among many features of this path, one has repeatedly been mentioned here. A person wishing to follow it must, to begin with, seriously imbibe what spiritual investigation has already been able to present about the mysteries and realities of the spiritual world. Here we touch upon a very important chapter of progress in Spiritual Science. People speak glibly about a spiritual science that cannot be corroborated, about spiritual facts alleged to have been witnessed and investigated by some initiate or seer, and they ask: Would it not be better simply to show us how we can quickly make our own way upwards into regions from which to glimpse the spiritual world? Why are we constantly told: This is what it looks like, this is how it appears to such and such a seer? Why are we not shown how to make the ascent quickly ourselves?

There are good reasons why facts which have been investigated about the spiritual world are communicated in general terms before details are given of the methods of training whereby the soul itself can be led into those higher spheres. We gain something very definite if we apply ourselves reverently to the study of what spiritual investigations have revealed from the spiritual world. I have often said that the facts of the spiritual world must be investigated and can be discovered only by clairvoyant consciousness; but I have as often said that once someone possessed of clairvoyant consciousness has observed these facts in the spiritual world and then communicates them, they must be communicated in such a way that even without clairvoyance, everyone will be able to test them by reference to the normal feeling for truth present in every soul, and by applying to them his own unprejudiced reasoning faculties. Anyone endowed with genuine clairvoyant consciousness will always communicate the facts about the spiritual world in such a way that everyone who wishes to test what he says will be able to do so without clairvoyance. But at the same time he will communicate them in a form whereby their true value and significance can be conveyed to a human soul.

What, then, does this communication and presentation of spiritual facts mean to the soul? It means that anyone who has some idea of conditions in the spiritual world can direct and order his life, his thoughts, his feelings and his perceptions in accordance with his relationship to the spiritual world. In this sense every communication of spiritual facts is important, even if the recipient cannot himself investigate those facts with clairvoyant consciousness. Indeed for the investigator himself these facts acquire a human value only when he has clothed them in a form in which they can be accessible to everyone. However much a clairvoyant may be able to see and investigate in the spiritual world, it remains valueless both to himself and to others until he can bring the fruits of his vision into the range of ordinary cognition and express them in ideas and concepts which can be grasped by a natural sense of truth and by sound reasoning. In fact, if his findings are to be of any value to himself he must first have understood them fundamentally; their value begins only at the point where the possibility of reasoned proof begins.

There is a radical test which can be applied to what I have just said. Among many other valuable spiritual truths and communications you will certainly attach very great importance to those concerning what a man can take with him through the gate of death of the spiritual truths he has assimilated on the physical plane between birth and death. Or, to put it differently: How much remains to a man who, by cultivating the spiritual life, has mastered the substance of communications relating to the spiritual world? The answer is: Exactly as much remains to him as he has fundamentally grasped and understood and has been able to translate into the language of ordinary human consciousness.

Picture to yourselves a man who may have made quite exceptional discoveries in the spiritual world through clairvoyant observation but has never clothed them in the language of ordinary life. What happens to such a man? All his discoveries are extinguished after death; only so much remains of value and significance as has been translated into language which, in any given period, is the language of a healthy sense of truth.

It is naturally of the greatest importance that clairvoyants should be able to bring tidings from the spiritual world and make them fruitful for their fellow-men. Our age needs such wisdom and cannot make progress without it. It is essential that such communications should be made available to contemporary culture. Even if this is not recognised to-day, in fifty or a hundred years it will be universally acknowledged that civilisation and culture can make no progress unless men become convinced of the existence of spiritual wisdom and realise that humanity must die unless spiritual wisdom is assimilated. And even if all space were conquered for the purposes of intercommunication, mankind would still have to face the prospect of the death of culture if spiritual wisdom were rejected. This is true beyond all shadow of doubt. Insight into the spiritual world is absolutely essential.

In addition to the value of spiritual wisdom for single individuals after death there is its value for the progress of humanity on the Earth. To have the right idea here, distinction must be made between the clairvoyant who has been able to investigate the spiritual world and express his findings in terms of healthy human reason, and a man whose karma while he was incarnated made it impossible for him to see into the spiritual world, and who had consequently to rely upon hearing from others about the findings of spiritual research. What is the difference between the fruits enjoyed after death by two such individuals? How do the effects of spiritual truths differ in an Initiate and in one who knows them only by hearsay and cannot himself see into the spiritual world? Is the Initiate better off than a man who could only hear these truths from someone else?

For humanity in general, vision of spiritual worlds is, of course, worth more than absence of vision. A seer is in touch with those worlds and can teach and help forward the development not only of men but of spiritual beings as well. Clairvoyant consciousness, then, is of special value. For the individual, however, knowledge alone has value and in this respect the most gifted clairvoyant is not to be distinguished from one who has merely heard the communications without being able in the present incarnation to look into the spiritual world himself. Whatever spiritual wisdom we have assimilated will be fruitful after death, no matter whether or not we ourselves are seers.

One of the great moral laws of the spiritual world is here presented to us. Admittedly, our modern conception of morality may not be subtle enough to understand its implications fully. No advantage is gained by individuals—except perhaps a merely selfish gratification—because their karma has made it possible for them to see into the spiritual world. Everything we acquire for our individual life must be acquired on the physical plane and must be moulded into forms appropriate to that plane. If a Buddha or a Bodhisattva stands at a higher level than other human individualities among the hierarchies of the spiritual world, it is because he has acquired these higher qualities through a number of incarnations on the physical plane.

Here is an indication of what I mean by the higher morality, the higher ethics, resulting from the spiritual life. Let nobody imagine that he gains any advantage over his fellow-men through developing clairvoyance, for that is simply not so. He makes no progress which can be justified on any ground of self-interest. He achieves progress only in so far as he can be more useful to others. The immorality of egoism can find no place in the spiritual world. A man can gain nothing for himself by spiritual illumination. What he does gain he can gain only as a servant of the world in general, and he gains it for himself only by gaining it for others.

This, then, is the position of the spiritual investigator among his fellow-men. If they are willing to listen to him and assimilate his findings, they make the same progress as he does. This means that spiritual achievement must be employed only to further the general well-being of man, and not for any selfish purposes. There are circumstances when a man is moral not merely of his own volition but because immorality or egoism would be of no advantage. It is also easy to realise that there are dangers in penetrating into the spiritual world without proper preparation. By leading a spiritual life we do not achieve anything which will fulfil a selfish purpose after death. On the other hand, a man may wish to gratify an egotistic purpose in his life on Earth through spiritual development. Even if nothing egotistic can benefit existence in the spiritual world, there may be a wish to fulfil some egotistical purpose on the Earth.

Most people who follow the path leading to higher development are likely to say that they will obviously strive to discard egoism before trying to enter the spiritual world. But believe me, there is no province of life where deception is likely to be as great as it is among those who claim that their endeavours are free from egotistic interests. It is easy enough to say this, but whether it can be a fact is quite another matter. It is a different matter because when a man begins to practise exercises which can lead him into the spiritual world, he then, for the first time, confronts himself as he truly is. In ordinary life very few things are experienced in their true form. A man lives in a web of ideas, of impulses of will, of moral perceptions and conventional actions, all of which originate in his environment, and he seldom stops to ask himself how he should act or think in a given case if his upbringing had not been what it was. If he were to answer this question honestly, he would realise that his shortcomings are very much greater than he has assumed them to be.

The result of practising exercises through which a man learns how to rise into the spiritual world is that he grows beyond the web woven around him through custom, education, environment. He quickly grows beyond all this. In soul and spirit he is stripped naked. The veils with which he has clothed himself and to which he clings in his ordinary feelings and actions, fall away. This accounts for a quite common phenomenon of which I have often spoken.—Before beginning to work at his spiritual development a man may have been a reasonable, possibly also a very intelligent and at the same time, humble person who went through life without committing any particular stupidities. Then, after beginning this development, he may become arrogant and do all sorts of senseless things. He seems to have lost his bearings in life. To those familiar with the spiritual world the reason for this is clear. If we are to maintain balance and a sense of direction in face of what comes to the soul from the spiritual world, two things are necessary. It must not make us giddy or light-headed. In physical life our own organism protects us through what we call in anthroposophical lectures, the 'sense of balance or equilibrium'. Just as in a man's physical body there is something which enables him to keep himself upright—for if the organism is not functioning properly he will get giddy and may fall down—so in the spiritual life there is something which helps him to orientate himself in his relation to the world, and this he must be able to do. Spiritual unsteadiness comes about because what used to support him, namely the external world and his own sense-perceptions, fall away and he has then to rely upon himself alone. The supports have gone and there is a danger of giddiness. When the supports fall away we may easily become arrogant, for arrogance is always latent in us although it may not previously have disclosed itself.

How, then, can we attain the necessary spiritual balance or equilibrium? We must assimilate with diligence, perseverance and dedication the findings of spiritual research which have been expressed in terms harmonising with our normal sense of truth and sound reasoning. It is not out of caprice that I emphasise so repeatedly how necessary it is to study what we call Spiritual Science. I emphasise it not in order that I may have opportunity to speak here often but it is the only thing which can give the firm support we need for spiritual development. Earnest, diligent assimilation of the results of Spiritual Science is the antidote for spiritual `giddiness' and insecurity. And anyone who has experienced this insecurity through having followed a wrong path of spiritual development—although he may think he has been very diligent—should recognise that he has failed to take in what can flow from Spiritual Science. The study of spiritual-scientific facts from every possible aspect—that is what is necessary for us. And that was why, last winter—though our ultimate purpose was to bring home the significance of the Christ Event for humanity—emphasis was laid over and over again upon the fundamental conditions for spiritual progress.

If a man is to make such progress there must be purpose and direction in his life of soul; but he needs something else as well. The soul can indeed acquire assurance through the study of Spiritual Science but it also needs a certain spiritual strength and courage. Courage of the kind necessary for spiritual progress is not essential in ordinary life because from the time of waking to that of going to sleep, our inmost being of soul-and-spirit is embedded in our physical and etheric bodies; and during the night we are inactive and can do no harm. If a man spiritually undeveloped were capable of acting during sleep as well as during waking life, he could do a great deal of harm. But in our physical and etheric bodies there are not only the forces which are active in us as conscious beings, or as thinking and feeling beings, but also those forces at which divine-spiritual Beings have worked through the evolutionary periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun, Old Moon and the Earth itself. Forces from higher spheres are continually active in us and support us. On waking from sleep we give ourselves up to the divine-spiritual Powers which, for our Well-being and blessing, are present in our physical and etheric bodies and lead us through life from morning till evening. Thus the whole spiritual world is active within us; we can do harm to it in many respects but very little to make amends for the damage we have done.

All spiritual development depends upon our inner being, that is to say, our astral body and Ego, becoming free; we have to learn to become clairvoyant in the part of ourselves that is unconscious during sleep, and because it is unconscious can do no harm. What is unconscious in the members of our constitution in which divine-spiritual forces are active, must become conscious. All the strength we have because on waking we are taken in hand by spiritual powers anchored in our physical and etheric bodies, falls away when we become independent of those bodies and clairvoyant perception begins. We withdraw from the forces which have been a buttress for us against the influences working from the external world; but that world remains as it was and we still confront the whole power of its impact. If we are to resist this impact we must develop in our Ego and astral body all the power we otherwise draw from the physical and etheric bodies. This can be achieved if we follow the indications given in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. The aim of all these indications is to impart to our inmost self the strength previously bestowed by higher Beings, the strength which falls away when we lose the external supports provided by our physical and etheric bodies.

Individuals who have not made themselves inwardly strong enough to replace the powers they have discarded when they become independent of the physical and etheric bodies through serious training of the soul—above all through purifying the quality designated as immorality in the external world—these individuals may still be able to acquire faculties enabling them to see into the spiritual world. But what happens then? They become over-sensitive, hypersensitive. They feel as if from every side they are being spiritually buffeted and cannot stand up against the blows rained on them from all sides. One of the important facts to be realised by anyone who aspires to make progress in spiritual knowledge is that inner strength must be developed through the cultivation of the noblest and finest qualities of the soul.

What are these qualities? Egoism will not help us in the spiritual world and indeed makes it impossible to exist there. Naturally, then, the best preparation for the spiritual life is to banish egoism and everything which stimulates selfish prospects of spiritual progress. The more earnestly we adopt this principle the better are our prospects for spiritual progress. Anyone who has to do with these things will often hear a man say that his action was not prompted by egoism. But when such a man is on the point of letting words like this pass his lips, he should check them and admit to himself that he is not really able to insist that there is no trace of egoism in his action. To admit it is much more intelligent, simply because it is more truthful. And it is truth that matters whenever self-knowledge is concerned. In no realm does untruthfulness bring such severe retribution as in the realm of spiritual life. A man should demand truth of himself instead of claiming to be without egoism. At least if we acknowledge our egoism we have a chance to get rid of it!

In regard to the concept of spiritual truth, let me say this. There are people who claim to have seen and experienced all kinds of things in the higher worlds—things which are then made public. If we know that these things are not true, should we not use every possible means to oppose them? Certainly, there may be points of view according to which such opposition is necessary. But those whose main concern is truth have a different thought, namely that only what is true can flourish and bear fruit in the world and what is untrue will quite certainly be unfruitful. Put more simply, this means that however much people may lie about spiritual matters, what they say will not get very far, and they should recognise that nothing fruitful can be achieved by lies. In the spiritual world, truth alone will bear fruit; and this holds good from the very beginning of our own spiritual development, when we must admit to ourselves what we really are. The conviction that truth alone can be fruitful and effective must be an impulse in all occult movements. Truth justifies itself by its fruitfulness and by the blessings it brings to mankind. Untruths and lies are always barren. They have only one result which I cannot go into in any further detail now; I can only say that they react most violently against those who actually spread them abroad. We shall consider on some other occasion what this significant statement implies.

I have tried to-day to give a kind of review of the activities in our Groups during the past year and to recapture the mood and tone which permeated our souls.

In speaking of the work carried on outside the Groups during the past year, I may perhaps mention my own participation which culminated in the production in Munich of the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. Later Group meetings will give us an opportunity of explaining what was then attempted. For the present I will merely say that in the Play it was possible to give a more artistic and individual form to what could otherwise be expressed in a more general way. When we speak here or anywhere else of the conditions of the spiritual life, we speak of them as they concern every soul. But it must always be borne in mind that each man is an individual whose soul must be studied individually. Consequently it was essential that one particular soul should be depicted at the threshold of Initiation. The Rosicrucian Mystery Play is accordingly to be regarded not as a manual of instruction but as an artistic representation of the preparation for Initiation of a particular individual, Johannes Thomasius.

In our approach to truth we have thus reached two important standpoints. We have presented the general line of progress and have also penetrated to the heart of an individual soul. We are always conscious of the fact that truth must be approached from many sides and that we must wait patiently until its different aspects merge into a single picture. We shall adhere faithfully to this attitude of humility in knowledge. Let us not say that man can never experience truth. He assuredly can! But he cannot know the whole truth at once; he can know only one side. This makes for humility in knowledge and true humility is a feeling that must be cultivated in our Groups and carried into the general culture of the day, for the whole character of our age needs such an attitude.

In this spirit we shall continue our task of presenting the Christ-problem, in order to learn from it how to achieve real humility in knowledge and thereby make further and further progress in the experience of truth.

• 1. When the present lecture-course was given, Rudolf Steiner was the General Secretary of the German Section of the Theosophical Society. His association with that Society was terminated in 1912 by its President, Mrs. Annie Besant, largely on account of the difference in his teaching on Christianity and the nature of the Second Coming, and the official founding of the Anthroposophical Society took place in Berlin, in 1913. The lecture on the Bodhisattvas is printed as the first in the Course entitled: The Christ Impulse and the Development of the Ego-Consciousness.

In the last lecture I gave a survey of our studies during the past year and an indication of the purpose and spirit of those studies. I said that the whole spiritual-scientific Movement must be permeated by the same spirit which actuates our study, for instance, of the many aspects of the Christ-problem. In all our striving for knowledge we must display modesty and humility and it is of this humility that I want to speak a little more specifically.

I have often said that while an object can be depicted in some way by painting or photographing it from one side, it must never be claimed that such a picture is in any sense a complete presentation. We can get an approximate idea of an object if we look at it from several sides and gather the single pictures into one whole, but even in ordinary observation we have to go all round an object if we want to get a comprehensive idea of it. And if anyone were to imagine that he could obtain the whole truth about some matter relating to the spiritual world from a single glimpse of that world, he would be greatly mistaken. Many errors arise from failure to recognise this. The four accounts of the events in Palestine given by the four Evangelists are actually a safeguard against students taking such an attitude. People who do not know that in spiritual life an object or a being or an event must be contemplated from different sides will, with their superficial approach to truth, find apparent contradictions in the accounts of the individual Evangelists. But it has been repeatedly pointed out that the four accounts present the great Christ Event from four different aspects and that they must be viewed as a whole, just as we should have to do in the case of an object painted from four different sides. If we proceed with careful attention to detail, as we have tried to do in connection with the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke and St. John and later on shall try to do with that of St. Mark, we shall see that there is wonderful harmony in the four accounts. The mere fact that there are four Gospels is a sufficient indication of the need to look at truth from four different sides.

During the past year I have often spoken of the possibility of discovering different aspects of truth. At our General Meeting last year I tried to supplement what is usually called `Theosophy' by another view which I called that of `Anthroposophy' and I showed how it is related to Theosophy. I spoke of a science based upon physical facts and upon the intellectual assessment of facts revealed to sense-observation. When this science deals with Man, we call it Anthropology, which comprises everything about Man that can be investigated by the senses and studied by means of rational observation. Anthropology, therefore, studies the human physical organism as it presents itself to the methods and instruments used by natural science. It studies the relics of prehistoric men, the tools and implements used by them and since buried in the earth, and then tries to form an idea of how the human race has evolved through the ages. It also studies the stages of development in evidence among savages or uncivilised peoples, starting from the assumption that these peoples are now at the stage of culture attained by civilised humanity in much earlier times. In this way Anthropology forms an idea of the various stages through which man has passed before reaching his present level.

A great deal more could be said to shed light on Anthropology. Last year I compared it to a man who gains his knowledge of a country by walking about on flat ground, noting the market-towns, the cities, woods and fields, and describing everything just as he has seen it from the flat countryside.

But there is a different point of view from which man can be studied, namely that of Theosophy. The ultimate aim of Theosophy is to shed light upon the nature and purpose of man. If you study my book, Occult Science, you will see that everything culminates in a description of man's true being. If Anthropology can be compared with a man who collects his facts and data by walking about on flat ground and then tries to understand them, Theosophy can be compared with an observer who climbs to a mountain-top and from there surveys the surrounding country, looks at the market-towns, the cities, the woods, and so on. Much that he sees on the ground below will be unclear and often he will see particular points only. The standpoint adopted by Theosophy is on a lofty level at which many of the qualities and idiosyncracies displayed by man in daily life become unclear, just as villages and towns are indistinct when they are viewed from the top of a mountain.

What I have just said will not, perhaps, be very enlightening to someone who is only beginning his study of Spiritual Science. He will try to understand and form certain ideas of the nature and being of man, of the physical, etheric and astral bodies and so on, but at first he will not come up against the difficulties that lie ahead when he tries to make progress in the deeper understanding of Spiritual Science. The greater the progress he makes, the more he recognises how difficult it is to find a connection between what has been attained on the heights of Spiritual Science and the feelings and perceptions of daily life.

Someone might ask why it is that spiritual truths seem illuminating and right to many people in spite of the fact that they are incapable of testing what they have been told from spiritual heights by comparing it with their own observations in everyday life. The reason is that there is an affinity between the human soul and truth. This instinctive, natural sense of truth is a reality and of untold value particularly in our own day, because the spiritual level from which essential truths can be seen is so infinitely high. If people had first to scale these heights themselves they would have a long road in the life of soul and spirit to travel and those unable to do so could have no sense of the value these truths have for human life. But once spiritual truths have been communicated, every soul has the capacity to assimilate them.

How is a soul which accepts these truths to be compared with one which is able actually to discover them? A trivial analogy can be chosen here, but trivial as it is it means more than appears on the surface.—All of us can put on our boots, but not all of us can make them; to do that we should have to be bootmakers. What we get out of the boots does not depend upon being able to make them but upon being able to put them to proper use.—This is precisely the case with the truths given us through Spiritual Science. We must apply them in our lives, even though we cannot ourselves discover them as seers. When we accept them because of our natural feeling for truth they help us to orientate our lives, to realise that we are not limited to existence between birth and death, that we bear within us a spiritual man, that we pass through many earth-lives, and so on. These truths can be absorbed and applied. And just as boots protect us from the cold, so do these truths protect us from spiritual cold and from the spiritual poverty we should experience if we were capable of thinking, feeling and perceiving only what the external sense-world presents to us. Spiritual truths are brought down from the heights for the use and benefit of all human beings, though there may be only a few who can actually find them, namely those who have trodden the spiritual path already described.

Any view of the world around us—which, when it is a question of studying Man is also the concern of Anthropology—shows us how this world itself reveals behind it another world which can be observed from the higher, spiritual standpoint of Theosophy. The sense-world itself can reveal another world if we do not just accept the facts with the intellect, but interpret them; when, that is to say, we do not move so far beyond the field of sense-perception as does Theosophy itself but stand as it were on the mountain-side where a wider view is possible without the details becoming unclear. This standpoint was characterised last year as that of Anthroposophy, showing that three views of Man are possible, namely the views of Anthropology, of Anthroposophy and of Theosophy.

This year, in connection with our General Meeting, the lectures on ‘Psychosophy’—which will be as significant as those on Anthroposophy, only in a quite different sense—will show how, on the basis of its impressions and experiences, the human soul itself can be described in its relation to spiritual life. Later lectures on ‘Pneumatosophy’ will conclude this series and will show how our studies of Anthroposophy and Psychosophy merge into Theosophy. The aim of all this is to show you how manifold truth is. The earnest seeker discovers that the further he progresses, the humbler he becomes and also the more cautious in translating into the language of ordinary life the truths attained at higher levels. For although it has been said that these truths acquire value only when they are thus translated, we must realise that this translation is one of the most difficult tasks of Spiritual Science. There are very great difficulties in making what has been observed at high levels of the spiritual world intelligible to a healthy sense of truth and acceptable to sound reasoning.

It must be emphasised again and again that when Spiritual Science is studied in our Groups the object is to create this feeling for truth. We have not merely to grasp with the intellect what has been communicated from the spiritual world; it is much more important to experience it in our feelings and so acquire qualities which everyone who strives earnestly for spiritual truth should possess.

As we look at the world around us we can say that at every point it displays to us an outer manifestation of an inner, spiritual world. For us this is now a commonplace. Just as a man's physiognomy is an expression of what is going on in his soul, so all phenomena of the external sense-world are a physiognomical expression, so to speak, of a spiritual world behind them. We understand sense-perceptions only when we can see in them expressions of the spiritual world. When by following his own path to knowledge a man cannot reach the stage at which spiritual vision is possible, he has only the material world before him, and he may ask whether his study of the material world provides any confirmation, any evidence, of communications based upon spiritual vision.

This search for evidence is always possible but it will have to be carried out with precision and not superficially. If, for example, you have followed my lectures and have read the book Occult Science, you will know that there was a time when the Earth and Sun were one, when Earth and Sun formed one body. If you bear in mind what I have said, you will agree that the animal forms and plant forms on the Earth to-day are later elaborations of those already in existence when the Earth and the Sun were one. But just as the animal forms of to-day are adapted to the conditions prevailing on the present Earth, so must the animal forms of that earlier epoch have been adapted to the conditions of the planetary body of Earth plus Sun. It follows that the animal forms which have survived from those times are not only survivors but developments of creatures which were already then in existence but could not, for instance, have possessed eyes: for eyes have purpose only when light is streaming in upon the Earth from outside, from the Sun. Accordingly, among the different creatures belonging to the animal kingdom there will be some which developed eyes after the Sun had separated from the Earth, and also animal forms which are survivors from the time when Sun and Earth were still united. Such animals will have no eyes. They would naturally belong to the lower species of animals. And we find that such creatures actually exist. Popular books tell us that animals below a certain stage of evolution have no eyes. This is confirmed by Spiritual Science.

The world around us, the world in which we ourselves live, can therefore be pictured as the ‘physiognomical’ expression of the spiritual life weaving and working behind it. If man were simply confronted by this sense-world and it did not anywhere reveal to him that it points to a spiritual world, he could never feel longing for that world. There must be a point in the sense-world where a longing for spiritual reality springs up, some point where the spiritual streams as through a door or window into the world of our everyday life. When does this happen? When does a spiritual reality light up in us? As you will know from lectures given by me and by others as well, this happens when we experience our own ‘I’, our own Ego. At this moment we actually do experience something that has a direct relation with the spiritual world. Nevertheless this experience of the ‘I’ is at the same time very meagre. It is as it were a single point amid all the phenomena of the world. The single point which we express by the little word, ‘I’, does indeed indicate something truly spiritual but this has contracted into a point. What can we learn from this spiritual reality that has contracted into the point, into the ‘I’? Through experiencing our own ‘I’ we can know no more of the spiritual world than has contracted into this single point unless we widen the experience. Nevertheless this point does contain something of great importance, namely that through it we are given an indication of the process of cognition that is necessary for knowledge of the spiritual world.

What is the difference between experience of the ‘I’ and all other experiences? The difference is that we are ourselves actually within the experience of the ‘I’. All other experiences come to us from outside.

Someone may say: ‘But my thinking, my willing, my desires, my feelings—I myself live in all that.’ In regard to willing, however, a man can convince himself by a very simple act of introspection that he cannot be said to be actually within it. The will is something that seems to be driving us on, as if we were not within it; our actions seem to be due to the pressure of some thing or some incident from outside. And it is the same with our feelings and with most of our thoughts in everyday life. How little we are really within our thinking in everyday life can be realised if we try conscientiously to note how dependent it is upon education, upon the conditions we have encountered in life. This is the reason why human thinking, feeling and willing vary so greatly in different nations and in different periods. Only one thing remains the same in all nations, in all regions and in all societies: it is the experience of the ‘I’.

Let us now ask in what this experience of the ‘I’ really consists. The matter is not as simple as it might appear. You may easily think, for instance, that you experience the ‘I’ in its real nature. But this is by no means so. We do not actually experience the ‘I’ itself but only a mental concept, a mental picture, of it. If we could really experience the ‘I’, it would present itself as something raying out on all sides to infinity. Unless the ‘I’ could confront itself as an image in a mirror, even though the image is only a point, we could not experience the ‘I’, nor could the ‘I’ create a mental picture of itself. What man experiences of the ‘I’ is a mental picture of it; but that is sufficient, for it differs entirely from every other picture in that it is identical with its original. When the ‘I’ makes a mental picture of itself it is concerned with itself alone and the picture is only the return of the ‘I’ experience into itself. There is a kind of obstruction, as if we wished to check the experience and compel it to return into itself; and in this return it confronts itself as a mirror-image. Such is the experience of the ‘I’.

It can therefore be said that we recognise the experience of the ‘I’ in the mental picture of it. But this mental picture of the ‘I’ differs radically from all other mental pictures, all other experiences which we may have. For all other mental pictures and all other experiences we need something like an organ. This is obvious in the case of outer sense-perceptions. In order to have the mental picture of a colour we must have eyes. It is quite obvious that we must have organs through which ordinary sense-perceptions reach us. You may think that no organ is necessary for what is so intimately related to our inmost self. Here too, however, you can quite easily convince yourselves that you do need an organ. You can find more precise details in my lectures on Anthroposophy; at the moment I am making it possible for you to hear in theosophical terms what was presented in those lectures rather for the benefit of the general public.

Suppose that at some period in your life you grasp a thought, an idea. You understand something that confronts you in the form of an idea. How can you understand it? Only through those ideas which you have previously mastered and made your own. You can see that this is so from the fact that when a new idea comes to a man it is accepted in one way by one person and differently by another. This is because the one person has within him a greater number of ideas than the other. All our old ideas are lodged within us and confront the new idea as the eye confronts the light. A sort of organ is formed from our own previous ideas; and for anything not formed in this way in the present incarnation we must look to earlier incarnations. This organ was formed then and we confront new ideas with it. We must have an organ through which to receive all experiences that come to us from the outer world, even when they are spiritual experiences: we never stand spiritually naked, as it were, in face of what comes to us from the external world, but we are always dependent upon what we have become. The only time we confront the world directly is when we attain a perception of the ‘I’. The ‘I’ is always there, even while we sleep, but perception of it has to be aroused every morning when we wake up. If during the night we were to journey to Mars, the conditions surrounding us would certainly be very different from those on the Earth—indeed everything would be different—except the perception of the ‘I’. This is always the same because no external organ is needed for it, not even an organ for concepts. What confronts us here is a direct perception of the ‘I’ in its true form. Everything else comes before us as a picture in a mirror and conditioned by the structure of the mirror. Perception of the ‘I’ comes to us in its own intrinsic form.

In fact we can say that when we have a mental picture of the ‘I’, we are ourselves within it and it is in no sense outside us. And now let us ask how this unique perception of the ‘I’ differs from all other perceptions. The difference lies in the fact that in the perception, the mental picture of the ‘I’, there is the direct imprint of the ‘I’, and in no other perception is this the case. But from everything around us we get pictures which can be compared with the perception of the ‘I’, for through the ‘I’ we transform everything into an inner experience. If we are to see any meaning or significance in the external world it must become a mental picture in us. Thus we form pictures of the external world which then live on in the ‘I’, no matter which organ is the channel for a sense-experience. We may smell some substance; when we are no longer in direct contact with it we still carry an image within us of the smell. The same is true of a colour we have seen; the pictures or images which come from such experiences remain in our ‘I’. The characteristic feature of all these pictures or images is that they come to us from outside. All the pictures which, as long as we live in the world of the senses, we have been able to unite with our ‘I’, are the relics of impressions received from the sense-world. But there is one thing the sense-world cannot give us—namely, perception of the ‘I’. This arises in us quite spontaneously. Thus in perception of the ‘I’ we have a picture which rises up within ourselves, contracted into a point.

Think now of other mental pictures which have not arisen from any external stimulus given by the senses but arise freely in the ‘I’ like the concept of the ‘I’ itself, and are consequently formed in the same manner. Images and pictures if this kind arise in the astral world. There are, then, mental pictures which arise in the ‘I’ without our having received any impression from outside, from the sense-world.

What distinguishes the images or pictures we derive from the sense-world from the rest of our inner experiences? Images derived from the sense-world can remain with us as images of experiences only after we have come into contact with that world; they become inner experiences although they were stimulated by the outer world. But what experiences of the ‘I’ are there that are not directly stimulated by the outer world? Our feelings, desires, impulses, instincts and so on, are such experiences. Even if we ourselves are not actually within these feelings, impulses, etc., in the sense already described, it must nevertheless be admitted that there is something which distinguishes them from the images that remain with us as a result of what our senses have perceived.—You can feel what the difference is. An image derived from the outer world is something that is at rest within us, that we try to retain as faithfully as possible. But impulses, desires and instincts represent something that is active within us, something that is an actual force.

Now although astral pictures arise without the external world having played any part, something must nevertheless have been in action, for nothing can exist as an effect without a cause. What causes a sense-image is the impression made by the outer world. What causes an astral picture is what lies at the root of desires, impulses, feelings, and so on. In ordinary life to-day, however, man is protected from developing in his feelings a force strong enough to cause pictures to arise which would be experienced in the same way as the picture of the ‘I’ itself. The significant feature of modern man's soul is that its impulses and desires are not strong enough to create a picture of what the ‘I’ sets before them. When the ‘I’ confronts the strong forces of the external world it is stimulated to form pictures. When it lives within itself, in a normal man it has only one single opportunity of experiencing an emerging picture, namely, when the picture is that of the ‘I’ itself.

Impulses and desires are therefore not strong enough to create pictures comparable with the ‘I’-experience. If they are to work strongly enough they must acquire a certain quality, a most important quality that is inherent in all sense-experiences. Sense-experiences do not behave just to suit us: if, for instance, someone lives in a room in which he hears an irritating noise, he cannot get rid of it by means of his impulses and desires. Through a mere impulse or desire nobody can turn a yellow flower into a red one because he prefers it. It is characteristic of the sense-world that its manifestations are quite independent of us. This is certainly not true of our impulses, desires and passions which are entirely consonant with our personal life. What, then, must happen to them in the process of intensification that is necessary to make them into pictures? They must become like the external world which does not consult our wishes in regard to its structure and the production of sense-images but compels us to give to the image we make the form imparted to it by the surrounding world.

If pictures of the astral world are to be correctly formed a man must be as detached from himself, from his personal sympathies and antipathies, as he is from sense-images he forms of the outer world. What he desires or wishes must be a matter of complete indifference to him. In the last lecture I said that this requirement simply means the complete absence of egoism. But this must not be taken lightly. It is no easy matter to be without egoism.

The following must also be borne in mind. Our interest in what comes to us from the outside world is vastly different from our interest in what arises within ourselves. The interest a man takes in his inner life is infinitely greater than his interest in the external world. You certainly know people who, when they have transformed something in the external world into an image, are apt to make it conform with their subjective feelings. Such people often spin the wildest yarns even when they are not actually lying, and believe what they say. Sympathy and antipathy always play a part here and create delusions about the external reality, causing the subsequent image to be distorted. But these are exceptional cases, for a man would not get very far if he were himself to create delusions in his daily life. There would be perpetual clashes with the circumstances of outer existence, but willy-nilly he is bound to acknowledge the truth of the external world; reality itself puts him right. It is the same with ordinary sense-experiences: the external reality is a sound corrective. This is no longer the case when a man begins to have inner experiences: it is not so easy for him then to let the external reality set him right and he therefore allows himself to be influenced by his own interests, his own sympathies and antipathies.

If we aspire to penetrate into the spiritual world, it is all-important for us to learn to confront our own self with the same absence of bias with which we confront the external world. In the ancient Pythagorean schools this truth was formulated in strictly precise terms, particularly for the department of knowledge concerned with the question of immortality. Think of all the people who are interested in the subject of immortality. It is normal for men to long for immortality, for a life beyond birth and death. But that is a purely personal interest, a personal longing. You will not be particularly interested if a tumbler gets broken; but if people had the same personal interest in the continued existence of a tumbler, even if broken, as they have in the immortality of the soul, you may be sure that most of them would believe in the immortality of a tumbler!

For this reason it was felt in the Pythagorean schools that no-one is really ready to know the truth about immortality unless he could endure it if he were told that man is not immortal and his question whether man is immortal had to be answered with a ‘no’. If immortality is to mean anything for a man himself in the spiritual world, then—so said the teacher in the Pythagorean schools—he must not yearn for it; for as long as a man yearns for immortality, what he says about it will not be objective. Weighty opinions about the life beyond birth and death can come only from those who could contemplate the grave with equal calm if there were no immortality. This was the teaching in the Pythagorean schools because it was essential that the pupils should understand how difficult it is to be mature enough to face the truth.

To state a truth on the basis of this maturity calls for very special preparation, which requires us to be entirely uninterested in its implications. Especially with regard to immortality, more than other problems, it is quite impossible to think that many people have no interest in the subject. Of course there are people who have been told about reincarnation and the eternity of man's existence, in spite of the fact that they are by no means disinterested. Everyone can take in the truth and use it for the benefit of life—including those who have not the task of formulating it themselves. There is no reason to reject a truth because one does not feel ready for it. On the contrary, it is quite sufficient for the needs of life to receive the truth and dedicate one's powers to its service.

What is the necessary complement to the reception of truths? They can be received and assimilated without misgiving even if we are not completely ready for them. But the necessary complement is this.—To make ourselves ready for truth with the same ardour with which we long for it in order to have inner peace, contentment and a sure footing in life, and at the same time to be cautious in proclaiming higher truths ourselves—truths which can only be confirmed in the spiritual world.

An important precept for our spiritual life can be gained from this. We should be receptive to anything we need and apply it in life; but we should be duly suspicious of truths we ourselves proclaim, especially if they are connected with our own astral experiences. This means that we must be particularly careful about making use of astral experiences at points where we cannot be disinterested, especially at the point where our own life comes into consideration.

Let us assume that through his astral development a man is mature enough to ascertain something that will be his destiny tomorrow. That is a personal experience. He should, however, refrain from making investigations in the book of his personal life for there he cannot possibly be disinterested. People may ask why it is that clairvoyants do not try to ascertain the time of their own death. The reason is that they could never be wholly disinterested about such a happening and they must hold aloof from everything relating to their personal concerns. We can only investigate in the spiritual worlds, with any hope that the results will have objective validity, matters which we are quite sure are unrelated to our personal concerns. A man who resolves to promulgate only what is objectively valid, apart altogether from his own interests, must never speak about anything that concerns or affects himself as the result of investigations or impressions from a higher world. He must be quite certain that his personal interests have played no part whatever in these results. But it is extremely difficult for him to be quite sure of this.

It is therefore a fundamental principle at the beginning of all spiritual aspirations that efforts should be made not to regard as authoritative anything that affects one personally. Everything personal must be strictly excluded. I need only add that this is extremely difficult to do: often enough when one thinks that everything of a personal nature has been excluded it proves not to have been so. For this reason, most of the astral pictures which appear to people are nothing more than a kind of reflection of their own wishes and passions. These spiritual experiences do no harm at all as long as people are strong-minded enough to remind themselves that they must be suspicious of them. Only when that strength of mind fails, when a man comes to regard these experiences as authoritative in his life—only then does he lose his bearings. It is then rather as if he were trying to get out of a room at a place where there is no door and consequently he runs his head against the wall. Hence this principle must never be forgotten: Test your spiritual experiences with extreme caution. No other value save that of being a means of knowledge, of enlightenment, should attach to these experiences; our personal life should not be governed or directed by them. If they are regarded as means of enlightenment then we are on safe ground, for in that case, as soon as a contradictory idea crops up it can also be corrected.

What I have said today is only part of the many studies we shall undertake this winter. I also wanted to give you something that can be a preparation for the study of Psychosophy, of man's life of soul, which will be the subject of the lectures during the week following the General Meeting.

We have often studied the period of evolution following the Atlantean catastrophe and the epochs of post-Atlantean civilisation: the Old Indian, Old Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Graeco-Roman, and now the fifth, in which we ourselves are living. There will be two more epochs, making seven in all, before there is another great catastrophe.

The accounts given have naturally been of different aspects of these culture-epochs, for an idea of the future can be formed only by knowing how we are related to each of them. I have often said that there is a correspondence between the individual human being as a ‘Microcosm’, a ‘little world’, and the ‘Macrocosm’, the ‘great world’. Man, the ‘little world’, is in every respect a replica, a copy, of the ‘great world’. This is literally true, but stated in this form it is a very abstract truth and does not lead us very far. It becomes significant only if we can go on and show in detail how the individual human being is to be conceived as a Microcosm compared with the Macrocosm.

The man of to-day belongs to all the seven post-Atlantean epochs for he has been, or will be, incarnated in each of them. In every incarnation we receive what that particular epoch can give us. Thus we bear within ourselves the fruits of past phases of evolution. Our intrinsic qualities and talents are those we have acquired during the several post-Atlantean epochs and they lie more or less within the range of human consciousness as it is to-day. On the other hand, during our Atlantean incarnations there were very different states of consciousness and what we then acquired has, generally speaking, been pressed down into the subconscious. It does not therefore reverberate within us as strongly as what was acquired in later incarnations during the post-Atlantean epoch. In the much earlier Atlantean epoch human consciousness was by no means as wideawake as it became later on and men were not then able to the same extent to injure their own development. Consequently the fruits of Atlantean evolution within us are more in harmony with the World-Order than has been the case since we have been able ourselves to create disorder in our own being. Ahrimanic and Luciferic influences were active during the Atlantean epoch too, but the effect of them upon man was altogether different. Nor was man then in a position to protect himself against them.

The ever-increasing development of human consciousness is the essential feature of post-Atlantean civilisation. The evolution of mankind in the period between the catastrophe which overwhelmed Atlantis and the one that will bring the post-Atlantean epoch to an end may be thought of as a macrocosmic process; humanity as a whole evolves as one great being through the seven post-Atlantean epochs. And the most important phases in the evolution of consciousness during these seven epochs resemble what the individual himself undergoes in the seven ‘ages’ or periods of his own life.

In my book Occult Science, and elsewhere, these different life-periods have often been described. The first period covers the seven years from birth to the change of teeth. During this period the physical body of the human being acquires its basic forms and with the coming of the second teeth these forms are to all intents and purposes established. Naturally, the child continues to grow; but speaking generally, the lines of the bodily structures have already been established. What is accomplished in the first seven years is the construction of the bodily form. We must be prepared to find these rhythms manifesting in us in a wide variety of ways. For instance, there is a difference between the first teeth, which appear during the earliest years of life and then fall out, to be replaced by the second teeth. The two sets of teeth are the result of essentially different conditions. The first teeth are the inherited product of the organisms of the child's forefathers. The second teeth are the product of the child's own physical constitution. This must be kept firmly in mind. Only by being attentive to such details can the distinction be fully understood. Our first teeth, together with our whole organism, are passed on to us by our forefathers; our second teeth are the product of our own physical organism. In the first case the teeth are a direct inheritance: in the second it is the physical organism that is inherited and this in its turn produces the second teeth.

The second life-period is from the time of the change of teeth to puberty, at about the fourteenth or fifteenth year. The important process now is the development of the etheric body. The third period, to about the twenty-first year, covers the development of the astral body. Then follows the development of the Ego, with the progressive development of the Sentient Soul, the Intellectual or Mind-Soul and the Spiritual Soul (Consciousness-Soul).

These are the different periods in man's life: but as you certainly know, the first period of seven years alone follows a completely regular pattern, and this is as it should be for man of the present age. The regularity apparent in the first three life-periods is not found in the later ones, nor can their length be defined with exactitude. If we ask why this is so, the answer is that in world-evolution which proceeds in rhythms of seven periods, the fourth plays a middle part. Thus in the post-Atlantean era we already have within us the fruits of the first four epochs; we are now living in the fifth and moving towards the sixth.

There is undoubtedly a certain correspondence between the evolution of the post-Atlantean epochs and that of the individual human being. Here again there is evidence of correspondence between the macrocosmic and the microcosmic.

Let us consider what was particularly characteristic of the first post-Atlantean epoch. We call it the Old Indian epoch because the character of post-Atlantean evolution in general was especially marked in the people of India. In this epoch there existed a sublime, all-embracing wisdom, with wide ramifications. In principle, the teachings given by the seven holy Rishis were identical with what was actually seen in the spiritual world by natural clairvoyants and also by very many of the people of that time. This ancient knowledge was present in the Old Indian epoch as a heritage from still earlier times. In the Atlantean epoch it had been experienced clairvoyantly, but it had now become more of an inherited, primal wisdom, preserved and made known by those who, like the Rishis, had risen through Initiation to the spiritual worlds. Basically, all the wisdom that penetrated into human consciousness was inherited and therefore essentially different from our modern knowledge.

It would be quite wrong to attempt to express the sublime truths proclaimed by the holy Rishis in the first post-Atlantean epoch in terms such as those used in modern scholarship; moreover it would hardly be possible to do so, because the forms assumed by scholarship as it is to-day appeared only in the course of post-Atlantean culture. The knowledge possessed by the ancient Rishis was of a very different character. Anyone capable of proclaiming it felt it working and seething within him, rising up spontaneously. To understand what knowledge was in those days we must realise above all that it did not in any way rely upon memory. Please keep this very specially in mind. Memory is the most important factor when knowledge is being transmitted to-day. A professor or a public speaker must take care that he knows beforehand what he is going to say from the rostrum, and then draw it out of his memory. True, there are people who deny that they do any such thing, insisting that they simply follow their own genius. But they don't affect the argument. The communication of knowledge to-day depends almost entirely upon memory.

Things were very different in the Old Indian epoch. It would be true to say that knowledge arose at the actual moment of speaking. In those early times knowledge was not prepared beforehand as it so often is to-day. The ancient Rishi did not prepare what he had to say and then memorise it. The preparation he made was to induce in himself a mood of piety, of reverence. It was his mood and his feelings that he prepared, not the content of what he was about to communicate. And then, while it was being communicated it was as if he were reading from an invisible script. It would have been unthinkable in those days for listeners to take down in writing what was being said; anything recorded in this way would have been considered quite worthless. Value was attached only to what a man preserved in his soul and might later reproduce for others. It would have been regarded as desecration to write anything down. The view rightly held at that time was that what is transcribed is not, and cannot be, the same as the oral communication.

This way of thinking persisted for a very long time. Such matters are retained in the feelings much longer than in the intellect and when, in the Middle Ages, the art of printing was added to that of writing, it was at first regarded as black magic. Old feelings were still astir in men and they felt that what is meant to pass directly from soul to soul should not be preserved in the grotesque form of letters and words printed on sheets of white paper. People were convinced that this transformed the knowledge to be communicated into something lifeless which might, moreover, subsequently be revived with anything but beneficial results. The direct streaming of knowledge from soul to soul was characteristic of the times we are considering. It was a prominent feature in the cultural life of the first post-Atlantean epoch and must be recognised if we are to understand, for instance, how it came about that Greek and even old Germanic rhapsodists could go from place to place reciting their very lengthy poems. This would never have been possible if they had been obliged to rely upon memory. It was a power and a quality of soul much more alive than memory that lay behind their recitations. Nowadays if we are to recite a poem we must have learnt it beforehand; but what those men were reciting was an actual experience in them, a kind of new creation. Moreover a direct expression of the life of soul was then more clearly in evidence than it is now, when—with some justification in view of prevailing conditions—it is apt to be suppressed. What is considered of main importance nowadays in recitation is the actual meaning of the words. It was not so, even in the Middle Ages, when a minstrel was reciting the Niebelungenlied, for instance. He still had a feeling for the inner rhythm and would stamp his feet to mark the rise and fall of the verse as he strode forward and back. But this was only an aftermath of what had been customary in more ancient times. You would have an erroneous idea of the Rishis and their pupils if you were to think that they had not faithfully communicated the old Atlantean knowledge. Even if the pupils in our schools were to fill their exercise books from cover to cover, they would not have reproduced what had been said as faithfully as the Indian Rishis reproduced the ancient wisdom.

The characteristic feature of the epochs which followed was that the flow of Atlantean knowledge came to a standstill. Until the decline of the Old Indian culture-epoch, knowledge received by men in the form of an inheritance continually increased. In essentials, however, the increase ceased with the close of this epoch: thereafter, hardly anything new could be produced from existing knowledge. An increase of knowledge was therefore possible only in the first epoch; thereafter it ceased. In the Old Persian epoch, among men influenced by Zoroastrianism, something began in connection with knowledge of the external world which can be compared with the second period in human life and is, in fact, best understood through such a comparison. In a spiritual respect the Old Indian culture-epoch is comparable with the first period in human life, from birth to the seventh year. During this period the basic forms are developed; whatever comes later is merely expansion within these established forms. What followed in the Old Persian epoch can similarly be compared with a kind of school-learning, the kind of learning connected with the second life-period. Only we must be clear who were the pupils and who were the teachers. At this point there is something I want to interpolate.

You must have been struck by the difference between the figure of Zarathustra, the Leader of the second post-Atlantean epoch, and the Indian Rishis. Whereas the Rishis seem to be consecrated individuals stemming from a primordial past, to be vessels into whom old Atlantean wisdom has poured, Zarathustra appears as the first historical personality to be initiated into a genuinely post-Atlantean Mystery-knowledge, that is to say, knowledge presented in such a way that it could be understood only by the intelligence of post-Atlantean humanity. Something new has therefore made its appearance. True, during the early period it was preeminently supersensible knowledge that was acquired in the Zoroastrian schools. Nevertheless it was there that knowledge began for the first time to take the form of concepts. The ancient knowledge possessed by the Rishis cannot be reproduced in the forms of modern scholarship but to some extent this is possible with the Zoroastrian knowledge. This is knowledge of an altogether supersensible character and concerned entirely with the supersensible world but it is clothed in concepts comparable with those current during the post-Atlantean epoch in general. Among the followers of Zarathustra a systematic development of concepts took place. To sum up: The treasure-store of ancient wisdom which had evolved until the end of the Old Indian epoch and continued from generation to generation, was accepted. Nothing new was added but the old was elaborated. A comparison, for example, with the production nowadays of a book on occultism will help us to picture the task of the Mysteries of the second post-Atlantean epoch. The contents of any book resulting from genuine investigations into the higher worlds could of course be presented as an entirely logical exposition in the physical world. This might be done. But in that case my book Occult Science, for example, would have to consist of fifty volumes at least, each of them as bulky as the present one. There is, however, another way of doing things, namely to leave something to the reader, to induce the reader to think things out for himself. That is what must be attempted nowadays, for otherwise no progress in occultism could be made. To-day, in the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, with the intellectual concepts developed by humanity, it is possible to approach and also to assimilate occult knowledge. But in Zarathustra's time the concepts in which to clothe occult facts had first to be discovered and gradually elaborated. There were then no branches of knowledge such as exist to-day. Something capable of being clothed in human concepts had survived from the time of the ancient Rishis, but the concepts as such had to be formulated before the supersensible facts could be clothed in them. It was then, for the first time, that man-made concepts were used to grasp supersensible realities. The Rishis had spoken in the only way in which, in their day, supersensible knowledge could be communicated. They poured their knowledge from soul to soul in an unceasing flow of pictures. They were unconcerned with cause and effect, with concepts and categories such as are familiar to us to-day. This was a much later development. In the field of supersensible knowledge a beginning was made in the second post-Atlantean epoch. It was then that man first became aware of the opposition offered by material existence and therewith the need to express supersensible facts in forms of thought employed on the physical plane. This was the basic task of the second post-Atlantean epoch.

By the third epoch, that of Egypto-Chaldean culture, concepts of supersensible realities were actually in existence. This again is difficult for the modern mind to grasp. There was no physical science but there were concepts of supersensible facts and happenings which had been acquired in a supersensible way, and these concepts could be expressed in forms of thought applicable to the physical plane. In the third post-Atlantean epoch men began to apply to the physical world itself what they had learnt from the supersensible world. This again can be compared with the third period in the life of a human being. In the second period he learns without proceeding to apply what he has learnt. In the third life-period most human beings have to apply their knowledge to the physical plane. The pupils of Zarathustra in the second culture-epoch were pupils of heavenly knowledge; now men began to apply to the physical plane what they had learnt. It may help us to picture this if we say that through their visions men learnt that the supersensible can be expressed by a triangle—a triangle taken as an image of the supersensible; that the supersensible nature of man, permeating the physical, can be conceived as threefold. Other concepts too were mastered, enabling physical things to be related to supersensible facts. Geometry, for instance, was first mastered in the form of symbolic concepts. In short, concepts were now available and were applied by the Egyptians to the art of land-surveying, also to agriculture, and by the Chaldeans in their study of the stars and in the founding of Astrology and Astronomy. What had previously been regarded as purely supersensible was now applied to things physically seen. In the third culture-epoch, then, men began for the first time to apply supersensible knowledge to the phenomena of the world of sense.

In the fourth epoch, the Graeco-Latin, it was especially important that men should come to see that what they were doing was to apply to the physical plane knowledge derived from supersensible sources. Hitherto they had acted without questioning whether this was actually the case. The ancient Rishis had no need for such questioning because the knowledge streamed into them directly from the spiritual world. In the epoch of Zarathustra men assimilated the supersensible knowledge and were fully aware how it originated. In the Egypto-Chaldean epoch men invested the concepts derived from the supersensible world with knowledge they had acquired in the physical world. And in the fourth epoch (the Graeco-Latin) they began to ask whether it is right to apply to the physical world what has come from the spiritual world. Is what has been spiritually acquired in fact applicable to physical things?—Men could not put this to themselves as a definite question until the fourth culture-epoch, after they had for some time been applying supersensible knowledge in all naivety to physical experiences and observations. Now they became conscientious in regard to their own doings and began to ask whether it is justifiable to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts.

Now when any epoch has an important task to perform, it always happens that some individual is particularly alive to its nature and responsible for fulfilling it. In this case, such an individual would have been struck by the thought as to whether one has the right to apply supersensible concepts to physical facts. Can anyone really predict how things will develop? It is obvious that Plato, for example, had a living connection with the ancient world and still applied concepts in their old form to the physical world. It was his pupil Aristotle who asked whether it is right to do this.—And so Aristotle became the founder of Logic.

People who reject Spiritual Science should just ask themselves why man had managed to get on without any system of Logic. Had they never before the fourth epoch felt any need for it?—To a clear-sighted view of evolution, important periods occur at definite points of time. One such period lies between Plato and Aristotle. Here we have before us a situation that is related in a certain way to the connection with the spiritual world existing in the Atlantean epoch. True, the living spiritual knowledge died out with the Old Indian culture-epoch, but something new had nevertheless been brought down to the physical plane. Now, in this later age, man had begun to develop a critical faculty, and to ask how ideas about supersensible reality may be applied to physical things. This is a sign that man only now became conscious that he himself achieves something when he is observing the external world, that he is actually bringing something down into the sense-world. This was a significant state of things.

We can still feel that concepts and ideas are in essence supersensible when we regard their very character as being a guarantee for the existence of the supersensible world. But only few feel this. What concepts and ideas contain is for most people extremely tenuous. And although there is something in them which can provide complete proof of man's immortality, it would be impossible to convince him, because compared with the solid, material reality for which he longs, concepts and ideas are as unsubstantial as a cobweb. They are, in fact, the last and slenderest thread spun by man out of the spiritual world since his descent into the physical world. And at the very time when he had left the spiritual world altogether and remained linked to it by this last, slender thread only—a thread in which he no longer had any faith—there came the mightiest incision from the supersensible world: the Christ Impulse. The greatest of all spiritual realities appeared in our post-Atlantean epoch at a time when man was least able to recognise the supersensible, because the only spiritual quality remaining to him was his feeling for concepts and ideas.

For anyone studying the evolution of humanity as a whole it would be interesting in a strictly scientific sense—apart from the tornado-like effect it may have on the soul—to set side by side the infinite spirituality of the Christ Being who entered into humanity and the fact that shortly before His coming man had been wondering how far the last thread of spirituality within him was connected with the supersensible world—in other words, to contrast the Christ Principle with Aristotelian Logic, that web of wholly abstract concepts and ideas. No greater disparity can be imagined than that between the spirituality which came down to the physical plane in the Being of Christ and the spirituality which man had preserved for himself. You will therefore understand that with the web of concepts available in Aristotelianism it was simply not possible in the first centuries of Christendom to comprehend the spiritual nature of Christ. And then, gradually, efforts were made to grasp the facts of world-history and the evolution of humanity in such a way that Aristotelian Logic could be applied. This was the task facing medieval philosophy.

It is significant that the fourth post-Atlantean epoch may be compared with the period of Ego-development in man's life. It was in this epoch that the ‘I’ of humanity itself streamed into evolution, at the time when man was further removed from the spiritual world than he had ever been and was therefore at first quite incapable of accepting Christ except through faith. Christianity was bound at first to be a matter of faith and is only now beginning, very gradually, to be a matter of knowledge. We have only just begun to bring the light of spiritual knowledge to bear upon the Gospels. For hundreds upon hundreds of years Christianity could only be a matter of faith, because man had reached the lowest point of his descent from the spiritual worlds.

This was the situation in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch. But after the lowest point the re-ascent must begin. Although in a certain respect this epoch brought man to the lowest point of descent, it also gave him the strongest spiritual impulse upwards. Naturally, this was beyond his comprehension then and will be understood only in the epochs still to come. We can, however, recognise the task before us: it is to permeate our concepts and ideas with spirituality.

World-evolution is not a simple, straightforward process. When a ball begins to roll in a certain direction, inertia will keep it rolling unless its course is changed by some other impact. Similarly, pre-Christian culture tended to preserve and maintain the downward plunge into the physical world until our own time. The upward urge is only just beginning and periodically needs a new impetus.

The downward tendency is particularly evident in the way men think, even in a great deal of what is called Philosophy to-day. Aristotle still recognised that spiritual reality is within the grasp of human concepts. But a few centuries after him men were no longer able to understand how the activity of the human mind can make contact with reality. The most arid, most barren element in the development of the old mode of thinking is represented by Kantianism and everything related to it. For Kant's philosophy severs all connection between the concepts a man evolves, between ideas as inner experiences, and what concepts and ideas are in reality. Kantianism is in the process of withering away and has no living impulse to give to the future. It will now no longer surprise you that the conclusion of my lectures on Psychosophy had a theosophical background. I have made it clear that in all our activities, and especially in connection with knowledge of the soul, our task is to take the knowledge bestowed by the gods on men in earlier days and brought down as a stimulus to our thought, and offer it up again at the altars of the gods. But the ideas and concepts we make our own must have their origin in spirituality.

Psychology as a science must be cultivated in such a way that it can emerge from the decadence into which it has fallen. This is not said out of arrogance but because it is what the times demand. There have been and there still are many psychologists: but they all work with concepts totally devoid of spirituality. It is significant that in 1874 a man like Franz Brentano published only the first volume of his Psychology, which in spite of certain distortions, is generally sound. He had announced the second volume for publication in the same year; but he came to a standstill and could not finish it. He was able to give an outline of what the content was to have been but to get beyond that a spiritual impulse would have been needed.

Modern psychologies, for example those written by Wundt and Lipps, do not really deserve the name because they work only with ideas previously evolved and it was obvious from the outset that nothing would come of them. Brentano's Psychology might have led to something but he came to a standstill—which is the fate of all dying sciences. It will not happen so quickly in the case of the natural sciences, where cut-and-dried concepts can be applied because facts are being collected and may be allowed to speak for themselves. With Psychology—the science of the soul—this is much less practicable, for the whole foundation disappears if any attempt is made to work with the ordinary, rigid concepts. You don't immediately lose touch with a heart-muscle even if you analyse it as if it were a mineral product and have no knowledge of its real nature. But you cannot analyse the soul in the same way.

The sciences are as it were dying from above downwards. And it will gradually dawn on men that while they are certainly able to turn the laws of nature to account, this is something quite independent of science itself. To construct machines and instruments, telephones and the like, is a very different matter from a basic understanding of the sciences, let alone the ability to further their progress. A man may have no fundamental understanding of electricity and yet be able to construct electrical apparatus. Science in the real sense is, however, gradually declining and we have now reached a point where in its present form it must be given new life through spiritual science. In our fifth culture-epoch science is rolling downwards by its own momentum: when the ball can roll no further it will come to a standstill, as Brentano did. At this time, therefore, it is imperative that the ascent of humanity should be given a stronger and stronger stimulus. This will indeed take place, but only if efforts continue to be made to fertilise knowledge acquired from outside with what spiritual investigation has to offer.

As I have said before, a kind of repetition of the old Egypto-Chaldean epoch will become apparent during our own fifth epoch. This repetition is at present only just beginning. Indications of this might have become clear to you during this General Meeting. Think, for instance, of Herr Seiler's lecture on Astrology. You will have felt that as students of Spiritual Science you are able to apply to astrological concepts ideas which would be quite impossible for a conventional astronomer, who will inevitably treat anything connected with Astrology as nonsense. This has nothing to do with the intrinsic character of Astronomy. As a matter of fact, Astronomy is the science par excellence which lends itself readily to being led back again to spirituality; from what Astronomy has at present to offer it would be easy to pass to the basic truths of Astrology which is so often derided. What stands in the way is that the general attitude of mind is so far removed from any return to spirituality. It will take time to build the bridge between Astronomy and Astrology and meanwhile all sorts of theories will be devised in an attempt to give a purely materialistic explanation of the planetary movements, and so on. In the case of the chemical and biological sciences the bridge will be even more difficult to build.

The building of a bridge can be easiest of all in the domain of Psychology—the science of the soul. The first requisite will be to understand the conclusion of my lectures on ‘Psychosophy’ where I showed that the stream of soul-life flows not only from the past into the future but also from the future into the past. There are two streams of time: the etheric stream, flowing into the future, and the astral stream, moving from the future back into the past. It is unlikely that anyone in the world today will discover anything of this character without a spiritual impulse, but there can be no real grasp of the life of soul until we recognise that something is perpetually coming towards us from the future. This concept is essential. We shall have to rid ourselves of the mode of thought which looks only to the past when cause and effect are being considered. We shall have to learn to speak of the future as something real, something moving towards us, just as we trail the past behind us. It will be a long time before such concepts are accepted; but until they are there will be no real Psychology.

The nineteenth century produced a really bright idea: Psychology without Soul! People were very proud of it. Roughly, what it meant was that psychological study should be confined to the external manifestations of the human soul and should take no account of the soul itself from which they originated. A science of the soul without soul! As a method this might be possible; but the outcome, to use a rough analogy, is a meal without food. That is modern Psychology. People are anything but satisfied if you give them a meal with nothing on their plates, but nineteenth century science was wonderfully content with a Psychology without soul. Such a trend began at a comparatively early stage and spiritual life must flow as a strong impulse into this whole domain.

The old life has come to an end and a new life must begin. We must feel that there was given to us from the ancient Atlantean epoch a primeval wisdom which has gradually withered away and that in our present incarnation we are faced with the task of gathering a new wisdom for the men of a later time. To make this possible was the purpose of the Christ Impulse, and the activity and power of that Impulse will continually increase. It may be that the Christ Impulse will work most strongly when all tradition—in history too—has died away and men find their way to Christ Himself as the true reality.

You can see, then, that the course of post-Atlantean evolution and the life of an individual human being are comparable as Macrocosm with Microcosm. But the individual is in a strange situation. What is there left to him in the second part of his life but to absorb and assimilate what he acquired for himself in the first half? And when that is all used up, death follows. The spirit alone can be victorious over death and carry forward into a new incarnation what begins to decay after the half-way point of life has been passed. Development is on the ascent until the thirty-fifth year. After that there is decline. But it is precisely then that the spirit takes a hand. What it cannot incorporate into the bodily nature of man during the second half of life it brings to blossom in a later incarnation. As the body withers the spirit gradually comes to fruition.

The macrocosm of humanity as a whole reveals a similar picture. Until the fourth post-Atlantean epoch there is a youthful, thriving development of culture. From then onwards there is a decline—symptoms of death everywhere in the evolution of human consciousness, but at the same time the inflow of new spiritual life which will incarnate again as the spiritual life of humanity in the culture-epoch following our own. But man must work with full consciousness on what is subsequently to incarnate again. The rest will die away. We can look prophetically into the future and see the birth of many sciences seeming to benefit post-Atlantean civilisation although they belong to what is dying. But the life that is poured into humanity under the direct influence of the Christ Impulse will come to manifestation in the future just as the Atlantean knowledge came again to manifestation in the holy Rishis.

Ordinary science knows of the Copernican system only that part which is in process of dying. The part that will live on and bear fruit—and that is not the part that has been influential for four centuries—must now be mastered by men through their own efforts. Copernicanism as presented to-day is not strictly true. Spiritual investigation alone can reveal its real truth. The same holds good for Astronomy, and for everything else that is regarded as knowledge to-day. Science can of course be of practical use and as technology completely justified. But in so far as it pretends to contribute to human knowledge in its real form, it is a dead product. It is useful for the immediate handiwork of men and for that no spiritual content is necessary. But as far as it purports to have anything vital to say about the mysteries of the Universe it belongs to the culture that is dying. If knowledge of the mysteries of the Universe is to be enriched, the orthodox science of to-day must be imbued with life through the findings of Spiritual Science.

The foregoing lectures were intended as an introduction to the study of St. Mark's Gospel which we shall now begin. I had first to show how essential this greatest of all spiritual impulses was for human evolution just at the time when only the last, most tenuous threads of spirituality remained to mankind.

At the beginning of this lecture Dr. Steiner emphasised that those relatively new to the study of Spiritual Science would find many things difficult to understand. He added that unless the necessary efforts were made by these recent Members to master the elementary principles of Spiritual Science, erroneous ideas would be inevitable.

My book Christianity as Mystical Fact will have made it clear to all of you that if the Gospels are to be rightly understood, they must be regarded as treatises of Initiation. This means that in essence they are adaptations of rites and rituals of Initiation. Scripts of this nature indicated the path along which the candidate was led step by step to the higher worlds, how he must undergo certain experiences and awaken forces slumbering in his soul, how each higher stage was related to the one below, until at the stage of Initiation itself the spiritual world penetrated into his soul and revealed its mysteries. At this stage he gazed into the spiritual worlds and a vista of the Beings of the Hierarchies lay open before him. The content of these Initiation-scripts, then, was a description of the experiences which every candidate for Initiation had to undergo.

In pre-Christian times many human beings were initiated in the different centres of the Mysteries. Generally speaking the process was the same, although there were variations in details. The candidates were led stage by stage to the point where they were able to gaze into the spiritual world and the Beings of the Hierarchies were before them as spiritual—not physical—realities. That is what happened in pre-Christian times. But what did Christianity, what did the Christ Impulse signify for those who had been initiated in the ancient Mysteries? It signified that a Being, known in the physical world as Jesus of Nazareth, had revealed the secrets of the spiritual world in a new way, not in the way that had been customary in the pre-Christian Mysteries. A man who had been initiated according to the ancient rites was able to speak to others about the secrets of the spiritual worlds. But the Christ Event meant that something had come to pass whereby without having traversed the usual paths, Jesus of Nazareth was able to speak of these secrets through what happened at the Baptism in Jordan, when the Christ Being entered into him. From the moment when in an event of supreme historical significance, Jesus of Nazareth was thus initiated, the Christ Spirit spoke to those around Him of the secrets of the spiritual worlds. Christ made manifest on the physical plane, for all the world to see, something that in former times could be attained only in the secrecy of the Mysteries by those who were to be initiated: they could then go forth and speak to their fellow-men of the secrets of the spiritual worlds. We can imagine ourselves looking into sanctuaries of the ancient Mysteries and seeing how the aspirants were initiated by the Hierophants and were then able to look into the spiritual worlds and go forth to teach of them. All the rites of Initiation took place in the deepest secrecy of the temples; and outside the Mysteries there was no possibility of speaking at first hand about the spiritual worlds. But now, what had been enacted time and time again in the secrecy of the Mysteries was brought into the open in Palestine, presented there as an historical event, as the story of Jesus of Nazareth, which culminated in an Initiation of supreme significance in world-history. This was the Mystery of Golgotha. The supreme Mystery enacted as an historic fact before the eyes of all the world—this is how we must picture the connection of the Mystery of Golgotha with the Mysteries of pre-Christian times.

Now the directives for Initiation, although concerned in essentials with the same stages, differed in details among the peoples living in different parts of the Earth and these directives were adapted to the nature of the individuals living in different places at different times. Let us think of the soul of one of those generally called the Evangelists who participated in the writing of our Gospels. From their own occult training such men had some knowledge of the directives for Initiation among various peoples and in various Mysteries. They knew what experiences a man must undergo before he could proclaim the secrets of the spiritual worlds and of the Hierarchies. And now, through the events in Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha, they had been made aware that what could previously be witnessed only by those who had attained Initiation in the Mysteries, had taken place openly on the stage of world-history and would enter more and more deeply into the hearts and souls of all men.

The Evangelists were not biographers in our sense of the word. They did not include in their writings details of no significance to the world which it is quite unnecessary for anyone to know. They were not the kind of biographers who ferret out every detail of a man's private affairs. They described the life of Christ by saying that in Jesus of Nazareth, in whom the Christ was present, something happened which had been witnessed again and again in the Mysteries but never as an historic event, concentrated into a few years. It was now an historic reality, yet it was a repetition of the temple-rituals.—The life of Jesus could therefore have been described by specifying the stages passed through in other circumstances during the process of Initiation.

The directives for Initiation in the ancient Mysteries are found again in the Gospels and indications are given there of the reason why what had formerly taken place in the deep secrecy of the temples had now been transferred to the great arena of world-history. And it is the writer of St. Mark's Gospel who, at the outset, states why he is in a position to write of an historic event which in fact fulfils a rule of Initiation though enacted on an infinitely greater scale. From the beginning he speaks of how humanity has developed in such a way that this great event might come to pass and Initiation might be transferred from the secrecy of the temple-sanctuaries to the arena of history. He proclaims that this is connected with an event foretold by the Hebrew prophets. For the Mystery of Golgotha had been foreseen and foretold by the true Initiates, among whom the Hebrew prophets may, in a certain sense, be included.

If we try to penetrate into the soul of a man such as the prophet Isaiah, the meaning of the words at the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel is approximately this: that a time will come when the souls of men will not be as they are at present. This time is already now being prepared for.—This was Isaiah's view in his own day. What did he really mean? The deeply impressive words of this prophet with which St. Mark's Gospel begins, are, as you know, usually rendered:

‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness. Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.'¹

In these words the prophet Isaiah points to the greatest event in all world-history—the Mystery of Golgotha in Palestine. You know what trouble we have had when studying the other Gospels to make the most important passages to some extent intelligible in translation. What really matters is to render the turns of phrases in a way that will convey the profound meaning of the original language. The words should not merely lend themselves to theoretical interpretation but be able to arouse feelings similar to those aroused in men who understood the inherent character of the language in current use. Language at that time was not as abstract, dry and prosaic as it has now become. Its character as the means of verbal expression was such that in addition to the usual meaning of the words spoken the hearer was always aware of a richer significance and fullness of content and knew precisely what that content indicated. At that time a whole world of meaning was heard in the words. The ancient Hebrew language was particularly rich in this respect, even when the picture used was drawn from the realm of the senses. Phrases such as ‘prepare the way’ or ‘make his paths straight’ are pictures derived entirely from the sense-world—as if a way, or a path, were being prepared with spades and shovels. But it was a peculiar feature of Hebrew—a language of outstanding grandeur among the others—that behind these expressions which were applied to outer things, spiritual worlds could be apprehended with great exactness. Fanciful interpretations were unheard of and the procedure was unlike that adopted by our modern scholars when they read all sorts of implications into the works of poets. Arbitrary interpolations were quite impossible. This was partly because in the ancient Hebrew language the vowels were not marked in the script, and by varying them, world-secrets could be revealed in the sounds themselves. In those days men had a true feeling for all this.

In Greek—the language of the Gospel texts—this was no longer the case to the same extent. All the same, far better renderings than those produced by most translators of the Gospels would have been possible, even without occult knowledge. What has happened is that for the most part one translator has just copied another without any searching philological study of the passages in the Greek texts. Later on I will give you definite examples of errors that have been made. I do not want to interrupt our study to-day and will try, not on a philological basis but with the help of knowledge derived from spiritual-scientific investigations, to clarify the most significant passage occurring at the beginning of the Gospel of St. Mark. The following is a prophecy of Isaiah, showing what the event of Palestine was to mean.

The Greek text is as follows:

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(Idou egō apostellō ton angelon mou pro prosōpou sou, hos kataskeuasei tēn hodon sou emprosthen sou,
Phōnē boōntos en tē erēmō: Hetoimasate tēn hodon Kyriou, eutheiās poieite tās tribous autou.)²

It is essential to realise from the beginning that the word Angelos (‘angel’ or ‘messenger’) was used in those ancient times only in the sense in which we use it when, in speaking of the Hierarchies, we are referring to the Beings of the hierarchical rank immediately above man. When the words τόѵ ἂγγελόѵ occur, we must realise that a Being of this rank is meant; otherwise the whole sense of the passage will be lost. Spiritual Science alone can provide the basis for understanding such a passage. But once understood it can be a foundation for what occultism has to say about the Christ-event. What is the fundamental significance of the Christ Impulse? We have expressed it as follows.—Through the Christ Impulse the human soul became conscious for the first time that an Ego, an ‘I’, was to find a place within it, a self-conscious ‘I’ through which in the further course of Earth-evolution there must be revealed all the secrets formerly revealed by the astral body through natural clairvoyance.

In the epoch of post-Atlantean culture preceding our own, men were still endowed, to some extent, with faculties of clairvoyance which enabled them to see into the spiritual world. In certain abnormal conditions of soul the secrets of the spiritual world streamed into them and they were able to gaze into the realms of the Hierarchies. Vision of the Hierarchy of the Angels persisted the longest and was the most frequent. The Angels were known as Beings belonging to the rank immediately above man. In the times of ancient clairvoyance men were not aware that they themselves possessed a faculty capable of leading them into the spiritual worlds; they regarded this possibility as a grace vouchsafed to them from without, as the implanting of spiritual powers in their souls. Hence the Prophets could point to the future, saying: “The time will come when man will be conscious of his ‘I’ and know that it is by the self-conscious ‘I’ that the secrets of the spiritual worlds will be unveiled. Man will be able to say: I penetrate into the secrets of the spiritual world through the power of the ‘I’ within me.”

But preparation was necessary before this stage could be reached. As the lowest rank of the Hierarchies, man had to be prepared by being sent an example of what he must become. The ‘Messenger’ or ‘Angel’ was to proclaim to man that he was to become an ‘I’ in the full sense of the word. And whereas the mission of earlier Angels had been to reveal the spiritual world, it was now the mission of a particular Angel to carry the revelations to a further stage, to make known to man that he was to enter into full possession of the Ego, the ‘I’. The earlier revelations were of a different character, not intended for a self-conscious ‘I’.

Isaiah proclaimed that the time of the mystery of the ‘I’ was to come and that from the host of the Angels one would be deputed to announce this.—Only in this sense can we understand what is meant when it is said that the Angel, the Messenger, was ‘sent before’—that is to say, sent before man who was to become a self-conscious ‘I’. The one who had been ‘sent before’ was to come as a Being of the Hierarchy of Angels. No Angel had yet spoken to man as a self-conscious ‘I’. So this messenger of whom the prophet Isaiah speaks is to make men aware that they must prepare to make a place in their souls for the ‘I’, the fully independent ‘I’. This passage therefore draws attention to a great revolution in the development of the human soul: whereas hitherto men had always to go out of their bodies in order to reach the spiritual world, henceforward they would be able to remain within their own ‘I’ and draw forth from the ‘I’ itself the secrets of that world.

Let us compare a soul of remote antiquity with a soul living near the time of Christ. When a man of very early pre-Christian centuries strove to rise into the higher worlds he could not retain even the degree of self-consciousness so far developed. He was obliged to discard all consciousness of self and be transported into the world of the Hierarchies, the world of pure spirituality. His consciousness was entirely suppressed.—Such were the conditions in the early pre-Christian era.

What, then, was the situation of a man living in times when in order to enter the spiritual world it was no longer necessary for self-consciousness to be suppressed but when the stage had been reached for the development of the ‘I’? Even in the Atlantean epoch the ‘I’ was already present—in a certain sense; but complete assurance that the greatest secrets and mysteries could flow from the ‘I’ itself was brought by the Christ Impulse. That is why a man who had achieved the old type of Initiation felt that if he desired to penetrate into the spiritual world and receive its revelations, he must suppress a certain part of his soul and make other parts of it particularly active. The part of his inner being that was gradually to grow into the ‘I’ had to be suppressed, darkened, to become a desolate waste in the soul. On the other hand the astral body—the body which could make a certain degree of clairvoyance possible—must be fired into activity. And then the old clairvoyant visions lit up within it.

I said that the ‘I’ was in a certain sense already present, but could not be used to investigate the secrets of the spiritual world. The ‘I’ had to be suppressed, the astral body fired into activity. But more and more it became impossible to quicken the impulses in the astral body. In olden times one of man's most elementary powers was that he was able to suppress the ‘I’ and kindle the astral body into activity; the secrets of the spiritual world then streamed into him. But progress in evolution was actually achieved just because the astral body became more and more incapable of receiving the secrets of the spiritual world. Man was obliged to admit to himself that his astral body was becoming more and more incapable of attaining what human beings had once been able to attain with the old faculty of clairvoyance, and the ‘I’ within him was not strong enough yet to achieve anything itself.

It was the best clairvoyants who were the most strongly aware of something barren, something desolate in the soul. This was the ‘I’, to which no impulse had yet been given. They were aware, too, how impossible it was to reach the spiritual world through the ‘I’. This will give you an idea of the feelings and mood of a man living in the period just before the coming of Christ. Such a man was bound to say to himself that he could no longer unfold in his astral body the powers it once possessed: but as yet he had no alternative impulse, so that there was something barren in his soul, something that could not rise into the spiritual world.

When the time for the Christ Impulse was drawing near, certain methods of training were adopted with the object of acquainting men with that province of the soul which could not yet be filled with the spirit. An individual who aspired to gain entry into the higher worlds was told that he could not rise into those worlds in his astral body, that he must withdraw into that province within him where he would feel as though he had no contact at all with the external world.

This was the mood of soul in an aspirant for Initiation at the time of the Christ Impulse. He said to himself: I must abandon all hope of reaching the spiritual world through the powers of my astral body; the time for that is past and the ‘I’ is still not ready. But from something within me that is trying to emerge and to penetrate into the spiritual world, I can surmise—no more than surmise—that it is striving with might and main to receive the spiritual impulse.

This experience, known in those days to every seeker for the light of the spirit, was called ‘the way into the solitude of the soul’, or also, ‘the way into the solitude’. The messenger who was to prepare for the Christ-event had therefore to describe the way into the solitude to those who wished to hear about the approaching Impulse. He had himself to know the depths of solitude, to preach from actual experience of the solitude of the soul.

In your study of St. Mark's Gospel you will come to realise more and more clearly that certain lofty spiritual Beings through whom matters of vital importance in human evolution are to take place, look for their instruments in suitable beings of flesh and blood and then descend to live in the soul incarnated in such a body. The messenger of whom Isaiah spoke—who must not be thought of as a man in the ordinary sense—took possession of the soul of the reincarnated Elias—John the Baptist—lived in him and was destined to proclaim to men that the Christ Impulse was at hand.

Where, then, did the voice of this messenger resound? It resounded in what I have just described to you as. ‘the solitude of the soul’. In St. Mark's Gospel we read: ‘Hear the cry in the solitude of the soul’. ὲν τῇ ὲpήμω (tē erēmō) must not be translated as if the image of a ‘wilderness’ were meant in an external sense. ὲν τῇ ὲpήμω really means: in the solitude. The imagery used helps us to glimpse the spiritual world.

We shall have a truer understanding of this expression if we devote a little study to the meaning conveyed by another word, Kyrios, or Lord, as in the usual rendering of this passage. ‘Prepare ye the way of the Lord.’ The actual meaning is still discernible in the Greek but can be confirmed by comparison with ancient tradition. In the language of those early times the meaning of a word such as this was not as abstract and shallow as it is to-day. In the age of materialism men have become superficial in their attitude to language and no longer feel as they once did, that words are the bodies of soul-beings, soul-realities, that a whole world lives in the words. The most that can be done to-day is to try to revive something of this feeling, as I have attempted to do in the Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation.

What men felt when they uttered the word Kyrios in circumstances such as those indicated, was that it was an image, a picture, of happenings in the inner life of the soul. They felt the ‘I’ rising upwards from the depths towards the surface of the soul as the appearance of a Lord and Master, the Director and Ruler of the soul-forces. Nowadays we speak of thinking, feeling and willing as servants of the soul. But within the soul there is a Lord, a Kyrios: the ‘I’ or Ego. In olden times man could not say: ‘I think’. He said: ‘It thinks’—or, ‘it feels, it wills in me.’

At the time when the Lord of the soul-forces, the ‘I’, appeared as Ruler, the result of this crucial change in the evolution of humanity was that man now said: ‘I think, I feel, I will.’ Hitherto the soul had lived in a certain subconscious state, the captive as it were of its own forces. Now, the Lord of those forces, the ‘I’, was at hand. This passage in St. Mark's Gospel does not refer to any personality or being but to the emergence of the ‘I’ as the Lord in the whole structure of the soul. ‘The Lord within the soul is at hand.’

This was also made known in the temples where preparation was in train for what was now to take place in mankind. In a mood of holy awe and reverence it was affirmed: Hitherto the soul has had within it only the forces of thinking, feeling and willing—they are its servants: but now the Lord, the Kyrios, is drawing near.—This mighty process will continue to unfold until the end of the Earth-period and its power will constantly increase. The impulse is given by Christ and His life marks the supreme moment in earthly time. The hour on the cosmic clock indicates the point when the ‘I’ becomes more and more powerful as Lord of the soul-forces. The goal will be attained when the Earth dies in the Cosmos and man rises to higher stages of existence.

Only if you are able to feel what this means can you have an idea of what was prophesied by Isaiah and repeated by John the Baptist. Both of them wished to call attention to the crucial event in the evolution of the human soul. But the word εὐθεἱαç (eutheiās) must not be translated ‘straight’, as is usual; the right rendering is ‘open’—that is to say, not only ‘straight’ but ‘open’, meaning that the paths along which the Kyrios comes to the human soul are clear. But man must himself do something to enable the Kyrios to take hold of the soul. The way must be made free, must be made open. In short, if the passage is to be translated at all intelligibly and at the same time kept fairly close to the conventional version, it would run somewhat as follows:

‘Mark well!’—‘behold’ is not really correct—‘I send my angel before the ‘I’ in you; he will prepare the way. Hear the cry in the solitude of the soul’—the cry for the Lord of the soul. (The word ‘soul’ is not actually used but was intuitively understood.) ‘Prepare the way of the Lord of the soul; labour to make the path open for him.’

These sentences give an approximate idea of what can be felt in the words of Isaiah. The Angel in the soul of John the Baptist used them once again.

What made this possible? To answer this question we shall have to give some thought to the nature of John the Baptist's own Initiation and to its effect in his soul.

You know from earlier lectures³ that a man can be initiated either by descending into the depths of his own soul or by being prepared in such a way that his soul passes out of the body and its forces pour into the Macrocosm. Among different peoples these two paths were adopted in very diverse forms. When a man wished to pour his soul into the Macrocosm, the twelve stages to be passed were symbolised, so to speak, by the twelve signs of the Zodiac. The souls flowed out in particular directions, to particular regions of the Macrocosm. Generally speaking, a very great deal was achieved, especially for the realisation of some particular purpose in world-evolution, when a soul had developed so far that it could receive all the forces originating from the cosmic secrets of a particular zodiacal constellation. The practice in all the ancient rites of Initiation was that a candidate should be initiated into the secrets of the Macrocosm in such a way that his soul flowed out in the direction, let us say, of Capricorn, or in the case of other candidates, in the directions of Cancer, Libra, Virgo, and so on. I have said repeatedly that there are twelve different possibilities of passing out into the Macrocosm, directions indicated symbolically by the twelve constellations of the Zodiac. If a candidate was unable at once to attain the highest Initiation, the Sun Initiation, but could achieve a partial Initiation only, his soul was directed to the secrets connected with one particular constellation. But his vision must become independent of everything material. This meant that either in the rites of the Mysteries or, as in the case of John the Baptist, by grace from above, the candidate's gaze was guided to a constellation when the Earth lay between him and the constellation—that is to say, by night. Physical eyes see the physical constellation only. But when vision can penetrate through the material Earth—which means that the constellation is masked by the material Earth—then what is seen is not the physical but the spiritual reality, that is to say, the secrets which the constellation expresses.

The vision of John the Baptist was trained in such a way that at night he could look through the material Earth into the constellation of Aquarius. When the Angel took possession of his soul he had attained the Aquarius Initiation. Thus John the Baptist was able to place all his faculties and all he knew and felt at the disposal of the Angel, in order that through the Angel the secrets connected with the Aquarius Initiation might be proclaimed and the announcement made of the coming of the ‘I’, the χὐριοç, the Lord of the soul-forces.

At the same time, however, the Baptist proclaimed that the time had come when this Aquarius Initiation must be replaced by another, which would make fully intelligible the approaching rulership of the ‘I’. Therefore he said to his intimate disciples: I am one who is able to place at the disposal of my Angel all the forces coming from the Aquarius Initiation: but after me must come one whose forces are derived from an even higher source.

If you follow the course of the Sun in the daytime from the constellation of Aries, through Taurus, Gemini and so on, to Virgo, you must follow its progress at night from Libra on to Aquarius and Pisces. This is the direction of the spiritual Sun. John had attained the Aquarius Initiation and announced that He who was to come after him would possess the powers of the Pisces Initiation—the Initiation that followed his own and was regarded as the higher. Hence John the Baptist declared to his disciples: Through the Aquarius Initiation I can place at the disposal of my Angel only those powers which enable him to proclaim the coming of the χὐριοç the Lord; but there will come One who has the powers symbolised by the Pisces Initiation; and into him the Christ Himself will enter!

With these words John the Baptist pointed to Jesus of Nazareth; and for this reason, tradition assigned to Christ Jesus the symbol of Pisces, the Fishes. Moreover because every outer event is a symbol for inner happenings, fishermen were assigned as helpers of the Pisces Initiate. All these happenings are external, historical events and at the same time profoundly symbolic of the spiritual secrets.

John proclaimed: A higher form of Initiation will be vouchsafed to mankind! He himself could give only the Initiation that comes from Aquarius and he called himself an Aquarian, a Water-man. We must realise more and more clearly that astronomical and cosmic secrets are connected with the images used to express the secrets of Man. John said: ‘I have baptised you with water!’ Baptism with water lay within the power of those who had received from heaven the Initiation of Aquarius. The spiritual Sun progresses from Aquarius to Pisces (representing the progress from John the Baptist to Jesus of Nazareth) and when a being appeared in the world who had attained the Initiation of the Fishes and was therefore able to receive the spiritual impulse which must be the instrument of the Pisces Initiation—it was then possible for him to baptise, not only as John had baptised, with water, but in the higher sense described by John as ‘baptism with the Holy Ghost’.

In this lecture I have put a twofold conception before you. First: the words at the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel indicate processes in the historical evolution of humanity and speak of a higher Power—an Angel who speaks through the body of John the Baptist. Second: the passages in question relate to happenings in the heavens—the progress of the spiritual Sun from the constellation of Aquarius to the constellation of Pisces. Every line of St. Mark's Gospel contains something that can be read rightly only if in following the words we always have in mind both a human and a cosmic-astronomical meaning, and when we realise that there lives in man something that in its true significance can be found only in the heavens.

We must grasp the connection between the secrets of the Macrocosm and the secrets of human nature more exactly than is usual. At the end of this lecture I can do no more than hint at what lies behind this and I have only wished to give certain hints of these things. In studying St. Mark's Gospel we shall have to plumb depths of wisdom about which you will have to ponder for a very long time if hints are to lead to anything more. I will try to make clear to you in the following way how this Gospel should be read.

A rainbow appears to a child as something real in the sky and until it is explained to him, he thinks that he can touch and take hold of it with his hands. Later on he learns that a rainbow appears only when there is a certain combination of rain and sunshine; when the conditions of rain and sunshine change, the rainbow disappears. The rainbow is therefore not a reality in itself but only a mirage, an illusion; a combination of rain and sunshine is the reality.

Once we make a little progress on the path of occult knowledge we are likely to have an experience which will remind us of the sort of thing I have said about the rainbow, namely that ultimately there is in the external world no solid reality but only appearances which are sustained by factors outside themselves.—And do you know what this chimera is? It is man himself! Man himself is also such an appearance. If you take him as you see him with your physical senses as being reality, you are much mistaken. You are in fact surrendering to maya, to the great ‘non-being’. The word ‘maya’ is derived from mahat aya—mahat = great; ya = being; a = non, negation; hence maya = the great non-being.

On the path of occult development a man reaches the point where he begins to think of himself as something like the rainbow. He is a chimera, like everything that comes before his physical senses. Even the Sun seen as a physical globe is a chimera. When physical science describes it as a globe of gas in cosmic space, that is good enough for practical purposes; but anyone who takes the globe of gas to be a reality is becoming a victim of maya, of illusion, of non-being. The truth is that the Sun is a meeting-place for Hierarchies of spiritual Beings, whose deeds come to expression in the warmth and light streaming from the Sun. The warmth and light themselves are an illusion; our other perceptions are also illusions. Normally we picture ourselves as having a heart in our breast; but that heart is nothing more than an appearance. What we see as a heart is rather like the rings we see around street lamps when we go out in the evening in an autumn mist; the rings are not really there but are the result of definite conditions. This is also true of the human heart. Imagine that this circle represents the vault of heaven and imagine various kinds of forces streaming in from different directions of the heavens and meeting at a particular point of intersection. In ultimate reality, where we think our heart is there is nothing but these heavenly forces that stream in and intersect. If you can somehow ‘think away’ everything except those instreaming forces, then the point of intersection actually is your heart. The same sort of thing is true of our other organs which are in reality only the outcome of intersecting cosmic forces.

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Look at it from another point of view. When you move from one place to another you probably think that it is some impulse inside yourself that makes you move. If you do, then you are falling a victim to what we have called maya. The real fact is that there are forces streaming in from the Macrocosm which intersect, and thus evoke an illusion about the direction in which you are walking and the forces which make you walk. Down on Earth all that you really experience is the intersection of cosmic forces. If we want to get at the truth we have to find out what is going on in the Macrocosm and what the upper and lower cosmic forces are doing. Those forces create the effect of making us think we have a heart or a liver and talk as if we were going from place to place. If we want to express all this in terms of actual reality we should have to describe the movements of cosmic forces.

If we want to give an adequate description of the reality of the Baptism administered by John the Baptist, we should have to refer to what the cosmic forces—those symbolised in Aquarius—were requiring him to do. The ultimate decision had been taken in the great World Lodge and in consequence the necessary forces were sent into John. We must therefore read in the cosmic language accounts of what happened at a particular place on Earth. The writer of St. Mark's Gospel read in the heavens the processes corresponding to the events in Palestine. It is cosmic-astronomical events which he is describing, and so he says: Look at things in this way: here you have a wall on which you can see shadows playing, and if you want to know what ‘causes’ the shadows you must look upward to what is casting those shadows. I am giving you an account of what happened at the Jordan, but those happenings are really the means by which others are reflected on Earth. These things that I am describing come about through the interplay of macrocosmic forces active in the heavens.

The writer of this Gospel is therefore describing cosmic forces, phenomena and happenings in the heavens. And what he describes is the expression, the projection, the shadow-image cast by the happenings in the Macrocosm upon the little area of Palestine on the Earth. Only if we are quite clear about this will any real understanding of the greatness and significance of the Gospel of St. Mark be possible. We had first to form an idea of its contents and to understand what is said at the beginning, namely this: The prophet Isaiah foretold that the Lord of the soul-forces will come to men and that the ‘messenger’ will live in John the Baptist; he will prepare men for the approach of the Lord of the soul-forces.

This messenger had to take up his dwelling in the body of a man who had passed through the Aquarius Initiation. John could thus make possible on Earth the work of an individual such as Jesus of Nazareth; Jesus, on His side, had been prepared for the Pisces Initiation and through it was able to receive the Christ into himself.

Events on the Earth are the reflections of cosmic happenings, related to cosmic evolution as the rainbow is related to rain and sunshine. We must study rain and sunshine if we are to describe the true nature of the rainbow. And if we want to understand what lived in the heart of John the Baptist or in the heart of Jesus of Nazareth who became the vehicle of the Christ, we must study cosmic happenings. For the whole Universe was speaking to men in what took place in Palestine and on Golgotha. The Gospel of St. Mark as it stands merely provides the letters for accounts of mighty cosmic happenings. Whoever thinks otherwise is like someone who sees one set of ink-marks here and another there but has no conception of what the word ‘Lord’ signifies. The truth is that what is recounted in this Gospel amounts only to the letters—and moreover even they are an outermost shell. We must rouse ourselves to understand to what the events in Palestine are pointing, as it were in a play of shadows.

Try to grasp what is meant by saying that earthly events are shadows of macrocosmic events and you will then have taken the first step towards a gradual understanding of St. Mark's Gospel—one of the greatest sacred records in the world.

• 1. Dr. Steiner quoted the translation by Carl Weizsacker.
• 2. Translation in the Authorised Version. Mark i, 2-3: ‘Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’
• 3. See Macrocosm and Microcosm, notably lectures 1 and 3. A course of eleven lectures given in Vienna, March 1910.

In several lecture-courses given over the years in the different Groups and attended by many of the friends here to-day, we have endeavoured to study the Gospels of St. John, St. Luke and St. Matthew and the great event in Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha, from three different points of view.

One result of these studies should have been to establish in our souls a growing realisation of the greatness of this unique event. We have understood that the reason why there are four Gospels is that their authors, writing as inspired occultists, each wished to describe the great event from a special angle, just as a photograph of an object is taken from a particular side. By combining the pictures, each taken from a different angle, an idea of the reality can be obtained. Each of the Evangelists makes it possible for us to study one aspect in particular of the great event in Palestine.

The Gospel of St. John gives us insight into the great events in Palestine by opening out a vista of the highest human goals and at the same time of the sublime realities of the spiritual worlds.

The Gospel of St. Luke unveils the mysteries connected with the personality of Jesus of Nazareth, with the Solomon Jesus and the Nathan Jesus, until the moment when the Christ descends into him.

The Gospel of St. Matthew, as those of you who heard the lectures will know and others will be able to read, shows how the bodily nature in which the Christ was to incarnate for three years was prepared by mysterious processes connected with the racial stock of the ancient Hebrew people.

In a certain respect the Gospel of St. Mark can lead us to supreme heights in our study of Christianity and give us insight into many matters communicated by the other Gospels but in a less dramatic way. And so this evening I will take the opportunity of saying something in reference to the Gospel of St. Mark.

We must realise how necessary it is to study many subjects with which superficial modern thought has no inclination to concern itself. If we are to understand the Gospel of St. Mark in its depths we must acquaint ourselves to some extent with the very different character of the language in which men expressed themselves at the time when Christ Jesus was on the Earth. Let me try to convey to you what I mean by using contrasts as it were of light and shadow.

We make use of language to express what we want to say and to reveal what lives in our souls. It is in the way in which language is used as a means of expressing the inner life of soul that the several epochs in the evolution of humanity differ radically from one another. If we go back to the ancient Hebrew epoch and to the wonderful modes of expression used in the temple-language, we find that there was a quite different way of clothing the secrets of the soul in words—a way undreamed of nowadays. In the old Hebrew language only the consonants were written, the vowels being inserted afterwards; and when a word was uttered the echoes of a whole world reverberated in it—not, as is the case to-day, some more or less abstract concept. The reason why the vowels were not written was that they were an indication of the speaker's inmost being, whereas the consonants were intended to depict external objects or conditions. For example, whenever an ancient Hebrew wrote the letter B—or what corresponded to our present B—it always evoked in him a sense of warmth and a picture of some outer condition, in this case something in which one could be enclosed, as in a shelter or a house. The sound B could not be uttered without this feeling as an accompaniment. Again, the sound A (ah) could not be uttered without conveying the impression or image of something inwardly powerful, of a radiating force. The content of the soul thus projected into words streamed out into space and into other souls. Language was therefore much more alive, much more related to the secrets of existence than is the case nowadays.

This is one side—the light side I wanted to convey. But there is also the other side—the shadow side—constituted by the fact that in the use of our language we have to a great extent become utterly shallow. Our language expresses only abstractions, generalisations. People no longer have any feeling about this but it could not be otherwise in times when language is used, even for literary purposes, before writers have any spiritual content to convey, when enormous masses of printed matter circulate everywhere, when everyone feels that he must write something and nothing is considered unsuitable as subject-matter. When our Society was founded I discovered that certain authors were attaching themselves to it simply out of curiosity, in the hope of finding material for their novels. Why, they thought, should they not find characters among the Members who could be portrayed in their stories? So it behoves us to realise that our language nowadays has become abstract, commonplace and vacuous and there is neither a sense of its holiness nor, as was once the case, a feeling of responsibility towards its use. That is why it is so extraordinarily difficult to put into modern words the great facts proclaimed by the Gospels. People cannot understand that our modern language is empty when compared, for example, with the fulness of meaning implicit in a word of the ancient Greek language. When we read the Bible to-day we are reading something that in comparison with the original wording has been sifted not once but two or three times, and it is not the best but the worst that has remained. It does, of course, seem natural to quote from modern versions of the Bible, but we go astray most disastrously of all when we quote the Gospel of St. Mark in its modern rendering.

You know that at the very beginning of the Gospel of St. Mark, in Weizsacker's supposedly excellent translation—although as might be guessed from the high reputation it enjoys to-day, it is anything but excellent!—these words are found:

“As it is written in the prophet Isaiah: Behold I send my messenger before you who shall prepare the way before you. Listen how the voice is heard in the wilderness: Prepare the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.”
[The words in the English Authorised Version are: ‘As it is written in the Prophets, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, which shall prepare thy way before thee. The voice of one crying in the wilderness, Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight.’]

When we read a passage like this it would be self-deception to pretend that we understand it; if we are honest we shall admit that it is utterly incomprehensible to us. The passage is either of no significance or it says something we cannot understand. The first thing to do, then, is to assemble concepts enabling us to grasp the meaning of this saying of Isaiah. Isaiah was referring to the event which was to be of supreme significance for the evolution of humanity. What has already been said gives some indication of what Isaiah was foretelling in these words.

In ancient days man was endowed with a kind of clairvoyance and through the forces of his soul was able to rise into the divine-spiritual world. When this happened he was not using his Ego, his ‘I’, at the stage of development it had then reached; he was using his astral body which contained the powers of seership, whereas the forces rooted in the Ego were only gradually being awakened by perception of the physical world. The ‘I’ uses physical instruments, but in earlier times, if a man were seeking revelation, he used his astral body, seeing and perceiving through it. The process of evolution itself consisted in the transition from use of the astral body to use of the ‘I’. The Christ Impulse was to be the most powerful factor in the development of the ‘I’. If the words of St. Paul: ‘Not I but Christ in me’ are fulfilled in the ‘I’, then the ‘I’ is able to grow into the spiritual world through its own forces, whereas formerly this was possible only for the astral body.

This, then, is how evolution proceeded: Man once used his astral body as an organ of perception, but the astral body became less and less able to serve that purpose. When the time of Christ's coming was drawing near, it was losing its power to see into the spiritual world. Man could no longer be united with that world through his astral body and the ‘I’ was not yet strong enough to reveal it. That was the state of things when the time of Christ's coming was approaching.

In the course of human evolution the important steps which are eventually to take place have always to be prepared in advance. This was so in the case of the Christ Impulse too; but there was necessarily a period of transition. There could be no sudden change from the time when man felt his astral body becoming unreceptive to the spiritual world, becoming barren and desolate, to a time when the ‘I’ was kindled into activity through the Christ Impulse. What happened was that as the result of a certain influence from the spiritual world a few human beings were able to experience in the astral body something of what was later to be seen and known by the ‘I’. Egohood was prepared for, anticipated as it were in the astral body. It was through the ‘I’ and its development that man became Earth-Man in the real sense. The astral body properly belonged to the evolutionary period of the Old Moon, when the Angels were at the human stage. Man is at the human stage on the Earth. On the Old Moon it was appropriate for man to use his astral body. Everything else was merely preparation for the development of the ‘I’. The earliest stages of Earth-evolution proper were a recapitulation of the Old Moon-evolution, for man could never become fully man in the astral body; on the Old Moon it was only the Angels who could reach the human stage in the astral body. And just as the Christ lived in earthly man in order to inspire his ‘I’, so there were Angels who, having reached the human stage on the Old Moon, prophetically inspired man's astral body as a preparation for Egohood. A time was to come in human evolution on the Earth when man would be ready for the development of the ‘I’. On the Old Moon the Angels had developed to the highest stage, but as we have heard, only in the astral body. Now, in order that man might be prepared for Egohood, it was necessary that in exceptional conditions, and through grace, certain individuals should be inspired to work on the Earth as Angels; although they were men, the reality was that Angels were working in and through them.

This is a concept of great importance, without which there can be no understanding of human evolution in line with that of occultism. It is easy enough to say simply that everything is maya, but that is a mere abstraction. We must be able to say: Yes, a man is standing in front of me, but he is maya—indeed who knows if he is really a man? Perhaps what seems to be a human figure is only the outer sheath; perhaps some quite other being is using this sheath in order to accomplish a task that is beyond man's capacity.—I have given an indication of this in The Portal of Initiation.

Such an event in the history of humanity actually took place when the Individuality who had lived in Elijah was reborn as John the Baptist. An Angel entered into the soul of John the Baptist in that incarnation, using his bodily nature and also his soul to accomplish what no human being could have accomplished. In John the Baptist there lived an Angel whose mission was to herald in advance the Egohood that was to be present in its fulness in Jesus of Nazareth. It is of the greatest importance to realise that John the Baptist was maya and that an Angel, a Messenger, was living in him. This is indeed what the Greek says: Lo, I send my Messenger. The Messenger is an Angel. But nobody pays attention to what is actually said here. A deep mystery, enacted in the Baptist and foretold by Isaiah, is indicated. Isaiah foretold that the future John the Baptist would be maya—in reality he was to be the vehicle for the Angel, the Messenger who was to proclaim what man will become if he takes the Christ Impulse into himself. Angels announce in advance what man will later become. The passage in question might therefore be translated: Lo, the bestower of Egohood sends his Messenger (Angel) before you to whom Egohood is to be given.

Let us now see if we can discover the meaning of the third sentence. We must first try to picture the conditions prevailing in man's inner life when the astral body had gradually lost the power to send out its forces like feelers and to see clairvoyantly into the divine-spiritual world. Formerly, when the astral body was activated, man was able to look into that world, but this faculty was disappearing and darkness spreading within him. He had once been able to expand his astral body over all the beings of the spiritual world, but now he was inwardly desolate, inwardly isolated—the Greek word is ἔρημος. At that time the human soul lived in isolation, in desolation. This is what the Greek text tells us: Lo, a voice seems to speak in the desolation of the soul—call it ‘wilderness’ of the soul if you like—when the astral body can no longer expand into the divine-spiritual world. Hear the cry in the wilderness, in the desolation of the soul!

What is it that is being proclaimed in advance? First of all we must be clear about the meaning of the word Kyrios, when it was used in Hebrew but also still in Greek in reference to manifestations of the soul and spirit. To translate it simply as ‘the Lord’, with the usual connotation, is sheer nonsense. In ancient times everyone using the word Kyrios knew perfectly well that its meaning was connected with the development of man's soul-life and its mysteries. In the astral body, as we know, are the forces of thinking, feeling and willing; the soul thinks, feels and wills. These are the three forces working in the soul but they are actually its servants. In earlier times man was under their domination and he obeyed them, but as his evolution progressed these forces were to become the servants of the Kyrios, the Ruler, the Lord—in short, of the ‘I’. Used in relation to the soul, the word Kyrios actually meant the ‘I’. At this stage it would no longer be true to say: ‘The Divine-Spiritual thinks, feels and wills in me’, but rather: ‘I think, I feel, I will.’ The passage should be rendered more or less as follows.—Prepare yourselves, you human souls, to move along those paths that will awaken the Kyrios, the powerful ‘I’ within you; listen to the cry in the solitude of the soul. Make ready the path (or way) of the ‘I’, the Lord of the soul. Open the way for his forces so that he may no longer be the slave but the Ruler of thinking, feeling and willing. Lo, the power that is the ‘I’ sends his Angel before you, the Angel who is to give you the possibility of understanding the cry in the solitude of the astral soul. Prepare the paths of the ‘I’, open the way for the forces of the ‘I’.—Such is the meaning of these significant words of the prophet Isaiah; they point to the greatest of all events in the evolution of humanity. You will now understand the sense in which he speaks about the future John the Baptist, indicating how man's soul in its solitude longs for the coming of its Lord and Ruler, the ‘I’. Such is the real meaning of this passage and in this sense it is to be understood.

Why was John the Baptist able to be the bearer of the Angel? It was because he had received a particular form of Initiation. Initiations are not all identical in character and individuals who have a definite mission to fulfil must undergo a special form of Initiation. Now the writing of the stars in the heavens is so ordered as to reveal the nature and facts of happenings in the spiritual world. Thus a man may receive the Sun-Initiation, which means that he is initiated into the mysteries of the spiritual world of Ahura Mazdao—the spiritual world of which the Sun is the outer expression. But there are twelve forms of the Sun-Initiation, each of which differs from the other eleven. A man will receive a particular form of Initiation according to the mission he is to fulfil for humanity. His Initiation, though still a Sun-Initiation, may be of such a kind that the forces stream in as they do when the Sun is standing, for instance, in the constellation of Cancer; and these forces will be very different in the case of an Initiation connected with the Sun in Libra. These are the expressions used to indicate specialised Initiations. Individuals chosen for a mission as lofty as that of John the Baptist must receive Initiation in the form that can give the strength necessary for the fulfilment of their mission. And so in order that he might become the bearer of the Angel, John the Baptist received the Sun-Initiation originating from the constellation of Aquarius. The Sun in Aquarius is the symbol for the form of Initiation received by John the Baptist in order that he might become the bearer of the Angel. He received the Sun-forces which flow when the Sun is standing in Aquarius—the Waterman. The sign was the symbol indicating that John the Baptist had received this particular Initiation. In actual fact the name Aquarius, or Waterman, was given to the zodiacal sign because those who had received that Initiation acquired the faculty which enabled John the Baptist, for example, to achieve what he did. When men were plunged under water, their etheric bodies were momentarily loosened and in that condition it was possible for them to perceive what action was of the greatest importance at that particular time. Baptism in the Jordan revealed to those who underwent it the momentous significance of that period in history. It was to this end that John had received the baptismal Initiation and because this was connected with the rays of the Sun streaming from its position in a particular constellation, the constellation too was known symbolically as the Waterman. The name of the constellation was derived from the human faculty connected with it, and not vice versa.

Nowadays many learned ignoramuses try to explain spiritual happenings of this character by bringing Heaven down to Earth, saying that such things are simply indications of the movement of the Sun through the Zodiac. These learned gentlemen, who fundamentally know nothing, explain events in humanity by reference to the heavens. In the case of John the Baptist, actually the opposite was true: the zodiacal sign was used to express something that had occurred on Earth and was then transferred to the Heavens.

John the Baptist could therefore rightly say: ‘I baptise you with water.’ This was the same as saying to his intimate disciples, as he might well have done, that he had received the Aquarius Initiation. The movement of the Sun through the Zodiac as seen with physical eyes is in the direction from Leo to Virgo; the spiritual movement is from Aquarius to Pisces. Consequently John the Baptist was able to proclaim something that would work as the forces of the Sun in Pisces and not in Aquarius; also that the Being who was to come would give a higher kind of Baptism than he himself was able to give. The spiritual Sun progresses from Aquarius to Pisces and when this happens the Aquarius Baptism becomes a Baptism with spiritual water—Pisces, the Fishes. Hence the ancient symbol of fishes for the Being who was the bearer of the Christ. Just as John, through very special influences, had received the Aquarius Initiation, so all the mysteries enacted around and in Jesus of Nazareth belonged to a Pisces Initiation. The Sun had moved forward, spiritually, from one zodiacal constellation to another, indicating that Jesus of Nazareth had passed through a Pisces Initiation.

All this is hinted at in St. Mark's Gospel but such things have to be presented in pictures. Christ Jesus draws to Himself those who are seeking that of which Pisces is the symbol. Hence His first disciples are all of them fishermen. The indication of the Sun's progression into Pisces is clear when we read the words of John the Baptist: ‘I have baptised you with water, but He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit.’ And as Christ passes along the shore of the Sea of Galilee, that is to say, when the Sun has moved so far that its counterpart could be seen rising in Pisces, the fishermen known as Simon and Simon's brother, James and James's brother, are inspired to follow Him.

How can we understand all this? We shall not understand it unless we go more deeply into the linguistic expressions used in those times. Our modern way of expressing ourselves is slovenly and banal. Thus when a human being is standing in front of us, we say: Here is a man—similarly when there are two or three. But what is there in front of us is only maya; if we see a being with two legs and a human face the only way of expressing what we see in our modern language is to say: That is a man. But what does occultism take this ‘man’ to be? In the form in which he stands before us he is nothing but maya—approximately as real as a rainbow in the sky. A rainbow is a reality only as long as the necessary conditions of rain and sunshine are present; as soon as the relation between sunshine and rain changes, the rainbow vanishes. It is exactly the same in the case of a man. He is only a confluence of forces of the Macrocosm; we must look for forces in the heavens, in the Macrocosm. For the occultist, what we assume on Earth to be a man is simply nothingness. The truth is that forces are streaming from above downwards and from below upwards, and they intersect. And just as a particular combination of rain and sun produces a rainbow, so do forces streaming together from above and from below out of the Macrocosm create a phenomenon, an illusory image, which we take to be a man. But the man we see before us is really nothing but maya. Where we think we see a man there are intersecting cosmic forces. You must take this quite seriously. The man as he stands before us is merely a shadow of many forces. But the being who manifests in the man may well be at a different place altogether from the point where the man with his two legs is standing.

Now think of three human beings. One is a peasant in ancient Persia, working his plough in the Persian countryside. He looks like a man, but in reality he is a soul whose forces are sustained by some world from above or from below, and if we are to have real knowledge of him we must ascend to the realm of these forces. The second man is possibly some kind of official in ancient Persia. He too is formed from another world through intersecting forces and again, if we are to know him in the real sense, we must ascend to the realm of those forces. Finally, think of a third Persian, or one of whom we should have to say even more emphatically: he is a veritable illusion, a phantom. To discover the truth about him we should have to ascend to the Sun to find the forces sustaining this phantom figure. There above, among the mysteries of the Sun, we should find what we might call the Golden Star—Zarathustra. Rays are sent down and on the Earth there lives the being we call Zarathustra, though his essential being is not there at all.

The important thing is to realise that in ancient times men were well aware of the significance of names. Names were not given as they are to-day but according to what was really living in a human being, apart altogether from the outer appearance. An old man at the time of Christ would have understood very well what was meant if someone had pointed to John the Baptist, saying: There is the Angel of God! The outer appearance would have been disregarded as a secondary consideration and attention paid only to the inner reality.—And now suppose the same mode of expression had been used in connection with Christ Jesus. What would have been said of Him in times when such things were understood? Nobody would have so much as dreamed of giving the appellation Christ Jesus to the body of flesh moving about the land; the body was regarded merely as the sign that what was streaming down spiritually from the Sun had gathered together at this particular point. And when this body—the body of Jesus—moved from one place to another it was simply that the Sun-force was being made visible. This Sun-force was able of itself to move from place to place, independently of a physical body. Occasionally, Christ Jesus was said to be ‘in the house’, that is to say, in the flesh; but the Being in the flesh also moved about without a body. In the Gospel of St. John, above all, the Evangelist often writes exactly as if the Sun-force were present in a body of flesh when in reality the Christ is moving from place to place purely in the spirit.

That is why it is so important for the deeds of Christ Jesus always to be brought into relationship with the physical Sun—which is the outward expression for the spiritual world when gathered together at the point where the physical body is present. For example, when Christ Jesus performs an act of healing, it is the Sun-force that heals, but the Sun must be in the right position in the heavens. Thus: ‘At even, when the sun did set they brought unto Him all that were diseased ...’ and so on. It was important to indicate that this healing force can flow down only when the physical Sun has set and is working in a purely spiritual way. Again when Christ Jesus needs special power in order to do His works, He must draw it from the spiritual Sun, not from the physically visible Sun. ‘And in the morning, rising up a great while before day, He went out ...’ The path of the Sun and the power of the Sun are expressly indicated, furthermore that it is the Sun-force that is working, that Jesus is simply the external sign and that this path taken by the Sun-force could also become visible to the naked eye. Wherever St. Mark's Gospel speaks of the Christ, what is meant is the Sun-force which, in that epoch of Earth-evolution, worked with special strength upon the land called Palestine. Moreover the Sun-force, gathered into a focus, was moving from place to place, and the body of Jesus was the outward sign making the movement of the Sun-force visible to physical sight. The paths of Jesus in Palestine were the paths of the Sun-force that had come down to the Earth. If you trace the paths of Jesus to form a kind of chart you will have before you the indication of a cosmic happening—the Sun-force had penetrated into the land of Palestine. It is a macrocosmic process—that is the essential point. This is made especially evident by the writer of St. Mark's Gospel, who was well aware that a body which was the bearer of a principle such as the Christ-Principle must be entirely subservient to it. The Gospel therefore directs attention to the world so gloriously proclaimed by Zarathustra—the world which lies behind the material world and influences the life of man. Through Christ Jesus it was again made clear how the forces of this spiritual world work into the Earth. Hence in the body—the body of the Nathan Jesus as we have heard [See Lecture-Course on the Gospel of St. Luke, lectures IV–VII.]—which was influenced in a particular way by the Zarathustra-Individuality, it was inevitable that a kind of repetition should take place of happenings connected with Zarathustra.

We know some of the beautiful legends about Zarathustra. Almost immediately after his birth occurred the first miracle, that known as the ‘Zarathustra smile’. The second miracle was when Duransurun, the King ruling the district where Zarathustra was born, determined to murder the child about whom retrograde Magi had made certain statements. But when the King was on the point of stabbing the child his arm was paralysed. Finding that he could not use his dagger to do away with the child, he ordered him to be taken out into the wilderness and left among the wild beasts. This is the expression used to indicate that already in earliest childhood Zarathustra was destined to see what everyone is bound to see if his gaze has not been cleansed of impurities. Instead of the majestic Group-Souls and the higher spiritual Beings, he sees the emanations of his untamed fantasies. This is what is meant when we are told that Zarathustra was left in the wilderness among the wild beasts, but remained unharmed. This was the third miracle; the fourth was again connected with wild beasts. And always it was the good spirits of Ahura Mazdao who ministered to him.

These miracles are to some extent repeated in St. Mark's Gospel. ‘And immediately the Spirit driveth him into the wilderness’ (the word really means solitude). ‘And he was there in the wilderness forty days, tempted of Satan; and was with the wild beasts; and the angels ministered unto him.’

It is made clear to us here that the body was being prepared to become a focus of macrocosmic processes. What had happened to Zarathustra had to be repeated in the encounter with the wild beasts. The body became the bearer of macrocosmic processes.

In its very first lines the Gospel of St. Mark presents us with a vista of majestic grandeur and my aim in this lecture has been to show you how this Gospel acquires new life and power if only the words are understood in their right sense—not in that of our commonplace modern speech but in the sense of ancient language, when whole worlds lay behind each word. Our modern language needs to be recast in many ways before it is possible to discover what the words of ancient languages contained. When we say that man lives on the Earth and develops his ‘I’, or that he was present on the Old Moon when it was the Angels who reached their human stage—all this must be borne in mind when we read: Behold, I send my Angel before men. These words cannot be understood without the preliminary knowledge communicated by Spiritual Science.

If people were really honest to-day they would admit that the words at the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel are unintelligible to them. But instead they adopt an arrogant attitude and maintain that Spiritual Science is so much fantasy and puts all kinds of complications into what would otherwise be quite simple. But the fact of the matter is that people to-day have no real knowledge; they no longer recognise the principle adopted, for instance, in ancient Persia, when the sacred records were re-written from epoch to epoch in order to be clothed in a new form suited to every period. In this way the divine Word was recast in the form of the Zend Avesta, then again recast, and what we have to-day is its latest form. The Persian scriptures were, in fact, re-written seven times. One of the tasks of Anthroposophy is to teach men how necessary it is that records in which sacred mysteries are clothed in words should be re-written from epoch to epoch. For if we want to preserve the sublime language of the ancient writings we should not attempt in our re-writing to adhere pedantically to the old words; we should rather try to translate them into words that are immediately intelligible in the present age. An attempt to do this was made in the summer in the lecture-course on Genesis, and you will have realised then how many of the words must be re-cast. The lecture today may have given you some idea of how the same principle applies to the Gospel of St. Mark.

In the course of the years we have spoken about the deeper meanings of the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Luke and St. John, and here in Hanover, too, about the mysteries of Christianity. You will have realised that each of the Gospels provides a special means of penetrating to the core of the Christian message. It is almost truer to say of the Gospel of St. Mark than of the others that if it is to help us to gain some understanding of Christianity, we must make a certain basic assumption.

In studying this Gospel it is essential to be aware of how language was used as a means of expression in past ages of evolution. The ancient Hebrew language opens up a wide horizon in this respect. Those of you who were present at the lecture-course in Munich on Genesis, must have realised how necessary it was to give an adequate translation of particular words before the six or seven days’ work of creation could be understood, and how essential it is to re-create these ancient records in order to bring to light the inner, spiritual truths they indicate. In the Hebrew language the vowels and consonants were used very differently from anything that is customary to-day. What a man saw round about him was indicated in that ancient language by the consonants; the vowels expressed inner experiences of the soul and were indicated by dots only. In those early times, and even in the Greek language, a word in itself was an indication of a supersensible reality. Everyone knew that a spoken word containing certain sounds or syllables would arouse in the soul a whole series of mental pictures. A very great deal could be conveyed in a few words because all these factors were operating. We must always bear this in mind when we are studying the Gospel of St. Mark. We must not restrict ourselves to the actual words, because the words by themselves cannot lead us into the secrets and mysteries of that Gospel.

Let me give you one or two illustrations. In earlier times, language was a means for the expression of realities of soul and spirit. In our day it is a means for the expression of abstract thinking and this is very far removed from the living, pictorial thinking which alone can point the way into spiritual worlds. If we want to recover that kind of living thinking we must alter the forms of expression in our language accordingly. Language has become pedantic, useful only as an expression of abstract thinking; it has entirely lost the living quality which is able to lead into higher regions through the words of language and to unite the soul with the mysteries of the Universe. In the Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, beginnings have been made to infuse real life into language. It is often a matter of subtle nuances. Our language is crude, lacks suppleness, and it is only with a struggle that it can be made to express the delicate aspects of spiritual life. That is why I tried to manipulate language in such a way as to point to secrets of existence. In the Mystery Play I made an attempt to use other means to express a great deal that words cannot express. In the Play a man is striving to take the first steps towards Initiation, to hear spiritual tones resounding in his soul. The Play describes the many deep experiences undergone by Johannes in the course of his development. His progress is such that through the bitterest but at the same time the most powerful inner experiences, he reaches the realm of Devachan in the spiritual world where he is to be introduced to the life and activity of the elemental beings there. Any attempt to express this in ordinary words could only result in abstractions. And so I tried to present living people, expressing in their own nature the mysteries of how light and darkness interweave. In this way I tried to make audible in actual sounds things which, expressed in the words of modern language, would have seemed unreal. One must listen intently to the sound of the words and feel how the right sound occurs at the right place, sensing where a sound is appropriate and where it is not. This is a kind of spiritual alchemy. And by such means it is possible to indicate the interweaving life and activity of the spiritual forces in the Universe.

In the Mystery Play, Johannes is welcomed in Devachan by Maria and her companions, Philia, Astrid and Luna. Philia is the poetic representation of the sentient soul, hence the sound I (ee) occurs twice and A once in her name. Luna is the expression of the consciousness-soul, hence U and A occur once in her name. Astrid, the expression of the intellectual or mind-soul has in her name first the sound A then I (ee). In this way a great deal can be expressed more truly than in words. If a feeling for such things could be aroused there is a great deal which I might be able to omit. You must learn to feel the significance of the U with its dull, deep ring, the lightness of the I (ee) and the delicate significance of the AI or EI, with the sense of wonder it awakens in the soul. This brings a kind of understanding different from anything to be gained through ordinary words. The sounds of language make it a most wonderful instrument, infinitely wiser than human beings, and it would be well for us to pay heed to its wisdom. Far from that, however, men are doing what they can to destroy it. If we want to have any understanding at all of earlier times with their peculiar forms of expression, we must penetrate into what was then living in the souls of men.

When we read the lines at the very beginning of St. Mark's Gospel we can feel how necessary it is to think in this way about language and its secrets. In Luther's translation, which in most respects is still the best—Weizsäcker's is far inferior—the passage from Isaiah reads: ‘Behold I send my Angel before thee who shall prepare thy way before thee. It is the voice of the preacher in the wilderness: ”Prepare the way of the Lord, make straight his path”.’

You would think that anyone who is honest with himself would have to admit that he can make nothing of this passage. To understand what it really means Spiritual Science must enable us to recognise what, according to Isaiah who was initiated in these mysteries, was to come to pass through the events of Palestine and the Mystery of Golgotha. In our day nobody is willing to admit that there are men who really can tell us something important about the most significant impulses in world-evolution. Consequently we have grotesque explanations of the Apocalypse and assertions that the writer had himself already experienced the happenings described. People talk about objective research but always start with the assumption that what they do not know cannot be known. In the words just quoted, Isaiah is giving voice to something he knew through Initiation, namely that an impulse of supreme importance is to be given to the evolution of humanity. Why did he, and all other Initiates, regard this event to which he was pointing as being of such significance? His picture of the evolution of humanity was true and he knew that in earlier times men possessed a natural clairvoyance, moreover that through the astral body they were able to see into the spiritual worlds. The astral body gradually lost the power of vision and became inwardly dark but man's progress lay in this very loss of astral clairvoyance. It was now to be made possible for the ‘I’ to function. Out of his Initiation-knowledge Isaiah might also have said: In those days men will speak only of their Ego and as long as that Ego is not filled with Christ it will be restricted to perception of the physical plane furnished by the senses and intellect. Men will be forsaken by the world of the spirit. But then Christ will come, bringing consolation, and human souls will be permeated more and more with the Christ Impulse so that they can again look upwards into the spiritual world. Before this is possible, however, they will experience the darkening of the astral body.

The very first beginnings of man's physical body came into being on Old Saturn, of his etheric body on Old Sun, of his astral body on Old Moon; and the Ego evolves on the Earth. Until the astral body lost its clairvoyant powers and became dark, the Ego had at first to work in the darkness. Before Earth-evolution began in the real sense a kind of recapitulation of the Moon-evolution took place. During that period man's astral body had developed to a stage where the activity of the whole Universe was mirrored within it. When the recapitulation of the Moon-evolution was completed the Ego began to enter into the process of evolution and Isaiah could say that Egohood would become more and more dominant on the Earth.

There were Beings who had reached the human stage on the Old Moon, others on Old Sun and Old Saturn. Man reached the human stage on the Earth. On the Old Moon the Angels reached the human stage and man has reached the human stage on the Earth. Consequently it devolved upon the Beings who were man's forerunners to make preparation for what man was to become on the Earth. The Angel-nature must penetrate into the astral body before the Ego can become active. Man's mission on Earth was prepared for by his forerunners—the Angels. Hence it is possible at certain times for an Angel to enter into a human personality. When this happens the Earth-man himself may well be maya, for a Being of higher rank is making use of his soul. The man is in truth the figure we see before us, yet he may be the sheath of some other Being. Thus it came about that the same Individuality who had once lived as Elijah and was reincarnated as John the Baptist became the vehicle of an Angel who spoke through him. In The Portal of Initiation a similar process takes place and another Being works in and through Maria:

Within our circle there is formed a knot
Of threads that Karma spins, world-fashioning.
Thy sufferings, my friend, are links in chains
Forged by the hand of destiny, whereby
The deeds of Gods unite with human lives.

(The Portal of Initiation. Scene 3)

A deed of the Gods mingles with human life and creates human destiny.

Thus in John the Baptist a deed of the Heavens was united with human destiny. A divine Being, an Angel, worked in and through him. What John achieved was possible only because, while the man John was maya, another Being lived within him, having the mission to proclaim in advance what man's destiny on Earth was to be. Consequently, if we are to translate the passage in a way that helps us to understand what is actually expressed, the rendering would have to be something like this.—‘Take heed: the ‘I’ which is to appear in man's being sends in advance the Angel who prepares its way.’ The Angel is the Being who lived in the personality of John the Baptist, and the lesson to be learnt from Spiritual Science is that Moon Initiates must make preparation for Initiations that belong essentially to the Earth.

We must now consider how man's nature had developed up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Think of what men must have felt when they looked back to those past ages when the astral body could see clairvoyantly into the spiritual world, and then, as incarnation followed incarnation, realised that this astral body was growing steadily darker. In earlier times, when they wanted to observe something in the spiritual world their astral bodies became luminous and radiant. But this gradually ceased and darkness in the astral body intensified until there was within man a state of isolation, a wilderness, ἔρημος. Even in Greek the expression is to be found. Then a voice awakens in the human soul, like a cry of longing for the ‘Lord’, for the ‘I’, to enter into the soul. This was the feeling accompanying the word χὐριοç, translated so baldly as ‘lord’. The soul was felt to consist of three forces: thinking, feeling and willing. Then a time came when the ‘I’, the kyrios, was to be received into the soul. This is what John the Baptist meant by the words: Prepare ye the way of the Lord, make his paths straight!

Thus the quotation from Isaiah at the beginning of St. Mark's Gospel points to the wisdom-filled guidance of human evolution up to the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. This utterance of Isaiah also indicated what we now know about John the Baptist. I have described under what con­ditions he was able to become the vehicle of an Angel. A certain Initiation was necessary for this—the Initiation which enabled the man receiving it to reveal to other men that the time had now come for the ‘I’ to penetrate into the human soul.

This could be proclaimed only by one who had received the Initiation known since ancient times as the Aquarius Initiation in the terminology used in the Mysteries. The language of the heavens was used to express the great secrets of the spiritual world made known to men through Initia­tion. The language of the heavens alone is able to express what happens to the human soul when it is initiated into the great Mysteries. Such things cannot be described by human words. Men looked up to the stars, observed their relations to one another and said to themselves: if we can frame adequate expressions for what the stars reveal, that is the most fitting way to indicate the nature of the mysterious processes operating in a man during a particular Initiation.

No matter what name was used in the various civilisations, it was always the great Ahura Mazdao to whom men looked up: they looked up to that Divine Being and to his hierarchy in the Sun. Christ is the supreme Spirit of the Sun Beings. There are twelve different ways in which Initiation into the sacred Mysteries of the Sun can take place and to explain this in human words is hardly possible. But if we think of the Sun standing in one of the constellations and sending its rays through that constellation to the Earth, and if we consider how it is related to other stars, we have a kind of script which expresses the fact that a particular man is initiated into the Sun-Mysteries in a way that makes him an Aquarius Initiate.

Take, for instance, the seven holy Rishis. The symbol of their Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries is the picture of the Sun in Taurus. When the Sun stands in the sign of Taurus the spectacle presented in the firmament reveals the mystery of the particular Initiation of the Rishis. This Initiation took effect through the seven personalities who were the seven holy Rishis. This is also expressed in the fact that the Pleiades, a cluster of seven stars, shine from the same region of the heavens. That is moreover the region where the whole solar system entered into the Universe to which we belong. So in order to specify the various forms of Initiation into the Sun-Mysteries we can use expressions indicating the Sun's position in a particular constellation.

John the Baptist had necessarily to receive an Aquarius Initiation, the expression indicating that the Sun was standing in the constellation of Aquarius. Try to understand it in this way: On the day or light side of the Zodiac lie Aries, Taurus, Gemini, Cancer, Leo, Virgo, then Libra. The constellations on the night or dark side of the Zodiac are Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn, Aquarius and Pisces. Since the last two lie on the night side, the Sun's rays coming from them must not only traverse physical space but they must send the spiritual light of the Sun, which passes through the Earth, through spiritual space. Aquarius Initiates received this name because they were able to confer the water-baptism, that is to say, to enable men, while immersed in water, to be sustained by the power of the spiritual Sun.

It is the facts of the spiritual life here on Earth from which the names of the zodiacal constellations are derived, by transference to the heavens. Our so-called learned men, however, explain such things by saying that the names of the constellations in the heavens were given to certain personalities on Earth. The truth is just the opposite! Nowadays it is said that John the Baptist was called the ‘Water-man’ because that name had been derived from the constellation and applied to him. But that is really putting the cart before the horse. You will have heard of a certain savant's ironical attempt to establish that Napoleon was not an historical figure. The argument was that the name ‘Napoleon’ is easily derived from ‘Apollo’, the prefix N indicating comparative rank—therefore a kind of super-Apollo. Napoleon had six brothers and sisters and the star Apollo is included among the seven Pleiades. Napoleon's twelve Marshals are said to be the twelve signs of the Zodiac and Apollo's mother, Leto, becomes Napoleon's mother, Letitia ... and so on, in the same strain!

If we trace the course of the Sun in the heavens we find that as the physical Sun sets the spiritual Sun begins to rise. In its day or summer course the Sun progresses from Taurus to Aries, and so on; in its night or winter course it will reveal to us the secrets of the Initiation of Aquarius or Pisces. Physically, the Sun's course is from Virgo to Leo, Cancer, Gemini, Taurus, Aries; spiritually its course is from Virgo to Libra, Scorpio, Sagittarius, Capricorn and Aquarius to Pisces. The spiritual counterpart of the course of the physical Sun is its passage from Aquarius to Pisces.

Consequently John could say: He must increase but I must decrease. My mission is one of which you will have a picture when the Sun passes from the sign of Aquarius to that of Pisces. I am an Aquarius Initiate and I am not worthy to give you the secrets of the Sun in Pisces. I am not worthy to unloose the shoe-latchet of the One I am to proclaim to you.

In these words John speaks of himself unambiguously as an Aquarius Initiate. Pictures in old calendars indicate the meaning of his words when he says: ‘The latchet of whose shoe I am not worthy to unloose’. In old pictures of the zodiacal constellations the Waterman is shown kneeling. His whole posture indicates the reverence he must feel for the Sun as it passes him by and rising in Pisces reveals what is to come. This is the picture of John the Baptist: the Sun passes on and he cannot detain it; he can only proclaim in advance what is to be.

The prophet Isaiah knew that when the Sun progressed to Pisces a new dispensation was to come. This progression signifies the advent of men or beings connected with the Pisces Initiation. That is why the sign for Christ Jesus in the earliest Christian times was the fish or two fishes still to be seen in the catacombs of Rome. Why did Jesus say to His disciples: ‘I will make you fishers of men’? John the Baptist prepared for the Pisces Initiation which the Nazarene had to undergo if the Christ was to descend into him. The events in Palestine, the most important in the whole process of world-evolution, are inscribed in wonderful signs in the Zodiac. What came to pass step by step in Palestine is explained in its depths not through any human script but through a heavenly script which must be consulted for any real understanding of a process so exalted that it is directly related to the Macrocosm. What the physical eye saw moving about Palestine in the flesh and blood of Jesus of Nazareth—was that all? If you remember the indications I have given, it was maya, illusion. Actually the whole spiritual power, the central spiritual power, of the Sun was present in the figure of Jesus of Nazareth moving about Palestine; the figure that appeared physically as Jesus of Nazareth was maya.

Everything Christ Jesus did was connected with macrocosmic events. Think of how often in St. Mark's Gospel it is said that Christ performed His acts of healing after the Sun had set or before it had risen. Thus we are told: In the evening, when the Sun had set, they brought to Him all manner of sick and possessed. (i, 32). Why were the sick and possessed brought to Him at just that time? Because the Sun had set and its forces were no longer working physically in Jesus, but spiritually; what He was to do was not connected with the physical forces of the Sun. The physical Sun had set, but the spiritual Sun-forces worked through His heart and body. And when He wanted to unfold His greatest and most powerful forces He had necessarily to exert them at a time when the physical Sun was not visible in the heavens. So also when we read: ‘Before the Sun had risen’—the words have a definite meaning. Every word in St. Mark's Gospel indicates great cosmic connections between processes in the universe and every step taken and every deed performed by Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth here on Earth. If you were to draw a map of the paths He trod and the deeds He performed and were then to study the corresponding processes in the heavens, the picture would be the same: processes in the heavens would seem to have been projected down to the Earth.

Whence did a man like Kepler derive the principles of his astronomy? In his life as Kepler he did not find the powers which enabled him to epitomise the fundamentals of astronomy in his three great laws. These three laws describe in words the movement of the planets around their fixed star. Kepler was able to discover them only because his enthusiasm caused certain memories to arise in him. In a previous incarnation he had been a pupil of the old Egyptian Mysteries. In him, and in many others too, those experiences rose up again as dim intuitions. Such men had in their life of soul much that was an expression of the harmony of the spheres. Kepler studied the wonderful constellations to be seen in the heavens during his life. He observed the conjunction of Saturn, Jupiter and Moon and through it sought to explain the star by which the Three Wise Men from the East were guided. Abstractions as appalling as the Kant-Laplace theory had not been devised in Kepler's day.

The Gospel of St. Mark gives expression to the wonderful harmony between the great Cosmos and what was to come to pass once on our Earth through the deeds of Christ Jesus and the Mystery of Golgotha. We cannot understand this Gospel unless we can decipher the writing of the stars and that requires insight into the secrets of the language of the heavens. When the Gospel says that the Sun had set, this does not indicate merely that the Sun was no longer shining but also that the spiritual Beings of the Sun-Hierarchy had moved into a world of stronger spiritual powers because they must now work through the Earth, through the physical substance of the Earth. All this was felt by men when they were told of what came to pass through Christ Jesus after the Sun had set. A whole world of meaning lay in the words.

I hope that these few indications will help us to penetrate more deeply into the secrets of the Gospels. Particularly through the study of St. Mark's Gospel the human soul can rise to an understanding of wonderful mysteries of cosmic happenings. Every word in that Gospel is of great significance.

Answers to Questions

What is the meaning of the temptation of Jesus by Satan? Are Satan and Lucifer identical? How can the highest of all Beings be tempted by one of a lower order?

Satan is Ahriman. In the Gospels of St. Luke and St. Matthew, Lucifer is meant; in the Gospel of St. Mark, Ahriman. An impressive description is given in that Gospel of how hideous animal forms make their appearance when a man enters the spiritual world in the usual way. There are people who believe that entrance to the spiritual world can be achieved by adopting some special diet and other material practices of a similar kind. But everything they then see, particularly when it takes the form of sublime figures of light, is only a reflection of their own self, an Ahrimanic deception. Both Lucifer and Ahriman are tempters; and Christ in human form showed how man must resist them when he begins to find his way into the spiritual world.

Shall we see in higher worlds those who belong to us?

Spiritual seeing is very different from physical seeing. In the spiritual sense we shall certainly see again those who belong to us. The fact that Mary Magdalene did not immediately recognise Jesus is an indication that the Risen Christ cannot be recognised by everyone; certain powers must first have been developed. These powers began to function in Mary Magdalene only when Christ spoke her name. Much of what Spiritual Science teaches is regarded as heretical, although the Gospels confirm it. The Risen Christ could be recognised only by clairvoyant sight.

Are not the contents of the Babylonian Tables and the Ten Commandments practically identical?

People who speak about similarities in such a case are not aware of the essentials. This is very evident in the case of the Sermon on the Mount. The Bible does not say: ‘yours is the kingdom of heaven’, but: ‘you will find the kingdom of heaven within yourselves’. The Ten Commandments too are fundamentally different from anything previously in existence. Hebraism and Christianity added the impulse of the ‘I AM’ to what was already contained in earlier religions. When such things are studied in depth they are extraordinarily enlightening.

How is the doctrine of reincarnation to be reconciled with the Bible?

It is not yet possible to understand the Bible fully. Each epoch has translated it in the way that suited itself. The Bible has nothing to fear from the doctrine of reincarnation. It used to be thought that every discovery of a new scientific truth constituted a danger to the Bible.

What is the relation between Christ and Lucifer?

It is not easy to explain this briefly. We have often spoken of how man has passed from incarnation to incarnation and how the Luciferic power took root in very early times in the astral body and Ahriman later on in the etheric body. With the coming of Christ all this acquired a new meaning. We are only at the beginning of Christian evolution. If the Gospels are understood they make it clear that Christ was obliged to deal with Lucifer and Ahriman. But there are very few who realise to-day that the stories of the Temptation differ in the Gospels of St. Matthew, St. Mark and St. Luke. Occultists know that there is not only a Luciferic temptation by way of man's desires, but also an Ahrimanic temptation—when a man carries his own passions out into the Macrocosm and sees all manner of animal figures and forms. The Gospel of St. Matthew describes a Luciferic temptation: in the Gospel of St. Mark, Jesus is ‘with the wild beasts’ of human nature. In all occult writings Lucifer is pictured as a serpent, Ahriman as a hound.

These stories of the Temptation point to deep mysteries. Just as the advent of the Luciferic and Ahrimanic powers was a necessity in order that man might become a free, independent being, so he must tear himself away from them again through the power of Christ in his soul. The spheres of Lucifer and Ahriman will gradually be reversed. Men will take the Christ Impulse into themselves, confronting Ahriman in the outside world. Up to now, and at present, the opposite has been the case. Such things can be studied in The Portal of Initiation. You should pay attention to the vowel sounds. These things are in accordance with an inner necessity. The verses in the first part change in the second into their opposite. This is intentional.

Question not recorded.

It is true that Jesus did not write anything. There is actually a theologian who discusses whether He could write at all!—In four hundred years people will call what is said nowadays about Copernicus and Galileo a modern form of mythology. Theosophists of all people should not talk about ‘Ptolemaic childishness’.

A question about the authenticity of the writings of Dionysius.

It is usual nowadays to regard the actual writer as more important than the spiritual originator and inspirer. (Rudolf Steiner here referred to his own experience in connection with Goethe's prose-hymn, Nature, the authorship of which had been disputed by some philologists.) Dionysius, the disciple of the Apostle Paul, actually wrote nothing down because in those days to have done so would have seemed unimportant. But his successors, who, as was customary in those times, were also called Dionysius, presented a faithful account of his teachings as handed down by tradition. These were the writings of the so-called pseudo-Dionysius.

To ‘believe in good faith’ is not enough; everyone should convince himself of the truth. People to-day have no conception of what is possible and what is impossible. Things become tragic in this respect when, for instance, the Bible is ruthlessly analysed by scholars. Erudition and nonsense often go hand in hand!

Can Christ Jesus appear to men on Earth?

In the way in which He appeared to St. Paul, this is possible. When this happens it is a kind of Initiation which can sometimes take place without previous training. From the middle of the twentieth century onwards many people will have this experience.

The last lecture began by speaking of the distinctive character of St. Mark's Gospel. It became clear that here, almost more than in the other Gospels, we can find in indications drawn from the deepest Christian mysteries, an opportunity to penetrate into many profound secrets and laws of the evolution of Man and of the Cosmos.

I had originally thought that during the winter it would be possible to make important and intimate references to matters of which we have not yet heard in our Movement, or perhaps better said, to matters at spiritual levels we have not yet reached. But we shall have to abandon this original plan for the simple reason that the Berlin Group has grown in numbers so astonishingly in recent weeks that it would now not be possible to make everything properly intelligible. We take it for granted that in mathematics and science some grounding is necessary if we want to reach a certain grade; and the same holds good to an even greater extent in the case of Spiritual Science. Later on, therefore, we shall have to consider how to present the parts of St. Mark's Gospel which are not suitable subjects for so large a Group.

In any attempt to understand a text such as that of the Gospel of St. Mark we must keep clearly in mind the factors which have influenced the evolution of humanity. I have always emphasised as a very general, abstract truth, that in all ages there have been certain leading figures among men who, because they were connected in some way with the Mysteries and with the spiritual, supersensible worlds, were in a position to implant into evolution certain impulses for its further progress. Now there are two main and fundamental ways in which a man can establish relationship with the supersensible worlds. One of these ways can be illustrated by the case of Zarathustra, the great Leader of mankind of whom I shall shortly be speaking in a lecture for the public. The other way in which such Leaders of men establish relationship with the spiritual worlds can be envisaged if we think of the characteristic features of the path followed by the great Buddha. These two outstanding figures differ widely in the whole manner of their work and activity.

What Buddha and Buddhism call contemplation or meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’—a symbolic expression for a certain mystical deepening of Buddha's consciousness—is a path by which the human Ego can penetrate into its own, inmost being. This path, opened up in so glorious a way by the Buddha, is a descent of the ‘I’ into the depths, into the abyss, of its own nature.

You will get a clearer idea of what this means if you remember that we have followed the evolution of man through four stages. Three of these stages have been concluded and we are living now in the fourth. The first three evolutionary periods were those of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, the fourth being that of the Earth proper. In the first three periods man's physical, etheric and astral bodies were brought into existence and in the present stage of Earth-evolution his ‘I’, or Ego, is developing as an integral member of his constitution. We have described the human being from various points of view as an ‘I’ enveloped in three sheaths—the astral sheath, the etheric sheath and the physical sheath, deriving respectively from the three previous evolutionary periods of Old Moon, Old Sun and Old Saturn.

At his normal stage of development to-day man has no consciousness of his astral, etheric or physical bodies. You will naturally insist that he is certainly conscious of his physical body. But that is not so. For what is normally regarded as man's physical body is an illusion, a maya. What is taken to be the physical body is the product of the interworking of the four members of man's constitution: physical, etheric and astral bodies, and the ‘I’. As the product of this interworking the physical body is visible to the eyes and can be touched by the hands. If you want to see the physical body as it really is, you must isolate it, as in a chemical analysis, by separating off and disregarding the ‘I’ and the astral and etheric bodies. But present conditions of earthly existence make this impossible. Although you may think that it happens whenever a man dies, this is not correct. What a man leaves behind at death is not his physical body, but a corpse. The physical body could not exist under the laws which come into operation after death has taken place for these laws do not properly belong to it; they belong to the external world. If you follow these thoughts through to their conclusion you will have to agree that what is usually called man's physical body is the complex of laws by which the physical body is created within our mineral world, just as their own laws of crystallisation create, let us say, quartz or emerald.

The physical body of man functions as an organism in the mineral-physical world and this is the sense in which it is always spoken of in Spiritual Science. What we know of the world to-day is nothing but the result of what the senses perceive, and such perception is only possible in an organism in which there is an Ego, an ‘I’. The superficial methods of observation now in vogue presume that an animal, for example, perceives the external world exactly as man perceives it through his senses. But this is a misguided view and people would be much astonished if—as will inevitably happen one day—they were shown how a horse, or a dog, or some other animal, pictures the world. If a picture were painted of the environment as perceived by a dog or a horse it would be very different from a man's picture of the world. We could not perceive the world as we do if the ‘I’ did not pour itself over the surrounding world, filling the sense-organs—the eyes, the ears, and so on. Only an organism in which an ‘I’ is present can perceive the world as man perceives it, and the outer human organism is itself an integral part of this picture. We must therefore conclude that what is usually called the physical body of man is only a result of our sense-observation, not the reality.

When we speak of physical man and of the physical world around him it is the ‘I’ that is viewing the world, with the help of the senses and the brain-bound mind. Hence man knows only that over which his ‘I’ extends, that which belongs to his ‘I’. As soon as the ‘I’ cannot be present there is no longer any perception of the world-picture—in other words, man falls asleep. There is no picture of the world around him and he loses consciousness.

Wherever you look, your ‘I’ is bound up at every point with what you are perceiving; it is poured over the perception so that in reality you can know only the content of your ‘I’. A normal man of modern times is aware of the content of his ‘I’ but he is not aware of his astral, etheric and physical bodies into which he penetrates every morning, for when he wakes he has no perception of his astral body. He would indeed be horrified if he had, for his astral body displays the sum-total of all the urges, desires and passions accumulated in the course of successive lives on Earth. Nor does he perceive his etheric body—there again he could not endure the sight. When he penetrates into his own intrinsic nature—into his physical, etheric and astral bodies—his attention is at once deflected to the external world; and there he sees what beneficent Divine Beings spread over the surface of his vision in order to safeguard him from descending into the core of his inner nature—an experience which he could not endure.

Therefore when we speak of this in terms of Spiritual Science, we rightly say that the moment a man wakes in the morning he passes through the portal of his own being. But at this portal stands a Watcher, the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold, who does not allow him to penetrate into his own being but diverts him immediately to the external world. Every morning a man meets this Lesser Guardian. Knowledge of him comes to anyone who, on waking, consciously passes into his astral, etheric and physical sheaths. And in the mystical life it is only a question of whether this Lesser Guardian benevolently dims our consciousness of our own inner being so that we cannot descend into it, diverting our ’I’ to the environment, or whether he allows us to enter through the portal into our own nature and being. The mystical life consists essentially in passing the Lesser Guardian of the Threshold and entering into our inmost self.

In the case of the great Buddha, what is described symbolically as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’ is nothing else than this descent into the inner core of being through the portal that is otherwise closed. Buddhism describes what the Buddha had to experience in order to complete this descent. The narratives are not mere legends but presentations of deeply felt truths, profound realities experienced by the soul.

The experiences encountered by the Buddha in descending into his inmost nature are described as his ‘temptations’. In his account of these temptations Buddha speaks of beings—even those he loves—who draw near to him the moment he attempts the mystical descent; they urge him to some particular activity, for instance, to practise exercises which would lead him astray. We are told that the figure of the mother of Buddha appears to his spiritual vision and urges him to practise a false kind of asceticism. It was not, of course, his real mother; indeed his temptation consisted precisely in the fact that at the first stage of his developing vision, what appeared to him was an illusion, a mask. Buddha resisted this temptation and then a host of demonic figures appeared, who are described as the cravings one experiences in hunger and thirst or as passions, urges, pride, arrogance, vanity, ambition. All these forms confront him—but how? They still lurked in his astral body, in his astral sheath, but in his stronger moments, as he sat in meditation ‘under the Bodhi tree’, he had already overcome them. This temptation of the Buddha shows us in a wonderful way how all the forces and powers of our astral body produce their effect because through the downward trend of evolution in our successive incarnations, we have steadily deteriorated. In spite of the sublime height to which he had risen, the Buddha still saw the demons which tempt the astral body and at the final stage of attainment he had perforce to conquer them.

When a man descends through the region of the astral body, through temptations, into the physical and etheric bodies—when, that is to say, he really gets to know these two members of human nature, what does he find? Our attention must here be called to experiences connected with the descent. In the course of his incarnations on the Earth, man has been able to do severe damage to his astral body, but less damage has been caused to his etheric and physical bodies. The astral body is injured by all lower urges, by every form of egoism in human nature—envy, hatred, selfishness, arrogance, pride, and so on. A normal man of to-day cannot do much more in the way of injury to the etheric body than through lying or at most through unconscious error. But even so, only a part of the etheric body can sustain injury. A certain part of the etheric body is so strong that however hard a man might try to injure it, he would be unable to do so; it would always resist. Through his individual powers a man cannot descend deeply enough into his own nature to be able to injure the etheric or the physical body. It is only in the course of repeated incarnations that the faults for which he is directly responsible have an effect upon these bodies and then they appear as illnesses, defects and dispositions to illness in the physical body. But a man cannot work directly from his individuality upon his physical body. A cut finger or a bodily infection is not the result of any activity of the soul. In the course of his incarnations man has become capable of working upon the astral body and part of the etheric body; but upon his physical body he can work indirectly only, never directly.

Hence we can say that when a man descends into the region of the etheric body upon which he still has some direct influence, everything that is part of him from his successive incarnations becomes manifest. By sinking into the depths of his own being, a man finds the way to his incarnations in the near or more distant past. And when the descent is as intense and complete as it was in the case of the great Buddha, this vision of the incarnations extends farther and farther.

Man was originally a wholly spiritual being. In course of time sheaths gathered around this spiritual being. Man was born out of the spirit, of which everything external is a condensation. Hence through penetrating into his own being he finds the way to the spirit of the universe. This descent into the sheaths enfolding the physical body is a path leading to the spiritual texture of the universe, enabling man to see how the physical has been built up in the course of his incarnations. And when he can go far enough back into the past, to the times when with his primitive clairvoyance he was in a certain respect one with the spiritual world, he then had direct vision of that world.

In tradition—which again is not merely legendary—we learn of the stages reached by the Buddha as he penetrated through his own being. Of these stages he himself says: When I had attained the stage of Illumination—that is to say, when he could feel part of the spiritual world—I beheld that world outspread before me like a cloud; but as yet I could distinguish nothing in it, for I was not yet perfect. I advanced a step further and then not only could I see the spiritual world outspread like a cloud but I could distinguish particular forms. But still I could not see what the forms actually were, for I was not yet perfect. Again I ascended a step and now not only could I distinguish the spiritual Beings but I could also recognise what order of Beings they were.—This process continued until the Buddha beheld his own archetype which had passed down from incarnation to incarnation, and could see its true relationship with the spiritual world.

This is the one way, the mystical way; it is the descent through a man's own nature and being to the point where the bounds beyond which lies the spiritual world are broken through. It is by following this path that certain leading Individualities acquire the powers they need in order to give an impetus to the evolution of humanity.

Very different is the path by which men such as the original Zarathustra came to be leaders of mankind. If you will recall what I have said about the Buddha, you will realise that having become a Bodhisattva in his earlier incarnations he must already have risen through many stages. Through the illumination known as ‘sitting under the Bodhi tree’—an expression which must be understood in the sense I have indicated—a man can develop vision of the spiritual worlds and rise to great heights through the faculties of his own Individuality. But if humanity had always been obliged to depend upon leaders of this kind only, the progress that has actually been made would not have been possible. There were leaders of a different type altogether, of whom Zarathustra was one. I am not speaking now of the Individuality of Zarathustra but of the ‘personality’ of the original Zarathustra, the herald of Ahura Mazdao. If we study such a personality at the point where he stands in world-history, we realise that this is not a human being who has risen through his own intrinsic merits. On the contrary, he is a personality who has been chosen to be the bearer, the sheath, of a spiritual Being who cannot himself incarnate in the flesh, who can only send his illumination into and work within a human sheath.

In my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation, I have indicated how at a certain point of time, when it is necessary for world-evolution, a human being is inspired by a higher spiritual Being. This is not poetic imagery but a poetical presentation of an occult reality.

The personality of the original Zarathustra was not one which through its own merits had reached as lofty a stage of development as that attained by Buddha; the personality of Zarathustra was chosen to be the abode of a higher Being and was filled with living spirituality. Such personalities were chiefly to be found in the early, pre-Christian civilisations which had arisen throughout Europe, in North-Western and Mid-Western Asia but not in the other civilisations which spread through Africa, Arabia and Asia Minor, into Asia. In these latter territories the predominant mode of Initiation was the one I have just described as having been achieved in its highest form by the great Buddha. Taking Zarathustra as a particular example among the peoples of the Northern stream, I shall now speak of the mode of Initiation which was to be found, too, in our own part of the world. Three or four thousand years ago this was the only kind of Initiation that it was possible to attain.

The personality of Zarathustra was chosen in somewhat the following way to be the bearer of a higher Being who was not himself actually to incarnate. It was decreed by the higher worlds that into this child there was to descend a divine-spiritual Being who when the child matured could work in him, make use of his brain, his faculties and his will.—To this end the circumstances of the life of such a human being must be quite different from those otherwise prevailing in the development of an ordinary individual. The happening I shall now briefly describe must be thought of as belonging to the whole life of such a human being, not confined to the physical realm of sense. Although the symptoms will not be perceptible to the ordinary senses, it will be clear to anyone with finer powers of observation that from the very beginning there is evidence of conflict between the soul-forces of such a child and the external world; that in this child there is a will and an inner driving power at variance with what goes on in the environment. But such is the destiny of a personality thus filled with a divine-spiritual Being. He grows up as a stranger, for those around him have no insight or feelings which would help them to understand him. Generally there are only very few—perhaps only one—with any inkling of what is developing in such a child. On the other hand, conflicts with the world around will easily arise and in such a case what I described to you in the story of the temptations accompanying Buddha's descent into his own being, will take place at an earlier age of life.

In the normal way the individuality of a human being is born into the sheaths provided by his parents and his people. These sheaths do not always entirely conform with the individuality and on this account such men feel a certain dissatisfaction with destiny. A conflict of such force and intensity as was associated, for example, with Zarathustra, could not be endured by an individuality developing in the normal way. When a child such as Zarathustra is observed clairvoyantly he will be found to have feelings, faculties and forces of thought which will be quite different from those developing in the people around him. Above all it will be evident—it is in fact always evident but it passes unheeded because little attention is paid nowadays to the life of soul-and-spirit—that those around such a child know nothing about his real nature; on the contrary, they feel an instinctive hatred of him; they can make nothing of what is developing within him. There is no sharper conflict visible to clairvoyance than that between a child born to be a saviour of mankind and the storms of hatred that are unleashed around him. This is inevitable, for it is just because such a child is different that the great impulses can be given to humanity. Similar stories are also told about personalities other than Zarathustra.

The story goes that as soon as he was born, Zarathustra could smile—something that is usually not possible for several weeks. We are told that Zarathustra's smile came from his consciousness of the harmony of the world. The smile was said to be the first sign of the difference between this child and all the others around him.

There is a second story, to the effect that an enemy, as it were another Herod, named Duransarun, lived in the region where Zarathustra was born and that when the birth of the child was divulged to him by Chaldean Magi, he tried to kill the infant with his own hands. The legend tells that as he raised the sword his arm was paralysed and he was obliged to give up the attempt.—These are pictures of spiritual realities which could have been revealed only to supersensible consciousness. We are further told how this enemy of the infant Zarathustra then caused him to be carried by a servant out into the desert to become the prey of wild beasts. But when a search was made it was found that no wild beast had touched the child and that he was sleeping peacefully. This attempt having also failed, the child's enemy caused him to be laid where a herd of cows and oxen would pass and trample him to death. Instead, so the legend tells, the first beast took the child between its legs, carried him off and set him down when the whole herd had passed by. The same thing was repeated with a herd of horses. And the enemy's final attempt was to expose the child to wild animals robbed of their young. But when the parents sought news of the child they found that again the animals had done him no harm: indeed according to the legend he had been suckled by the ‘heavenly cows’.

These indications are to be understood as showing that through the presence of the spiritual Being, of the Individuality who passes into such a soul, very special forces are called into play. Such a child is brought into disharmony with his environment. This is necessary in order that evolution may be given an upward impetus. Disharmonies are always inevitable if there is to be real progress towards perfection. It must also be realised that these forces help to bring such a child into his destined relationship with the spiritual world. But how does the child himself experience all these conflicts?

Try to think of this penetration of a man's soul into his own being, as an awakening. When the soul can experience the physical body and etheric body it achieves the development we saw in the Buddha. But now imagine going to sleep in full consciousness. As things are to-day, a man loses consciousness when he goes to sleep and the Void engulfs him. But if he were to retain consciousness he would be surrounded by a spiritual world into which his being pours. But here again there are obstacles. When we go to sleep, before the portal through which we must pass there also stands a Guardian. This is the Greater /Guardian of the Threshold, who denies us entrance into the spiritual world as long as we are not ready for it. The reason for this is that if without being inwardly strong enough we attempt to pour our Ego over the spiritual world into which we pass on going to sleep, we face certain dangers.

The dangers are these.—Instead of perceiving objective reality in the spiritual world we should perceive only the effect of the fantasies which we ourselves take into that world; we take into it the worst that is in us—everything that is not in keeping with truth. Hence any premature entry into the spiritual world would mean that instead of reality, a man would see grotesque, fantastic images and forms, said by Spiritual Science to be a sight that does not belong to his humanity. Whereas if he had objective vision of the spiritual world he would reach a higher stage and would see what is human. It is always a sign that what are seen are fantasies if on rising into the spiritual world, animal forms appear. These animal forms are indications of our own irresponsible play of fancy; they appear because inwardly we have not a firm enough foundation. Faculties in us which at night are unconscious must be strengthened if we are to have a really objective vision of the outer spiritual world. Otherwise we see it subjectively and we take our fantasies into it. They do, of course, accompany us, but the Guardian of the Threshold protects us from sight of them. To be surrounded by animal forms which attack us and try to force us into error as we ascend into the spiritual world is all a purely inner process. To enter the spiritual world safely we need only develop greater and greater strength.

When an infant such as the Zarathustra-child is filled by a higher Being the little body is naturally immature and has to develop to maturity. The organic system of intellect and sensory activity is also disturbed. Such a child is in a world in which he may truly be said to be ‘among wild beasts’. I have often emphasised that in descriptions of this kind the historical and pictorial elements represent two aspects of the same thing. The happenings take place in such a way that when the spiritual forces work from outside in the form of hostility, as in the case of the Zarathustra-child, they are personified in the figure of King Duransarun. Everything also exists in archetype in the spiritual world and the external events correspond to what is taking place in that world. It is not easy for the modern mind to grasp such a thought. If we say that the events occurring around Zarathustra have significance in the spiritual world, people think that they cannot be real. If we show that the events are authentic history, we then incline to regard the personality concerned as being no more highly developed than anyone else. Thus the liberal theologians of to-day tend, for instance, to regard the figure of Jesus of Nazareth as on a par with, or not greatly excelling, what they may picture as their own ideal. It disturbs the lazy materialism of men's souls if they have to picture a really great Individuality. There must not be anything in the world superior to the professor or theologian seeking to attain his own ideal! In dealing with great events, however, we are concerned with something that is both historical and symbolic; the one aspect does not exclude the other. Those who do not understand that external events have a significance other than their surface appearance will never grasp their essential reality.

The soul of the infant Zarathustra was actually exposed to great dangers; but at the same time, as the legend relates, the ‘heavenly cows’ stood at his side to succour him and give him strength.

Similar stories can be found over the whole area from the Caspian Sea, through our own region, and into Western Europe, in connection with all great founders of world-conceptions. Such personalities, without having risen to lofty heights through their own development, are indwelt by a spiritual Being in order to become leaders of men. There were a number of such traditions among the Celts. It is related of Habich, an important figure in Celtic religion, that he too was exposed to dangers and suckled by heavenly cows; that he was attacked by hostile animals who had to give way before him. The descriptions of the perils confronting Habich, the Celtic leader, read just as if extracts had been made from the seven ‘miracles’ of Zarathustra—for Zarathustra is to be regarded as the greatest personality among leaders of this kind. Certain features of his miracles are to be found all through Greece and on into the Celtic regions of the West. As a well-known example you have only to think of the story of Romulus and Remus.

This is the second way in which leaders of mankind arise. Certain deeper features of the two great streams of culture in the post-Atlantean epoch have now been characterised. After the great Atlantean catastrophe, one of these streams of civilisation spread and developed through Africa, Arabia and Southern Asia; the other spread in a more Northerly course through Europe, to Northern and thence to Central Asia. There the two streams united; and the outcome is our post-Atlantean culture. The Northern stream had leaders such as I have described in the figure of Zarathustra; in the Southern stream, on the other hand, there were leaders of the type revealed in its loftiest form by the great Buddha.

If you now recall what you already know about the Christ-event, you will want to understand what really happened at the Baptism by John in the Jordan. As in the case of all the leading figures and founders of religious thought in the Northern stream—of whom Zarathustra had been the greatest—a diving-spiritual Being, the Christ, descended into a human being. The process was the same but carried out at the highest level. Christ descended into a human being in his thirtieth year, not in his childhood, and the personality of Jesus of Nazareth was specially prepared for this event. In the Gospels the secrets of both types of leadership are shown us in synthesis, in harmony with each other. Whereas the accounts of the Evangelists St. Matthew and St. Luke are mainly concerned to show how the human personality into whom the Christ entered had been evolved, the Gospel of St. Mark describes the nature of the Christ Himself, the element in this sublime Individuality which could not be confined within the human vehicle. That is why the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe with wonderful clarity a story of temptation different from that related by St. Mark. He is describing the Christ who had entered into Jesus of Nazareth. The Gospel of St. Mark relates the story of temptation which occurs in other cases already in childhood—the encounter with wild animals and the help given by spiritual powers. Thus it can be regarded as a kind of repetition of the Zarathustra-miracle when St. Mark's Gospel narrates in simple and impressive words: ‘And immediately the spirit driveth him into the solitude (wilderness) ... and he was with the wild beasts; and the Angels’—that is, spiritual Beings—‘ministered unto him.’ St. Matthew's Gospel describes a quite different process, one which seems like a repetition of the temptations of Buddha, that is to say the tests and allurements confronting the soul of a man who is penetrating into his own inner being.

The Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke describe the path taken by the Christ when descending into the sheaths He received from Jesus of Nazareth. St. Mark's Gospel describes the kind of temptation which the Christ was obliged to undergo when He confronted the environment—as happens with all great founders of religion who had been inspired from above by a spiritual Being. Christ Jesus experienced both these kinds of temptation, whereas earlier leaders of humanity had experienced only one. Christ united in Himself the two ways of entering the spiritual world.—That is the all-important point. What had formerly taken place in two separate streams into which smaller streams then flowed, was now united in one.

It is only from this point of view that we can understand the apparent or real contradictions in the Gospels. The writer of St. Mark's Gospel had been initiated into Mysteries which enabled him to describe the temptation presented in his Gospel, namely the encounter with wild beasts and the help of spiritual Beings. St. Luke was initiated into the other aspect. Each of the Evangelists writes of what he knew and understood. Hence their Gospels present different aspects of the events in Palestine and of the Mystery of Golgotha.

In all this I have been wanting to indicate from a point of view we have not hitherto adopted, how we have to understand the course of the evolution of humanity and the intervention of particular Individualities: whether those who rise from the rank of Bodhisattva to that of Buddha, or those whose significance lies not so much in themselves as in what has come down into them from above. It is in the figure of Christ alone that these two types unite; and it is only when we know this that we can rightly understand the Christ.

It will now be clear why incongruities are apparent in mythical personalities. When we are told that one of them behaved in a matter of right or wrong as, for instance, Siegfried behaved, someone will certainly protest that after all, he was said to have been an Initiate! But in the case of a personality such as Siegfried, through whom a spiritual Being was working, the individual development is not a factor that comes into consideration. Siegfried may well have had faults. What really mattered was that an impetus should be given to the evolution of humanity, and for this purpose it was a question of choosing the most suitable personality. The same standard cannot be adopted universally and Siegfried cannot be judged as you would judge a leader arising from the Southern stream of culture, for a figure such as Siegfried differs radically in character and type from men who penetrate into their own inner self.

It can therefore be said that the leading figures belonging to the Northern stream are permeated by a spiritual Being who drives them out of themselves, enabling them to rise into the Macrocosm. Whereas in the Southern cultures a man sinks into the Microcosm, in the Northern stream his being pours into the Macrocosm and in this way he comes to know all the spiritual Hierarchies, as Zarathustra came to know the spiritual essence of the Sun.

We may therefore sum up all that has been said, as follows.—The mystical path, the path of the Buddha, leads to such depths in a man's inmost being that in breaking through to them he comes into the spiritual world. The path of Zarathustra draws a man out of the Microcosm and his being is diffused over the Macrocosm so that its secrets become transparent to him. The world has as yet little understanding of the great spirits whose missions are to unveil the secrets of the Macrocosm. There is very little understanding, for example, of the essential nature and being of Zarathustra. And we shall find how greatly what we have to say of him differs from what is usually said at the present time.

This again is a digression intended to convey to you the intrinsic character of St. Mark's Gospel.