Rudolf Steiner - Theosophy and

Rosicrucianism GA 100

Table of Contents
Lecture 1..........................................................................................................................................2
THEOSOPHY AND ROSICRUCIANISM...............................................................................2
Lecture 2........................................................................................................................................10
INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING THE NATURE OF MAN...................10
Lecture 3........................................................................................................................................18
MAN'S SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, HIS WORK UPON THE LOWER MEMBERS OF HIS
BEING AND HIS DESTINY AFTER DEATH.............................................................................18
Lecture 4........................................................................................................................................23
MAN'S FURTHER DESTINIES IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS THE KINGDOM OF
HEAVEN...................................................................................................................................23
Lecture 5........................................................................................................................................28
METAMORPHOSES OF OUR EARTHLY EXPERIENCES IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLD,
INTO NEW CAPACITIES FOR OUR NEXT LIFE................................................................28
Lecture 6........................................................................................................................................36
MAN'S DESCENT INTO AN EARTHLY INCARNATION...................................................36
Lecture 7........................................................................................................................................44
VII. THE LAW OF KARMA....................................................................................................44
Lecture 8........................................................................................................................................51
SUPPLEMENTARY THOUGHTS ON THE LAW OF REINCARNATION AND KARMA.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH AND THE PLANETARY EVOLUTION....................51
Lecture 9........................................................................................................................................62
THE EARTH'S PASSAGE THROUGH ITS FORMER PLANETARY CONDITIONS.........62
Lecture 10......................................................................................................................................69
FURTHER STAGES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR EARTH......................................69
Lecture 11......................................................................................................................................76
PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE DIFFERENT CYCLES OF CULTURE
...................................................................................................................................................76
Lecture 12......................................................................................................................................86
THE STAGES OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION........................................................................86
Lecture 13......................................................................................................................................96
THE ROSICRUCIAN TRAINING...........................................................................................96
Lecture 14....................................................................................................................................105
FURTHER STAGES OF ROSICRUCIAN TRAINING........................................................105

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Lecture 1

THEOSOPHY AND ROSICRUCIANISM

The aim of these lectures [Note 1] is to give a survey of what we are accustomed to call
theosophy. Theosophy must become a new impulse of culture in an encompassing way. For a
long time humanity has been yearning for it, and from many aspects it is called upon to give
an answer to the burning questions now advanced by men. At the present time, however,
theosophy is to a great extent something which people not only wish to oppose, but something
which they look upon as questionable, even as mad, like the dreams of certain fantastic brains.

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

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

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

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

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

During the thirty years of its existence, the Theosophical Society [ Note 2] of course had to
pass through many things and many an illness of childhood, which made people question its
significance! But it will extricate itself from these illnesses and show what it is capable of.
Spiritual science must become an all-encompassing concern, a universal task, because it must
supply the answer to questions which are, after all, the fundamental questions of all existence,

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and it must point out the way in which modern men should grasp these questions and why
religions and sciences exist at all. Whatever we do, and if art, science and practical activities
are to exist at all, we must go back to certain fundamental questions, and these must in some
way or other be solved. All religions were attempts to give an answer to such questions, an
answer which was always in keeping with the intellectual and cultural stage of different
peoples.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If we immerse ourselves in the development of human souls, we shall find in the course of
these lectures, that human souls have already lived many times upon the physical plane, and
that they gradually developed, until they reached the present stage, At first, this may sound

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strange, yet during past lives our souls have frequently heard the deep truths which will be
explained in to-day's lecture.

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

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

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

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

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

How did it come about that man has now lost the understanding for the spiritual life which

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lies at the foundation of all physical existence? Why had this to occur?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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men.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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giver of life.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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still pass through, in order that he may reach his goal.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Being, is an expression of the Spirit.

Notes:

Note 1. From greatly abbreviated notes unrevised by the lecturer.

Copyright reserved.

Before the founding of the Anthroposophical Society, in Sept.

1912, Rudolf Steiner used to speak to theosophical audiences, but as
an independent spiritual investigator, who always maintained his own
standpoints.

Note 2. Soon after these lectures, in 1911, the German Section of

the Theosophical Society left the Theosophical Society, which was
drifting into a course of which they could not approve, and founded
the Anthroposophical Society.

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Lecture 2

INTRODUCTORY EXPLANATIONS CONCERNING

THE NATURE OF MAN
Yesterday we spoke in an introductory way of the aim and essence of the spiritual-scientific
movement; to-day we shall penetrate more directly into the essence of this science. It has the
disadvantage that it may shock those who are not familiar with these things, but we must have
patience and realise that many things which seem almost nonsensical at first, will in the course of
time appear well founded and comprehensible.
Of the subject which lies before us, we shall first of all consider the nature of the human being.
Let us place this human being before our soul. He is a most complicated being, the most
complicated being of all which we encounter in the known world. Those who possessed a deeper
insight have therefore always called man a microcosm, in contrast to the macrocosm, the universe.
Paracelsus used a very fine comparison expressing man's being in the form of an image. He said:
Contemplate Nature around you, and imagine every being in Nature, every plant, animal and stone,
as the letter of an alphabet, and if you imagine a word written with these letters, you obtain man.
We find, in this connection, the confirmation of Goethe's words, that we must understand the
whole of Nature in order to understand man.
To begin with, my explanations will only be a kind of sketch of man's nature. This will be
related to the explanations of the following days in the same way in which a charcoal sketch is
related to the finished picture.
If we contemplate man with our physical senses, when he stands before us as an earthly being, if
our eyes perceive him and our hands can touch him, we look upon him, from the materialistic
standpoint, as complete, as a whole being. Yet a deeper, that is to say, a spiritual contemplation of
the world, sees in that which is perceptible to our physical senses only a small part of the human
being, that part which the anatomist dismembers and dissects, The anatomist endeavours to
understand the human being through the intellect, by dissecting the visible part into cells which can
only be perceived through the microscope, and he thinks that he thus obtains an idea of the structure
and activity of the single organs.
Ordinary science thinks that all this constitutes the physical body of man. But at the present
time, man's physical body is frequently looked upon in the wrong way, for people think that the
human being standing before them only consists of a physical body. This is not the case at all, for
higher members of human nature are intimately connected with the physical body, are active
through it, and it is through these members that this body becomes manifest in the form in which
one human being confronts another. The physical body would present an altogether different aspect
were we to separate it from the higher members of human nature. Man has this physical body in
common with the whole mineral world. All the substances and forces which are active in mineral

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substances, such as iron, arsenic, carbon, etc, are also active in the substances of the human body
and in the physical body of animals and plants.
Our attention is immediately drawn to the higher members of human nature if we once realise
the tremendous difference which exists between man's physical body and the other physical
substances which surround us in the mineral world. You will know that this wonderful structure of
the physical body bears within it what we call inner life, consciousness, desires, joy and pain, love
and hate; this physical body does not only contain substances pertaining to the mineral world, but
also thoughts. You may indeed perceive the glow upon the countenance, or the colour of the hair,
but you do not perceive what takes place within the physical body in the form of inclinations and
dislikes, joy and suffering, etc, All this we do not see, nevertheless it takes place within the covering
(sheath) of the skin. This is the most evident and irrefutable proof that there is something in addition
to the physical body, something besides mere physical substances.
When you watch a tear falling, this tear is but the physical expression of sorrow, which is an
inner process, Now look upon the mineral world: these minerals are dumb! You cannot perceive in
them any joy or sorrow, nor any other inner life. The stone has no feelings and no consciousness,
such as we have. To a spiritual scientist this stone appears like the nails upon our fingers, or like the
teeth. Observe one of your finger nails: it has no feeling, no consciousness, nevertheless the nail
forms part of your being. There must be something within us which brings about the formation of
nails and teeth, and in the same way there must be something in the world outside which produces
minerals. The nails themselves have no consciousness, but they form part of something which is
endowed with consciousness. If a small beetle creeps over one of our nails, this nail perhaps appears
to it as a mineral. This is the case when we creep over the earth, without being aware that behind
this mineral earth there is consciousness, even as there is, consciousness behind our nails. Later on
we shall see what kind of consciousness lies at the foundation of the mineral world. This Ego-
consciousness of the mineral world lies high above us, even as, for instance, the consciousness, of
the small beetle creeping over our nail is surpassed by our own consciousness behind the nails.
The Rosicrucian philosophy ascribes this consciousness of the mineral kingdom to a world
which it calls the WORLD OF INTELLIGENCE; there lies the consciousness of minerals, and
there lies also the foundation of human intelligence, enabling us to form thoughts. Yet the thoughts
which live in us are very deceptive, for human thoughts are related to the Beings of the Intelligent
World in the same way in which our shadow is related to our real self. Even as the shadow upon the
wall is not I, but only my own shadow, so man's thoughts are only shadow-pictures in the world of
the spirit. But here on earth we are able to grasp a thought because in the Intelligent World there is a
real Being who produces this thought. This is a world in which our thoughts are real beings, whom
we encounter in the same way in which we here meet other human beings. This Intelligent World of
the Rosicrucians is for an initiate the higher Devachan World, the Arupa Devachan of the Hindoos,
or the higher Mental World. When an initiate passes through the physical world, every portion of
the earth speaks to him of life, and he experiences everywhere the manifestations of another world.
Since in our physical body we are nothing but portions of the physical world, we also have a
subordinate physical consciousness, reaching as far as the Intelligent World, that is to say, as far as
the consciousness of the mineral world.

11
 Our physical body is therefore, in its substances, of mineral nature, and the consciousness of the
physical body lies there where the consciousness of the mineral world is to be found.
What is, however, the difference between our physical body and a mineral — for instance, a
rock crystal? If we compare our body with a crystal; we find upon comparison, that
our body is a most complicated thing, Let us picture to ourselves the difference between a mineral
and a living being.
In regard to the substances, there is no difference at all, for exactly the same substances can be
found in living beings as in minerals, except that the structure is far more complicated.
If you have before you the mineral and its form, you will find that it remains the same; if it only
depends upon itself. But this is not the case in a living being, in a plant, an animal, or a human
being. As soon as a substance takes on so complicated a form that it can no longer be held together
through its own forces, in other words, that it would decay if left to itself, there is something in this
substance which prevents it from decaying, and in that case we have before us what we call a
LIVING BEING.
Spiritual science therefore says: A living being would decay into the component parts of its
substances if it were left to itself, if within it there did not exist something which prevents this
decay. That which every moment prevents this living being from decaying, the preventing factor of
such a decay, is what we call the etheric or the vital body. This is of an entirely different nature from
the substances which constitute the physical body in every living being, and it has the capacity to
produce the most complicated physical substances, to maintain them and to prevent their decay.
What a living organism thus reveals in a purely external form, is what we call LIFE. This etheric or
vital body, or this body of formative forces, cannot be perceived by physical eyes, but it can be
perceived through the first degree of clairvoyant vision, and it is the task of a clairvoyant to develop
himself so as to be able to perceive this etheric body. Modern natural science does indeed try to
discover the etheric body, but it tries to form a conception of it in a purely speculative way, by
speaking, for instance of vital force, or vital energy.
How does the etheric body appear to a clairvoyant eye, that is to say, to the clairvoyant?
If you contemplate an object of the mineral world, for instance, a rock crystal, through the eye
of a clairvoyant, eliminating for this purpose the physical substance, by deviating as it were, your
attention from it you would see nothing in the space occupied by the physical crystal. This space is
void. But if you contemplate in the same way a living being, a plant, an animal, or a human being,
this space occupied by the physical body will not be empty, for it will be filled up by a kind of
shape of light, and this is the above-mentioned etheric body.
The etheric body is not of the same kind in every living being; on the contrary, it takes on very
different forms, even as regards shape and size in relation to the physical body of the living being in
question; this varies according to the stage of development of the different beings. The etheric body
of plants has quite a different shape from the plants themselves; the etheric body of animals has a
greater resemblance to the external shape, and the etheric body of man appears as a shape of light
which corresponds almost exactly to the form of the physical body. If we contemplate, for instance,
a horse from this standpoint, we see its etheric body protruding rather far from the head as a shape
of light, but it more or less resembles the shape of the horse's head. But in the case of an average

12
man of to-day we can see his etheric body protruding only slightly above the head and its sides. In
regard to the substance of the etheric body, one generally has quite wrong ideas. Even in theosophy
people write and talk a lot of confusing nonsense on the etheric body, but this forms part of the
“childhood illnesses” of the Theosophical Society, and they must be overcome. To obtain a correct
idea of the substantiality of the etheric body, please try to follow my thoughts in this comparison: —
Imagine that you have one hundred pounds and that you spend more and more: Your property
will grow smaller and smaller and finally you will have nothing at all. This would be the least
possible substantial state of your property. But there is one still less substantial, when you diminish
still more the zero-stage of your property by making debts and acquiring a “negative” property. You
can therefore reduce your property still more, for you have less than nothing if you borrow, for
instance, ten pounds.
Or imagine this applied to something else. Imagine a battle with its tremendous noise; if you go
further away from it the noise will grow weaker and weaker; the silence will grow until you finally
hear nothing more. If you reduce still further this stage of hearing nothing at all, then it will be more
than silent around you, more than soundless ... Such a silence actually exists, and it is in the highest
degree blissful, though an ordinary person will not so easily be able to imagine it.
Now imagine these examples applied to the density of substance. At first you will have the three
generally known aggregate conditions: the solid, liquid and gaseous conditions; but in accordance
with the above-mentioned example of the property, you should not remain by these three conditions.
Even as it is possible to dilute the property into a “negative” property, so the substance can also
become thinner and thinner, more and more diluted, beyond the gaseous stage. Imagine therefore a
kind of substance opposed to the physical substance; this will give you a kind of idea of that which
constitutes the etheric body.
A “negative” property has the opposite qualities of a positive one, for a “plus” property makes
us rich, and a “minus” property poor; the more money I have, the more I can buy; the less money I
have, the less I can buy. In the same way, the cosmic ether, of which the etheric body of every living
being is a part, has the opposite qualities of physical substances.
Even as physical substance has the inclination to fall asunder, to decay, so the etheric body has the
inclination to hold everything together, preventing the physical body, which it permeates from
decaying. As soon as the etheric body abandons the physical body — in other words, when physical
death arises — the decomposition into the elemental parts immediately sets in. We have thus traced
matter into a world where it has the opposite effect of our physical matter.
When I say that man's etheric body resembles his physical body, I mention a fact which must be
borne in mind and which must be mentioned here, for it will give rise to important conclusions in
following lectures. This statement must be subjected to an important limitation, for in reality the
etheric body differs greatly from the physical body and resembles it only in its upper part, in the
head; but it differs from it greatly in regard to the fact that it is of opposite sex: man's etheric body
is feminine, and woman's etheric body is masculine. Every human being is therefore bisexual; the
sex of the physical body is only an external expression, having its opposite pole in the etheric body.
Even as a magnet has a north pole and a south pole, even as a magnet cannot have only a north pole,
so we also find two poles in man: the pole and the counter-pole.

13
 The etheric or vital body, also called the body of formative forces, therefore constitutes the
second member of man's being, and from birth to death it remains intimately connected with man's
physical body, and when the etheric body severs itself from the physical body, this signifies death.
The physical body is first built up by the etheric body; the etheric body is, so to speak, the
architect of the physical body. If you wish to have a picture for this, take that of water and ice:
When the water cools down, it takes on another shape, it becomes ice. Even as ice is formed out of
water through condensation, so the physical body is formed out of the etheric body.
Ice — water, physical — etheric body; this means, that the forces of the etheric body have
become tangible, physically perceptible in the physical body. Even as the water already contained
the forces which then manifest themselves in the solid ice, so the etheric body already contains, all
the forces needed for the structure of the physical body. The etheric body thus already contains a
force producing, for example; the heart, or the stomach, or the brain, and so forth. For each organ of
our physical body there is a predisposition in the etheric body; these predispositions are not
substances, but currents of forces.
Man has the etheric body in common with every plant and animal, that is to say, with every
physical being manifesting LIFE,
Now we may ask: Do the plants have a kind of consciousness such as we have found for the
world of the minerals? We have already seen that spiritual research discovers the consciousness of
minerals in the higher Intelligent World, the origin of our thoughts.
Even as our fingers do not have a consciousness of their own, for the consciousness of the finger
forms part of man's consciousness, so the plants form part of a state of consciousness lying on the
lower Intelligent World, in the heavenly world (Rupa Devachan), When the spiritual investigator
enters this world, he encounters in it the souls of the plants. There, the souls of the plants are
Beings, such as we are beings here on earth; and these Beings are related to the plants in the same
way in which man is related to his fingers.
The consciousness of plants is therefore rooted in this lower Devachan World. In it are rooted
the forces which lie at the foundation of every growth and of every organic structure; in it are also
rooted the forces which build up our physical body, that is to say, the forces of our etheric body,
which, we have already designated as the architect of our physical body. This consciousness of the
vegetable world is far higher and wiser than the consciousness of man,
You will realise this at once if you bear in mind the wise structure not only of man's physical
body, but of every being permeated by an etheric body, that is to say, of every living being. What
enormous wisdom is needed to build up the simplest physical body of any living being; not to
mention the most wonderful structure all living beings on earth; the human body!
Observe, for instance, man's upper thigh bone; how wonderfully and in accordance with every
rule of architecture the single little osseous joists and beams are put together! In its upper part, the
upper thigh bone is far more complicated than it appears to us externally; for it is composed of a
trestle of beams whose angles are arranged so skillfully that the weight of the whole body is borne
by the least quantity of matter; truly a far greater work of art than the most complicated bridge
construction; no engineering skill in the world could imitate it!

14
 Or contemplate the structure of the heart: it is built so wisely that man with all his wisdom is but
a child in comparison to that wisdom which reveals itself in the structure of the heart. How many
things does the human heart withstand, though man's foolish attempts to ruin it every day, for
instance, through our so-called stimulants — coffee, alcohol, nicotine.
Forces reaching as far as the astral world are needed for the construction of such a wonderful
edifice as our physical body; only the Beings of this astral world are, trivially speaking, clever
enough to build up such a physical body.
And now we come to the third member of man's being. Plants have a physical body and an
etheric body; but they lack something which both man and the animals have; they have no pain, no
desires, no sufferings, and no sensations whatever. This is the difference between man and animal
on the one side, and the plants on the other. The difference consists therein that inner, processes take
place in the animals and in man. From processes observed in plants, modern science even seeks to
ascribe sensations to plants. It is a shame to see how concepts are being misused! These are no inner
processes, as in the case of a sensation — such sensations might just as well be ascribed to a blue
litmus paper. Such mistakes arise if sensations are looked for in the physical world; no sensation
can be found in the physical world in a phenomenon of the kind which may be observed in certain
plants, for we must rise up to heavenly worlds if we wish to find sensations in plants. To prevent
misunderstandings, let me add that in the case of so-called reacting plants, for instance, in the
mimosa, the sensitive process of reaction does not reflect itself in the physical world as a sensation,
but only in the lower Intelligent World, the seat of the plant's consciousness. Here, in the physical,
world, only man and animals have instincts and passions, joys and pains. Why? — Because they
have, in addition to the physical and etheric body, also the astral body, the third member of human
nature.
To a clairvoyant seer, the astral body appears in such a way as to envelop the whole human
being in an egg-shaped cloud, and within this cloud every sensation comes to expression, every
instinct and every passion. The astral body is therefore the carrier of desire, pain, suffering and joy.
This third member presents a different aspect from the etheric body and the physical body. When
man is asleep, only the physical and the etheric body lie upon the bed, whereas the astral body and
the Ego are lifted out; but when the astral body and the etheric body go out of the physical body,
then death arises, and with it the decay of the physical body.
Why is this third member called astral body? — No more appropriate name could be found for
it! Why? — Because this member has an important task which we must bear in mind. At night, this
astral body is not inactive, for then it works upon the physical and etheric body, and the clairvoyant
seer can observe this. During the day, we use up our physical and etheric body, for everything we do
uses up the physical body, and the expression of this is fatigue. Now the astral body repairs what we
use up during the day. The astral body really eliminates fatigue while we are asleep. This shows the
importance and necessity of sleep. The clairvoyant seer can do this repair-work consciously. The
refreshing element of sleep depends on the fact that the astral body has worked in the right way
upon the physical and astral bodies. But since the astral body must first return into the physical and
etheric bodies, the refreshment of sleep arises gradually, that is to say, about one hour after waking
up.

15
 Something else, something important is also connected with the fact that the astral body goes
out during sleep. When the astral body enters in connection with the external world during the
waking life of daytime, it must live together with the physical and etheric body; but when it
extricates itself from the body, that is to say, during sleep, it is freed from these fetters of the
physical and etheric body. Then something wonderful arises; the forces of the astral body then reach
as far as the starry world, where the soul-Beings of the plants are to be found, and it draws its
strength from that world. The astral body reposes in a world where the stars are embedded. This is
the world of the Harmony of the Spheres, according to the Pythagoreans. It is a reality and not a
mere fancy. If we live consciously in this world, we can hear the harmonies of the spheres, we can
hear the stars resounding in their reciprocal forces and relations. In this sense, Goethe was an
initiate, and in this meaning we should read the beginning of the Prologue in Heaven of “Faust: —
“Die Sonne tönt nach alter Weise
In Bruderspharen Wettgesang,
Und ihre vorgeschriebene Reise
Vollendet sie mit Donnergang.
Ihr Anblick gibt den Engeln Stärke,
Wenn keiner sie ergründen mag;
Die unbegreiflich hohen Werke
Sind herrlich, wie am ersten Tag.”

(Translation after Latham)

“The sun, with many a sister-sphere,

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

People do not know Goethe, and as a rule they are not aware that he was an initiate, for they
simply say: A poet needs images ... . Yet Goethe knew that the sun stands in the midst of a choir and
that it resounds as Spirit of the Sun! Goethe therefore remains by this image and continues: —
“Horchet! Horcht dem Sturm der Horen!
Tönend wird für Geistesehren
Schon der neue Tag geboren.
Felsentore knarren rasselnd,
Phöbus' Räder rollen prasselnd;
Welch Getöse bringt das Licht!
Es drommetet, es posaunet,
Auge blinzt and Ohr erstaunet,
Unerhörtes hört sich nicht.”

(Translation after Latham)

“Hark! The Hours in storm are winging,

16
 And to spirit ears loud-ringing,
Now the new-born day is springing.
Rocky portals clang asunder,
Phoebus' wheels roll forth in thunder,
What a tumult brings the light!
Loud the trump of dawn hath sounded,
Eye is dazzled, ear astounded,
The Unheard no ear may smite.”

During the night, the astral body lives in this world of stars. During the day it comes into a kind
of disharmony of wordly things, whereas at night, during sleep, it is once more embedded in the
world of the stars. And in the morning it returns with the forces which it brings along from this
world. From the astral world we bring with us the harmony of the spheres, when we awake from
sleep! The real home of the astral body is the world of the stars, the astral world, and that why it is
called astral body.
Now we have learned to know three parts of human nature; the physical body; the etheric body
and the astral body.
The fourth part, the Ego, we shall learn to know next time. The Ego is that member which raises
man above the animal and makes of him the crown of creation.
The animal does not have man's consciousness, although it has a certain kind of consciousness,
just as we have seen it in the case of the plant and of the mineral; but the consciousness of animals
lies in the astral world. Man's fourth member, the Ego, constitutes with the other three members,
the, “holy fourfold essence” of man, of which all the ancient Schools speak.
Man therefore has the physical body in common with the mineral, the etheric body in common
with the plants, and the astral body in common with the animal. He alone has an Ego, and this raises
him above the others. In man we find, as it were, the essence of everything which we see spread out
round about us. In fact, a microcosm! We must therefore first learn to know our environment, if we
wish to know man.
We should therefore think of these three members, of these three bodies, as sheaths, woven in
different regions, and we, that is to say, our Ego, lives in these sheaths, together with the higher
members of human nature, together with our immortal part.

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Lecture 3

MAN'S SELF-CONSCIOUSNESS, HIS WORK UPON THE

LOWER MEMBERS OF
HIS BEING AND HIS DESTINY AFTER DEATH

There is a “holiest of holies” in man which we may designate as his self-consciousness. Those
who see this in the right way, have no difficulty in perceiving that this word “self-consciousness”
expresses at the same time the true meaning of human life. Self-consciousness is the capacity for
transmitting the knowledge that One is an EGO.
You may clearly obtain an idea of this if you bear in mind that there is one name in the whole
language which fundamentally differs from all the others: it is the word “I”. Anyone can designate
the table, but, “I” is a designation which can only be applied individually to one's own self. To
every other person one is a “you”. Never can the word “I” resound from outside, if it is to designate
my own being. Spiritual science has always experienced this.
In the Jewish religion, for instance, when speaking of man's inner being, it was referred to as the
unspeakable name of God. For the Hebrews said: When the “I” is to be pronounced, it must resound
from the central point of our being. No being outside can utter this name: A kind of shudder
therefore passed through the whole congregation when the priest uttered the word JAHVE, “I am
the I am”. The God within man begins to speak — this is the pure, original, meaning of the Jewish
name of God. You will also learn to know other names, but they all stand in some kind of
relationship to this one name.
With this word “I,” we designate the fourth member of man's being. Through the Ego, and from
this centre, man works upon the other members of his being, upon his astral body, etheric body and
physical body. No matter how far we go back into the history of human development, we find that
man always possessed these four members, and it is this which distinguishes him from the animals.
Let us now form an idea of the relationship between developed and undeveloped men in regard
to these four members. Consider under this aspect one of the most savage men, who eats up his
fellow-men, and compare him with an average European, and the latter again with a highly
developed individual — Goethe, for example, or Schiller, or Francis of Assisi. The savage blindly
follows the instincts and passions contained in his astral body. He has an Ego, but this Ego still lives
completely under the sway of the astral body. An average man of the present time is already able to
distinguish good and evil, and this is due to the fact that he has worked upon his astral body. He has
worked upon it and even transformed certain instincts into so-called ideals. Man reaches an ever
higher stage of development the more he transforms his astral body through his Ego. The modern
average European has transformed a good part of this astral body. An individuality such as Schiller
or Goethe has already transformed the greater part of the astral body. But a human being who has
subjugated all his passions through his will, as for instance, Francis of Assisi, has an astral body
which is entirely transformed by his Ego, there is nothing left in this astral body which is not
completely under the sway of the Ego.

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 That part of the astral body which man has been able to transform, we designate as “Manas” or
“Spirit-Self”. This is the fifth member of his being. We may then say: The Ego contains the seed for
the transformation of the astral body into Manas, Spirit-Self,
Now man has the possibility to transform not only his astral body, but also his etheric body, so
that the Ego also becomes the sovereign of the etheric body. But you must realise that this is a far
more difficult and slower work. The difference between the transformation of the astral body and of
the etheric body is the following: —
Consider what you knew when you were eight years old, and what you have learned since your
youth! The bearer of all these transformations is the astral body. Consequently it changes essentially
every day through the external impressions which you take in. But this is not the case with the
etheric body. If you wish to have an idea of this imagine the following: — If you were a choleric
child at the age of eight, you will probably still lose your temper even to-day. Only a few people
succeed in transforming themselves to such an extent as to change also their habits, inclinations,
temperament and character. This does not in any way contradict what I have explained above. The
astral body is indeed connected with pleasure and pain and the other sensations, but when these
have become habitual and so-called character traits, then they are rooted in the etheric body; and if
we wish to transform these habits, then the etheric body must be transformed, for it is the bearer of
every habit and character-trait.
I have frequently compared the transformations of astral body and etheric body with the
progress of the minute and second hands of the clock.
Later on we shall speak of the development of the more advanced pupil. He is not a pupil in the
meaning of ordinary life, not only one who learns something. Undoubtedly, such a pupil must also
learn a lot, but far more important than learning, is the above-mentioned work upon the etheric
body: He must succeed, for instance, in transforming a choleric disposition into gentleness of
character. Spiritual science in particular gives him indications for this.
He who succeeds in transforming from one day to the other at least one of his habits, that is to
say, some quality of his etheric body, has attained a high stage of development. Such a
transformation of the etheric body should go hand in hand with the other things which the disciple
of occult science learns. But even if a man knows nothing of such a training, he nevertheless
transforms his etheric body of his own accord — though slowly and gradually, and throughout
many incarnations And that part of his etheric body which he has been able to transform, we
designate as Budhi, or Life-Spirit, which constitutes the sixth member of human nature.
Then there is the stage lying far, far above the others, upon which man learns to work upon his
physical body and to transform it. That part of his physical body which he has learned to control, we
designate as Atma, or Spirit-Man. It is the seventh member of his being. Atma is connected with the
German word “atmen”, to breathe, for the process of transformation goes out from the breathing
process.
We can only form an idea of what it means to control one's physical body consciously, through
the Ego, if we bear in mind how little we really know of our physical body. This knowledge has
nothing to do with the assertions of modern anatomy concerning man's physical body. Long before
modern anatomy existed, there were ancient teachings, which of course were not known publicly,

19
but which contained a knowledge concerning man's inner being. This knowledge enabled the wise
men of ancient times to follow, for instance, the currents of life and of the blood, and they were thus
able to observe themselves inwardly, to observe the physical body and all its organs. When we shall
have reached this stage of development, not one portion of our body will move without the
conscious participation of our will. This is the transformation into Atma, the Spirit-Man.
Now someone might object: The Physical body is the lowest member of human nature; how is it
possible that its transformation should constitute the highest member? Just because the physical
body is the lowest member, man's highest effort is needed in order to gain control over this body.
The transformation of the physical body is intimately connected with the acquisition of power over
forces which permeate the whole cosmos. And the sway over these cosmic forces is what we
designate as magic.
Man's true inner nature thus consists of seven parts. But those seven parts are completely
intermingled. A true idea of this intermingling can only be obtained if we compare it with the seven
colours of the rainbow, which are all contained in the light of the sun. Even as the light consists of
these seven colours, so man consists of his seven members.
Let us now consider the significance of this structure of man's being in connection with the
knowledge of man's whole life-path. Yesterday we learned to know the nature of sleep. The physical
body and the etheric body lie in the bed; respiration and blood-circulation remain, as life-expression
of the etheric body, but everything pertaining to the astral body is lifted out of the physical body and
the etheric body together with the Ego.
When death arises, something else appears, in contrast to this. Whereas the physical body and
the etheric body remain united throughout the life between birth and death, death separates the
etheric body also, and not only the astral body, as in sleep, from the physical body. But the physical
body is so complicated (let us bear in mind yesterday's explanations) that it must decay, if obliged to
rely upon its own forces.
Let us now observe clairvoyantly the human being after death: Before us lies only the physical
body, and above it soar, the astral body and the etheric body ... Immediately after death, the
deceased human being experiences a peculiar manifestation: At the moment of death, the course of
his whole life appears in the field of human memory, like a spread-out picture. Every event, even
the most insignificant, passes before him in the form of an image. This is the natural result of the
fact that the etheric body, besides having the above-mentioned quality of preventing the decay of
the physical body, is also the bearer of memory. As soon as it loses its first task, it devotes itself
intensely to this second task. Since every event in life, whether, pleasure or suffering, is connected
with joy or pain, owing to the permeation of the etheric body with the astral body, now that the
astral body is also severed from him, man experiences those memory pictures, that is to say, he
experiences his whole past life, without any sensations or feelings, as if it were a great panorama.
As long as the etheric body remains connected with the physical body, the instrument which it
must use, the brain renders our memories incomplete; we only retain fragments of life impressions
in our memory. The deficiency of the physical brain is responsible for this, but as soon as the etheric
body becomes emancipated from the physical brain, it can remember everything.

20
 An analogy may even be found in ordinary life, during the shock which one experiences, for
instance, at the moment of drowning, or crashing, etc. This is simply due to the fact that at such a
moment the etheric body becomes forcefully severed from the physical body, which also takes
place, for example, in a slight degree when an extremity falls asleep (pins and needles), or in
hypnosis. In the case of a hypnotized person, the clairvoyant can see his etheric body hanging out at
both sides of the head. Materialistic physiology objects that in hypnosis there is a physical change
in the blood, but people simply mix up cause and effect.

Man's first experience after death is therefore this retrospection of his past life, which differs in
length, but averages about three and a half days.
Then comes a second kind of death, when the etheric body completely severs itself also from
the astral body, so that a kind of etheric corpse remains behind. But this corpse soon dissolves, more
or less quickly in each individual case, and becomes part of the universal cosmic ether. Yet it does
not dissolve altogether; a kind of essence remains from the past life. The Ego takes this essence
along with it; it is an imperishable treasure, which remains for all the subsequent incarnations. After
every incarnation a new leaf is added, so to speak, to the proceeding one. In Theosophy this essence
of the etheric body is called the Causal Body, and the quality of the causal body determines the way
in which the future incarnations take place.
Now the astral body remains alone ... What is the difference between this condition, in which it
is severed from the other members, from the physical body and the etheric body, and that of sleep,
in which it also remains alone? The forces which it had to use during sleep in order to elaborate and
improve the physical body, have now become emancipated, through the fact that the physical body
has definitely been laid aside. The astral body now uses those forces for its own self and is
conscious of this. In this state of self-consciousness the astral body now passes through a time
which can be understood best of all if we consider the following: —
Imagine that you are enjoying a specially tasty dish — you eat it and enjoy its taste. This
pleasure is not rooted in the physical body, but in the astral body, but it can only arise because it has
the required organ, namely a tongue and a palate. Thus the physical body supplies the instrument
for the gratifications of the astral body.
Now, what takes place after death, when the physical body has been discarded? The instrument
is lacking, the transmitter of enjoyment, but the astral body has not lost the longing and desire for
some special pleasure. Now imagine this state as vividly as possible. It resembles the condition of a
man who is thirsting in the midst of a desert. After death the astral body still feels the desire for
certain enjoyments, in the same measure in which it was accustomed to feel this during the past life
on earth, and for this reason the time after death is for so many people a time of unsatisfied desires.
This condition is named Kamaloka (Kama means desire, and locus place). It is the same
condition which we find described in many myths — for instance, the tortures of Tantalus, or
purgatory. Of course, this condition is not only a torturing one; it tortures us until the astral body has
lost the habit of desiring enjoyments. The more needs the astral body feels during physical life the
longer does this condition of Kamaloka last.

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 But you may gather from the above, that according to the quality of these needs experienced by
a human being during his past life on earth; the astral body may encounter in Kamaloka experiences
which are not only torturing, but under circumstances very good and pleasant. The astral body will,
for instance, feel pleasure in every moment of joy given to him by Nature and its beauty. In order to
experience this enjoyment of Nature and its beauty, we must indeed have eyes to see, but beauty is
something that transcends the physical, and therefore this condition is in Kamaloka the source of
increased enjoyment. These things produce great joys and wonderful experiences even during the
Kamaloka period.
Thus we may render this Kamaloka time more beautiful by emancipating ourselves from purely
physical enjoyments. If you consider this, you will be able to understand several things in life, for
instance, everything which constitutes art. The more ideal art is, the more the ideal essence
manifests itself through art, the stronger and the more uplifting will, be the influence of the work of
art, an influence transcending physical life. The Spirit is the real element of art. The materialistic
short-sightedness, alone has led to naturalism in art.
After passing through this Kamaloka period, we therefore reach the stage where we have lost
the habit of physical enjoyments, and this means that we must now pass through an entirely
different condition. The soul now discards all those parts of the astral body which man, that is to
say, the Ego, has not yet transformed. The discarded astral sheath now constitutes the third corpse
which we leave behind.
Now that the Ego has united itself with that which it has gained from the other bodies — viz.
with the above-mentioned essence of the etheric body and with that of the astral body — it passes
on to the Spirit-realm. There it lives until the time of a new birth.
We shall speak of this to-morrow. To-day I only wish to emphasize once more that all these
spiritual worlds exist continually round about us, and not in a “Beyond”, which is spatially
separated from us. One who can look into the spiritual worlds can at any time perceive the above-
mentioned corpses, as shadows or spectres. It is these corpses which so frequently intrude
themselves in spiritistic seances. But if such an astral corpse is mistaken for the individuality in
question, it is just as foolish a mistake as that of taking the physical corpse for the living human
being, Thus the astral corpse frequently reveals very ridiculous traits, for it possesses the very
qualities which the Ego has discarded.

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Lecture 4
MAN'S FURTHER DESTINIES IN THE SPIRITUAL WORLDS
THE KINGDOM OF HEAVEN.
Since it is our task to-day to continue following, man's destinies in the spiritual world, it will be
advisable if we first form some idea of what we designate as a world, in the spiritual-scientific
meaning.
We are conscious of the world round about us, because we have certain capacities and organs
which enable us to perceive it. If we had other organs, this world would present an entirely different
aspect. For example, if a man had no eyes enabling him to see the light, but an organ enabling him
instead to perceive electricity, then he would not see this room flooded with light, but he would
perceive electricity in every wire, flashing, streaming through it. — The world round about us, what
we call our world, is therefore dependent upon our sense-organs.
The astral world, too, is nothing but a sum of phenomena, which the human being experiences
in his environment , when he has severed himself from his physical body and from his etheric body,
so that he can use forces enabling him to see what he cannot otherwise see. This is the case, when
he has discarded his physical body and his etheric body. The perceptive organs for the astral world
are the organs of the astral body, analogous to the sense-organs of the physical body.
Let us now contemplate the astral world.
Through methods which will be discussed later, a man endowed with spiritual vision can
perceive the astral world even here, in his physical body. The astral world differs greatly from our
physical world. You may obtain some idea of what is round about you in the astral world, if you
summon up before your soul the life of dreams, which is the last trace of that early clairvoyance
which man once possessed in times gone by. You all know this life of dreams from your own
experience, as world of chaotic images. How does it come about that man dreams at all? We know
that while we dream, the physical body and the etheric body lie on the bed, while the astral body
soars above them. In a sound, dreamless sleep, the astral body is completely lifted out of the etheric
body; but in a sleep filled with dreams, certain tentacles of the astral body still reach into the etheric
body, and this enables man to perceive the more or less confused pictures of the astral world.
The astral world is as transparent as the dream-pictures; it is, as it were, woven out of dreams.
But these dreams which constitute the astral world differ from ordinary dreams, for they are the
images of a reality, just as “real” a reality as the physical world. We perceive this reality in the same
way in which we perceive dreams, for the astral world, too, is perceived symbolically. You all know
that the world of dreams is a symbolical world. Everything from the world outside which enters our
sleep, takes on a symbolical aspect in our dreams. I will give you a few typical examples of dreams,
which will show you how a simple impression from outside constitutes the foundation of a dream's
symbolical image.
For example, you may be dreaming that you have caught a frog. You feel its slippery body, and
on waking up you find that you are holding the cold end of the sheet in your hand. Or you may
dream that you are in a cellar, in a dark hole full of spiders' webs: You wake up ... with a headache.

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Or you may see snakes in your dream, and when you awake you will find that you have abdominal
pains. Or another dream: An academician has a long dream of a duel, beginning with some insult
and ending with the pistol-shot: He hears the shot, awakes, and discovers that a chair has fallen.
The whole course of this last dream can also show you that the conditions of time are quite
different in dreams. Not only does time run backwards, so to speak, but the whole conception of
time loses its meaning in a dream. During a dream, we may pass through a whole life in the fraction
of a second, in the same way in which our whole life passes before our soul's eye during the
moment of drowning, or crashing. The point to be borne in mind in all these dream-pictures is that
the cause which gave rise to them appears in the form of IMAGES.
This is the case in the astral world. Its images can be interpreted. The same astral experience
always appears in the form of the same image; there is always regularity and harmony in these
pictures of the astral world, whereas our ordinary dreams are chaotic. In the end, we can find our
way about in the astral world just as well as in the physical world.
The astral world is woven out of such pictures, but they are the expression of soul-beings. After
death all human beings are enveloped in such pictures, which are in part very rich in colour and
form. Also when we are asleep the astral body can be seen in the midst of streaming, changing
forms and colours. If we have the astral power of vision, we can perceive these astral beings in a
surging sea of colours.
The astral world has, however, one peculiar quality, which appears strange to one who hears this
for the first time. In the astral world everything exists, as it were, in the form of a picture reflected
in a mirror, and a pupil of spiritual science must therefore get accustomed little by little to see things
in the RIGHT way. For instance, you may see the number 365, but this really corresponds to 563.
This applies to everything which we see in the astral world. There, everything that goes out of our
own being appears as if it were coming towards us. It is most important to consider this fact.
When astral images arise, for instance, in pathological conditions, we must know how to deal
with them. They often appear when people are delirious; a delirious person often sees all kinds of
faces and forms rushing towards him, for the astral world becomes accessible to him in this
pathological condition. Although these astral pictures seem to be rushing towards him, they are in
reality streaming out of him. Progressive doctors should bear this in mind, for in future such
symptoms will be more and more frequent, arising out of a concealed religious longing. The subject
of a painting such, as for instance, the well known “Temptation of Saint Anthony” is based on such
astral experiences.
If you think these things through to the very end you will no longer find it strange that time too
is reversed in the astral world. An echo of this may be found in dreams. In this connection you
should remember the above-mentioned example of the duel in a dream. In the astral world
everything is reversed; even time. When we observe the development of a tree astrally, we first
perceive its fruit, then its blossoms, and so on backwards to the seed.
After death, during the time in which we must lose our earthly habits, our whole life in the astral
world runs backwards. But this process of living through our whole life once more backwards,
concluding it ,with our first impressions of childhood, is faster than the one on the physical plane; it

24
lasts about one third of the duration of our life on earth. Thus we live through our life again in a
reversed order, but we experience many other things too.
Let us suppose that you were eighty years old when you died, and that now you live through
your life backwards as far as your fortieth year. At that time you may, for instance, have boxed
someone's ear, thus causing him pain. In the astral world this sensation of pain also appears as if in a
mirror, i.e. YOU now experience the pain felt by the other person when you boxed his ear. But this
also applies to every pleasant experience.
Only when the human being has thus passed through his whole life backwards, is he ready to
enter the heavenly world. Religious traditions should always be taken literally. If you bear in mind
what I have just now explained to you, you will easily understand that the human being can only
enter the spiritual world — and the spiritual world is the one which the Bible designates as
“Kingdom of Heaven” — when he has lived through his whole life backwards as far as infancy.
This lies at the foundation of Christ's words: “Unless you become as little children you cannot enter
the Kingdom of Heaven”. For on reaching the stage of childhood in his reversed passage through
life, the human being discards the astral body and enters the spiritual world.
Now I must give you a description of the spiritual world. The Kingdom of Heaven differs from
the physical world even more than the astral world. But since it is only possible to describe the
spiritual world with expressions taken from the physical world, it should be borne in mind even
more than for descriptions of the astral world, that everything I say about the spiritual world should
only be taken comparatively.
In the Kingdom of Heaven we also find a triad, as here on earth. Even as upon the earth we find
the three aggregate states of solid, liquid and gaseous, and accordingly divide the earth into
continents, oceans, and atmosphere, so we may also distinguish three similar spheres — but, as
stated, only as a comparison — in the spiritual realm. The continental sphere, however, consists of
something which differs from our rocks and stones. What constitutes the firm ground of the spirit
realm, are the archetypal images of the physical world. For everything physical has its archetype,
even man. The clairvoyant seer perceives these archetypal images as a kind of negative, that is to
say, he sees space as a kind of shadow-form, and round about it radiant light. But corresponding, for
instance, to the blood and nerves, these shadows are not uniform. But a stone, or a mineral reveal in
their archetypal images a uniformly empty space surround by raying light.
Even as you walk, on firm ground here on earth, so in the spiritual realm you walk on the
archetypal images of physical things. This forms the continents of the spiritual world.
When the human being first sets foot on these continents, a definite aspect always presents itself
to him: It is the moment when he first has a clear perception of his own body lying before him. For
he himself is spirit. Normally this takes place about thirty years after death, and this is connected
with the fundamental experience: “This is you.” The Vedanta philosophy based one of its
fundamental teachings on this knowledge, the “Tat twain asi” — this is you. All such expressions
are drawn out of a deep spiritual knowledge.
The second sphere of the spiritual realm is the oceanic sphere. Whatever is life here in the
physical world, i.e. everything that possesses an etheric body, exists in the spiritual realm as if it
were a liquid element. Streaming, surging life flows through the spirit-realm. It even collects like

25
the waters of the ocean, in a kind of ocean-basin, or to be more precise, like the blood streaming
through the veins and collecting in the heart.
And thirdly we have the atmosphere of the spirit realm, consisting of all the passions, instincts,
feelings, etc. You have all these sensations up there as an external perception, resembling the
atmospheric phenomena here on earth. All this blows through the atmosphere of Devachan. As a
clairvoyant, you can perceive in the spirit-realm all the sufferings and joys experienced on earth.
Every passion, every feeling of hatred and such like, appears in the spirit-realm as if it were a storm.
A battle, for example, appears in such a form that in the Devachan world the seer experiences a
tremendous storm. The whole spiritual world is thus permeated with wonderful joys which pass
through it, but also with terrible passions.
In the same way it is possible to speak of spiritual ears. When you have advanced to the stage of
having an insight into the Devachan world, you may both see and hear these floating phenomena,
and what you thus hear is the HARMONY OF THE SPHERES.
We have thus characterised the spiritual region up to this stage. But there is a fourth region in
Devachan. Up to now we have found in it:
1. The prototypes of all physical forms; as the continents
2. The prototypes of all life, as the oceans
3. The prototypes of all soul-life, feelings, etc., as the atmosphere

Now there is something in human life which cannot have its origin in the external world, and its
spiritual content constitutes the fourth sphere of Devachan. There we find every original idea, going
as far as the creative productions of genius. All that is original, that is to say, all that man puts into
the world, thus enriching the world, the prototypes of all these creations form the fourth sphere of
Devachan. This concludes the description of the lower parts of Devachan.
Beyond this there are three higher spheres, but during his physical life man can only reach them
through a higher initiation. They are only accessible to an initiate, and after death, they can only be
perceived by more highly developed individuals.
What does such an advanced initiate experience when he penetrates into the next higher sphere
of Devachan? At first he experiences that which is designated in Occult Science as the Akasha
Chronicle. Everything that occurs in the world and that has ever occurred in it in the past, is
preserved as an impression in a fine substantiality, which is imperishable.
Let me illustrate this through at example: Now I am speaking to you, but you would not hear me
if my voice were not able to produce vibrations in the air. Thus every word which I utter exists in
the air in the form of fine movements. These fine movements of course vanish, but everything
which occurs here on earth becomes impressed in that fine substantiality which we experience when
reaching the spiritual world. This impression is everlasting. Every word, every thought, everything
which has ever taken place in humanity, can be read in the Akasha Chronicle. This entails either
initiation, or that moment after death when the human being enters the higher devachanic sphere,
that is to say, when he has developed so far as to perceive this high sphere of Devachan after death.
In that case he is able to look into the past.

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 The Akasha Chronicle is a writing which preserves everything that has ever occurred. But it is
not really a writing in the ordinary physical meaning, for it consists of images. You see, for
example, Caesar in every situation of his life, — you do not see what he has done, but the inner
impulses which led him to his deeds. These Akasha pictures possess a high degree of life, and if we
cannot interpret them in the right way, they can give rise to great delusions. The source of many
spiritistic aberrations is, for example, the appearance of an Akasha picture at one of these seances. If
you summon Goethe, and the Akasha picture of November 25th 1797 appears before you, giving
you information concerning some question, this picture will reply as Goethe would have replied had
he been asked that question on November 25th 1797. Only those who really know the spiritual
world can judge whether they are dealing with a reality or with a shadow. These descriptions can
show you what aspect the higher spheres of the spiritual world present.
The first experience is therefore the perception of one's own body, and this experience is the
starting point for all other experiences. The human being feels strongly that he has emancipated
himself from his bodily involucres, for the most blissful of moments is the one in which he discards
the last body, the astral corpse. Even as a plant wedged in the fissure of a rock would experience it
as bliss to be freed, so this feeling of blissfulness becomes a fundamental sensation of the human
being. It permeates him and transfigures the other feelings which were once experienced in an
earthly manner, for instance, feelings of friendship, which may perhaps undergo certain
transformations here on earth, but which are deepened and purified in the spiritual realm.
Also a mother's love for her child undergoes such a purification, and viceversa. The originally
animal feeling of belonging to one another, which even here upon the earth took on a moral
character, unfolds a still higher moral-power in Devachan, Every tie on earth becomes deepened in
the spiritual realm, and all connections interpenetrate.
Through love man works his way up from the narrowness of egotism to the encompassing
experience of cosmic life. There, nothing, is divided or severed; each one works for the others, for
even in the spiritual world activity and work constitute the element which carries, furthers and
unites the souls. But Love is the inexhaustible source of all life.

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Lecture 5

METAMORPHOSES OF OUR EARTHLY EXPERIENCES IN THE

SPIRITUAL WORLD, INTO NEW CAPACITIES FOR OUR NEXT LIFE.
It will be our task to-day to describe to a certain extent the human being during his sojourn in
Devachan between death and new birth. In this connection we must first of all form an idea of that
which man gains through the fact that during his passage through the spiritual world he is, to begin
with, active for his own sake. We can picture this more easily if we bear in mind the relationship of
two things: of that which we experience, and of that which our experience becomes during the time
between birth and death.
Consider, for instance, everything which you experience when you learn to write. You would
find it difficult, to remember all the things which you had to take in at that time in order to learn the
or writing. Think of all admonishments of your teacher. Perhaps even of his anger! All this passed
through your soul, and what has remained? The capacity to write. Everything else has become
blurred and the art of writing has remained.
This is the course of things in life generally — not only during the life between birth and death,
but in the whole life of the universe, both in the physical and in the super-sensible world.
It is possible to form a conception of how the things explained above are active in the super-
sensible world. Let us, for example, take Mozart. When he was quite a young boy he heard a long
piece of music at St. peters in Rome; according to an old tradition it was not allowed to write down
this music, but Mozart wrote it down afterwards, from memory. What memories you must have
had! And he could do this as a young boy! How do materialists explained this? They would protest
energetically if they were asked to believe that an ox grows out of a piece of earth, that in animals
such as the ox arises in a way which does not correspond to Nature. They say: Miracles do not
exist ... and they are perfectly right in this. But in the face of spiritual things they become
tremendously superstitious and believed in miracles at which point materialists simply accept back
such as the one just now described from Mozart's life, and without further ado they place it to the
account of heredity. Yet at Mozart's case, an explanation not arising out of a spiritual science
describes just as great a miracle as that of an ox growing out of a piece of earth. For it is possible
for a human being gradually to acquire an excellent memory if he turns his spirit again and again
towards the same object. Memory develops in exactly the same way in which something perfect
develops out of something imperfect, and it would be a miracle if Mozart's memory had grown out
of nothing!
The answer of spiritual science to such a problem is that even in such a case upgrade developed
gradually and naturally. If a materialists seeks an explanation for it, he cannot extricate himself
otherwise that by admitting that he must either believe in miracles or that capacity is which does
manifest themselves prove that they already existed in a former life and that they followed an
entirely natural course of development.

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 Reincarnation is consequently the logical deduction of such a train of thought. And those who
explain, through a materialistic way of looking at things, that such a perfect memory as that of the
young boy Mozart can arise out of nothing, should follow their belief to a logical conclusion and
admit, for instance, that frogs develop without further ado from mud — A fact which was accepted
by a natural scientists before the time of Francesco Redi. Consequently, those who wish to be
logical in spiritual science state: Even as an oak-tree grows out of the acorn and develops gradually,
so our soul-capacities develop little by little, and when a human being enters life with capacities so
highly developed as those of Mozart, this undeniably proves that the human being gained these
capacities during former lives on earth. This gives us a clue to the comprehension of man's destiny
in the spiritual world.
The essential point is therefore that the experiences of one life transform themselves into
capacities for the succeeding life. All the dispositions of character which we bring with us in this
life are the fruit of experiences gained during earlier lives on earth. For this reason it is necessary to
study man's passage through Devachan in order to understand fully how the experiences of one life
become capacities in the next life.
When we pass through our life on earth, we daily experience many things, and all these
experiences appear in the panorama-picture already described to you, which rises up before the
soul's eye immediately after death. But the capacities which we have gained through all these
experiences remain as an essence, and we take along with us into the spiritual world this
essence,which endures for all times to come.
When the human being enters Devachan, he perceives the regions described to you yesterday;
the continental region, consisting of the archetypes of all earthly forms; the oceanic region,
consisting of everything which is life; the air-region, consisting of everything pertaining to the soul,
pleasure and pain, joy and suffering, etc. In the continental region the human being first perceives
the archetype of his own physical body, and in the air-region he of course perceives, to begin with,
also that which took place within his own soul during his past life on earth in the form of joy,
suffering, pleasure, pain and passions. In other words, he once more perceives all the experiences of
his past life, but in an entirely different way than during his passage through the Kamaloka period,
which I have already described to you. In Kamaloka he lived through them once more in order to
lose the habit of being dependent on them. In the watery region of Devachan man experiences all
the peculiarities of his bodily life, and in the air-region of the celestial world he passes through all
his psychic experiences.
It is important and of great interest to realise that everything which we have experienced in the
course of one life — our feelings concerning the world, pleasure, pain, etc. — that in the spiritual
world all this surrounds us as an external world. We need not feel sad that there our sufferings lie
spread out before us. This is not sad at all, for there, all our sufferings exist in the same way in
which storms exist in the physical world and in the spiritual world all our joyful experiences appear
to us like wonderful cloud-phenomena. In Devachan our own inner experiences do not exist within
us, as here on earth, but they live in our environment in an external form, in the same way in which
a picture of Nature lies spread out before us. Our inner experiences live round about us, as if they
were images, sounds or atmospheric phenomena; they have become objectified, as heavenly forms.

29
 I have told you that it is not sad if our sufferings come raying towards us; just as little sad as
lightning or thunder in physical life. Those who perceive these connections know what they owe to
their sufferings in particular. Just those who have passed through pain and suffering will always say
that they gratefully accept joy and pleasure, but that they would never wish to do without suffering
and pain. We owe all Our wisdom to our suffering and pain during past lives on earth. A man whose
physiognomy bears upon it the mark of wisdom in this life, owes this to the fact that in former lives
he experienced the world's connection as suffering.
I have already explained to you that everything which we have experienced during our earthly-
life lies spread out before us in pictures, etc, , when we enter Devachan. What does this signify? It
will be easier to understand this if we realise what influence the environment exercises upon us. You
all know Goethe's words: “The eye has been formed through the light and for the light.” What does
this mean? The eye must exist in order to perceive the light. If we did not possess our eyesight the
world would be dark and gloomy. But what is the origin of the human eye? It has been formed by
the light itself, and similarly the eye would degenerate if there were no light. It has, for instance,
been possible to observe this fact directly, in the case of animals who immigrated into the caves of
Kentucky.
Light is the origin of the power of sight. Once upon a time man was not endowed with sight,
because he still lived under quite different conditions; in earlier times of the earth's development the
sun was not visible to an external sensory eye. Let us remember in this connection what the legends
relate in regard to “Niflheim”.
The:more man lived exposed to the sun, the further the eye developed by the light of the sun. All
the other sense organs developed in the same way: sound formed the ear, heat the sense of heat. We
would have no sense of touch if there were no hard objects. The external world moulds and forms
our body.
This is most important in practical life; in fact, theosophy is always meant to be applied to
practical life. It is also most important in education, for only an educator who can look deeply into
man's nature educate in the right way.
The physical body develops until the child changes its teeth, the etheric body develops up to the
14th/15th year, and the astral body up to the 21st year. We must know all this if education is to be
approached practically and not fantastically. Since the disposition of the physical body is what we
must bear in mind up to the seventh year, physical impressions, that is to say, everything which the
child perceives through his sense organs, must be considered deeply and thoroughly. Sins of
omission in education in connection with the form and disposition of the physical organs in the
child's body, are a loss for the whole of life.
An insight into this last sentence gives medicine in particular many guiding lines for a right
treatment of illnesses, among others, for instance, rickets, How is it that rickets arise just in this
period of life? Just because; the child is moulding its body, and that is why these symptoms
manifest themselves in the form (deformed bones, bad teeth, wrong form of the skull, etc.) But for
this very reason the child is still able, until dentition, to correct the wrong forms and lead them back
to a normal condition. We can see that even the most crooked legs grow straight again if the child
receives the right treatment, and that perfectly sound second teeth can develop even if the milk-teeth

30
were quite defective, whereas crooked legs which were not healed up to the seventh year remain
crooked for the whole of life.
Up to the seventh year the brain is also engaged in the work of moulding its plastic forms, and
the fine developments and forms of the brain's shape which could not be moulded up to that time
are lost forever. Since the physical brain is the instrument through which the spirit manifests itself,
it is of tremendous importance that this instrument should be moulded as finely as possible, that is
to say, that it should be prepared during, the first seven years of life. For even the greatest
individuality can do nothing with a defective brain, just as the greatest pianist cannot play well on a
piano which is out of tune. Spiritual science, can give most important guidance to pedagogy, as well
as to medicine, particularly in regard to the development of the brain.
In modern medicine one comes across a complete misunderstanding of facts particularly in this
field. Rickets manifest themselves in a deformation of the bones, but very frequently they also
appear in the shape of a defective glandular system and diseased mucous membranes; that is to say,
children affected with rickets frequently have symptoms of swollen glands, adenoid growths, etc. A
third pathological symptom in such children is that at school they frequently remain behind
spiritually and that they become apathetic, indeed even slightly idiotic. In reality this is based on the
defective development of the physical brain, particularly of its so-called corticose substance, which
must above all be developed in its finest structure during these years. And in the same way the other
symptoms are based on defective development.
Through the modern natural-scientific training and attitude, modern medicine is in such cases
more than inclined to follow the example of modern natural science, namely to look upon the
external symptoms as cause and effect, linking them up together like pearls on a chain and
completely ignoring the deeper spiritual causes. What is the result? The facts are: rickety bones,
adenoid growths, diminished attention and comprehension on the child's part. The conclusion to
which modern doctors arrive is: Children with adenoid growths become mentally defective Owing
to those growths; consequently it is necessary to remove them. The growths are consequently
removed by operation. If this conclusion were right, every child who underwent such a treatment
would respond to it by the disappearance of the impediments in the brain. But what is observed after
such a treatment in the great majority of cases? The operation results in a sham success of brief
duration, for the growths appear again after a very short time. But if the illness is to be attacked at
its root — and this is quite possible, only now this would lead us too far away from our subject —
the deformed bones, the swollen mucous membranes and glands disappear, as well as the
impediments in the working of the brain.
After this digression, let us new return to our subject. The external world thus calls into being
and moulds the right physical forms. Up to the seventh year, the child is in reality nothing but
sense-organ. Everything which it takes in with its senses is elaborated ; above all, what it sees and
hears in its immediate environment. Until dentition, the child is therefore an imitative being,
and,this goes as far as its physical organisation. This is quite natural. Through its sense-organs, the
child takes in its whole environment. And it is always practicing how to use it to limbs. It watches
how its father or mother, etc. do this or that thing, and it simply imitates them. This goes as far as
the movements of hands and legs. If the father or the mother are, for instance, fidgety people, then
the child will also become fidgety in countless cases; if the mother is calm, then the child will of

31
course, also become calm. We must try to produce the right counter-condition by placing the child
in a right environment.
It is absolutely necessary to stimulate the child's fantasy, besides giving it sensory impressions,
if it is to receive the influences needed for the development of the physical brain. It is consequently
necessary to give a small child toys which are as simple as possible. A natural child will again and
again turned to the “old doll”, made of a rag, no matter how beautiful the “new doll” which it
receives. Only the spoiled children of our age are brought up on “beautiful”dolls. What is the reason
for this? The child must exert its fantasy in order to transform the red-doll in its fancy into
something resembling human shape, and this is a sound activity for the brain. Even as the arm grow
stronger through gymnastic exercises, so the brain develops through this exercise.
Also the colours in, the child's surroundings are important. They exercise quite a different
influence upon a small child than upon an adult. Many people think that green has a calming effect
upon children. But this is quite wrong. A fidgety child should be surrounded with red and a calm
child with green or blue-green. The effect of red upon the child is as follows: If you look upon a
bright red and then turn your gaze away quickly to a piece of white paper you will see its
complementary colour, which is green. ... By this I mean to, illustrate the tendency which the eye
has to produce the opposite colour. The child also attempts to do this; inwardly he seeks to unfold
the activity which calls forth the counter-colour. This is an example showing how the environment
can influence a child.
In a similar way the child is influenced by everything which surrounds it, in addition to many,
many things which I shall explain later, in another connection. All this contributes to a very great
extent to the development of the child's physical body, from its birth to dentition; to the
development of the etheric body, from the seventh to the fourteenth year; or to the development of
the astral body, from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year, etc. Indeed, during the whole life the
surrounding world exercises its influence upon the human being. The proverb, “Tell me with whom
you go, and I will tell you who you are”, is based on this insight, for “with whom you go” means
“what takes place in my environment”. This environment therefore has a strong influence upon us.
This applies particularly to the time when the astral body develops, from the fourteenth to the
twenty-first year, and it is an almost daily experience that a young person can easily be astrally
corrupted by his environment during these years.
It is exactly the same in Devachan, as here in physical life. Even as here on earth the human
being is constantly exposed to the influences of the atmosphere, so he is also exposed to them in
Devachan — and there the atmosphere consists of all psychic life, our own and that of our fellow
men. All this soul life continually influences the, human being, and gifts and talents develop
through the fact that they attract the psychically kindred astral forces from the environment,
allowing them to exercise their influence. Mozart was born with such a great musical memory
because in a former life he had gathered experiences having this goal in view, and then allowed
these experiences to exercise their influence for a long time, during his life in Devachan. Through
our environment in Devachan we pass through an enhanced development of our innermost being —
indirectly, through all our experiences during our preceding life on earth.
All our capacities are therefore the fruit of former lives, and in Devachan they have been further
developed. This is the bliss-giving feeling in Devachan. In Devachan we hatch out what we are able

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to do in our present life, And in accordance with this is the feeling which we have during the whole
intermediary time of our Devachan existence: This feeling, connected with everything productive, is
bliss.
Here on earth we often feel pain, but in Devachan even pain is bliss, for there we realise, that we
acquire wisdom through pain. Even a materialistic scientist has discovered this fact his book
“Mimic of Thought” he writes: “Every wise countenance reveals the expression of crystallised
suffering”. From the pains of his preceding life the human being in fact produces through his
experiences in Devachan talents and wisdom for his next life on Earth. And the feeling of producing
this is one of untold bliss.
You may see a pale reflection of this here on earth in a hatching hen. If you transfer this to the
spiritual plane and enhance it immensely you obtain the feeling of incessant infinite bliss between
the time of Kamaloka and a new birth, — for then the human being works out all his dispositions
and capacities for the next life. Everything there becomes a source of blissful life.
We have therefore seen that one source of bliss in Devachan is all the ties formed here on earth
are formed once more in Devachan, indeed we experience the spiritual part of those relationships in
an immensely enhanced form. The other source of bliss is the productive, creative activity for our
next life, as described above.
If the spiritual investigator now turns his gaze upon this activity of man in Devachan he
perceives that this productive work has a meaning not only for the individual human being and for
his future organisation, but that the human being must contribute and cooperate in a significant way
in the progress of the whole evolution of the earth. It is an error to think that in Devachan we are
only concerned with our own affairs. How must we work, as blissful spirits in the realm of spirits?
The activity of the dead is a cooperation in the development of our earth . . . We might easily
ask: Why are we always born again, after having passed through the experiences of one earthly life?
Is not reincarnation useless?
But this is not the case. It is never useless for a man to be born again. The single lives on earth
are so far apart , that we always learn something new and pass through new experiences. Centuries
elapse between two incarnations, and when we return, the earth has completely changed. Let us
suppose that we lived on earth in the second century after Christ. What aspect did the earth present
at that time? Even the descriptions of this region, of the Elbe and the Weser etc. of a much later
period would be quite different from present descriptions, for here, in Nassau-Hessen, there were
still virgin forests.
When the human being is born again, he experiences something quite different from his former
life. During our various lives on earth we participate in the development of the earth itself, through
the very fact that we incarnate again and again. In addition there is the change brought about by
every civilisation. Think of what a Roman boy was able to do! Of the great difference in the
education of a boy of the present time! As we have seen, all these experiences are immensely
important. It therefore has a deep significance that the human being must always come back again.
Let us now ask: Who changes the face of the earth? The dead themselves, who live in the spirit-
realm, do this, through the power which they there acquire, enabling them to work upon this

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transformation of the earth. Even as human beings are here active externally upon the earth, so the
dead are active upon the spiritual prototype of the physical earth. It is they who send their forces
into this physical earth, cooperating in its transformation. Of course, there are leaders in this work
and higher beings who take over the guidance. In this spiritual realm — which is in our very midst
— the dead work upon the transformation of the countenance of the earth.
Why am I in this very place to-day? Why have I been born here? Because I myself have, so to
speak, prepared my bed in the very place where I was born. The forces which have a transforming
influence both upon the oceans and, upon the surface of the earth, are the forces of our dead. We
know that the Atlantic Ocean of to-day was once upon a time a wide expanse of land; this
transformation too has been brought about by our dead, and these forces are quite natural and in no
way miraculous.
An insight into such things proves with absolute logic the importance and necessity of this work
in the spirit realm. If we only know how to interpret the phenomena in the right way, we may even
describe this work. Here on earth we breathe the air; we could not live without air. It is similar with
the dead, except that there the light plays the same part which the air plays here on earth. The
initiate perceives the dead in the midst of light, which is spread out everywhere. A clairvoyant seer,
for instance, sees the plants surrounded by the spirits of the dead and these spirits of the dead make
the plant grow through the light and change the plant. In the spiritual world we shall all soar above
the earth and work upon the plants.
If we thus contemplate the world in connection with the spiritual beings, it becomes larger and
more significant to us.
In conclusion, let me mention a few things which can help us to understand certain fine details
in our civilisation.
At times, the seer finds that his own observations are confirmed by phenomena in the history of
ancient peoples, which before were enigmas to him. It is, for instance, a well known fact that at first
primitive nations possess a kind of clairvoyance enabling them to see things of which we have no
idea. These primitive races often saw in the shadow, for example, something which is connected
with the soul. The clairvoyant now returns to this through his own observations. For if you look in
to the shadow which you yourself throw, you first learn to perceive your own spiritual emanations.
If we retain the physical light, we perceive the spiritual in the shadow-space. This knowledge has
been preserved in occult science, and many who had no inkling of this truth have used it, for
example, Chamisso in his “Peter Schlemihl”. This is a man who lost his shadow and is very
unhappy over this. But it is a spiritual fact that the soul is visible in the shadow, and the man
without a shadow is therefore a man without a soul.
There are hundreds of examples of this kind. We really learn to know the world fully if we learn
to know its spiritual foundations. Spiritual science therefore is not for brooding people, but for those
who wish to be active in practical life. We do not wish to withdraw from the visible world, but
rather to understand it better.
The higher facts are related to the visible world as magnetism is related to iron. We learn to
know iron fully if we also learn to know magnetism. A few examples will show us that especially
that which we learn to know in the spiritual world bears fruit in practical life.

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35
Lecture 6

MAN'S DESCENT INTO AN EARTHLY INCARNATION.

When, as we saw yesterday, man has reached the stage in the spiritual world in which he has, so
to speak, transformed everything which he possessed in the form of capacities and talents acquired
during his earthly life, then the time has come for him to prepare for a new incarnation. But we
must realise that two things should be dealt with in that which comes towards us from the human
being. One thing is that which reproduces itself in the course of physical heredity, and the other is
that which the human being brings along into the world from his earlier lives on earth.
To-day we shall have to describe man's descent into the world, but you need not object to the
word “descent”, for it is not a spatial descent, but a gradual process of development whereby man
comes out of the world which is round about us and enters into the physical world.
Yesterday we saw that the spiritual world should not be sought in a “Beyond”, but that it is also
round about us; modern man, however, is not able to perceive this spiritual world.
Out of this spiritual world develops that which we designate as a new embodiment. We saw that
from his former life man retains an essence of his etheric and of his astral body, a survey of his
experiences, and that he also took with him into the spiritual world that part of his astral body which
he had been able to transmute, casting off the unrefined part.
It will be easier to form an idea of reincarnation if we bear in mind a few other things
concerning the life after death. We saw that immediately after his physical death man lives for about
three and a half days within his etheric body and that his past life rises up before him in these three
and a half days like a kind of picture. The etheric body dissolves and then comes the Kamaloka
time; this is the time of purification, in which the astrality still requiring purification is cleaned and
purged.
But now I must mention another experience. When this memory picture arises immediately after
death, man has a significant experience. He has the experience as if he suddenly grew in size,
quickly breaking through his own surface and growing out into space. This feeling does not vanish
until he is born again. Man feels that he is as large as the whole world to which he belongs, as large
as the whole space of the universe. This will enable you to realise that man can look upon his body
and experience it as something which does not belong to him, for he sees his passions as if they
were outside his body. He has the strange feeling of being spread out over the whole universe.
Then comes something which is more difficult to understand. During the whole time of
Kamaloka man feels as if he were really split up into space. You may understand this better if you
bear in mind the following: During the time of Kamaloka, when man lives through his life
backwards as far as his childhood, in the manner described, he passes through all his experiences as
if they were reflected in a mirror. If he once slapped someone's face it is he who now feels the slap,
for he feels that he is a part of the world once occupied by the other person. For example, if you
died here in Kassel and the other person whom you slapped lives in Paris, then you feel as if one
part of your being were in Paris. Thus you feel as if you were split up over, the whole world; parts

36
of you live, so to speak, wherever you have to look for something. But you should understand this
in such away that you cannot feel anything in the space between Kassel and Paris. If you thus bear
in mind all the events of your life, you really feel split up into many many places during your
passage through the period after death.
The following may serve you as a simile: A wasp. consists of two parts, a front and a back part,
with a very thin connection. Now imagine that the back part were completely severed, but that the
wasp nevertheless, drags it along with it. This is more or less the way in which you can picture to
yourself what I have just described: You feel that you consist of single parts and that there is no
connection between them. But when the human being enters Devachan, he once more feels as he
did immediately after death, namely as if he filled up the whole space of the universe.
Now, when in Devachan man has transformed all his dispositions into talents and capacities, the
Ego once more feels attracted towards the physical earth and endeavors to descend to the earth in a
physical incarnation. First of all the Ego surrounds itself with an astral body. This process takes
place through the fact that Ego attracts everything astral; the astral substance comes shooting
towards it, as it were. It is just as if you were holding a magnet in front of iron filings; even as these
filings are attracted in definite forms, so the Ego attracts the astral substance. But while passing
through the soul and spirit realms the Ego has gained impressions through its experiences and all
these form the fundamental forces which help to build up the new astral body. The new astral body
thus takes along with it everything that the human being has experienced during his former life and
in Kamaloka. All the impressions which he has had there, have a definite influence upon the way in
which the new astral body enters into him.
The human being has now acquired an astral body; but he must also have the other members.
The astral body has only been formed through its own forces of attraction. Before conception, man
is enfolded only by this astral body. The seer therefore continually sees these astral germs of human
beings waiting to be born — that is to say, waiting to be conceived. He sees them flying about with
a tremendous speed; bell-like shapes move about. through space with enormous speed; distances
play no part whatever; they move so rapidly that distances play no part at all.
Now comes the enfolding with an etheric body; but that a process in which the human being
does not become enfolded with his own forces alone. His own forces, which lie in him, can no
longer care for the etheric body; for that purpose, man needs the help, of certain spiritual Beings
who must cooperate in this.
You may have an idea of these Beings if you bear in mind that you sometimes use words which
you do not generally connect with any definite thought; for instance, the word Folk-spirit, Folk-
soul. To-day we have no definite idea in connection with this word, but only something quite
abstract. But the clairvoyant seer connects with it something quite different. There really are Beings
of a higher nature, who exist even as we ourselves exist, but who never incarnate in the flesh, and
these beings are the souls, or the souls of tribes and races. We do not use a vague expression when
speaking of the Folk-soul: The Folk-soul is a real being, except that it does not possess a physical
body, for its lowest member is the etheric body. Then the Folk-soul has an astral body, the Ego,
Manas, Budhi, Atma, and a still higher member which man does not attain and which Christian
Esoterisism calls the Holy Spirit, and which Theosophy generally designates as the Logos.

37
 The clairvoyant seer may therefore address the Folk-Soul even as he addresses other human
beings. To-day we have no real conception of such things and believe that this word designates
characteristics of single nations. But this is not true — a reality is connected with it. The
understanding for such things was necessarily lost through the materialistic conception, but it will
be reached again. To-day men are inclined to dissolve such things into empty concepts. This had to
come. For this same reason a book had to be published in our modern epoch which constitutes, so to
speak, the very opposite of a theosophical conception. This book had to appear and has been greatly
admired. It is Fritz Mauthner's “Kritik der Sprache” (The Critique of Language). Mauthner is a
thinker who dissolves everything which lies beyond sensory things. Only a radical thinker who had
been abandoned by every good spirit, could have the courage to write as Mauthner did, breaking
with everything that is spiritual and real. In centuries to come, men will turn to this very book when
they wish to know how people used to think at the beginning of the 20th century.
The Folk-Soul is a reality; it spreads out like a mass of fog, and in it are embedded all the
etheric bodes of the individual human beings belonging to a definite nation and its forces stream
into the etheric bodies of individual men.
Now there are spiritual beings having the rank of these Folk-souls, who cooperate in the
building up of the etheric body of the new soul. These spiritual beings bring about the fact that the
human being is led towards the nation which is most suited to him. The etheric body does not
always fit quite perfectly; all the disharmonies which you often encounter in life often depend upon
the fact that man is unable to build up his etheric body through his own forces. A complete harmony
will only be reached upon a much later stage of development of the earth.
The enfolding with the etheric body takes place with great rapidity — a speed which you cannot
conceive of if you compare it with physical conditions. Still higher spiritual beings then lead man
towards the parents who are able to supply him with the substance which he needs for his physical
body.
The modern materialist who sees that the son resembles his parents, will not be able to believe
that something else is also connected with the body inherited from the parents. Of course, as regards
our body we resemble our ancestors, but this does not contradict the facts explained above.
Let us observe a definite case — the family of Bach In the course of two hundred and fifty
years, over 29 more or less significant musicians have come out of that family. Materialists will say:
This clearly proves that there is such a thing as heredity! — In the same way the family Bernoulli
produced eight mathematicians in a short time. How can we explain this? We can understand this
best of all if we bear in mind hereditary conditions. As this is easier to grasp in the case of a
musician lot us observe the family of Bach.
Let us suppose that a young Bach had lived in Rome during his former incarnation, that he had
elaborated his dispositions and was ready to reincarnate. Supposing he had brought with him, as the
result of his former incarnations, the greatest musical gifts; he could do nothing with these gifts if
he were not able to find a well developed ear. Without such a well developed ear, he would be just
as helpless as a great artist without an instrument. Necessarily such an individuality would have to
incarnate in a body supplying a good organ for his dispositions. But the external form of the inner
and outer organs is hereditary and if this individuality wished to become a musician, a well

38
developed ear would be essential! Where can he most easily acquire such an organ? In a family of
musicians. So he is led towards a family where he can find the best organ for his further
development and the unfolding of the talents reposing in him. At that time, the best which could be
found in that direction were the parents of Johann Sebastian Bach.
And how do matters stand with the brothers Bernoulli? Mathematical thought does not depend
upon the structure of the brain (for mathematical logic does not differ from any other), but the
mathematical gift is based upon the specially exact development in the structure of the three
semicircular canals. This is an organ not larger that a pea, embedded in the middle of the ear and
consisting of three semicircular canals, exactly corresponding to the three-dimensional space. If one
canal lies exactly horizontally, then the second one stretches from right to left, and the third one
from the front to the back. [Note 1] They all face one another in an angle of 90 degrees The essential
thing is therefore this exact position: The more exact the right angle is, the better does the organ
function. If the organ is in any way injured, giddiness arises; you can no longer orientate yourself in
space. The mathematical talent, that is to say, the possibility of using it, is based upon a specially
fine elaboration of these canals. And this organ is inherited in the same way as, the musical ear.
The brain forms thoughts concerning space in exactly the same way in which it forms thoughts
on philosophy. But the fact of having an understanding for the forms in space depends upon these
three semicircular canals. Thus an individuality with highly developed mathematical gifts will
incarnate in a family in which this organ has reached the most perfect development and this was the
case in the family Bernoulli.
A suitable instrument is also needed in order to be morally efficient. An individuality with a
high morality therefore seeks parents who promise to supply the best instrument for this purpose.
The proverb, which is often used so superficially and trivially: “one cannot be too careful in the
choice of one's parents”, is true in the deepest and most earnest sense, for a child chooses its own
parents, so to speak.
Many people might object to this and ask: How can we explain mother-love, if that is so? For
mother-love depends on the fact that the mother knows that the child is part of her own self. But
viewed in the right light, mother-love does not suffer in any way — on the contrary, we learn to
know it better.
Why is a chill born to a certain mother? Because its spiritual qualities lead it to a mother who is
spiritually related to it, and the child loves its mother even before it is conceived; mother-love is, as
it were, the counter-part of this primary love and attraction. Consequently this insight even deepens
the idea of mother-love.
Now the occasion for incarnate is essentially dependent on the qualities of father and mother;
and there, father and mother work differently. When a human being descends to a new birth, the
Ego, which possesses more volitional forces, feels more attracted by the father, and the more astral
forces by the mother. The father has a greater influence upon the Ego, the will and character, and
the mother has more influence upon the astral body — that is to say, more in the direction of
thought. Of course, it is best of all if both parents are suited to the individuality seeking to incarnate.
When man descends, those forces are also active which were impressed upon him when he
ascended to the spiritual worlds. All this develops forces of attraction and he is drawn into the

39
sphere which was related to him from the very beginning. He is consequently led towards those
human beings with whom he was already connected before.
Let me give you an example based on real fact. It once happened that a man was sentenced to
death by a vehmgericht of four or five judges and executed. The former life of these six men was
investigated through spiritual science and it appeared that they had formerly all been together on
earth, but that the executed man had been their chieftain and that the others had been sentenced to
death by him. The last execution was therefore a kind of atonement. This case in particular brings
into clear evidence the law of Karma.
Thus the various forces which man attracted during his former life exercise a determining
influence when he is born again, both in regard to the structure of his body and the place of birth,
and in regard to his later destiny. Disharmonies appear in the physical body even more strongly than
in the etheric body.
All these things show how man becomes enfolded by the three bodies when he is born again.
And in every incarnation one Ego works upon the astral body, the etheric body and the physical
body. Later on we shall see how man ascends to this high degree of perfection, for he transforms the
astral body and the etheric body more and more. Out of the purified astral body develops Manas,
out of the purified etheric body Budhi, and out of the purified physical body Atma. We are therefore
able to imagine the ever growing perfection of man from incarnation to incarnation.
This appears most beautifully in the Lord's Prayer. But we can only understand it in the right
way if we grasp it in the truly Christian meaning, as it was grasped in the Occult School of St. Paul.
In this School the Lord's Prayer was explained according to its true Christian meaning, and the
pupils were told: Imagine the higher members of human nature, which develop, through the fact
that man more and more refines his three lower members. Early Christianity used to look upon
these three higher members (Manas, Budhi, Atma) as man's higher nature. By developing the three
higher members more and more, man gradually approaches the Godhead. From this standpoint, the
esoteric Christians of the past used to call the three highest members the Divine Nature, and they
called the highest Atma, i.e. the Father. This is the deepest divine essence in man: the Father in
Heaven.
The Father is the essence towards which all men develop. He is the centre of the world's
creation. The creation in the Christian meaning, can be best imagined if we bear in mind the
sacrifice. Think of your mirrored-image, and assume that you could be just as selfless as this
mirrored image, to the point of being able to sacrifice your own life. This is how we must think of a
selfless creative activity: We ourselves must become completely one with the created object.
Now imagine the Father as the centre of a reflecting hollow sphere: The Father's image will in
that case be reflected a thousand-fold. The esoteric Christian of olden times said to himself: Look at
the world: All the Beings in it are, after all, the reflected images of God. And in their esoterisism
they used to call this reflection of the Godhead's own image “the Kingdom”, that is to say: God,
reflecting Himself everywhere.
“Continue now to develop your feelings,” was the instruction given to the pupil of esoteric
Christianity in olden times, “continue to develop, your feelings. and if you can perceive God in
everything, if you have dissolved the Godhead in an infinite number of single objects, and if you

40
wish to distinguish these objects you must give each a name. This name: must be sanctified, it must
be hallowed, for every single creature is a mirrored image of' the Godhead.”
In the course of his development, aiming at the attainment of God, man enters into these three
elements. But you must not think that man becomes God. Take a drop out of the ocean: In its
essence it is akin to the ocean, but it is not the ocean. In the same way the drop of divine nature
within us is akin to God, to be sure, but it is not “the Godhead.” By developing the three highest
members more and more, man gradually becomes united with the Kingdom; for the spiritual world
comes down to him.
Here you have the three first entreaties in the Lord's Prayer: the first place, the appeal to the
Father; in the second place, the entreaty that the Kingdom should come to us; in the third place, the
Hallowing of the Name.
If we develop those three highest members within us, we shall always endeavour to avoid acting
in a way which is not in harmony with the Spirit of the Father, from Whom we descend and to
Whom we go in our development.
In contrast to the three higher members esoteric Christianity then considers the four lower
members of man which must also become more and more perfect.
The physical body consists of the same substances which are also to be found outside in Nature,
and these substances continually go in and out of our physical body. Indeed, if the physical body is
to remain healthy, they must continually go in and out.
The etheric body has forces which are inter-related with the whole Folk-soul, even as the
physical body's forces are inter-related with the whole of Nature. If the physical body is to remain
sound, physical substances must go in and out of it day by day. If the etheric body is to remain
sound, it must not develop upon an individual basis, but enter into harmony with the whole Folk-
soul and with all the higher Beings.
The word “trespasses” is connected with the word “debts.” Debts clearly show that you do not
stand there isolated, but that you live within social connection with your fellow-men.
That which brings disorder into the astral body of man was considered in early Christian
esotericism as something connected with man's inclinations, passions, impulses and desires.
Everything which can bring disorder into these is expressed by the word “temptation”. “Trespasses”
are something which brings man into connection with the social community, whereas “temptation”
is something into which every man may fall, in so far as he is an individual being.
If physical substances did not go in and out of our physical body, this body would come into
disorder. Hence, we pray: this day our daily bread.
If the etheric body did not enter into a harmonious relationship with the Folk-soul, that is to say,
if it did not insert itself harmoniously into the whole social structure, this body too would come into
disorder. Hence we pray: Forgive us our trespasses.
If man fell into the error of giving way to every temptation which approaches him, this would
bring disorder into his astral body. Hence we pray: Lead us not into temptation.

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 The Ego can commit errors which we designate as “evil”. Everything which transforms a
normal, sound self-consciousness
into to evil, that is to say, into selfishness, belongs to these errors of the Ego (which is our own
Self). To these errors belong all the aberrations of selfishness and egoism. Hence we pray: Deliver
us from evil.
The physical body can thus develop soundly if we nourish it in the right way with daily bread.
The etheric body can develop soundly, if we bring it into a right harmony with the social
structure in which we live.
The astral body can develop soundly, that is to say, it can be purged and purified, if we
overcome all temptations.
The Ego can develop soundly, if we endeavour to transform every form of egoism into altruism,
every form of selfishness to selflessness. Thus we may see in the Lord's Prayer a prayer
encompassing the whole development of man.
Someone might now object — and you will often come across this objection: The Lord' s Prayer
is one that was given by Christ Jesus for every man. Of what use are explanations such as the
above, since the majority of men knows nothing about them?
The naive' person need not know anything about them. Look at the rose. The greatest wisdom
has built up the rose, and yet even the simplest man may rejoice in it! It is not necessary to know
anything of the wisdom contained, in the rose. It is the same with the Lord' s prayer. A power goes
out from it and influences the human soul, even if the soul in its simplicity does not know this . But
the Lord's Prayer could never contain this force had it not been drawn out of the deepest wisdom.
Every great prayer, such as this greatest of all prayers, has been drawn out of the deepest wisdom,
and the power of such prayers is based upon this fact. If you think that this is simply a thought-out
explanation, you will be wrong, for the Being Who gave us the Lord' s Prayer laid into it this deep
power.
You may therefore see that only with the help of spiritual science can we understand that which
we practice daily the power of which has been experienced by mankind for nearly two thousand
years.
Now we have reached a stage in the development of humanity where it is no longer possible to
proceed without such a deepening of our understanding. Formerly, that is to say, up to that moment,
humanity was able to feel the spiritual forces contained in this prayer without knowing its deeper
meaning. But now humanity has progressed so far in its development that it must ask after this
meaning, and an answer has to be given now.
The Christian religion will not lose any of its value thereby, but it will, on the contrary, manifest
itself in its whole depth. Religious truths will be gained anew through the greatest wisdom. The
esoteric explanation of the Lord's Prayer is an example of this. (See Rudolf Steiner's booklet: The
Lord's Prayer) It shows us the path which man must tread through many incarnations. If he walks in
the spirit of the four petitions referring to the four lower members, they will help him to fulfil the
work leading to the development of his higher members, as expressed in the first three petitions of
the Lord's Prayer.

42
Notes:

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

43
Lecture 7

VII.
THE LAW OF KARMA.
To-day we must speak of what is designated as the Law of Karma, the law of cause and effect in
the spiritual world. To begin with, the last lectures should be borne in mind, because they showed us
how life as a whole takes its course through a series of incarnations. You have all been in the world
many times and you will often return to it. We shall see later on that it is not right to think that our
incarnations repeat themselves through all eternity either in the past or in the future. On the
contrary, we shall see that they began at a certain point in time and that a time will come when they
will cease; the human being will then continue his development in a different form.
Let us first consider that space of time in which reincarnations take place. In connection with
this we should realise that everything which we call destiny, whether relating to character and inner
qualities or to external events, is brought about by our preceding incarnations, and that everything
which we do in this life has an effect upon our subsequent lives. The great law of cause and effect,
the law of Karma, thus runs through all our incarnations.
Let us now picture to ourselves how this law is active in the whole universe — not only in the
spiritual, but also in the physical world.
Take two imaginary jugs of water and then assume that you are heating an iron ball until it
becomes red hot. You then drop it into the first jug, What will happen? The water will hiss and the
ball will become cool. Then take the ball out of the first jug and drop it into the second one. In that
case the water will hiss no longer and the ball will not become much cooler. We therefore find that
the ball behaves differently in each case; in the second case it would not have behaved as it did, had
it not been dropped into the first jug. Consequently the way in which it behaved in the second case
is the result of what happened to it in the first jug. Such a connection is called Karma. The ball's
Karma brings about the fact that the water in the second jug does not hiss and that the ball itself
does not become much cooler.
I will now give you an example from the animal kingdom showing that preceding life-
conditions bring about subsequent ones. Take those those animals which immigrated into the caves
of Kentucky; their eyes gradually degenerated through the complete deprivation of sunlight. The
substances which are generally used for the structure of the eyes go to other organs and as a result
the eyes degenerate and the animals little by little become blind It is then the destiny of all their
descendants to be born blind. Had the parents not immigrated into the dark caves, the descendants
would not have been fated to lose their eyesight. The condition of blindness is therefore the
consequence of the immigration into the dark caves.
Spiritual science explains that everything which occurs in the world is dependent upon Karma.
Karma is the general law of the universe. Even the Bible speaks of this law at the very beginning. It
says: “In the beginning God created the heaven and earth”. On reading this superficially, as is
generally the case to-day, you do not notice that these words lie within the meaning of the law of

44
Karma, but you notice it without further ado if you consult the original text of this ancient
document, or if you take one of the oldest Latin translations, for instance the Septuagint, which the
Roman Catholic Church still considers as the authoritative translation of the Old Testament, and
particularly of Genesis. Perhaps in an introductory course such as this one, which is to acquaint you
step by step with the immense depths of the spiritual-scientific world-conception, it is not
inappropriate to deviate a little from our main subject.
Modern man has really no connection with the “living word”. Speech has become, on the one
hand, a conventional means of communication and, on the other; a“business language”. Things
were quite different in ancient times, when words were being coined, for the human being still
possessed a living connection with the word. Indeed, in the remotest times, even the single letter
leading to the composition of a word had a deep significance. A modern man has not the faintest
idea of that which passed through the soul of an ancient Hebrew sage when he uttered the word
“bara”, contained in the first sentence of Genesis; and which posterity — that is to say, the Latin
world — translated with “creare”, and which we translate with “created”. What is the deep meaning
of the word “bara”? In the German language we still find the same root “bar” in the word
“gebären”, to bear children.
The root “K-r” lies in the word Karma. It is the same root which also lies in the word “creare”,
so that when we say “creare” in Latin (to create), this simply means: something arises as the result
of earlier influences; that is to say, something arises which is karmically determined by something
which preceded it!
We can speak of Karma in the way in which we interpret it to-day only since the influx of the
Luciferic influence, that is to say, from that moment onwards in which man took upon himself guilt.
Consequently something of the idea of guilt always adheres to everything connected with the word
Karma. “Creare” therefore means to produce something brought about karmically by earlier
connections and conditions, whereas the root “bar” does not contain anything of this karmic
relationship. How does this come about? Undoubtedly through the fact that the ancient Hebrew was
still connected far more intimately with the spiritual world and still realised quite clearly that at a
time when “the Elohim were meditating creatively” it was not yet possible to speak of Karma in the
meaning in which we generally speak of it. But in the Latin epoch of human evolution man was
already completely severed from the spiritual world, as we shall see upon some other occasion, and
therefore he could imagine even the Elohim's “creative meditation” only within a karmic
connection.
But “bara” as well as “crease” do not mean that God created the world out of nothing; both
words contain the meaning that God led over earlier conditions into new ones ... in the same way in
which a mother does not bear her child out of nothing. To bear a child means that the child passes
over from a former concealed condition within the mother's womb into a condition in which it
becomes visible in the external world.
This shows you how the meaning of the Bible can be distorted. Theology was the first to decree
that God made the world out of nothing, (for theology no longer knew anything of the cosmic
epochs of evolution which preceded earthly existence) and whole libraries have been written on this
subject. Yet all these theologians fought against windmills, like Don Quixote. We should always

45
know, however, against whom and against what we are fighting; that is to say, we should always
reveal the original meaning of the ancient documents.
If we think of this Law of Karma in the right way, as the connection between cause and effect,
applying it not only to physical life here on earth between birth and death, but also to the life in the
spiritual world, we shall find that this very law of Karma becomes a torch which illuminates our
own life. Insight into the law of Karma not only gives us a deep intellectual satisfaction, but it also
profoundly satisfies our heart and soul and gives us the right understanding of our relationship to
the world. More and more you will realise its deep significance and that only a true insight into this
law of Karma enables you to mould your life harmoniously in regard to your environment.
The law of Karma does not throw light upon abstract riddles of the universe, but upon problems
which we actually encounter in life at every step. Is it not a real life-riddle when we see that one
human being is born in misery and poverty, apparently without any fault of his own, and that the
finest gifts which lie concealed within him must atrophy owing to the social condition into which
life has placed him? We must often ask ourselves in life: How can we explain the fact that an
apparently innocent man is born in the midst of misery and pain, whereas another man is born
without his merit in surfeit and wealth, surrounded at the cradle by those who tenderly love him?
These are problems which modern superficiality alone can ignore.
The deeper we look into the law of Karma; the more we find that the hard injustice apparently
presenting itself to a superficial observation of this law disappears. We then realise more and more
why one man must live in one condition of life and another man in another. Injustice and hardness
in one or other life-situation can only be seen if we limit ourselves to the observation of one life; but
if we know that this one life is the absolute result of former deeds, the injustice, completely
vanishes, for we perceive that the human being prepares his own life.
Someone might now object: It is terrible to think that all the blows of destiny which a human
being encounters in this life are brought about through his own fault! We must realise, however, that
the law of Karma is not something for sentimental people to brood over, but that it is an active law,
rendering us strong and giving us courage and hope. For even though we ourselves have moulded
our present life with all its hardships, we know at the same time that Karma is a law the chief
significance of which must be looked for, not in the past, but in the future. No matter how deeply
oppressed we may be in the present owing to the result of past deeds, our insight into the law of
Karma will bear fruit in our subsequent lives. Our attitude determines what fruit our deeds will bear,
for no action is without consequence. It is far more theosophical to look upon Karma as a law of
action, as an active law! For no matter what we do, we cannot escape the consequences of our
deeds. The more we suffer in this life and the better we bear our sufferings, the more shall we profit
by this in future lives. Karma is a law which solves the riddles of life which we encounter at every
step.
What is the connection between a preceding and a subsequent life? We should clearly bear in
mind that everything which we experience as inner effects of external events — joy or pain over
things which we encounter in life — that all this has an influence upon our future lives.
Now you know that everything living within us in the form of pleasure and pain, of joy and
suffering, is borne by the astral body. Everything which the astral body experiences during this life,

46
particularly if experiences repeat themselves again and again, appears in the next life as a quality of
the etheric body. Some object in this life which gives us pleasure and which we call up in our soul
again and again, will produce in the next life a deep inclination and predilection for this particular
object. But this inclination and predilection are character qualities, and their bearer is the etheric
body. Consequently the effects produced by the astral body in a preceding life become qualities of
the etheric body in the next life. What you repeatedly experienced during this life, appears in your
next life as fundamental character. A melancholic temperament is due to the fact that in a preceding
life the human being in question had many sad impressions throwing him again and again into a sad
mood; as a result, the etheric body will have the inclination to sadness in the next life. The opposite
may be found in people who obtain something good from everything in life, thus producing in their
astral body joy and happiness and an uplifted mood; this will become a lasting characteristic of the
etheric body in the next life producing a merry temperament. But if a human being courageously
overcomes every sad experience in spite of the hard school in which life has placed him, his etheric
body will be born in the next life with a choleric temperament. If we know all this, we can almost
prepare our etheric body for our next life.
The qualities which the etheric body possesses during one life appear, in the next, in the
physical body. Thus if a man has bad habits and bad characteristics and does nothing to get rid of
them, this will appear in the next life in the physical body as a disposition, a predisposition to
illness. Strange as this may sound the disposition towards certain illnesses, particularly infectious
ones, depends on the bad habits of a preceding life. This insight therefore enables us to prepare
health or illness for our next life. If we conquer a bad habit, we become healthy and immune against
infections in our next life. Thus we can prepare health for our next life. By endeavouring to foster
only noble qualities, we can prepare a healthy body for our next incarnation.
A third and most important thing should be borne in mind in order to understand the law of
Karma: — To truly estimate our actions in this life. So far we have only spoken of what takes place
within the human being; but what he does during this life, that is to say, his attitude towards his
environment and his actions, produce a result which appears in the surrounding world during his
next life.
A bad habit in itself does not mean that I have done something; but if this bad habit leads to an
action, this action changes the external world. In fact, everything which thus exercises an influence
upon the physical world returns to us during our next life as our external destiny in the physical
world. Thus the deeds of our physical body during this life become our destiny in the next. We learn
this through being placed in this or in that life-situation. Whether a person is happy or unhappy in
one or other condition of life depends upon his actions during his preceding life. An appropriate and
instructive example for this case is that of the vehmic murder, which shows us how an external
action during one life falls back upon men as their destiny during the next one.
This is a brief sketch of karmic relationships in regard to individual human beings . But we can
speak of Karma not only in the case of individual persons, for man should not consider himself as a
single being. If the individual were to rise even a few miles above the earth, the result would be the
same as if the finger severed itself from the body.
If we penetrate into spiritual science we are literally forced to admit through this knowledge that
we should not delude ourselves to the extent of insisting that we are single beings. This applies to

47
the physical world and even more to the spiritual world. Man belongs to the whole world and his
destiny is involved with that of the entire world. Karma touches not only the individual, but also the
life of whole nations.
Let me give you an example: You all know that in the Middle Ages there were pestilences
resembling leprosy. In Europe they completely disappeared only during the 16th century. Quite a
definite cause, a spiritual cause, produced this form of pestilence in the Middle Ages. Materialists
are of course inclined to trace such a contagious disease to bacilli, but not only the physical cause
should be borne in mind in such illnesses. We can make exactly the same mistake if we try to find
out, for example, why a man has been whipped, what is the cause of this whipping. A person of
insight will immediately discover that certain brutal men in the village were the cause of the
whipping. In this case it would be foolish to say that the blue wheals are due solely to the fact that
the sticks came down so and so many times on the man's back. The purely materialistic cause of the
blue marks is undoubtedly the fact that the sticks came down on the victims back, but the deeper
cause must be sought in the brutality of the men who whipped him. Similarly the pestilence of the
Middle Ages has a spiritual cause in addition to the materialistic one of the bacilli.
We have an analogous example in weeping. Its spiritual cause is sadness, but its material one is
the secretion of the lachrymatory glands. It hardly seems possible that a famous modern scientist
should have come to the same foolish conclusion mentioned above, but he actually made the
monstrous statement that the human being does not weep because he feels sad, but that he feels sad
because he weeps!
But let us get back to the pestilence. If you wish to explain the deeper cause of this disease
spiritually, you must look back upon a significant historical event. Upon the great masses of peoples
coming from the East, who overflowed Europe, bringing with them fear and terror. These Asiatic
masses were people who had remained behind at the ancient Atlantean stage, and were
consequently decadent races. They were races whose decadence had the character of putrefaction,
which was particularly strong in their astral body. Had they invaded Europe without bringing s0
much terror and fear to the Europeans, nothing would have happened. But these hordes brought
with them fear, terror and and alarm, whole nations in Europe experienced this state of fear and
terror. Now the putrid substance of the Huns' astral bodies mixed with the terror-stricken astral
bodies of the peoples whom they had invaded. The degenerated astral bodies of these Asiatic hordes
unloaded their bad substances on the terror-stricken astral bodies of the Europeans, and this putrid
substance was the cause of the pestilence, the physical effects of which appeared later on.
This is in reality the deep spiritual cause of pestilence in the Middle Ages. Consequently
something which had a spiritual cause appeared later in the physical body.
Only those who know the law of Karma and have insight into it are called upon to play an active
part in the course of history.
Let me now tell you something which contributed to he founding of the spiritual-scientific
world-conception: Karma influences not only individual men, but also nations, and even humanity
as a whole. Those who pursue the course of history in the spiritual life of Europe know that
materialism came to the fore during those last 400 years or so. The most innocent aspect of
materialism is to be found in science, for there every mistake can always be perceived and

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corrected. The influence of materialism is far more harmful in practical life, where everything is
viewed from the angle of material interests. But materialism would never have entered practical life,
had men not had a predilection for it. The influence of of materialism is most harmful of all in the
sphere of religious life, that is to say, in the Church: The Church above all has been heading towards
materialism for centuries. In which way? If you go back to the days of early Christianity, you would
never have heard people say, for instance that the seven days creation was actually accomplished in
seven days, as we so often hear to-day, nor was the “seventh” day imagined in such a way that after
a hard piece of work someone sits down and rests. The materialistic age has lost all knowledge of
the reality underlying this work of seven days.
It is the task of spiritual science to give mankind an explanation concerning the true meaning of
this ancient document, Genesis. (See Rudolf Steiner's “Secrets of the Bible Story of Creation”)
It is the materialistic conception in religion which corroded most deeply the life of nations.
Materialism will hold sway more and more in the religions sphere, and. particularly in this direction
people will less and less realise that the spirit, not physical material things, counts most of all. It
will readily be admitted that the materialistic way of thinking, feeling and willing has gradually
penetrated into the whole life-conception of mankind, and finally this appears in the state of health
of the succeeding generations.
In an epoch in which men have a sound conception of life, a strong central point is produced
within them, enabling them to be self-contained personalities whose descendants become strong and
healthy. But an epoch in which people believe only in matter, will give rise to a generation of men
who have a body where everything goes its own way, where nothing is directed towards a centre,
thus producing symptoms of neurosis, of nervous diseases. If materialism continues to be the ruling
world conception in the future, these nervous health conditions will gradually increase.
The clairvoyant can tell you exactly that which must occur if materialism is not counter-
balanced by a sound spiritual conception. Mental diseases would in that case become epidemical
and even newly born children would suffer from symptoms of trembling and from other nervous
disturbances, while the further result of the materialistic mentality would be a race without any
power of concentration; in fact, we can see this already to-day. About three decades ago, this
thought — how mankind would fare without spiritual remedy against the effects of materialism —
led to the inauguration of the spiritual-scientific movement. Many discussions may arise regarding a
remedy, yet no objections can be of much avail in the face of the chief argument: its efficacy. It is
the same with the efficacy of spiritual science as a remedy, for it is a preventive against that which
would inevitably occur if men continue along the path of materialism.
If we reflect more deeply over the law of Karma, we cannot look upon men as a single being,
but as forming part of a community subjected to the law of Karma. The law of Karma is not of
much use to those who wish to believe in a blind fate. It would of course be quite wrong to attribute
such a character to the law of Karma. Yet we constantly come across people who fall into this error.
One person says: “I know that it is not my fault that this or that thing happens to me; it is my Karma
and I must bear it!” Or another one says: “I see a person who is in misery; but I must not help him,
for this misfortune is his own fault; it is his Karma and he must bear it!” — Such arguments would
be quite a senseless interpretation of the idea of Karma!

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 In order to have a clearer conception of this great law, you may compare it with the commercial
law of debit and credit. Even as the merchant is subjected to this law in all his actions, so life is
subjected to Karma, Your items in life are marked off on the debit or credit side, according to the
good or bad actions which you have done during your past life. All your good qualities are booked
on the credit side, and all your bad ones on the debit side of Karma.
But we should, not say: “I have no right to interfere!” This would be just as foolish as when a
merchant balancing his accounts says: “I must not do any more business, for in that case I should
alter my balance sheet.” Even as the merchant improves his balance sheet with good business, so I
improve my Karma with every good action. And even as the merchant is always at liberty to enter a
debit or a credit item in his account, so the human being is always free to do likewise in his account
book of life. Not in spite of the law of Karma, but just because of it, man is free in regard to his
actions. Just because he knows that everything he does — and he does this in full freedom — has an
effect upon his account book of life, he cannot agree with those who do not help a man in need. It
would be the same as if a merchant facing bankruptcy were to ask us for a loan of 5000 pounds.
Would you not give him the money if you knew that he is a good business man who would work his
way up again? It is the same with man in need: You help him to better his Karma so that his destiny
takes a turn for the better, and at the same time you improve your own Karma through this good
action.
The law of Karma consequently induces us to take an active part in daily life. A right
understanding of the law of Karma, particularly from this aspect, is of special importance if we
consider it in relation to Christianity. In this connection there are serious misunderstandings,
particularly on the part of theologians. Modern theologians say: We teach that sins were forgiven us
through Christ's death upon the Cross, and you teach the law of Karma, but this contradicts the
former.
Yet the contradiction is only apparent, because the law of Karma is simply misunderstood. On
the other hand, there are theosophists who declare that they cannot accept Christ's death of
atonement — but these theosophists misunderstand the law of Karma just as much as the others.
Take the following case: You help a man, interfere in his destiny and turn it to the good. If you
could help two men, this would just as little contradict the law of Karma. Assume that you are an
individuality called upon to blot out evil in the world by a certain deed: would this contradict the
law of Karma? The Christ-Being has, in the largest measure, done something analogous to the
above example, like a man who helped not only a hundred or a thousand other men through his own
deed, but the whole of mankind. The death of redemption, Christ's death of atonement, therefore
harmonizes completely with the law of Karma — indeed, it can only be understood in the light of
this law. A contradiction can only be seen by those who do not understand this law. Christ's death
contradicts the law of Karma just as little as when I help a man in his need.
When looking upon the law of Karma you must think of the future, for with everyone of our
actions we enter into our account book an item which will bear fruit. Only as long as one is passing
through the illnesses of childhood in theosophy can a contradiction be found between Christianity
and the law of Karma.

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 Many things become clear to us through an insight into this law. In the first place, we can
accurately prove the connection between the individual bodily development and earlier lives. A life
full of love prepares for the next life a course of development whereby the human being preserves
his youth for a long time; a premature ageing is on the other hand caused by much antipathy during
the past life. In the second place: A particularly selfish sense of grasping and hoarding things
produces in the next life a disposition to infectious diseases. In the third place, it is of special
interest that pains, and particularly certain illnesses through which we pass, produce a beautiful
body in our next life. This insight enables us to bear many an illness more easily.
An insight into such connections of destiny enabled one of the greatest Bible students of our
time, Fabre d'Olivet, to use an image which clearly shows us how things are linked up in life. He
says: Behold the pearl in the shell! The animal in it had to pass through an illness, and the beautiful
pearl arises through this illness. Thus illness during this life is in fact often connected with things
which render our next life more beautiful.
How these things may be further developed in various directions, will be shown to-morrow.

Lecture 8

SUPPLEMENTARY THOUGHTS ON THE LAW OF

REINCARNATION AND KARMA.
THE DEVELOPMENT OF SPEECH AND THE PLANETARY EVOLUTION.
Let me add a few supplementary explanations to the problem of reincarnation and karma, and
then pass on to the discussion of the development of our earth, for only the consideration of these
facts enables us to understand man's true nature as it appears to us in relation to the cosmic
conditions. I shall conclude this course of lectures by leading you on to the contemplation of man's
development, when he endeavours to attain vision and knowledge of the higher worlds.
In order to penetrate into the spiritual worlds we must first consider the pre-Christian training,
secondly the Christian training, and thirdly the Rosicrucian training.
Further explanations connected with the problem of reincarnation should really be reserved for a
separate chapter, becaue for beginners they are difficult to understand. What we shall discuss now
refers to the time which lies between two incarnations. In itself it is a problem which shocks modern
materialistic thought.
Immediate spiritual experience, which is one of the sources of knowledge at the disposal of the
spiritual investigator, cannot be attained by those who lack spiritual vision. But those who apply the
training which will be spoken of later on, will be well able to find out in what epoch the majority of
men now living on earth passed through their last earthly incarnation. I shall then discuss what
means were used in the Chaldean and Pythagorean schools and in every other occult school of pre-
Christian times, to enable man to enter the spiritual world.
All those who have insight into the conditions which exist in the spiritual world, all those who
are able to trace human development back into the preceding incarnations, will discover that the

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majority of souls now living had their preceding incarnation in the first centuries after Christ's birth,
up to the 8th and 9th century. But these are average conditions, for the time between two
incarnations may also be of shorter or of longer duration.
Another fact is connected with the one mentioned, a fact which must now be strongly
emphasized: Namely, there are certain uncommonly radical thinkers of the present, who claim
equality for all men. This is nothing but the materialistic aspect of a claim for equality which was
advanced during the first Christian centuries — equality in the face of God, and equality in the face
of the temporal powers.
Many of the people who advanced this claim for equality during the early centuries of
Christianity and who then passed through the portal of death with unfulfilled claims, many of these
people whose souls took with them into the spiritual world this longing for equality in the face of
God and of the temporal powers, are born again at the present time, and they of course bring with
them a particular attitude in regard to these claims, but in a transformed shape which is in keeping
with the modern materialistic world-conception. But these men who return to the earth overlook the
materialistic influence which the modern age exercises upon their claims. It is not right to believe or
to declare that the modern idea of freedom comes from Christianity.
The transformation of the old claim of equality in the face of God and of the temporal powers
into the modern claim for equality under all earthly conditions, can only be viewed in the right way
if we survey the true connections revealed by the spiritual-scientific world-concepton. Those who
survey these true connections and at the same time consider the modern materialistic world-
conception; realise without further ado that the claim for equality advanced by modern radical
thinkers is something which necessarily had to arise independently and of its own accord. On the
other hand, however, it is a fact that the human beings must from now onwards rise again from
materialism to spiritualism. This alone can heal social conditions. There is no other remedy than
spiritual science itself.
This problem is discussed more fully in numbers 30, 32 and 34 of the magazine “Lucifer-
Gnosis” [Note 1] all the other remedies, even those advanced from high quarters, suffer from the
blemish of amateurishness, for modern men know nothing whatever of the higher worlds. If modern
social thinkers were to submit to some extent to the inspirations of spiritual science, they would
really discover ways and means of approaching these problems.
Even as it is true that humanity had to descend from a spiritual past, into materialism, so it is
also true that it must rise again to spirituality. A spiritual world-conception alone can produce
something that gives rise to harmony, peace and love. Even in this sphere, spiritual science can be
of practical help in the highest possible way.
Now I will show you how a conception of the human course of development gained through
spiritual-scientific observations can lead us back to the events that lie between death and re-birth.
I have already explained to you that it is not in vain that the human being returns to the earth
many times and we have seen that the reason for this lies in the fact that with every new incarnation
the human being finds, entirely new conditions upon the earth. With every new incarnation he
gathers new fruits for the future, for the earth has each time undergone a complete transformation,
both in regard to human civilisation and the external aspect of Nature. Every time the human being

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enters the earthly sphere through a new incarnation, he finds the face of the earth completely
changed.
ation .
According to the Chaldean conception, the transformation of the earth depends upon the sun's
relationship to the other stars. You may find more detailed explanations on this in many of my
lectures; now I can only refer to it quite briefly.
If you observe the astronomical aspect when the sun rises the vernal point, if you observe this
vernal point and the other conditions in the world of the stars, you will find that the sun's position in
regard to the other stars changes every spring. The vernal point advances year by year, so that in
about 26,000 years (25,920) this point returns to where it was 26,000 years ago. This closes a cycle.
But the circle thus described is only an apparent one, for in reality the sun describes a spiral. The
vernal point was fixed in accordance with the constellation with which it coincided and the sun
accordingly describes a circle in the sky and this circle is designated as the Zodiac with its twelve
signs. Every year the sun advances a little, and within 26,000 years tho sun has passed through all
the signs of the Zodiac.
About 747 B.C. the sun rose in the sign of Aries; and since the sun's passage through all the
Zodiac signs takes up about 25,920 years, one twelfth of the time, ie, 2160 years is needed in order
to pass from one sign to the other. The change in the face of our earth is really dependent upon the
fact that the vernal point advances. After an epoch of about 2,200 years the face of the earth has
therefore changed to such extent that entirely new conditions have arisen; and on the average, the
human being advances to a new incarnation within this space of time.
The observations of occult science show that this is indeed the case. Ancient peoples always
connected a definite feeling with the rising of the sun in the vernal point of Aries, and this feeling
may be described as follows: “From the sign of Aries the sun again sends down to us for the first
time this year the rays which conjure up the plants from the earth.” They thought that the sign of
Aries sent them these rays and and so they particularly venerated this sign. Sacred feelings of a
definate kind were connected with the naming of the Zodiac signs. Aries sends down the forces of
the vernal sun, and in the Lamb the peoples of those times therefore saw a symbol for the
regenerating forces in Nature and in the human being. Many legends are connected with it; for
instance, the legend of Jason going in quest of the Golden Fleece, which symbolizes something
immensely prized by men. This veneration for the Ram or the Lamb held sway for many centuries
and it was taken over by Christianity. That is why a lamb could originally be seen on the Cross,
instead of Christ. And that is why Christ was called the Lamb of God.
If that is so, and if the sun rose in the sign of Aries from the 8th century B.C. onwards; another
form of worship must have existed before that time; when the sun's vernal point lay in the sign of
Taurus. In fact before the 8th century B.C. the bull was venerated instead of the lamb. This
veneration lies at the foundation of the temple-cult of Apis in ancient Egypt, and of the Persian
Mithras-cult. 2,200 years earlier, the sun rose in the sign of Gemini, and this sign too played a part
in the ancient cultures of those times. The ancient Persian religion, with its Ormuzd and Ahriman
cult may be traced back to this.

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 Thus we see that the ancient peoples had very significant conceptions in connection with the
sun's passage through the single signs of the Zodiac. This again is connected with the fact that man
reincarnates after a definite space of time; on the average, when 2,200 years have gone by since his
last incarnation. Within this epoch, it makes a great difference whether he incarnates upon the earth
as a man or as a woman, and so the calculation of the time during which the single. incarnations
take place is very complicated. A human being's experiences during an incarnation as a man or as a
woman differ so much, that he must incarnate twice during this epoch of 2,200 years, once as a
man, and once as a woman, so that two incarnations succeed one another during the average period
of one thousand years. Therefore 1,100 to 1,200 years only lie between two incarnations. Generally
speaking, it is therefore right that a male and a female incarnation should alternate, but in
exceptional cases there may be several succeeding incarnations of the same sex (the greatest
number which could be observed was seven), but then the sex changes. These are exceptions, for as
a rule the sexes alternate in the successive incarnations.
This can be said of the time which lies between two incarnations. But its duration depends upon
many other things besides. For instance, a certain individuality may be particularly suited to a
definite epoch, in order to fulfil a certain task. In such a case, the higher powers may draw this
individuality into an incarnation before the expiration of the normal period. They draw him down,
because his whole constitution enables him to fulfil a definite mission. This is particularly the case
with the great leaders of humanity. But in the whole of human life the balance is re-established late
on, for such an individuality will have to live through a correspondingly longer time in Devachan.
Another thing which must be said is that there is a kind of counterpart to the experience already
described to you, which takes place immediately after death, when man looks back upon his past
life as on a picture. This counterpart consists in a kind of prophetic vision of the following life on
earth.
Let us bear in mind once more how the retrospective vision arises at the moment of death. You
know that the etheric body has the two principal tasks of stimulating the vital functions of the
physical body, that is to say, of constantly protecting the physical substance against decay and of
regulating the structure of this substance; but the etheric body is also the seat of memory. When the
etheric body abandons the physical body at the moment of death, it is relieved of its first task, and
then its second quality comes to the foreground, that is to say, the memory of everything which the
human being experienced during his past life. This forms the retrospective picture of human life. At
the moment man's being only consists of the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego.
When man enters a new incarnation the following arises: the Ego descends from the spiritual
world with all the imperishable extracts which it has acquired, both those pertaining to the etheric
and to the astral body. For the building-up of a new astral body, the Ego must attract all those astral
qualities corresponding to the development, through which it has passed so far, and afterwards it
must similarly attract the etheric qualities. All this, takes place during the first days after conception,
and the new etheric body begins to work independently and to develop the physical germ of the
human being only after the 18th or 20th day, whereas before that time the mother's etheric body
fulfilled that which must then be done by the new etheric body. From the 18-20-th day after
conception, the individuality about to incarnate, which has enveloped its Ego with a new astral and

54
etheric body, begins to take possession of the physical body, which has up to that time been formed
by the mother.
When the human being thus takes possessionof the physical body, he consists of exactly the
same members as during the moment of death; in the latter case he had just discarded the physical
body, and in the former, he has not yet taken it up. This will easily enable you to understand that
when the human being enters his new physical body, something arises which is analogous to his
experience on discarding this body at the moment of death. When he enters his new physical body,
the human being has a kind of fore-vision of his coming life, even as at the moment of death he has
a retrospection of his past life. But he forgets this fore-vision, because the constitution of his
physical body does net yet allow him to retain it in his memory.
At this moment the human being realises: “These are the family-conditions into which I am
born, these are the geographical and local conditions and my destiny ...” And at that moment it may
sometimes occur that when the human being thus foresees a sad or a terrible experience which lies
in store for him, he receives a shock and is afraid of the life which awaits him, so that his etheric
body does not properly unite with the physical body, it does not wish to enter it. Idiocy is the result
of such a fright of the etheric body's reluctance to enter properly into the physical body. A
clairvoyant may perceive the etheric body of such people protruding above the physical head and
because the etheric body is not properly structured into the physical head, the brain remains behind
in its development, for the etheric body does not work upon it as it should. Many cases of idiocy to-
day are dependent upon this.
If we bear in mind that the majority of men who are reincarnated to-day passed through their
preceding incarnation dating the 9th to the 11th century A.D., we can easily understand that the
modern age in particular produces such cases of idiocy. By applying a kind of physical treatment
the etheric body may be influenced so that it gradually penetrates into the physical body, and this
may improve the condition. Such a treatment, however, can only be applied by a person who is able
to see the spiritual cause of the existing facts, so that he can deal with the case properly.
We know from the preceding explanations that man's whole being consists of physical body,
etheric body, astral body and Ego. These members do not simply fit together, but they interpenetrate
and they all influence one another. Thus they all influence tho physical body and cooperate in,
working upon it in such a way that it can develop properly. When you face a human being and your
higher organs of perception are undeveloped, you can only, see his physical body. But the physical
body appears to you as it does, only because the etheric body, the astral body and the Ego permeate
it, and because they all cooperated in developing this physical body. The physical organs of the
human body were not built up chaotically by the three higher members, for we can clearly perceive
how the higher members worked upon the structure of the physical body. Let us try to form a
picture of this.
In the physical body we have first of all that which constitutes in a certain connection the purely
physical organs. These organs are based upon purely physical laws — namely, the eyes, the ears, the
larynx, etc. The eye is, to be sure, a living organ and it obtains its life from the etheric body which
permeates and nourishes it, but seen from a purely physical standpoint it is a complicated apparatus,
ruled by the same forces which are also active in inorganic Nature, for instance, in the crystal. We
may therefore look upon the activity of the eye in accordance with purely physical laws.

55
 These sensory apparatuses must first extricate themselves from the physical body. They are
organs which we first learn to know more strictly as organs which are built up by the physical
forces and according to physical laws.
We then have a second group of organs; the organs of nutrition, growth and procreation,
culminating in the activity of the glands. The etheric body is chiefly involved in the development of
these organs.
As a third group we have the nervous system, which is built up essentially by the astral body.
And in the fourth place we have that which constitutes the red blood in animals and in man: the red
blood, the warm blood, is built up by the Ego.
We thus have firstly the purely physical parts, the sensory organs — later on, also the purely
mineral osseous system which is built up by the physical body itself.
Secondly, the glandular system, the organs of procreation and so forth, which are built up by the
etheric body.
Thirdly, the nervous system, which is built up by the astral body.
Fourthly, the blood system which is, built up by the Ego.
When we consider the development of the earth, we shall understand this better.
You should realise that the law of reincarnation must be applied to the whole world, not only to
the human being. I now live upon the earth, I am the reincarnation of my preceding state, but this is
not only the case with me, as human being, but in a certain way with everything which fills the
world's spaces, — among other things, with the planets. Even as- we are the reincarnation of former
individualities, so the earth is, among other things, the reincarnation of an earlier planetary
condition.
The reincarnations of our earth are not unlimited in number, either in regard to the past or to the
future; even the best clairvoyant cannot look back further than a definite state of being in regard to
our earth, for even his knowledge is subjected to limitations. The clairvoyant can look back as far as
three incarnations of our earth, and similarly he can survey three incarnations which will follow the
present one. Including, the present state of the earth he thus surveys seven incarnations.
It may perhaps sound superstitious to people who hear this for the first time that the clairvoyant
sets the earth so to speak in the centre of this course of development, and one might say: This is a
very strange coincidence! But only a superficial judgment induces one to speak like that, for it is not
more strange than the fact that when I stand in an open field, I can look out everywhere at an equal
distance, for I stand in the middle of the horizon. And through the Ego, I also stand in the centre of
the sevenfold human being: physical body, etheric body, astral body, Ego, Spirit-Self, Life Spirit,
Spirit-Man. This is based upon the same standpoint.
Even my explanations regarding the planetary development of our earth may surprise many
people and seem strange to them.
Our earth developed out of a former planet. This planet from which our earth arose can no
longer be seen in the sky. But a fragment of that which once existed may be seen in the present
Moon; the Moon is a fragment of the earth's predecessor. If you were to mix the present earth and

56
the present moon and all the spiritual beings living upon them, you would more or less obtain an
image of the earth's preceding incarnation, which the occultist designates as Moon. But you should
bear in mind that this hypothesis is only advanced in order to make the process more
comprehensible to you, yet like all hypotheses it is of course not quite correct. If we were to mix the
present earth and the present moon, in the same way in which we mix two substances in a chemical
laboratory, we would not by a long way obtain the ancient Moon . For we must consider that when
earth and moon separated, these two celestial bodies each continued, their own development. The
solid substance, for instance, which we call the mineral kingdom has only been formed since the
present development of the earth. Before this development of the earth, there were no minerals in
the present meaning.
From this imaginary mixture of earth and moon we must therefore eliminate everything which
developed afterwards. The mass of the ancient Moon did not consist of anything resembling the
present mineral. Its consistency had not gone beyond a liquid or viscous condition. As stated, the
above hypothesis has only been advanced in order to render things more comprehensible to people
who have never heard anything of the planetary development of our earth and of the whole cosmos.
For a deeper understanding of this course of development, far more is needed, but this cannot be
explained in an introductory course such as the present one for such things can only be unfolded
little by little. This course of development will then repeatedly be completed and illumined from
ever new standpoints. [Note 2]
Before the earth passed through this ancient Moon condition, it lived in a state of existence
which occultists designate as the Sun. The earth passed through conditions resembling those which
still exist upon the present sun. But if we now wish to apply the same hypothesis as before things
become, more complicated. If you wish to have an idea of this condition, you must mix the earth the
moon and the sun, thus obtaining one celestial body, the former Sun. (Here again, the same
restrictions must be borne in mind as in the case of the ancient Moon). In the further course of its
development, the ancient Sun put out, cast out from itself all the essential parts, forces and
substances of the present earth, and moon, and thus it changed from a planet into a fixed star. Also
our earth will one day become a sun, when it shall have transformed all its beings into Beings of
Light ...
Before its present condition, the earth was therefore the ancient Moon-planet, and this was
preceded by the ancient Sun. We may then look back upon a still earlier state of development,
which occultists designate as Saturn. We can therefore distinguish the following states of
development, which preceded our earth: Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth, and these will be followed
by the Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan states.
Someone might say: You tell us that the earth was once Saturn, but Saturn still shines in the sky
even to-day. But the Saturn which once constituted our earth has nothing in common with the star
now shining down as Saturn. I do not mean to say that the beings who live upon the earth, once
lived upon the Saturn which now shines in the sky. The present Saturn is connected with the former
Saturn condition only as explained in the case of the present Moon and the ancient moon condition.
Since those remote times, the Saturn which we now see, has passed through its own development,
and the ancient Saturn is related to the present one in the same way in which a baby is related to an

57
old man. The present Saturn was once in a condition resembling the ancient Saturn, even as an old
man was once an infant.
When the spiritual investigator looks up to Jupiter, he finds upon Jupiter conditions and beings
which the earth will one day have, when it shall have become Jupiter.
This teaching has been handed down by the most ancient initiates, and initiates have explained
this course of development over and over again to their pupils.
Certain parts of our language which may be traced back to the remotest past, were formed by
initiates. In an introductory course I cannot explain this fully, because this would lead us to far away
from our main subject. But in ancient times, when the formation of speech was still still dependent
upon initiates, language was quite different from what it is now. To-day, for instance, when naming
something, we choose a name because it is uncommon, but it has no deeper significance. In olden
times, however, thera was a deep significance in names, and the choice of a name depended upon
inner conditions. Thus one wished to erect a kind of monument, as a remembrance of the earth's
course of development through the ages, and through its planetary conditions. A kind of time-table
was formed, so that man might always remember these phases. But if we wish to understand this
table,we must first consider certain other things.
The above outline shows you that before its present earth-condition the earth passed through a
Saturn, Sun and Moon condition. Before the earth became the present earth, that is to say, during
the transition from the moon state of existence
to the present earth existence; the earth stood under the strong influence of another celestial body,
namely under the influence of Mars.
The important influence of Mars, which is of tremendous significance for the further
development of our earth, was exercised just at the beginning of the development of our earth.
Parenthetically let it be said that the earth then obtained from Mars the iron subatances which were
not contained in the earthly substance.
During the first stage of its development, the earth was therefore influenced by Mars, and during
the second half, that is to say, now, it became subjected to the stronger influence of Mercury. This
explains why occultism drops the designation “earth” and subdivides the conditions of the earth into
two halves, the Mars part and the Mercury part. This changes the above diagram as follows: Saturn
condition, Sun condition, Moon condition, Mars and Mercury condition, Jupiter condition Venus
condition and Vulcan condition.
The Vulcan condition would therefore be the eighth in the series; within this course of
development it plays the same part as the octave in music. Even as the octave repeats, as it were, the
first tone, but on a higher scale, so the Vulcan condition is a repetition of the Saturn condition, but
upon a higher stage of development. The whole cosmos developed out of the spirit, and in the
Vulcan stage everything will once more return to the spirit, but upon a higher and more manifold
stage of development. Innumerable spirit-men developed out of a uniform spirituality, even as out
of the seed which the sower planted in the earth, grains resembling this seed reach a manifold
development in the ear of corn which ripens in the autumn. Everything perishable is but a symbol.

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 The ancient initiates made these seven names flow into that monumental table mentioned above,
in memory of the earth's course of development, and this is given to us in the names of the seven
days of the week:
The day of Saturn = Saturday
The day of the Sun = Sunday
The day of the Moon = Monday
The day of Mars = Mardi (Mars = Ziu, Dius = Tuesday)
The day of Mercury = Mercredi (Mercury = Wodan =
Wednesday)
The day of Jupiter = Giovedì (Thor = Thursday)
The day of Venus = Vedredi (Venus = Freya = Friday)

A monument has indeed been preserved in the names of the days of the week, a monument
which reminds us of the seven stages of development of our earth. Apparently common things in
life may thus show us deep spiritual connections.
You must now bear in mind that even the whole development of humanity is intimately
connected with this planetary evolution. Indeed the whole human development can only be
understood in the light of the planetary evolution.
Each member of the human being is intimately connected with one of these planetary stages of
evolution of the earth, in so far as the foundation of each of the members of the human being was
laid during one of these phases.
The physical body was thus prepared during the Saturn age, the etheric body during the Sun
epoch, the astral body during the Moon phase, and the Ego entered the human being only during the
Earth phase. The physical body is consequently the most perfectly developed member, whereas the
etheric body is only in the third stage of its development, for it was prepared upon the ancient. Sun;
the astral body in the second stage, for it was prepared upon the ancient Moon, and the Ego is the
baby among the members of the human being, for its development only began with the present earth
condition.
An indication for what has just been said may be found by considering the four members of man
from the aspect of their development.
During the infancy of the Theosophical Society the expressions “higher” and “lower” members
were much in use; the physical body was designated as the lowest member and this was frequently
connected with ideas of value. All too frequently people were inclined to look upon the physical
body as the least valuable of all and they even despised it. But this is, quite wrong.
If you look more closely upon the wonderful structure of the physical body, you will find
without further ado that it stands upon a tremendously high stage of perfection, whereas this is, for
instance, not the case at all with the etheric body. If you look upon the physical body through the
eyes of wisdom, you will find a wonderful structure in every one of its organs — in the heart, in the
bones, etc. Observe the wise structure of the heart and consider the work done daily and hourly by
this comparatively small organ. Compare this with the present comparatively still deficient
development of the astral body: the unpurified passions which live in it every day, man's longing for
pleasures which literally illtreat the structure of the heart — nevertheless the heart is able to

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paralyze these harmful astral influences without breaking; and frequently without undergoing any
damage.
To-day the astral body is not so developed as the physical body; at present the physical body is
the most perfect member. But in the future the astral body will reach a stage in which it will surpass
the physical body. Also the etheric body is less developed than the physical body and the astral body
stands in the third place. The Ego is the youngest of the members, constituting the human being,
and it will consequently be the last to reach perfection.
Everything in the physical body constituting its essentially physical part is therefore oldest of
all. Our physical body passed through a development before the etheric body was incorporated with
it. And this development through which the physical body passed purely as physical body is the
Saturn phase. There, the first foundation of the physical body was merely a physical apparatus.
The course of development proceeded and upon the Sun the etheric' bedy was incorporated with
the physical body, The etheric body filled, as it were, the physical body, in a certain way
transforming it. During the Moon state of existence the astral body was added, and the Ego was
only added during our present Earth condition. To-day man is a fourfold being. During the Moon
epoch he consisted of physical, etheric and astral body; during the Sun epoch he consisted of
physical and etheric body, and during the Saturn epoch only of the physical body, The physical
body therefore has four,the etheric body three, the astral body two and the Ego one phase of
development. The physical body is the most perfect member, because it has been elaborated more
than the others.
Thus you see how the single members of the human being are connected with the development
of the whole planetary system. In occult books you will therefore find the following designations:
Saturn body for the physical body,
Sun body for the etheric body,
Moon body for the astral body,
and Earth body for the Ego, which is the real earthly member of man

To-morrow we shall study the development and the whole life upon Saturn, and then we shall
pass on to the Sun and to the Moon. This will show you how the human beings perfected
themselves more and more until they reached the present state.

Notes:

Note 1. See “Geisteswissenschaft über die soziale Frage”; published by

Phil. Anthrop. Verlag. Dornach, Switzerland

Note 2. Compare the “Akasha Chronicle”. Also “Microcosm and

Macrocosm. The Great and the Small World, Soul Problems, Life Problems
and Spiritual Problems.”

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61
Lecture 9

THE EARTH'S PASSAGE THROUGH ITS FORMER

PLANETARY CONDITIONS.
In continuation of yesterday's sketch on the planetary evolution, let us now add some further
explanations. We have already explained that our earth once passed through a Saturn, a Sun and a
Moon condition. Let me now describe to you these successive states of existence, as they are
usually described in occultism. When speaking of the soul's development along the path of
knowledge, we shall be able to understand many things which can now only be advanced
hypothetically.
If we consider the Saturn state of existence, that condition of our earth lying millions and
millions of years before the present time, we find that it presented an aspect greatly differing from
the one which is taken for granted through our present physical conditions. Above all, we should
bear in mind that man, the most perfect being we know, has passed through the longest course of
development. You will therefore hear the description of a course of development which greatly
deviates from the Haeckel-Darwin theory of evolution, but the advantages of this purely
materialistic theory may be gathered from my book, “Haeckel, the Riddles of the World and
Theosophy”.
The first thing to be grasped is that the most perfect beings are those who passed through the
longest course of development, and the most perfect being of all is man, especially the physical
body of man. All other beings in our environment have not attained to the perfection of man's
physical body, which has taken longer than all others for its development. If we look back through
spiritual vision, we therefore find that the first foundation of man's physical body was laid upon
Saturn. The whole universe, with all the beings and objects which it contained, influenced the first
state of the earth's existence. The present human beings on our planet still possess all the organs
which were formed upon Saturn and they are the most perfect parts of man's physical body, namely,
the sense-organs. These apparatuses can be grasped from a purely physical aspect and their first
foundation was then laid. Of course, you must not think that the eye existed on Saturn in the same
form in which it exists to-day. But the first foundation of the eye, the ear, of every sense-organ and
of all the other purely physical apparatuses of the human being appeared upon Saturn. The only
activities existing upon Saturn which may still be found to-day, are those which pertain to the
mineral kingdom. (Crystallizations, etc.)
Upon Saturn, the human being existed in the form which was the first foundation of his physical
body; everything, else, the blood, the tissues, etc. did not then exist. Physical apparatuses
constituted the first basis of man's physical body. Even as the emerald, the mica, etc, arise through
physical laws and develop in the form of cubes, hexaeders, etc, so at that time forms developed
which resembled apparatuses and which existed upon Saturn in the same way in which crystals now
exist upon the earth. The activity of Saturn's surface essentially consisted in a kind of reflection
which went out into the universal space. The Beings in Saturn's environment who were scattered in
the universal spaces sent down their influences. Something which we may call the “cosmic aroma”

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was also then strongly developed. Only a few phenomena of the present day may give you a feeling
for what took place upon Saturn: for example, when you hear an echo in Nature, the sound of this
echo can convey to you something which went streaming out of Saturn as the result of the
impressions which it received. These conglomerations of forces resembling apparatuses which
threw back pictures in the universal space, formed the first foundation of that which developed later
on as the eye. In a similar way we might follow the development of everything else. What you now
have within your body, was once upon Saturn a physical kingdom, which sent out into the world's
spaces the reflection of the whole cosmos in a manifold manner.
Myths and legends preserved this knowledge far more clearly than one generally supposes. The
Greek myth of Chronos and Rhea, proceeding from the Eleusinian Mysteries preserved, for
example such a truth; it contains however, a great displacement of facts due to the way in which the
Greeks viewed the great cosmic connections. This myth tells us that Chronos sent down his rays
and that these rays then returned to him in many forms: this explains the picture of Chronos
devouring his children.
Now you must not think that the Saturn mass was as firm and solid as the physical bodies of to-
day; even water and air do not give you an idea of Saturn's fundamental substance. When speaking
of bodies in occultism, we speak of solid, liquid and gaseous bodies. And if we speak of the
elements in the old manner, they correspond to that which modern chemistry designates as the
“aggregate conditions” of matter, for you must not think that the men of olden times, when speaking
of the “elements” meant the same thing as we do. Then there is a higher “aggregate state”,
designated in ancient occultism as “fire”; a better meaning is however conveyed by calling it “heat”.
Even physics will be obliged to recognise that what is designated as heat, may be compared with a
kind of fourth aggregate state, with another kind of substance differing from air and water. The
Saturn mass was not even condensed to the state of air it consisted of purified heat, and its activity
resembled that of the heat your blood, for it was connected with inner life-processes. The physical
processes upon Saturn were real life-processes. Saturn consisted of heat-substance, of an immensely
fine volume which may be designated as neutral, if compared with our present substances.
If we wish to study the Beings who inhabited Saturn, we must realise that the Beings whom we
now see moving about upon the earth, then possessed only the first beginning of a physical body;
they were embodied in heat-substance, and their activity consisted in a current of heat which moved
about. These currents constituted the deeds of the Beings who filled Saturn with life. Even as to-day
you are able to make a table, so these Saturn-beings did their work by producing currents of heat.
Nothing else could be observed of these Beings. A greeting exchanged upon Saturn was as if two
currents of heat moved to and fro, exchanging their forces.
The Beings who passed through the human stage upon Saturn did not possess a physical body as
their lowest member, for they did not descend into matter so deeply as to require a physical body.
Their lowest member was the Ego, even as to-day our lowest member is the physical body; then
came their Sprit-Self or Manas, their Life-Spirit or Buddhi, then Spirit-Man or Atma. In addition
they developed an eighth, ninth and tenth members, which must be included.
Theosophical literature calls these members which the human being has not yet developed, the
“Three Logoi”; in Christianity they are called the Holy Spirit, the Son or the Word, and the Father.
We may therefore say: Even as the human beings now consists of physical body, etheric body, astral

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body and Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-Man, so these Beings living upon Saturn, who in
regard to their connection with the earth may be compared with the present human beings, consisted
of Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-Man; of the Holy Ghost, the Son or Word, and the Father. The
theosophical terminology designates them as “asuras”. They are the Beings who from the very
beginning implanted into the physical foundation of man's body the feeling of independence, of
Ego-consciousness, and of Ego-feeling. You could not use your eye in the service of the Ego had
your eye's foundation not been prepared at that time, so that now you are enabled to place your eye
at the service of the Ego. These members were therefore prepared by the Spirits of the Ego, also
named the Spirits of Egoism. They gave us the wisest thing of all, when developed in the right way.
But everything of the highest nature becomes perverted into its opposite if it is not developed in the
right way, because then it exercises the most harmful and destructive influence. Man could never
reach that high stage which we designate as human dignity, had not these Spirits of Egoism
implanted in him the Ego-feeling. There have always been Beings who followed an evil Course,
and consequently we must say: The Beings who implanted the Ego into man and who are now upon
a stage of development greatly surpassing the human one, those Beings to whom we may look up as
the highest of all, gave their Ego as an offering of self-renunciation and sacrifice; but the others
followed the development of their Ego in a selfish manner.
In striving after freedom and human dignity we bear within us the influences of the Spirits of
the Ego who followed the good path, and we bear within us the seed of evil, because the influence
of the Beings who fell away continued to be active. This contrast has always been felt. Christianity
itself makes a distinction between God the Father, whom it considers as the most highly developed
Spirit of Saturn, and his opponent, the Spirit of all the evil Egos and of everything which is
radically immoral, the Spirit who fell away upon the ancient Saturn. These are the two
representatives of Saturn.
Even as after death we encounter other forms of existence, so a cosmic body, such as Saturn,
passes through a kind of intermediate state, a kind of sleep-condition, before it enters into a new
condition; it passes through a “pralaya” in contrast to a “manvantara”, so that we have a kind of
resting, passive condition of the planet, between the Saturn and the Sun state of existence. The
whole planet then emerges in a new form from its sleeping state, which is, however, a spiritual one.
Saturn thus emerged as the Sun, and a considerable transformation had taken place. Upon the
Sun a great number of the germs which had already developed upon Saturn and which are still
developing within us to-day, were permeated by an etheric body. During such a planetary transition
something evolves which may be compared with the fruit of a plant which we lay in the earth; it
decays, but it forms the foundation of a new plant Thus everything which developed upon Saturn
arose again upon the Sun with a new foundation and it became permeated with an etheric body.
There were also other beings who had remained behind upon the mineral-physical stage, and
they can be compared with the present mineral kingdom. The Sun absorbed them as a kind of
subordinate kingdom of Nature, but at the same time another kingdom was raised to the stage of
plant-man.
You obtain a right conception of the Sun-atmosphere if you imagine a thick, chemical gas, no
longer representing a merely reflecting body, but one which absorbed everything which, came
raying towards it, and after having transformed it, reverberated it in the same way in which plants

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now reverberate colours. The plant forms its green colour and other substances and returns them to
the cosmic spaces. That which lived upon the ancient Sun cannot be compared with an echo, nor
with a reflected image, as in the case of Saturn, in regard to the beings embodied upon the Sun, we
come across a phenomena which can only be compared with a kind of Fata Morgana, with
atmospheric phenomena resembling coloured pictures. Such phenomena which can only be
perceived to-day in certain regions of our globe, can give you an idea of how these plant-bodies
could be perceived. You must imagine that your bodies revealed certain Fata Morgana-like
processes, through which your present bodies could pass as if through air. You were then as
transparent as a Fata Morgana — but this phenomenon did not only consist of light, but also of
tones and smells whirring through the gas- sphere of the Sun.
Whereas the beings living upon the Sun could shine like the fixed stars of to-day, the ancient
Saturn kingdom of the beings who had remained behind, could be observed like a dark mass, like
dark forms against the light, like obtuse. caverns in the body of the Sun, which disturbed its
harmony. Particularly in regard to the “cosmic aroma” these retarded beings mixed into it sensations
which provoked all kinds of evil smells. Myths have retained a recollection of this, for they relate
that the Devil leaves behind an evil smell. As it progressed, the Sun really left behind a dark part,
and the sun-spots which are visible now, are the remnants of the ancient Saturn kingdom which
once existed upon the Sun. Hypothetically these spots should be explained exactly as we explain
them now; for all these explanations are valid.
In a short sketch you thus have the earth's sun-existence painted, as it were, from its material
aspect. Let us now see who were the Beings who attained the human stage upon the Sun. They
would have to be described as follows: Their lowest body is the astral body, then comes the Ego, the
Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, the Spirit-Man or Atma, then the Holy Ghost in the Christian meaning,
and finally the Son or the Word. They did not have the Father, for this member was only developed
during the Saturn era. These Saturn Spirits meanwhile rose to a still higher stage, and now they
stand far above the human being.
The Leader of the Sun Spirits, in so far as He exercised the highest, influence upon the earth, the
representative of the Spirits whose highest member was the Son or the Word, is the Christ, in the
esoteric meaning of Christianity. He is the real regent of the earth, in so far as the earth is based
upon the Sun state of existence. Upon the Sun, Christ would not yet have been called by that name.
The old form of Christianity always taught this truth, and the difference between genuine
Christianity and, the exoteric form of Christianity, which is in so many cases based upon
misunderstandings, is that the older form of Christianity exerted all its thinking power and applied
every conception in order to understand that high Being Who took on human shape in Jesus of
Nazareth. The ancient form of Christianity wished to gain a conception of what lay at the
foundation of this mystery, and no wisdom was too high for it, or too complicated: It explained the
Being of Christ within Jesus of Nazareth in accordance with this truth. Many a passage in the
Gospel of St. John can only be understood if you grasp it from this aspect. It suffices to draw
attention to one point: If you take the words, “I am the Light of the World” literally, these imply that
the Christ is the great Sun Hero, and that the Light which belongs to the Sun constitutes His being.
We designate the whole hosts of Spirits whose Leader is the Christ as the “Fire Spirits” and we say:
The Asuras or the Ego Spirits reached the human stage during the Saturn era. During the Sun
existence the Fire Spirits or the Logoi, whose highest representative is named the Logos or the

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Word, reached this stage. For this very reason, Christ is named the “Word” that existed in “the
beginning”, and the “beginning” designates in the Bible a definite point of departure in the cosmic
evolution.
Again we have an intermediate condition, a kind of sleeping condition for the whole cosmic
body, and then it begins to shine forth again as the ancient Moon.
You must imagine that in the beginning the present Earth and the present Moon formed one
body with the Sun. Only when the Sun began to shine forth again, one part of the Beings separated
from it with their own environment, so that two celestial bodies arose. One of these bodies, the Sun,
begins to develop into a fixed star, and the body which separates from it begins to circle around it.
The ancient Sun thus divided itself into two parts; the more highly developed substance remained
behind upon the Sun, and the less perfect substance was eliminated. Consequently, that which once
pursued the same course, because there was only one body, now followed two separate course: the
Sun path and the Moon path. The Sun path was the one which developed upon the Sun-body,
whereas the Moon developed its own world. You could reconstruct the ancient Moon by mixing
together the present earth and the present Moon; this would enable you to form a conception of the
way in which the ancient Moon was constituted. Both physically and spiritually the present Moon is
far below the Earth in regard to its quality, and the Earth separated from the Moon just because it
needed better conditions of life for Beings who lived upon it. The Earth developed beyond the stage
it had reached during the Moon existence; but its best part remained behind upon the Sun.
What was the aspect of things upon the ancient Moon? The Beings who had passed through a
preparatory stage upon Saturn by developing the physical foundation of the sense-organs,
transformed these organs upon the Sun by permeating them with a etheric body; the sense organs
thus became centralised, and the first basis of the organs of growth reaching as far as the glands
could unfold upon the ancient Sun under the influence of the etheric body; this was a final product
of the Sun existence.
Upon the Moon, the astral body was added in a similar manner. Everything astral first existed in
the surroundings; the Fire Spirits had an astral body as their lowest member. The Beings upon the
Sun resembled plants; for instance, they could not move from their fixed places. Although the
whole body of the Sun was gaseous, you must imagine air-strata of greater density which were the
bodies of these human plants. But now the astral body of man was added; this gave rise to the first
foundation of a nervous system. The kingdom which had reached the plant stage of development
upon the Sun, passed over to the animal stage, to a stage resembling that of animals. The physical
ancestors of man upon the Moon thus possessed three bodies: the physical body, the etheric body
and the astral body, yet they greatly surpassed the most highly developed apes of our planet; they
were human animals which no biology can describe, an intermediate kingdom between man and
animal. Our present vegetable, animal and mineral kingdoms only developed later, but even as there
were human animals; so we must admit the existence of an intermediate kingdom between plant and
animal; plants with a kind of sentient capacity, plants which literally squeaked if one touched them.
These plant-animals could never have grown upon a mineral soil, such as the present soil of the
Earth; in fact, this mineral soil did not exist upon the Moon. Its mass did not consist of the present
rocky substances, not even of loose soil. Comparatively speaking, the Moon's foundation consisted
of a mass resembling a mash of cooked spinach or salad, and in it a kind of mineral plant, The

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whole foundation of the Moon was therefore of vegetable nature. A peat bed of to-day would
resemble the kingdom which existed at that time as an intermediate kingdom between our plants
and minerals. There were no rocks, and anyone walking over the ground would have walked over
such a peaty ground or vegetable foundation, and analogously you may think of rocks in the form of
woodened portions within this mass.
The plant-animals grew out of this whole foundation, and above them, in the Moon's
environment which may be designated as “fire-air”, moved those beings who were man-animals.
Imagine the whole atmosphere filled with saltpeter, carbon and sulphur gases; the Moon-men lived
in this fiery air which you would thus obtain. Occultists always knew of the existence of this fire-
air, and under older conditions of the Earth it was even possible to produce this fire-air artificially.
This is only possible to-day in a very restricted circle, but this knowledge has been preserved in
genuine alchemy. Consequently, if you read in Goethe's “Faust”, “Let me produce a little fire-air”,
this touches the depths of occultism. Fire-air enwrapped; the Moon; this was its atmosphere.
We can understand this Moon-existence even better if we add another fact. Upon the Moon
there was a kingdom of plant-minerals, of animal-plants growing out of this vegetable-mineral soil,
and then there were the animal-men moving about upon it. But upon each stage there are beings
who remain behind — you may, if you like, say that they did not “pass”. This is the case not only at
school, but also in the great course of development, where a pupil may have to repeat a class. These
beings who did not “pass”, appear in future stages of development in very peculiar conditions. Such
stragglers of the plant-minerals who did not “pass” still exist in parasites, for instance in the mistle-
toe. It cannot grow upon mineral soil, because it was accustomed to grow upon a vegetable-mineral
soil. It proves a fact resembling that of a pupil who did not move on to a higher form; except that
the case of the beings who remain behind in the cosmic development is far worse. Particularly in the
North we come across a myth which describes this; you are all acquainted with the northern myth of
Baldur and his death through Loki.
The Gods were frolicking about in the Aesir's home and in there games they hurled about all
kinds of objects. Baldur had just before had dreams foreboding his early death, and the Gods were
therefore afraid to lose him. The Mother of the Gods had taken an oath from all the living and
inanimate beings and they all had all promised that they would never hurt Baldur, and so the Gods
enjoyed the game of throwing all manner of weapons against Baldur. Loki, the opponent of the
Gods, had discovered that one being, who was considered to be harmless, had not made any
promise, and this was the mistle-toe, which lay in hiding somewhere in the distance. Loki obtained
the mistle-toe, gave it to the blind god Hodur, who threw it at Baldur: the mistle-toe wounded
Baldur, for it had not sworn the oath, and Baldur died.
This myth indicates that that which is invulnerable upon the Earth can only suffer harm through
that which has remained behind from another existence as something evil. In the mistle-toe people
saw something which had entered the present state of existence from an earlier one. All the beings
now living upon the earth can only suffer harm through that which has remained behind from an
earlier one. All the beings now living upon the Earth are connected with Baldur. But it was
otherwise upon the Moon; consequently that being which had remained behind from the Moon was
able to kill Baldur. All the various customs connected with the mistle-toe arise out of this
foundation.

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 We should also consider the Moon existence from another aspect, from the Spiritual one. The
Moon Beings who had reached the human stage must be described as beings whose lowest member
was the etheric body, their second one the astral body, then the Ego, Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, Spirit-
Man or Atma, and then they also had the Holy Ghost. They no longer had the ninth member
pertaining to the Fire Spirits upon the Sun. The highest of the Moon Spirits who had reached the
human stage is called the “Holy Ghost” in Christian esotericism. In the early original form of
Christianity, the threefold Godhead was therefore intimately connected with the evolution of the
earth. The Holy Ghost is a Spirit who is above man and Who is able to inspire him in a direct way.
Thus you may see that the Moon Spirits now stand above the human being. They are also called
“Lunar Pitris”, “Moon Fathers” and “Spirits of Twilight”. The whole host belonging to the Holy
Ghost is called in Christian esotericism the Host of Angels. The Angels are the Spirits immediately
above man, who passed through their human stage upon the ancient Moon.
The life of the animal-men and of the plant-animals upon the Moon, differed from that of the
beings who developed out of them upon the Earth. The movement of the Moon, which had already
severed itself from the Sun, was quite different from the movement of the present earth around the
sun. The ancient Moon circled around the Sun in such a way that it always turned the same face
towards it, even as the Moon to-day always shows the same side to the earth. The Moon thus turned
only once around its own axis, while circling around the Sun. The Moon Beings were therefore
dependent upon the Sun in quite a different way than is the case with the present earthly inhabitants.
During the Moon's whole epoch of revolution around the Sun, it was always daytime on one of its
sides, and a kind of night upon the other. The Moon Beings, who were already able to move about,
wandered in a kind of circle around the Moon, so that they passed through one epoch in which they
stood under the influence of the Moon. The time in which they stood under the Sun's influence was
their time of procreation. For there was already a kind of procreation. The Moon-men could not as
yet express joy and pleasure through sounds; their expressions had a more cosmic significance. The
sun-epoch was the time of ardour and passion, and it was connected with a great screaming on the
part of the Moon Beings, This exists to-day in the animal kingdom.
Many other things have remained from that time. You know how one tries to investigate the true
reason for the birds migration, why they circle around the globe in a certain manner. Many things
which are mysteriously concealed to-day, can be understood if the whole course of earthly evolution
is borne in mind. There was a time when the lunar beings could only procreate when they wandered
towards the Sun; this may be called their epoch of sexual life. General processes of lunar life
expressed themselves in sounds at certain seasons of the and at other times, the beings upon the
Moon were dumb.
We have thus learned to know time earth' s passage through the three preceding conditions of its
existence: that of Saturn, of the Moon and of the Sun.

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Lecture 10

FURTHER STAGES OF THE DEVELOPMENT OF OUR EARTH.

Let us consider to-day the transformation of the ancient Moon into the present Earth. But first of
all we must draw attention to an important phenomenon of the Moon development. When this
development drew towards its close, when. everything, which I have already described to you had
more or less taken, place, the ancient Moon and the Sun were reunited. The ancient Moon found its
way back, as it were, to the Sun, and as a result a uniform body arose. These two celestial bodies
which were reunited then passed over into a kind of latent planetary existence. Out of this came
forth the fourth metamorphosis, which did not immediately resemble our present Earth, for the
present condition of our Earth was prepared gradually and slowly. A study of the Earth in particular
can give us a clear conception of the cosmic law that later conditions of development must in a
certain way repeat conditions which have already existed. Before the Earth became our present
planet — after awaking from its latent planetary condition — it had to repeat briefly the Saturn, Sun
and Moon conditions. Of course, this development took a somewhat different course than in the
case of the three planets themselves.
Upon Saturn we found the first foundation of the sensory apparatus which we now possess;
During the first repetition of the Saturn Condition these sensory forms had progressed so far that a
kind of human shape could develop; but during this metamorphosis the automatic sense-apparatus
did not as yet possess an etheric body. The etheric body was embodied during the repetition of the
Sun condition, and the astral body was added during the third transformation, the repetition of the
moon condition. During the third phase we once more have Sun and Moon as separate bodies in the
cosmic space. But the beings who lived upon them had in the meantime developed further; they had
gradually prepared themselves for the experiences which awaited them upon the Earth. There, a
fourth member was added to the three bodies which the animal-like human race possessed upon the
ancient Moon, and this fourth member was the Ego.
But this course of development did not take place so quickly. While the earth was passing
through its Saturn epoch, the automatic sense-apparatus of man had to mould a form enabling it to
absorb the Ego. During the Sun repetition the etheric body also transformed itself, so as to be able
to become the bearer of an Ego, and during the Moon repetition the astral body underwent a change
enabling it to take in the Ego. These members waited, as it were, for the moment when they could
take in the Ego.
What we were able to pursue thus far, was the separation of the Sun from the Moon. Then
comes a stage which more closely approaches our present development, namely the separation of
the Moon from the Earth. Two bodies emerge from the ancient Moon: one which consisted of the
worst material in regard to its beings and substances, was thrown out into the cosmic space, and the
other formed the present Earth. It was necessary to eliminate that which would have hindered the
beings from their further development and this part which was cast out became the present Moon.
After the elimination the Earth existed as an independent cosmic body. This entailed powerful

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cosmic events: first the separation of the Earth plus Moon from the Sun, and then the separation of
the Earth from the Moon. These two events prepared our present development.
I have led you as far as the point where our Earth became an independent sphere. Let me now
lead you to this point by following another direction, so that you may have a clear idea as to the
exact position of this point in regard to our Earth. Let us go back from the immediate present into
the past; let us go back from the present form of the Earth which you all know, to a past condition.
Even natural science draws attention to the great differences between the present and the past aspect
of our Earth. All this, to be sure, is based on hypotheses, but in this field natural science meets
spiritual science to some extent. Natural science says: Huge virgin forests once existed in the
regions which we now inhabit, their climate was one which we now encounter in Equatorial zones
and gigantic animals lived in those forests.
According to the statements of modern natural science the face of our Earth once presented
quite a different aspect from the present one. The ice-age followed the tropical climate and preceded
the present temperate one. Every book on geology contains these facts. I am only telling you this in
order to show you that the face of our Earth underwent great transformations in the course of certain
epochs of time and that now it presents an entirely different aspect from that of the past.
As far as the external aspect of the Earth is concerned, natural science, which only disposes of
the combining intellectual power, of apparatuses, etc., can only look back upon a few thousands of
years. The descriptions of a clairvoyant looking back upon the past development of our Earth must,
however, differ from those of natural science though a kind of harmony ,will one day be established
between natural science and spiritual science. Natural science draws attention to a fact which a
clairvoyant can ascertain without any doubt namely that the face of our Earth has not only changed
in regard to plants, but that continents and oceans once existed in regions of our Earth where they
no longer exist. Huxley, for instance, pointed out that a whole part of Great Britain has already been
submerged by the ocean four times. Thus the face of our Earth constantly undergoes a
transformation. In volume 12 of “Kosmos” you may, for instance, find an article on the so-called
old continent of Atlantis, where a scientist who completely adopts the standpoint of natural science
proves, through the configuration of the flora and fauna in Europe and in America, that the present
Atlantic Ocean must once have been a continent, and that great parts of Africa must in those times
have been covered by the ocean. On the other hand, the continent of Atlantis existed, in the West,
stretching between the present Europe and America. This scientist only speaks of the fauna and of
the flora of Atlantis, which is of course natural. But even if remnants of the ancient human beings,
who were our ancestors could be found (they must exist at the bottom of the Atlantic Ocean), it is
not possible to-day to investigate to such an extent the bottom of the ocean. The clairvoyant,
however, can look back as far as the time of Atlantis, and he knows that this ancient Atlantean
continent, which Plato describes, really existed. Essentially speaking, the whole surface now
covered by the Atlantic Ocean was once Atlantis, and this continent was inhabited by the physical
predecessors of the present human race. Of course they had a rather different aspect from the one
imagined by modern natural science.
We should not in any way compare them with the present apes; though psychically and
physically the Atlanteans greatly differed from modern men, they were not apes. Apes did not exist
at that time, for this animal species, only arose much later; simply through the fact that certain

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human shapes of that time remained behind at the stage of development which had then been
reached, and afterwards degenerated, sinking down to a lower stage. Darwinism consequently
makes a great mistake, which is, however, easy to detect. If we have before us two men, one upon
an imperfect stage of development and the other a man who applied his faculties in order to perfect
himself, and if we are told that these two men are relatives, we shall not say: They are relatives, and
consequently the more perfect man descends from the less perfect one. Yet Darwinism comes to
such a conclusion: The perfect and imperfect specimens stand side by side; one developed upwards
by applying his faculties in the right way, while the other led them down and thus became decadent.
That is how apes the descendants of human beings, confront man. An ape is a caricature of man, but
he is not like a human being.
At the time of Atlantis there existed an entirely different human race, which gradually
developed towards a higher stage. But certain men remained behind in there development, and
because the Earth itself underwent changes, these beings also changed; they degenerated and
became a caricature of man — they became apes. These lower beings, the apes, are consequently
degenerated specimens of higher beings who had become decadent.
If we study the Atlantean man, an observation of his psychic qualities will give us the best idea
of his way of living.
All that modern men are able to do — to think logically, to calculate, etc. — all this arose much
later. Logic, power of judgment, etc. were unknown to the Atlanteans. But on the other hand, they
had a soul-quality which has now become decadent; they had an almost inconceivable power of
memory. They could not calculate twice two is four, nor make this calculation over and over again
through intellectual power, but they could bear in mind the result obtained by multiplying two by
two, and they were always able to remember this result. This is connected with an entirely different
constitution which existed on that ancient continent. If you wish to have an idea of the physical
aspect of that continent, imagine a mountain valley filled with thick fogs and mists: The Atlanteans
never saw an atmosphere which was free from moisture. The air was always filled with water.
When the ancient Atlanteans came over into Europe,they preserved the memory of this condition
and they called the land of their ancestors.“Niflheim”, which mans the land of fogs.
When the last third of the Atlantean epoch drew towards its close, the Atlanteans began to notice
that they were Egos. The Ego foundation had indeed existed for some time, and the Atlantean even
had a certain feeling for the Ego, but only during the last third of the Atlantean epoch he learned to
say clearly: “I am an Ego.” This is connected with the relationship of the etheric body with the
physical body.
If you observe these two bodies, you will notice that they more or less coincide, but the etheric
body slightly protrudes above the physical body. Between the eyebrows there is a point which
constitutes a centre for certain forces and streams of the etheric body, and this corresponds to a
definite point in the physical brain. These two points must coincide; on this depends the capacity of
being able to experience oneself as an Ego, to calculate, combine, etc. In the case of idiots, f0r
instance, these points in the head do not coincide, and when this is the case, man's power of
judgment no longer functions properly. In the case of the Atlanteans these points did not coincide,
and this is still the case to-day with animals. If you observe the head of a horse you will find that

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these two points are far apart. In the Atlantean, the etheric head protruded and his physical head had
a retreating brow.
But the Atlantean had something which man lost when the etheric body and the physical body
began to coincide. The Atlantean still possessed dull clairvoyance, but he was, for instance, unable
to count up to five. All his judgments were based on his capacity of remembering incredibly distant
times. And that old clairvoyance appeared as the enhancement of our present dream-life. Imagine
the highest enhancement of this dream-life: this would lead you to the conceptual capacity, to the
ancient, dull, dream-like clairvoyance of the Atlantean. When the Atlantean walked over the earth;
he could indeed see the human beings in their physical involucres more or less as we see them to-
day, but this perception had in a certain way a misty and foggy outline. The Atlantean could,
however, perceive something which we cannot perceive. When we meet someone today, we do not
see anything special of his inner being, we can only see what his features reveal to us; a gloomy
expression will tell us that he is sad and will enable us to guess something of his state of mind. But
when an Atlantean encountered someone who had evil intentions towards him, a brown-red vision
rose up before him, and if that person loved him he saw a blue-red vision. A kind of colour vision
harmonized with the psychological state of the other person; the Atlantean could still perceive
something of what took place in the inner being of other men. An Atlantean walking along, who
saw a terrible red-brown fog rising up before him, ran away, for he knew that a dangerous animal
was approaching (perhaps it was still far away), one that would surely devour him.
The ancient Atlantean clairvoyance even had a physical foundation. For the Atlantean
considered that only his close relatives belonged to him (to a far greater extent than was the case
later on). Small communities existed which did not extend beyond the family circle. It was of
greatest importance to marry only within this restricted family circle. These marriages between
closely connected relatives produced a blood mixture which preserved the etheric body's capacity to
receive spiritual influences. Had the Atlantean attempted to marry outside his family circle, he
would have suppressed his clairvoyant faculty and, astrally speaking, would have become an idiot.
It was a moral, ethical law to remain within the blood-ties of one s family. Before the Atlantean was
able, to have a definite experience of his Ego,he said “that am I” to his whole blood-brotherhood.
He considered himself as a part of the whole blood-brotherhood, even as the finger is a part of the
hand.
But something else is based on this fact. The Atlantean could not only remember his own
experiences, but also the experiences of his father, grandfather, great-grandfather, etc., reaching far
down the line of the generations, as far as the founder of his family. Everything which came from
there, everything which streamed through the line of the generations was experienced as a unity.
This can show you how greatly developed was the memory of the Atlanteans! Everything was based
upon memory. Later on we shall see how man lost this powerful memory because he broke through
the circle of close marriages.
An Atlantean soul necessarily required quite a different physical nature and environment than is
the case to-day. He needed an environment described, for instance, in the legendary “Niflheim” of
the ancient Germans. Legends and myths are not in any way based upon so-called popular fancy or
poetic invention. The origin of such legends can be clearly traced. The Atlanteans still possessed an

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ancient, dull clairvoyance, and the events which were later on related and preserved (though
frequently in a distorted form) in the legends and myths of various nations really occurred.
The transmigration of the Atlanteans to the East has been preserved wonderfully in a cycle of
European legends. Man could not say “I” to his individual personality, when he still lived on the
ancient Atlantean continent. Consequently egoism, which later on constituted the foundation of
social life, did not exist among the Atlanteans. The inhabitant of Atlantis considered as his
possession everything which belonged to all his blood-relatives and he felt that he was a member of
this blood relationship. Then came the transmigration to the East. Man's Ego-consciousness
emerged more and more, and with it, human egoism. Man once lived far more in the external world
than within his own being; Nature still formed part of his being. He felt as if he were embedded in
Nature, as if he were a part of Nature. With the acquisition of his Ego-consciousness, the world
around him became narrower and narrower; he separated himself from his environment little by
little and the Ego emerged more and more.
This was at the same time connected with a process of Nature. When the old Atlantean looked
up to the sky, he could not see the sun as we see it to-day; thick masses of fog filled the air, and
when he looked at the sun and at the moon he saw an immense circle of rainbow colours. Then
came the time when the Atlantean could perceive the sun and the moon as such. But there was one
phenomenon which was unknown to the Atlantean — the rainbow. When the waters of Atlantis
began to leave the atmosphere, when rain alternated with sunshine as is the case to-day, then the
Atlantean learned to know the rainbow, for there no rainbows in the moisture-filled atmosphere of
ancient Atlantis. Now bear in mind that great stretches of land were laid bear by the great Atlantean
flood, and this has been wonderfully preserved in many legends, particularly in the Bible. Consider
the deep truth contained in the Bible words: “And when the waters had departed, Noah saw the
rainbow”. Only when the atmosphere became freed from the fogs and mists of Atlantis, could the
sun appear to man in its present form. This process accompanied the narrowing of man' s being, so
that he became confined within his own self, within his Ego.
For reasons which have a profound meaning, spiritual wisdom defines the light flooding
through space as the etheric gold, and gold is looked upon as the condensed light of the sun. The
ancient Atlanteans were taught by their teachers that there is a connection between the light of the
sun and gold, and they took in the following image: “The light of the Sun, the gold of the sun,
shines forth! It envelops us with a ring which frees the Ego, bringing about the fact that we no
longer experience ourselves selflessly as a part of Nature”. Among the Atlanteans the Ego was still
dispersed within clouds of mist, but now it began to enfold him like a ring.
The mists of Atlantis left the atmosphere, they were pressed down and appeared in the West as
rivers. For the descendants of the Atlanteans, the Rhine was nothing but mist which descended from
the air and then flew along as a river. In the Rhine they perceived the masses of water still
permeated by light; in the Rhine they felt the presence of the sun's gold, which exercised such a
pure and selfless influence upon the inhabitants of ancient Atlantis. They saw this gold in the
Nibelung treasure of the Rhine, and anyone who strove to gain possession of this treasure, was their
enemy.
Richard Wagner, who describes this in music, was not clearly conscious of this truth, but
nevertheless he was inspired by this powerful, encompassing fact. Remember the Prologue to

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“Rhine Gold”: Is the wonderful organ-theme in E sharp not the point where the Ego enters
humanity? But even as the plant does not know the laws according to which it grows, so the poet
does not require the full knowledge of what he writes. We must think of the creative artist as one
who is inspired by forces which stand behind him. In this case, a conspicuous artist has felt
something which must again enter mankind. We can therefore see that even in art the same spirit
which lies at the foundation of spiritual science streams into human culture. We can see it flowing
into it from two directions. This is how we should consider life as a whole.
We have traced human evolution as far back as Atlantis. Let us now consider a few more details.
At that time men did not build houses such as they exist to-day, for they could utilize to a far greater
extent the forces which existed in Nature. Masses of rock were moulded together with that which
existed in the environment, and constituted dwelling places which resembled natural houses. The
further back we go, the more we come across men endowed with clairvoyance and possessing an
image-consciousness. In a visionary form, in pictures which rose up before their souls, they could
see the feelings of those who lived round about them. In the early Atlantean epoch, even the human
will presented quite a different aspect. To-day you can stretch out the finger of your hand through
your will, and this action is connected with your thinking. But in the early Atlantean age the body
was a far more supple mass. The Atlantean could not only stretch out his finger, but he could even
make it longer or shorter; he could easily make his hand grow when he saw a small plant, he could
make it grow through an effort of his will. He disposed of a kind of magic. He also had a strange
connection with the animal world; he still perceived something which later on could no longer be
perceived and he exercised a fascinating power over animals through his gaze.
If we go back still further, we reach an age in which even Atlantis did not exists; people then
lived upon a continent designated as “Lemuria”. It stretched south of our present Asia, as far as
Africa and Australia; this was the continent inhabited by our ancestors when they were Lemurians.
Their body was far softer than that of the Atlanteans and their will, far more powerful. But the
ground under their feet was most unsteady; fire eruptions, vulcan ic powers continually upheaved it;
ancient Lemuria was a kind of fire-country.
If we go back still further, we reach a time in which the osseous system began to develop out of
a boneless mass, and then comes a time in which the earth had not yet developed the present
mineral kingdom; everything was in a constant state of flux and reflux.
The further back we go into the evolution of the earth, the greater is the degree of heat which we
encounter. We reach an age in which the forms now constituting our solid earth were in a liquid
state, like mercury or molten lead. The solid state only developed in Lemuria. Thicker and thicker
grow the messes of mist. This was not a sea of fog, but a thick ocean of hot steam, containing, all
kinds of molten substances whirling within it. Man's predecessor could already live in certain parts
of this steam, but he of course possessed quite a different constitution from the present human
being. We thus reach a time in which man lived in a kind of primordial ocean, in a warm, fiery-
watery element. The earth's kernel was enveloped by a kind of primordial ocean, containing the
germs of everything which developed later on.
This was the aspect of the Earth immediately after the Moon's exit from it as a separate body.

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 We have now gained insight into a course of development reaching to the time in which the Sun
first severed itself from the Earth and from the Moon; and when the Moon severed itself from the
Earth, leaving it in the condition described above.
To-morrow we shall once more consider this process which I have set forth just now from two
aspects, and then we shall consider the further development of man and of the earth, reaching as far
as the present time.

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Lecture 11

PROGRESSIVE DEVELOPMENT THROUGH THE

DIFFERENT CYCLES OF CULTURE
Yesterday, in the description of the development of the various cycles of earthly development,
we reached a point which made us realise how the three celestial bodies, the Sun. the Moon and the
Earth, gradually separated from one another. We began by considering this separation and stopped
at the point where the Moon separated itself from the Earth, but we also tried to reach this same
point by setting out from the present time and going back to the Atlantean epoch. Let us now
consider the condition of the Earth at the time of Atlantis. Long, long epochs of time must be borne
in mind, taking up millions of years, so that the great changes which took place, not only in the
universe, but also upon the earth, need no longer surprise us.
Let:us consider once more the Earth, after its separation from the Moon. It was still enveloped
by a volume of air, which presented, however, quite a different aspect from the present air. You
must not think that this air inwardly resembled a glowing stove — although its temperature was far
higher than is the case now. At that time many substances which are now solid existed within the
Earth in a liquid state. An air thickly permeated with gases of the most varied substances, enveloped
the Earth, an atmosphere which we might designate as fire-air, a repetition of the former Moon-
condition,
When the Earth became independent after its separation from the present Moon, it was
surrounded by a strange atmosphere which may be designated as fire-air, Through the fact that the
Earth freed itself from the atmosphere which went away with the Moon, the beings who lived upon
the Earth were able to attain certain higher stages of development. Within the atmosphere of the
Earth the most advanced animal-men had reached a higher stage than the one which they had
attained upon the Moon, and these were the beings who later developed into men. A great number
of these animal-men remained behind upon the Moon-stage. As a result, they not only remained
behind, but owing to the entirely new conditions which now arose, they sank half a degree below
the level which they had previously attained, (animal-men could, only live upon the Moon) and thus
they became animals. Animals did not as yet exist upon the Moon. We therefore have two
kingdoms: Human beings — and the kingdom of animal-men, beings who had remained behind and
had gradually sunk to the level of animals.
The same applies to the plant-animals. A certain number of these had developed to a higher
stage, to that of animals; others had remained behind and changed into plants. A The kingdom of
plant-minerals also followed this line of development: some became heavy minerals, while others
ascended in their development to the level of plants.
Not everything arose in accordance with one standard of measure, for the animals which we
know to-day arose, for instance, partly through the descending development of men-animals and
partly through the ascending development of plant-animals. In the vegetable kingdom also we have
side by side the plant-minerals in an ascending course of development and the plant-animals in a
descending course. The plants now chiefly constituting the pleasant plant-carpet of our earth, arose

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through the ascending development of the Moon's plant-minerals; this is, for instance, the case with
the violet. On the other hand, everything that gives us a decaying impression is in a descending
development, whereas our green, leafy, plants will in future attain to higher stages.
Our minerals developed entirely upon the Earth; there were no minerals upon the Moon, such as
exist to-day. The mineral kingdom is the former plant-mineral kingdom which sank down to a lower
stage and which was embedded into the earth as a firm crust. When the Earth cast off the Moon, the
substances which remained behind and which later on became
minerals, solid metals,. etc., were still an altogether liquid mass. The substances which at that time
had already reached a solid state, were hurled out into the cosmic spaces, because, had it kept these
substances, the Earth could not have developed, further. Then the first metals which reached a solid
state were added. Sometimes they had most peculiar forms! What you now encounter in the
mountains as granite or gneiss, at that time revealed quite clearly that it had arisen through the
descending development of vegetable beings, of plants which had become stones.
You may gather from this that upon the Sun and upon the Moon the mineral kingdom was a
vegetable kingdom. The vegetable kingdom has not developed out of the mineral kingdom, but
minerals have developed out of the vegetable kingdom! The coal which is now dug out of the earth
is nothing but a complex of petrified plant — plants which decayed and became stones, so that now
they can be dug out of the earth as petrified plants. If you were to go back still further, you would
see that once even the hardest stones were plants; and that they have arisen out of plants through the
descending development of plants to the mineral kingdom.
A clairvoyant sees this in the following way: If you investigate gneiss, the mineralogist will tell
you that it consists of feldspath, hornblende and mica — but he cannot go further. The clairvoyant
says: Feldspath in gneiss appears to spiritual vision quite clearly as the petrified stalk and the green
leaves of plants, the petrification of those parts which built them up; whereas the mica foundation is
related to that part of the plants which still develops to-day as the plants sepals and corollae. When
a modern occultist observes a piece of gneiss he will say: This is a petrified plant, and even as
plants now possess leaves and flowers, etc., so the mica foundation of gneiss has developed out of
the sepals and petals of ancient epochs.
Thus it can be explained how every mineral developed out of former plants. For the substances
which came over from the ancient Moon were plants, which then became densified in the liquid
mass of the Earth. Even as one can see the water in a receptacle freezing into solid ice, so it is
possible to observe in the early stages of the Earth's development the gradual forming of solid
masses. Thus the solid crust of the Earth slowly developed out of the liquid Earth. The further we
proceed, the higher and purer become the beings who live upon the Earth, and those that were
unable to ascend became petrified. It was the same both with animals and men. Man reached the
stage of being able to transform his body in a still higher measure.
The Moon-men floated and swam about in a primordial ocean; they were predisposed to this
swimming movement. This may sound strange to modern men, nevertheless it is true; and let it be
said without reserve, that I do not wish to mitigate some of these apparently grotesque descriptions;,
for generally people laugh at truths when they are revealed for the first time.

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 The human. being who swam about in this primordial ocean had as yet no eyes and endowed
with sight such as we have to-day: man, indeed, received the foundation of sight upon Saturn, but in
this primordial ocean he did not need to see; he had to orientate himself in other ways. The ocean
contained all the food which he required for his life and also animals, some benevolently disposed
towards him; and some not. At that time man still possessed an organ which now exists in the head,
it is the size of a cherry and is called the pineal gland (in reality it is not a gland). Once upon a time,
this organ was of immense size; it enabled man to orientate himself in the ocean and it protruded
from his head like a lantern. Man moved about, by using this lantern-like organ in front; it was a
sensitive organ, not an organ of sight. He used it when swimming about. Later on, he no longer
needed it and so it shriveled.
At that time it was not possible to speak of an Ego foundation. In regard to everything which
man did, he was still under the guidance of higher spiritual powers: We may compare him with the
animals of to-day. From a spiritual-scientific aspect, we now look upon animals by saying that man
differs from the animal through the fact that he has an individual soul; every man has his own soul,
his individual Ego.
This is not the case with animals; for whole groups of animals have one soul in common. For
instance, all the animals pertaining to the lion species have one soul, which lives in the astral world.
Similarly all the animals of tiger-nature have a soul in common. In the case of animals we therefore
speak of group souls. All the horses together have one group soul; these horses belong together.
Even as the single fingers belong to the hand, so the animals belong to their group soul.
Consequently we cannot speak of individual responsibility in the case of animals. Only of an
individual soul can we say that it is either good or evil.
At that time, the human beings possessed a kind of group-soul embedded in the bosom of the
Godhead. We must however realise that that which now lives in us as our Ego already existed in
those early epochs, but it did not live within the human body.
Man's origin must be sought in two currents: that which came over from the Moon and
continued to develop, constituted the animal-man who lived upon the Moon; but that which now
lives in us as our individual soul, existed in those times in the higher realm, in the care of the
Godhead, — only man's body lived below in the primordial ocean. Later on body and soul united;
the soul descended and spititualised the body, so that man became an individual soul.
Imagine a receptacle containing water; in it are many many drops of water, but it is impossible
to distinguish them. If you were to take many hundreds of small sponges dipping them into the
water, the drops first contained in the volume of water would be individualised. Similarly imagine
your spirituality soaring above the primordial ocean and compare your soul reposing in the bosom
of the Godhead with the drops of water; the bodies absorb the souls, even as the small sponges
absorb the drops of water; the souls thus became independent, in the same way in which the water
becomes individualised into drops through the sponges. Below we have the primordial ocean with
the floating-swimming bodies, and above there are the souls. We cannot describe this better than by
saying: “And the Spirit of God moved (literally: brooded) over the face of the waters,” which means
that he elaborated that which was below until it was able to take in the soul-drops.

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 The bodies themselves had to soar and float, and for this purpose the beings within them needed
a special organ. At that time man had no lungs, but a kind of air-bladder; this kept him afloat in the
ocean.
The fish which have remained behind upon that stage, have even to-day an air-bladder and no
lungs. The lungs developed little by little, as the air freed itself from the moisture and man could
raise himself above the water, so that he began to breathe in air. A long process, lasting millions of
years, finally enabled man to breathe in the air through his lungs. This gave rise to the physical form
capable of absorbing the soul. The more man became a being who breathed through lungs, the more
he became capable of taking in the soul. You cannot express this better than with the words: “And
God breathed His own breath into man's nostrils and he became an individual soul.”
At the same time this enabled man to develop something which he did not possess before; he
became capable of forming red blood. Before that time all human beings had a constitution which
gave them the same temperature as their environment; if they were surrounded by a higher
temperature, they were adapted to it. Red blood did not exist at that time and the animals above the
stage of amphibians are human bodies which have remained behind at a much later stage of
development. After the epoch in which man began to develop red blood, the animals also began to
develop into warm-blooded beings.
Even as a plant cannot develop out of a stone, but stones developed out of plants, so the animal
developed out of man. Every being upon a lower stage developed out of beings who once stood
upon higher stages, this is the theory of evolution. Man first had to transform himself into a being
with red blood, and then he could leave behind the animals. You may literally see in animals the
stages left behind in man's development. In every animal man perceives more or less a piece of
himself which he has left behind. Paracelsus expressed this so wonderfully in the words: When we
look about in the world, we see, as it were, the letters of an alphabet; in the human being alone these
letters unite and form a word. Consequently the meaning of that which lies spread out in man's
environment is to be seen in man himself.
You must then bear in mind the following: An apparently insignificant process (but in the light
of spiritual science it is an extraordinarily important process) took place at that time: it already
began in the early stages of the Earth's separation from the Moon, when the Earth was still
connected with the Moon, and it consisted in a certain cooperation between Mars and the Earth.
During the whole first half of the Earth's development, the forces of Mars streamed into the Earth,
so that this first half is actually designated as the Mars condition of the Earth. Iron is connected with
this passage through Mars and iron then began to play an entirely new role in the earthly process of
evolution.
Iron plays a far more superficial part in plants, but you can see how things are connected:
cosmically, the Earth passed through Mars and Mars gave it iron; iron was then stimulated to
exercise the functions which it now possesses and iron appeared in the blood. The aggressive side
of human nature, that which turns man into a warrior here on earth, is connected with the iron in the
blood. The Greek myth knew this, for it designated Mars as the God of War.
The human body thus became capable of taking in the Ego; for without red, warm blood a body
cannot be the bearer of an Ego. This is very important. Pulmonary breathing is the first condition

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for the formation of warm, red blood. The required processes then arose upon the earth and became
embodied with the blood. Little by little, man developed so as to become a red-blooded being
breathing through lungs, and then he left behind the other creatures, the lower warm-blooded
animals.
In occultism, animals are not only differentiated in the ordinary way, but another differentiation
is pointed out. We distinguish the “inwardly sounding animals”, those which can express their own
pain and pleasure in sounds from the “non-sounding animals”. If you descend to the lower animals,
you may still hear sounds, but these are purely external, produced by rubbing together certain parts
of the body,or by climatic influences; these are sounds produced by external causes. Only the
animals which branched off when man had developed into a warm-blooded being were able to
express pain or pleasure through sounds coming from within.
This was the time when man's larynx was transformed into an organ of sound. The fact that
outside the liquid earth substance became crust, produced an inner process in the human being;
parallel with the external process of hardening, an osseous and cartilaginous skeleton developed
within the human being out of the soft parts of his body. Beings with a skeleton did not exist before
that time.
The minerals outside are the counterpart of the bones. The Earth perpetuated this epoch in the
masses of rock and man in his skeleton. Man then gradually became an upright walking being, thus
changing over from his former horizontal position into a vertical one. He turned round, so that his
front extremities became organs of work, and his other extremities were used for walking. There is
a connection in all this, for no being without a sound-producing larynx and an upright walk can be
an Ego-being.
Animals were predisposed for this, but they degenerated. Consequently they could not transform
themselves into beings endowed with speech, for speech is connected with a larynx located in a in a
body having an upright position. We may gather this through a primitive fact. Many dogs are
undoubtedly cleverer than parrots, yet a parrot learns more, because its larynx is in a more vertical
position. Parrots and starlings learn to speak a little, because their larynx is located vertically.
This shows you that the Earth and man advance to ever new stages of development. The
atmosphere also changed: a condition developed in which the Earth was surrounded by a misty,
foggy air. This took place at the time, when the Lemurians saw their continent crumbling away, so
that they wandered out to Atlantis and became Atlanteans.
During this, phase of evolution; in which man acquired the first elements of speech, which were,
to be sure, sounds expressing mere feelings, the soul emerged more and more. Essentially speaking,
the Atlantean had a dull kind of clairvoyance. As he came out of the sub-earthly ocean, his eyes
developed to the extent of enabling him to participate in the light raying out from the sun through
the masses of mist. Physically, his power of sight and perception developed more and more, but he
gradually lost his old clairvoyance. The most advanced race of the Atlanteans developed in a certain
region of the Earth's surface during the last third of the Atlantean era, which was a significant close
of phase of evolution.
In view of the existing conditions, the Atlantean who traveled more to the West, became
inwardly neutral natures, cold and indifferent, and developed later on into the copper coloured

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population of America. The others who traveled further South, became the black Negro population,
and those who turned to the East became later on the yellow Malayan population. These populations
concentrated themselves in the most unfavourable places which prohibited a further development.
But the peoples who lived in a region now occupied by Ireland, and further West, in a country now
covered by the ocean, reached the highest stage of development. The mixtures of not and cold
streams which existed there, permitted the human body to develop in the best and speediest manner.
A pronounced Ego-feeling, a first foundation of such a feeling, developed from the still magical will
power of those epochs. It was then that man first learned to say “I”. The human beings then also
learned the first foundations of counting and of arithmetic, and they developed the first capacity of
forming judgments and of combining thoughts.
There were always Beings among them who had progressed further, who were the leaders of
humanity and their relationship to man was that of Beings who belonged to a higher realm. These
Beings became the teachers and guides of men and it was they who induced them to migrate
towards the East. From the site which lay in the neighbourhood of present-day Ireland certain
peoples had already migrated to the East, settling as far as Asia. Now the most highly developed
masses of peoples began to migrate to the East, and everywhere along their journey they formed
colonies, the most powerful of these colonies, with the most highly developed culture, existed in the
neighbourhood of the present Gobi desert. Later on, a certain number of peoples travelled from
there to many parts of the world: one group went to the present India; where they encountered an
indigenous yellow-brown race, with whom they became partly united.
It was after the Atlantean flood, that this colony travelled South and founded the first culture of
the post-Atlantean epoch, the first culture of our own age. The most advanced teachers who went
with this colony, the first great teachers of ancient India, are called the ancient Indian Rishis. The
Hindoos of to-day are the descendants of that ancient population, but if we wish to discover traces
of this culture we must go far back into times which are not known to history; the Vedas, for
example, already belong to a later epoch, for nothing was recorded in those early days.
The ancient Hindoo nation represents the first cultural group after the Atlantean age and
consequently they resembled the Atlanteans most of all. The Atlantean was a kind of dreamer; his
consciousness was dull, he did not have any power of judgment and self-consciousness and like a
dreamer he wandered about half consciously. The ancient Hindoos were the first to overcome this
condition, but they were still partly rooted in it. The ancient Hindoo longed to experience the spirit
realm of past times and yearned for the clairvoyance which the Atlanteans still possessed. In ancient
India the early Yoga training still consisted of a kind of dulling of human consciousness, which
transferred the human being back to the times when he could still perceive in his environment
spiritual beings. The Hindoo longed for this clairvoyance of ancient Atlantis and in the Yoga
training the Rishis taught him the methods of producing clairvoyance, though these methods
followed another line of development.
The Atlantean did not possess any power of judgment, whereas in India the power of judgment
had already awakened; but men loved, so to speak, that which they had already overcome and they
knew how to conjure it up again, by dulling their consciousness and by recalling that which they
had seen in earlier epochs. The culture of ancient India preserved this through its highest
representatives. The Hindoo did not seek to enhance his consciousness, but he dimmed it down to a

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dreamy state, and this explains the passivity of the Hindoo character. It would be a great
disadvantage, indeed harmful, if modern culture were to take hold in a greater measure of life in
India.
During the first epochs, the human beings did not perceive minerals; and what the Atlantean saw
least clearly of all ,was the mineral kingdom. Through his visions, the spirit-world was the one
which existed for him, and this world lived in everything. He perceived the human being
surrounded by colours — by sympathetic colours if he liked him. This was the world which the
Hindoo tried to conjure up again. But human progress requires that man shall enter more and more
into a relationship with that which exists upon the earth in the world of matter, The Atlanteans did
not need any instruments; they orientated themselves through their clairvoyance and they attributed
no importance whatever to physical instruments. The Hindoo followed the Atlantean in this, and
consequently he looked upon the physical world as Maya, as a kind of illusion and lie. He had no
interest in the world which is accessible to the ordinary senses. He asked the dream-like world of
the Spirit to rise up before him.
The progress from this Indian culture to the next cultural epoch, i.e. the Persian one preceding
the time of Zarathustra, consisted in the fact of humanity learning to appreciate external reality. A
second colony went out from the Gobi desert and founded a kingdom in Asia minor which existed
in remote times and which gave birth to the kingdom of Zarathustra. The Persian began to perceive
the existence of a world in which he had to be active. The Divine essence appeared to him as
something which he had to overcome, against which he had to measure his strength. From the
spiritual world he drew the forces which he needed in order to work in this world. The world
appeared to him as something dark, which had to be transformed with the aid of the good forces.
The Hindoo established a science pertaining exclusively to the spiritual world, which told him
nothing about the external reality. But to the Persian this external reality presented another aspect, it
was something which had to be constantly transformed through his own work.
The third colony which went out from the Gobi desert went further West into Asia Minor and
founded the Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian cycle of culture. In addition to the earlier science of the
Spirit, these nations also possessed a science of the physical world. An astrology and geometry
arose in Egypt which taught the Egyptians how to treat and cultivate the earth. Science extended to
spheres which the Hindoo still looked upon as a world of illusion. Now this world of illusion had
become a world calling for the keenest thought, for a manner of thinking connected with physical
things. When the Hindoo immersed himself in the starry world, this world was to him only the
expression of the Godhead. But the Chaldean loved the physical World; to him it was a part of the
Godhead into which he penetrated and immersed himself. This activity leading him from the divine
into the physical world appears to us in the Babylonian-Assyrian culture.
We have now reached a point leading us to the fourth cultural cycle, which we designate as the
Graeco-Latin culture. The human being is now included in the external perception, The Egyptian
knew that the world was not a chaos, but that it was fraught with meaning and that it had been
constructed throughout immeasurable aeons of time. The sphinx and the pyramid expressed great
cosmic thoughts. The ancient Egyptian concealed his knowledge of these truths in images: he
created the sphinx, which faces us like a riddle of evolution itself: the development of man's higher
essence from earlier animal-like conditions. This was the wisdom which the Egyptian spoke out

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into the world in his own way. In ancient Egypt you may find calculations and measurements,which
were drawn directly from heaven. The cities were built in such a way that the Egyptian expressed in
these constructions a sacred order of laws and they sought to express in images the cosmic laws
which governed the universe. This did not as yet include the individual human essence, which only
begins to unfold in Greek art, and which shows us that man now takes hold of his own being as an
immediate reality and seeks to create it as an image in space.
Man became more and more familiar with the world which the Hindoo designated as Maya. He
began to face his own self. Within the world which in ancient India was considered as an illusion,
the Greek created a world of realities and realised that he had to create it without the help of the
Gods; more and more he united himself with the external reality and out of his own strength he
permeated the external reality with a divine essence. If you study the Greek “polis” you do not find
in it any trace of jurisprudence. Man had to establish this during the Roman epoch as “Roman right”
which governed the private social intercourse of men, as Roman citizens.
The human being thus acquired an ever greater knowledge of that which takes place in the
world of external reality.
The fifth cycle of culture is the one in which we now live, with our materialistic civilisation. It
is the time in which man has descended most profoundly into the external world. Compare, our age
with preceding ones: We know, to be sure, how to apply the forces of the spiritual world to our
physical environment — we carry the spiritual world into it. But in the light of spiritual science this
presents strange aspects. Think of the time when the human being still produced his flour by
grinding corn between two stones — he did not apply much spiritual power to do this. In ancient
Egypt and Chaldea he still immersed himself in the wisdom of the heaven; he still learned a great
deal concerning the spiritual significance of the earth itself and of the starry sky. The Greek still
placed into the world of physical reality the idealised human form. What is the aspect of our own
time? A great amount of spiritual power is used to produce modern natural science with its technical
appliances. How great is the difference between obtaining food by primitive means, and obtaining it
from America with the aid of telephone, engines, etc.! Yet these complicated technical means are
after all used to satisfy the same needs also felt by animals and which animals are able to satisfy by
primitive means! Try to investigate how many of the modern inventions really serve spiritual life,
and how much spiritual power is used for the sake of furthering material life! What an enormous
amount of spiritual power must human beings develop at the present time for the satisfaction of
material requirements! There is no great difference whether an animal satisfies its hunger by
grazing, or whether man obtains his food from America or Australia through all kinds of means.
This is hot an adverse criticism, for this had to come. Man had to submerge himself in the
physical world. The Hindoo still looked, upon it as an illusion, but modern man considers the
physical world as the only reality. We have reached the deepest point in our descent and this
rendered possible the greatest progress upon the physical plane: This descent, however, must not be
in vain, even from a spiritual aspect!
A new element has now arisen, an element that was implanted into the world during the first
third of the post-Atlantean epoch: it is the rise of Christianity, the most significant influence in the
whole development of the earth. In the light of occultism, everything which proceeded is only the
preparation for Christianity. Buddha, Hermes, and so forth, prophetically pointed towards

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Christianity, for Christianity must lift man out of his deepest entanglement with matter. And it will
raise man out of this entanglement. Man's ascent from matter begins again. The task of spiritual
science is to help in this ascent into the spiritual world.
The next epoch of our Post-Atlantean culture will bring still more inventions and discoveries;
but man will more and more perceive mere letters in the physical world. A genuine Christianity will
speak of the external world as condensed Spirit, and the Spirit will once more arise out of matter.
We shall then no longer say that the external world is an illusion, for we shall recognise it fully and
lose nothing, and yet rise up to a higher spiritual world.
Christianity will contribute most of all towards this course of development. During the sixth
epoch, great masses of men will be deeply moved and seized by truths which are now revealed to
few, and this will give mankind an insight into the spiritual world. What now exists as thought will
in future be a real force. Many people will have this power of thought during the sixth epoch of
culture. The theosophical Christianity of to-day will spread among great masses of men. These
thoughts will grow stronger and stronger and they will have a creative influence upon the human
form.
Once upon a time the human body had quite a different aspect from that which it has to-day;
indeed, if I were to describe to you this human body of ancient times, you would be greatly
surprised. Because it was still soft, the Ego could exercise a far greater influence upon it. Modern
man has only retained an insignificant rest of the psychic influence of will upon his body, for
instance, when you are seized by sudden fright you grow pale, because the inner soul-condition
penetrates as far as the blood and your complexion changes. But other bodily conditions can show
you how little we are now able to control our body. With the gradual ascent into the spiritual world
this will change; man's body will become softer and softer and he will once more be able to
influence the thoughts which now still exist so sparsely, will gradually grow stronger; these
thoughts will then be able to transform even the body. Man will be able to mould his own body —
but this will only be the case in a very distant future.
Sex arose in the human being only during the Lemurian age; before that time he was bi-sexual,
both male-and female. With the incorporation of the Ego, the human being was split into two sexes.
We shall learn to know this better, when we shall consider more closely the development of the
human blood. This will lead us to the problem of the division into sexes and also to the fact that the
now existing division of the sexes will again disappear.
Thus we look into a future in which the human being will exercise quite a different influence
upon his body.
What is, for example, that which sends the blush of shame into our face? What is it? A last
remnant of the influence which man once exercised over his body. Man will more and more be able
to work consciously into his body, and then will come the time when he will be able to transform
the muscle of his heart into one which obeys' him.
Science describes the heart as a mere physical apparatus: as a pump. But the blood does not only
stream through the body because the heart pumps the blood through it; everything which constitutes
the blood depends upon the soul; the blood pulses more or less quickly according to our feelings,
and it is the blood which produces the movement of the heart. But in future the human being will

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have a conscious influence upon the heart; therefore the heart is an organ which is now at the
beginning of its development. The heart is a muscle with a spiritual development, an organ through
which the human being will be able to express himself as he develops towards a higher stage, thus
exercising a creative influence upon his whole body.
The heart is only at the beginning of its development, and for this reason it is a cross to
materialistic science. Materialistic science tells you: all the muscles through which you move, are
formed of transversal strips, but all those muscles which move automatically consist of longitudinal
strips. The heart however is a peculiar organ upsetting every calculation! It is an automatic muscle,
nevertheless it has, even to-day, transversal fibres.
To-morrow I will show you how certain things can be explained in the light of spiritual science.
Spiritual science thus throws light upon that which surrounds us. We shall redeem everything
which has become matter from its present rigid condition. This is how the thought of redemption,
may be grasped in its deepest essence! Man has developed to an ever higher stage, leaving behind
him certain kingdoms in the course of this development. He will become powerful and redeem that
which he has left behind; he will help to redeem the earth! But if he is to redeem the earth he must
not despise it, but unite himself with it.

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Lecture 12

THE STAGES OF CHRISTIAN INITIATION.

Yesterday we tried to follow the evolution of humanity in the universe and also upon the earth.
Today I shall only add a few explanations to this, in order to pass over to that which spiritual
science is able to say concerning the significance of Christianity and also concerning the Christian
initiation. But to begin with please turn your gaze once more to the point of issue of human
development.
We have said that when the earth separated from the present Moon, it was enclosed by a kind of
primordial ocean, and we explained how the human being then united himself with his soul-spiritual
part. We then pursued this course of development as far as the present time, which we characterised
as the time of man's deepest descent into matter through the spirit. We recognised that an ascent
must once more come, a spiritualisation, and we also spoke of the mission of Theosophy,or Spiritual
Science in regard to this course of development.
We already pointed out that the division into two sexes took place in ancient Lemuria. The
lower beings upon the Moon were already divided into two sexes, but the human being who lives in
each one of you was only at that time divided into two sexes upon entering his bodily form. We
must think of these antediluvian times of human evolution; before the separation of mankind into
two sexes, male and female, in such a way that what we designate as sex did not exist as yet, or at
least, it existed in quite a different form. Now a great deal depends upon our grasping the great
significance of the fact explained just now for the whole course of human evolution.
If this division into two sexes had not occurred, if humanity were not to complete its course of
development through this cooperation of the male and female principle, the human being would
have an entirely different form. The individual element in man comes from the influence of the
male principle. Yesterday I explained to you the difference between a group soul and an individual
soul. This is quite different among animals. The animal has two sexes even on the astral plane. But
the human beings did not have these two sexes on the astral plane before descending like drops into
the individualised human bodies, or they had not yet passed, as one might. say, through “the fall
into sex”. Had the sexlessness of man continued in the physical world, replacing the two sexes, man
could not have become an individual being. The true meaning of human development is that man
should become more and more individualised.
If we once more survey the epochs which I described to you yesterday you would see how
greatly the human beings resembled one another in regard to their external form. The cooperation of
the two sexes gave rise to individual differentiations; these became more and more pronounced the
further man advanced into the future. Without the division into sexes the generations would always
look alike. We must really say that the fact that man becomes an independent being depends upon
the division into two sexes.
In that remote time, and far back in the Atlantean epoch, but even in the post-Atlantean epoch,
you find that the law of “marriage among close relatives” prevails, and: that this is only gradually

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replaced by the law of “marriage among non-relatives” In remote epochs people married within
closely related groups, within small tribes. In every nation you will find that it was once considered
unusual and wrong to marry someone who belonged to another tribe one's own, and this was
everywhere considered an exceptional event.
The further back we go, the more we find that it was looked upon as an ethical law for people to
marry within their own tribe; so that blood only mixed with the blood of relatives. We can explain
this process best of all by setting out from a comparison which hits the nail on the head, whereas all
other comparisons are weak. Let me tell you a little story in this connection.
You know Anzengruber and Rosegger. Rosegger is a writer who described his village characters
with great devotion. Also Anzengruber has a good knowledge of his subject. In his drama “Der
Meineidbauer,” (The Perjured Farmer) the farmer and peasants whom he portrays really live. We
know how plastic these characters are in the “Meineidbauer” and in his, “Parson Of Kirchfeld” and
in other plays. Rosegger and Anzengruber one day went for a walk together and Rosegger said: “I
know you really never look at farmers; perhaps you could describe them better if you went to see
them in the village.” Anzengruber replied: “If I did this, I would probably be quite at a loss. I never
learned to know peasants more closely, but I can describe them because my father, my grandfather
and all my ancestors were farmers, and I still have this farmer's blood in my veins. I form my
characters through the farmer's blood in me, and I do not bother about the rest!”
This is an interesting fact and it indicates what we should bear in mind. Where blood does not
mix, as in the case of old tribal communities, or in the case of the Anzengruber family, we find such
a marked character as the writer Anzengruber, in his last incarnation. He had inherited the plastic
force and he knew how to appreciate it; this plastic force ran through the blood of the generations.
This really occurs where the blood only mixes with the blood of relatives. If the blood mixed with
alien blood it quenched the soul's plastic forces. Had Anzengruber married, had he married a
someone belonging to a different social class his children would no longer have had this plastic
force.
In the case of almost every nation still existing to-day we can observe this phenomenon at the
beginning; marriages within small circles of blood-relatives were always connected with an
extraordinary power of memory. They were connected with a dull, vague clairvoyance people could
remember what they had experienced since their birth and they looked upon these experiences as
something connected with their personality. Before these marriages between close relatives were
replaced by marriages with non-relatives, people could literally remember the experiences of their
grandfather and even of distant ancestors; they said “I”, and passed through the experiences of their
grandfathers, great-grandfathers, and forefathers. The further back we go the more we find a power
of memory reaching far back into the line of the generations.
it is interesting to see that these people: did not feel that they were individual egos when they
said “I”, their grandfather was included in in this, and they bore his name, a name which
encompassed all. Even as you now adopt a name connecting it with an individual person; so these
nations adopted a name reaching far back into the centuries, because birth did not break off the
thread of memory. The individual human being had no name, for birth was no special event. All
men had one name, as long as the thread of memory remained unbroken.

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 In the Bible you have a document relating this giving of names: all the discussions about the
names of the patriarchs are merely theological discussions! Adam was Adam and became so old
because the power of memory was preserved for centuries, and the individual who descended from
Adam felt that his Ego was one with that of his ancestor. The blood which thus flowed through the
centuries producing such a memory was named “Adam”. So long as memory lasted in the line of the
generations and the experiences of the forefathers could be remembered as if they were one's own,
one said: “Adam still lives. People did no at all experience themselves as individual physical
personalities, but they identified themselves with that which existed spiritually and which united
them.
Then the marriages between non-relatives became more and more frequent. The mixing of the
blood gradually killed the power of memory which once reached beyond the individual human
being. The limitation of memory is a result of these marriages between non-relatives. In the course
of human evolution the individual human being gradually grew out of his tribe.The blood in
common which flowed through the tribes also contained the common expression for this blood:
love. Those who were blood-relatives loved each other. But this love, which we may designate as a
primordial love connected with the blood and leading to the development of families gradually died
out in the course of time. The love of the past greatly differed from the love which shines towards
us as the love of future times. During the Atlantean epoch, this love ruling through the blood
prevailed; people who had the same blood in their veins loved one another. But this gradually
disappeared; individually, the human beings gradually emancipated themselves from the closer
family ties.
This primordial love, which arose when the souls began to descend into physical bodies, thus
faces us in a descending,course of development; this love streamed into the human beings at the
moment which the Bible describes in the words: “And God breathed into man's nostrils the breath
of life and he became a living soul.”
But something else arose at that time. Man became a living soul, and consequently a being who
breathed through his lungs. The air which he thus breathed in, produced his red blood. The Ego-
nature expressed itself in the red blood. As long as the blood was a common element shared by
many, the Ego too was a common Ego. We see this in the Jews, where a whole nation was ruled by
a group-soul. But the human beings gradually developed and emancipated themselves from the
blood of their relatives. When the first breath of air entered the human being it formed the first
foundation of his blood. But long epochs of time passed by before mankind reached the degree of
maturity enabling it to influence the blood so that the primordial love could be replaced by a love
for mankind as a whole.
Imagine the course of human development as described just now: The primordial love would
gradually die out; love among relatives, the love of a mother for her child, and so forth, would have
to decrease; the blood has not the power of encompassing the whole of humanity with a tie of love,
so that the power of the Ego, the power of selfishness would grow ever more ... An event had
therefore to occur which replaced the primordial love with another kind of love, calling into life a
spiritual love, and this event is Christianity.
The appearance of Christianity prevented that which would otherwise have taken place: the
disintegration of the whole of humanity into single human atoms. The human beings must indeed

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become more and more independent, for this lies in the development of their blood, but that which
was driven apart naturally, must once more be led together spiritually, through a new power which
is able to exercise its influence without the love connected with the blood: This new power is
Christianity.
The Mystery of Golgotha thus acquires a fundamental significance for the whole evolution of
humanity. If we understand this, we also understand the meaning of the words: the Blood of Christ.
This is not something which can be experienced or investigated externally, but something which
must be considered as a mystical fact. I have therefore entitled my book purposely, “Christianity as
Mystical Fact” and not “The Mysticism of Christianity”!
In order to understand the nature of Christ Jesus upon the earth, in order to understand this
fundamental significance of Christianity, we must study the preparatory stages which led to
Christianity. For they already existed in ancient times. You may really see how an early Christian
regarded this by taking a passage of St. Augustine's writings: “What we now call religion has
always been the true religion, except, that that which once constituted the true religion is now called
the Christian religion.” St. Augustine still knew that Christianity has a foundation: that which once
lived in the ancient Mysteries. These very Mysteries are now to be revealed through the
theosophical movement. Let me characterize it in a few words.
There were schools which were at the same time churches and centres of art; at the head of these
schools stood the leaders of humanity, those who had advanced most in human development. Into
these schools were admitted people who were considered to be adapted for a training enabling them
to gain an independent conception of the spiritual world which surrounded them. They were
carefully prepared; first of all they had to learn the facts of the spiritual world theoretically, more or
less in the same way in which we now learn these facts through spiritual science. Then they reached
ever higher stages. Theory changed into practice, exoteric into esoteric truths. They received a
living instruction in every subject. Strict rules governed the pupil's life, so that he might gradually
ascend to the contemplation of the spiritual world. The pupil first learned to know the facts and laws
of the spiritual world, and then he had to develop through exercises the organs which enabled him
to look into the spiritual world.
Let me now describe to you the final act. You must bear in mind that man's sleep consists in the
fact that his astral body goes out of his etheric and physical bodies, whereas death consists in the
fact that the physical body remains alone, because the etheric and astral body have left it. Now the
leader of the Mysteries, the hierophant, through methods which he applied, prepared the human
being in such a way that his physical body lay for three and a half days as if dead, while the etheric
body and the other members were outside. This was not sleep, nor death, but a third condition.
Everything was prepared in such a way that during these three and a half days the human being
could journey into the higher worlds, through the guidance of the hierophant who initiated him, he
now learned to know the things which have been described in my preceding lectures. He learned to
know this in a direct way, through his own vision; after these three and a half days he was newly
born. When he returned, he could remember everything which he had experienced in the spiritual
worlds; now he was a living witness to the existence of these worlds. His words acquired a different
sound from that which they had before, he had become “Blessed”, and the words could be applied
to him: “Blessed are those who see”.

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 When he returned, he was given new name; he laid aside his old name and as an initiate he
continued to use his new name. A strange phenomenon arose when he descended from the spiritual
worlds and again took possession of his physical body, when he again began to live in the physical
worlds. In the case of every initiate — this was a law — words rose to his lips which can be
translated with: “My God, my God, how Thou hast glorified me!”
This could be felt by a human being who had reached this stage. He could say of himself:
“Everything which still existed in the form of primordial love, everything which is to be implanted
in man through the blood, must be replaced within me by a love which knows no difference
between mother, brother, sister and other human beings”. Spiritually, he had abandoned his parents,
wife, children, brother and sister, and had become a follower of the Spirit. And people said of him
that Christ had come to life within him.
All this had taken place in the concealment of the Mysteries. These men were the witnesses of
the spiritual world, and they were also prophets, for they pointed towards a coming event. This
event is none other than the Mystery Of Golgotha. What took place with the individual human
beings in the Mystery schools, occurred upon the physical plane in Palestine once only, for the
whole world.
If you were now able to study the instructions which were given, to the old initiates, you would
find that they closed with this experience lasting three and a half days; but never before had this
experience been enacted upon the physical plane! A new epoch began with the Mystery of
Golgotha. You may therefore say: All initiations were prophetic announcements of that which took
place in the Mystery of Golgotha; this event could only take place because an individuality as
encompassing as the Ruler of the Sun Spirits was incarnated in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. What
took place upon Mount Golgotha, could not have been fulfilled by any human Ego; such as we have
it. Such a deed called for an Ego which had already advanced t0 a high stage of development upon
the Sun.
In this way we are able to grasp the Divine humanity of Christ Jesus, which modern men so
easily reject, because they cannot penetrate into the depths of the spiritual world. If we consider
things in the true light, we may therefore perceive that upon Golgotha an event took place which
has a significance greatly surpassing that of any other event.
Among modern men, Richard Wagner alone had an inkling of the significance of the blood, I
have already explained to you that man's glandular processes are an expression of the etheric body;
his nervous processes an expression of the astral body, and the blood an expression of the Ego. I
have shown you that if Christ had not appeared, the development of the blood would have led to a
greater form of egoism; the Ego would more and more have increased man's selfishness and
egoism. The unnecessary blood, man's excess of blood, had to flow out, had to be sacrificed, so that
humanity might not completely lose itself in selfishness. The true mystic sees in the blood which
flowed out of the Savior's wounds the surplus blood which had to flow out in order that a soul-
spiritual brother love might take hold of the whole of mankind.
This is how the spiritual scientist looks upon the blood which streamed down from the Cross;
the blood which had to be taken away from humanity in, order that man might rise above material
things. The love which was linked by blood ties was therefore replaced by a love which will fully

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develop in the future; by a love going from one human being to the other. Only in this light is it
possible to understand the words of Christ Jesus: — “He that forsaketh not father, mother, brother,
sister, wife and child, cannot become my disciple.” These words can only be grasped if we bear in
mind that the event upon Golgotha has overcome everything which had once to be strengthened
through the kindred blood, through the love of relatives. He who replaced this love by the new,
soul-spiritual love, could say that the old form of love had to be relinquished. This is how things are
connected.
The appearance of Christ Jesus Himself is a deep mystical fact; and can only be understood if
we do not apply to it the standard of natural science. Those who apply natural-scientific standards to
the appearance of Christ Jesus, resemble people who see a tear and judge it according to the law of
gravity, refusing to see in it an expression of the soul.
Such things can only be understood with the aid of spiritual science. The appearance of Christ
Jesus upon the earth differs from that of all other founders of religions. What the others gave was a
teaching. In the case of Christ Jesus we can really say: Almost every word which He uttered, has
already, been said in the past in one or the other connection. The essential thing in the case of
Hermes or of Buddha is the words which they spoke: in Christ Jesus the essential thing is the fact
that He existed, that He lived upon the earth, and that the Mystery of Golgotha was enacted.
Those who wish to be Christians in a truly spiritual-scientific meaning, become so through the
fact that they believe in the Divinity of Christ-Jesus. The first disciples did not only proclaim: “we
are sent out into the world in order to announce His words”, but they were to bear witness to His
existence: “We have heard the words themselves and, have placed our hands into His wounds!”
The essential thing is the fact that Christ-Jesus existed. In other religions you may eliminate the
founders of these religions and you would not lose much. But if you were to eliminate Christ-Jesus,
then Christianity would not be there! This is the difference. People like Darwin, Strauss, Drews, etc.
may proclaim as much as they like that all other religions can be rediscovered in Christianity — this
is not essential, for the essential point to be borne in mind is the fact that He existed and that He set
forth as a fact what the Prophets had foretold. Christianity is therefore no theory, but a working
power.
If you were to rise from the earth to another planet, you would not only see the earth, but also
the earth's etheric and astral body; you would see the spiritual earth besides the physical one; and if
you could dwell on that planet for thousands of years, if you could have dwelt on it even before the
appearance of Christ-Jesus, you would have seen how in the spiritual part of the earth the colour of
the astral body underwent a change through the fact that Christ-Jesus was there. The earth really
underwent a change, and the men who lived after Christ-Jesus, lived upon a transformed earth. For
this reason they can overcome the deepest descent of the spirit. Before that time, it was necessary to
be raised to the spiritual worlds if one wished to know something about it; but in Christianity the
Mystery Itself has descended to the earth. It was there, as a historical event, visible to physical eyes.
The Godhead had to descend in order to lead humanity up once more, from the physical world into
the spiritual.
This is the description of Christianity which you will find in the purest of Gospels, in the Gospel
of St. John. It is not only a poetical work, but a book of life. Only one who has experienced it,

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knows what the Gospel of St. John really is: and if its reality has been experienced, then everything
which I have explained to you to-day can be proclaimed as a self--discovered truth.
Let me now show you briefly how we may attain knowledge of the truths of Christianity.
Among many books, the Gospel of St. John is the one which indicates the methods by which it
is possible to fathom the depths of Christianity. Even when Christianity did not as yet exist in its
present form, it was already taught in the Mystery-schools; for instance, in the school of Dionysius
the Areopagite, a disciple of the Apostle Paul. In ancient times it was usual to designate throughout
centuries the nearer of the Mysteries with the same name, so that this person who took over the
Mysteries and wrote them down, was given the same name as his predecessor.
Those who immerse themselves into the first words of the Gospel of St. John from the
standpoint of esotericism, experience that they become within them a quickening force. But the
Gospel of St. John must be applied as it was originally intended to be applied; and we must have the
patience to take the first sentences of the Gospel of St. John again and again as a subject of
meditation, and to let them pass every morning before our soul. They. will in that case have the
power to draw out of our soul deeply hidden forces. But we must of course have a correct
translation of these words expressed in German word-characters, they must more or less express
what the original text contained. In a translation which is as faithful as possible, let me now show
you that the real life of the spirit is indicated in the words of the Gospel of St. John.
“Im Urbeginne war das Wort, und das Wort war bei Gott, and ein Gott war das Wort.
Dieses war im Urbeginne bei Gott.

Alles ist durch dasselbe geworden, and ausser durch dieses ist nichts von dem
Entstandenen geworden. In diesem war das Leben, and das Leben war das Licht der
Menschen. Und das Licht schien in die Finsternis, aber die Finsternis hat es nicht
begriffen.

Es ward ein Mensch gesandt von Gott, mit seinem Namen Johannes. Dieser kam
zum Zeugnis, auf dass er Zeugnis ablege von dem Licht, auf dass durch ihn alle glauben
sollten. Er war nicht das Licht, sondern ein Zeuge des Lichtes; denn das wahre Licht,
das alle Menschen erleuchtet, sollte in die Welt kommen.

Es war in der Welt, und die Welt ist durch es geworden, aber die Welt hat es nicht
elkannt.

Zu den einzelnen Menschan kam es, bis zu den Ich-Menschen kam es, aber die
einzelnen Menschen — die Ich-Menschen — nahmen es nicht auf.

Die es aber aufnahmen, die konnten sich durch es als Gotteskinder offenbaren. —
Die seinem Namen vertrauten, sind nicht aus Blut, nicht aus dem Willen des Fleisches
and nicht aus menschlichen Willen, — sondern aus Gott geworden. Und das Wort is
Fleisch geworden und hat unter uns gewohnen, and wir haben seine Lehre gehöret, —
die Lehre von dem einigen Sohne des Vaters, erfüllt von Hingabe und Wahrheit!”

(Translation into English)

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 “In the beginning was the Word and the Word was with God and the Word was a
God. This was from the very beginning with God.

All things came into being through Him, and except through Him, was not anything
made that was made.

In Him was the life, and the life became the light of men. And the light shone in the
darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it.

There was a man sent from God, whose name was John. The same came for a
witness to bear witness of the Light, that all men through him might believe. He was not
the Light, but a witness for the Light; for the true Light which lighteth every man had to
come into the world.

He was in the world, and the world came into being through Him, but the world did
not comprehend Him.
To each man He came, even to the Ego-men, but these individual men, these Ego-men,
received Him not.

As many as received Him could manifest themselves through Him as children of

God. Those who confided in His name are not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh,
nor of the will of man, but of God. And the Word became flesh and dwelt among us, and
we have heard His teaching, the teaching of the only Son of the Father, filled with
devotion and truth.”

I could now tell you many things of how you would have to immerse yourselves in each chapter
of St. John's Gospel. Let me only give you one example — how you would have to use the chapters
from the thirteenth chapter onward, if you were a true disciple of Christian Initiation. What I am
telling you in words, has occurred in fact to render it more comprehensible, I will clothe it in the
form of a dialogue, giving you an idea of what took place between teacher and pupil.
The teacher said to his pupil: — You must develop within you a feeling, you must think the
following: Transfer yourself into the plant. If it had consciousness such as you have, and if this
consciousness enabled it to look down to the stones, it would say: Thou lifeless stone; thou art a
lower being than I in rank among the beings of this world; I am higher than thou. But could I exist
as a plant, if thou were not there as stone? I draw my nourishment from thee. I could not exist
without that which is lower than me.
And if the plant were endowed with feeling it would say: I am indeed higher than the stone, but
I bow down humbly towards it, for the stone made it possible for me to live.
Similarly the animal would have to bow down to the plant and say: If thou; O plant, were not
there, I could not exist, although I am higher than thee. To thee, a lower being, I owe my existence.
Humbly I bow before thee.
Now rise up to the kingdom of man, survey the different human beings, the lowest and the
highest, — what would each one have to say, who stands upon a higher rank of development than
the others? Even as the plant bends down to the mineral and the animal to the plant; so each human

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being who stands upon a higher stage must bend down to those upon a lower stage and say; Thou
standest upon a lower rank, yet to thee I owe the fact that I can be there!
Now imagine this carried out to the highest stages, reaching as far as Christ-Jesus, and you will
have Christ's attitude towards the Apostles with whom He lived. He bent down towards them, even
as the plant bends down to the mineral and washed their feet “I owe my life to you, and I bend
down to you!”
For a long time the pupil had to pass through a scale of all these feelings. This feeling had to
become more and more alive and then he awoke to the first stage of Christian Initiation. This can be
felt through an outer and inner symptom: The outer symptom consists therein that the pupil really
feels for a time as if the watery element were washing around his feet, and the inner symptom
consists in the fact that he himself experiences the thirteenth chapter of the Gospel of St. John as an
inner vision upon the astral plane.
The teacher then proceeded by telling the pupil: You must experience something else: you must
now imagine that bodily and psychical pair and suffering rush towards you from every side; but you
must arm yourself against everything so that you can say: However great the pain and suffering
which come towards me, I remain upright, I do not allow myself to overthrown! This is called the
Scourging. Its outer symptom is that one experiences on the skin's surface pains which are an
indication that the soul has reached this stage. And the inner symptom is that one sees oneself upon
the astral plane undergoing scourging. But the essential thing is that the soul gains in the form of
inner experience.
The third thing which the pupil heard from his teacher was the following: Now you must
develop a feeling that you do not only withstand every form of pain coming towards you, but that
you remain upright and steady, even when the holiest
within you is cast down into the dust. You must remain so strong, that everyone can tell you, This is
worth nothing. But even though people trample on you, you must know its worth, and you must be
able to withstand a whole world. — If the pupil reached this stage, he was said to have reached the
“Crowning with Thorns”. The outer symptom is to feel a certain pain in the head and the inner one,
to see oneself in the situation of the Redeemer with the crown of thorns.
The fourth thing was the following: The teacher told his pupil: You must gain a new connection
with your body. You dwell in your body, but you must look upon it as something quite strange, even
as the table outside is a strange object for you. You must even learn to say: I am carrying my body
through the world. The body must become for you, as alien as other external objects. — This was
said to be the experience of the Crucifixion. Even as the Redeemer carried the Cross, so one carried
one's body about, as if it were a piece of wood. The outer symptom for the Crucifixion consists in
the stigmata. During the meditation the pupil could produce on his hands, feet and on the right side
of his breast the signs of Christ's bleeding wounds; red spots on these places reminded him of the
Crucifixion wounds. This “blood trial” is an outer symptom showing that one has learned t0 know
the inner essence of Christianity. And the inner experience is to see oneself on astral vision hanging
upon the Cross.
The fifth stage is what one calls the “Mystical Death”. This can only be described
approximately, The Mystical death consists for the pupil in the fact that the whole world appears to

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him as if it were enveloped in black darkness, as if a black wall stood before him. The whole
physical world appears to him as if it were blotted out, as if it had disappeared. This can be
experienced. It is a moment revealing everything bad and evil which can exist in the world (in
reality, it can only be known through this experience). In order to know life one must also pass
through this experience. It is called the “Descent into Hell”, and it is followed by a strange event
appearing before one's eyes; that black wall is rent asunder. This is the “Rending Of the Veil of the
Temple”. After this one cam look into the spiritual world. This is designated as the “Mystical Death
and the Rending of the Veil of the Temple”.
The sixth stage is the “Burial and the Resurrection”, where the pupil learns to experience that in
addition to the other feelings, all external objects appear as if they belonged to his body, that the
whole world belongs to him. Even as the finger might say: I an only a finger through the fact that I
belong to the organism of the hand, so the human being only lives upon the earth through the fact
that he belongs to the earth. People can walk about upon the earth, and consequently they think that
they are independent. But if we permeate ourselves with the feeling that everything belongs to us,
we have the experience designated as the “Burial”. Soul-spiritually we rest in the earth and only
after this experience we rise again, spiritually. Only then can we have an understanding of the deed
of Christ-Jesus who united death with his own soul; and even as He has once been the Ruler of the
Sun, He has now become the Spirit of the Earth. We should take the words of St. John's Gospel
literally: “Whoso eateth my bread, treadeth me underfoot.” If you look upon Christ-Jesus as the
highest planetary Spirit of the Earth, and the earth as His body, you will understand that you
literally tread the body of Christ-Jesus with your feet. And you become united with Him when you
experience this sixth stage, of the Burial.
Then comes the seventh stage, the “Ascension”, which cannot be described, for it can only be
understood by those who can think without using their brain.
Now I have described to you the process of the Christian Initiation. The pupil acquired thereby
what was called the “Eye of Christ”. Everything, around you would be dark if you had no eyes;
even as you cannot see the sun without eyes, so you cannot perceive Christ without the Christ-
organ. The eye is born through the light for the light. Light is the source of vision. The sun must
exist outside as real sun, and you experience this real sun within your eye. It is the same with the
spiritual eye. We use empty words when speaking only of the “Christ within”; it is the same thing as
speaking of the eye without taking into account the existence of the sun! The capacity to look upon
the Christ may be acquired through the exercises indicated above; but the power enabling him to do
this, again conies from the historical Christ. Even as the sun is related to the eye, so the Christ is
related to the Christ-organ which develops in the human being.
This is not meant as, a. guidance, but as an explanation of facts. We must learn to know what
exists in the world. These, lectures aim at showing the deep sources of the truly Christian spirit, and
how the Gospel of St. John itself contains the methods of a Christian Initiation, giving in man the
eye which enables him to see Christ Himself. But those who wish to announce Him, must in a
certain way have lived with Him, not only through faith, but in reality.

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Lecture 13

THE ROSICRUCIAN TRAINING.

My task of to-day and of tomorrow will be to show you the path into the spiritual worlds which
has been followed ever since the 14th and 15th century, particularly in the so-called Occult
Training, and which is the most suitable path for modern people. But it will be easier for us to
understand the essential points if we first cast a glance over the future development of humanity.
We have already spoken of the course of human development through the Stages of Saturn, Sun,
Moon and Earth. Those who are only accustomed to think in accordance with present-day
conceptions will find it difficult to understand that it is possible to know something about the future
course of evolution: But you must bear in mind that certain great laws which are now active, will
also exercise their activity in the future, and those who know these laws can therefore cast a glance
into the future.
In the sphere of physical reality no one doubts that things can be foretold, — for example, lunar
and solar eclipses and other astronomical phenomena can be calculated in advance, far into the
future. In the sphere of physical reality there is no doubt as to this. And everybody knows that when
certain substances are mixed in a retort, scientists can foretell the result. This is a prophecy relating
to external sensory facts, and these things can be foretold because the laws which influence the
substances are known.
Similarly we learn to know through spiritual science the laws which govern the course of human
life, so that it is possible to foretell what will take place in the future.
An objection might now be raised which has been advanced by the thinkers of every epoch: “It
is impossible to speak of human freedom if future events can be foreseen!” But here people confuse
the capacity of looking into the future with predestination. In every philosophy you will therefore
come across the strangest observations, for all philosophers were unable to make this distinction.
Jacob Boehme was the only exception!
Let me now give you an example to make things clearer to you. Let me compare time with
space. Imagine yourself standing here, and two people in the street, outside. You can see what these
two people are doing, for you are watching them from a distance. But are you able to influence their
actions, in view of this fact? No, you are simply looking at them, and these two people act in perfect
freedom. You can determine nothing in their actions through the fact that you are looking at them.
Now imagine a clairvoyant who observes what will take place in the future. He merely sees this,
and he does not in any way influence the events. If these events could be influenced, if they were,
so to speak, predestined in the present, there would be no pre-vision. But we can only grasp the
difference between predestination and prevision if we ponder over this problem for a long tune.
I do not intend to describe to you what the Earth will be like when it shall have reached the
Venus and the Jupiter stages; instead, I wish to tell you something which will give you an idea of
man's future development; I wish to explain to you something which comes from the oldest

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Christian Mysteries, which originates from the Christian School of the true Dionysius; it was a
teaching which was always taught in the Christian esoteric schools.
The following comparison was taken as a starting point: — I am now speaking to you. Yell can
hear my words; you hear the thoughts which were, to begin with, in the depths of my soul; you hear
thoughts which would remain concealed to you were I not to express them in sounds. But you could
not hear my words, if the air did not exist between us. Whenever I utter a word, the air in the space
around us is set into motion; whenever I speak, I cause the whole volume of air around me to
vibrate, it vibrates in accordance with the words which I pronounce. Let us now proceed further:
Imagine that you were able liquefy the air, and then to render it solid. Air can be liquefied; you
know that water can exist in the form of steam and that this air becomes liquid when it cools; and
then the liquid can become a solid block of ice. Imagine now that I pronounce the word.“God” into
the air; a form would fall down, for instance, the form of a shell; if the sound-vibrations could
render the air solid. And another wave of sound would fall down as a solid form if I pronounce the
word “World”. A crystallized form of air would correspond to every word I utter, and you would be
able to perceive these crystallized forms.
This example was in fact advanced in the Christian schools. First of all we have the spoken
word, and then this word becomes a solid form, but before it became solid, it existed as an inner
thought. Now the early Christian imagined the following: The creative process in the universe
resembles the creative process which takes place in space, when we speak. The creative proceeded
from the idea of things and then the Godhead expressed these ideas in the form of words uttered out
into space. Everything which appears to us outside in the form of plants, minerals, etc. is the
crystallization of God's utterances. It is possible to imagine everything dissolved into tone-
vibrations of the Divine Cosmic Word. “Whatever I see before me, is the crystallization Word of
God!” said the Christian. And on a certain wy he made a distinction between the “Father in
Concealment”, Who had not yet expressed Himself, the “Word” or the Son, Who resounds through
space, and the crystallized Word, the “Revelation”.
This enables us to understand in a deeper sense the beginning of the Gospel of St. John: — “In
the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. It was in the very
beginning with God. Everything was made by Him, and except through Him was nothing made that
was made.” Everything that was made, was made by the Word! We should take things as literally a
possible, then we can easily recognise the creative element of the Word, or the Logos. In the
Christian meaning, the Word or the Logos stands in the second place. “Logos” should only be
translated with “Word”, for this means that at the foundation of everything which exists in the
created world lies the unuttered creative Word; it then resounded as spoken Word, and this is the
origin of every existing thing. If we go far back into times we could hear animals, plants, minerals,
and men, resound through the cosmic spaces as “Word” — even as you now hear my own words —
for in those remote, times, the air had not yet cooled down to such extent as to enable words to take
on solid form.
Let us bear this in mind, for then we can say to ourselves: Once upon a time, the Word
was ,creative. Men are now beginners in an activity which was once carried out by their ancestors,
the Gods, who stood above them. Once upon a time, the Gods created the world by uttering their
words into the cosmic spaces, and this creative activity gave rise to the created world round about

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us. The forces of procreation in the vegetable, animal, and human kingdoms are but, a
metamorphosis of the former creative Word of God. We still bear within us a higher and a lower
nature. The greatest perfection has been reached by that part within us which is endowed with sex,
whereas our larynx contains the first stage of a new procreative power. Whenever we pronounce
words, we are at the beginning of an activity which will one day become procreative. At present we
are only beginners in an activity which was once carried out by the Gods. A new form of
procreation will replace the old one. The larynx is now able to form words but in the future it will
become an organ of procreation, a generative organ, which will produce more and more condensed
and higher forms. The larynx can now mould forms of air, but in future it will give rise to real
beings. When the earth shall have reached the Jupiter stager the Word will have creative power in
the mineral kingdom, and during the Venus stage it will be able to produce plants. Thus the course
of development will proceed, until man will be able to procreate himself through the Word.
The present form arose, when man first sent the air streaming through his lungs through sounds.
But in future stages of the earth's development, the words, the mere words which we now tell each
other, will have a lasting form. And finally, the larynx will become man's generative organ, through
which he will procreate himself in purity without the intromission of sex.
This shows us the future aspects of human development, and the predisposition of the human
larynx. Indeed, an enigmatic phenomenon can show you how intimately the larynx is connected
with certain stages of development: When a boy reaches puberty, his voi0e breaks, it undergoes
mutation. The human larynx is at the beginning of its development, whereas sexual life is at the end
of its development. This shows us the intimate connection of certain things in Nature. In sexual life
we are confronted by something which is dying off; the larynx, the word, on the other hand, will in
the future become man's generative organ.
We might indicate many other examples showing how the human being will gradually develop
organs which now exist in a rudimentary form — for instance, the organs which now constitute his
breathing system, but which really form part of the heart system.
The training which was introduced into Europe since the 14th century in fact anticipates future
conditions of human evolution and it enables us to follow a speedier course of inner development
than the ordinary one. The training which is called the Rosicrucian training is the one most suited to
modern men. In a certain sense, Rosicrucianism has not a good reputation among men who have
only heard of it now and then. If we could rely on the statements made in books, and on what
scientists know about Rosicrucianism, then it would indeed be the swindle which it is reputed to be!
But those who judge Rosicrucianism by these sources do not know real Rosicrucianism, but a mere
swindle!
But let us now consider Rosicrucianism in it s true form; it arose through an individuality
concealed under the name of Christian Rosenkreutz, who gave rise to the Rosicrucian Movement in
the year 1459. [Note 1]
I expressly remark that what I an telling you now is only to be taken as an example, in the same
way in which I spoke to you yesterday of the Christian. training. Let me therefore indicate right
away the seven chief points of Rosicrucian training. The sequence of these stages is not the same

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for all, but let me point them out to you, for they come into consideration for everyone who passes
through the Rosicrucian training.
The first thing is what we call Study; the second is what we call the Appropriation of
Imaginative Knowledge; the third, the Appropriation of the Occult Writing; the fourth, the
Preparation of the Stone of the Wise; the fifth stage is called Conformity of the Small World, the
Microcosm, with the Large World, the Macrocosm. [Note 2] The sixth stage is the Penetration into
the Life of the Macrocosm and the seventh is what we the Divine Blissfulness.
The Rosicrucian path leads in the surest and profoundest way to a knowledge of Christianity.
The Christian path of training is more suited for those who can abide in faith and who can awaken
their feeling life within them, in the manner described to you yesterday. But the Rosicrucian path is
for these people who can connect the truths of Christianity with the truths relating to the external
world This above all, will enable them to protect Christianity against every attack from outside.
Christianity is a world-conception of such profundity that our wisdom will never suffice to grasp it
fully. The path of Rosicrucian training is the most suitable one for modern men. [Note 3]
If we follow a train of thought which has nothing in common with the sensory world, we pursue
study in the Rosicrucian meaning. What is designated as “thinking in free thoughts” is only known
to the civilisation of the west, through geometry, the Christian-Gnostic schools therefore used the
name “mathesis” for the designation of things connected with the higher truths, with God and the
higher world, for such truths had to be grasped independently of everything pertaining to the
sensory world, even as mathematics must be grasped independently of all sensory impressions. A
circle drawn with chalk is most imperfect, a real circle can only be conceived in thoughts; thought
alone is able to grasp everything that can be learned in connection with the circle. Through
mathematics we learn to think of the circle independently of the senses; we construct it in thought,
with the aid of the triangle built up spiritually, whose angles equal to 360 degrees.
It is somewhat uncomfortable to have to think without the support of external sensory objects,
and for the majority of men there is no other field of study in this direction than spiritual science. In
my first lecture I told you that the knowledge contained in spiritual science can absolutely be
grasped through logic. But clairvoyance is needed if anyone wishes to investigate these truths.
Logic suffices, however, for the understanding of the truths contained in spiritual science.
Our materialistic age could only invent the calculating machine, which teaches us to form
thoughts which are not independent of the senses: A child, above all, should learn to grasp things
independently of sensory impressions. Thee influence of spiritual science will therefore be of
greatest value in education: Spiritual science is an excellent training for the development of a
thought activity independent of the senses. Everything which I have told you in connection with
Saturn, the Sun, and the various members of the human beings relates to things which cannot be,
seen; they must be grasped through thought, independently of the senses. No one should, however,
believe that he can train himself unless he first grasps these truths theoretically. The advantage of
such truths is that they do not exist for the senses, so that they can transmit us a way of thinking
which goes beyond sensory life. For many people it is sufficient at first, to penetrate into the truths
which theosophy describes in connection with facts which cannot be grasped through the senses.
These truths constitute, the kind of thoughts which were always explained to the pupils of the
Rosicrucian Schools, and the truths were well impressed upon them.

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 If we now wish to proceed, we can find a good means of a Training in Thought in my books
“Truth and Science” and “The Philosophy of Spiritual Activity”. These books are merely a
gymnastic in a form of thinking which is independent of the senses. Generally speaking, you will
find that in other books it does not make much difference if the thought- contained in one sentence
is transferred to another one. But in the above-mentioned books no thought can be transferred to
another place. These books have arisen in such a way that my own person merely, gave this
thought-structure the opportunity to take on a sensory form. It was necessary to yield to these
thoughts, so that they could arise of their own accord, continue of their own accord. Those who are
willing to penetrate more deeply into these thoughts, devoting themselves to this study for, say, half
a year (this is not easy, but the effort entailed is the very best way of tackling ) those who can read
these books to the very end, have drawn out of their inner being a dormant force.
The second stage is Imagination, or the Imaginative Knowledge, which is entirely under the
influence of Goethe's beautiful words: “All transient things are but a symbol”. Only those who have
acquired a firm, sure thinking, should enter this second stage. For they might easily fall into
delusive fancies without a firm foundation of thought. Consequently, the first condition is to have a
clear head; nothing can protect us more against mistakes than a clear way of thinking.
In the widest meaning, imagination might be characterized by observing everything which
surrounds us in the following Manner: — Observe the face of a human being; you see upon it
creases and wrinkles,which come and go; you do not only describe these lines, but you designate
them as smiles or sorrow. A man's smile reveals to you his happy disposition of mind. You do not
only deduce an inner truth from something which you see outside, but this outer perception is for
you a real symbol of that man's inner life or else you see a tear falling; you are not only a physicist
who observes that tear in accordance with the law of gravity, but you know that that falling tear is
the expression of the soul's inner sadness. Thus everything which you see outside on a person's
countenance becomes for you the expression of the soul's inner mood. The Rosicrucian pupil learns
to feel that everything which he sees outside is similarly the expression, let us say, of the Earth-
Spirit, a certain plant, for, example the meadow-saffron, really appears to him as the expression of
the mourning life of the earth. Even as a smiling countenance reveals to him the soul's happy mood,
so the flowers become an expression for the earth's happy or sorrowful mood.
Goethe did not only wish to convey an external image when the Earth-Spirit in “Faust” speaks:
“In Lebensfluten Tatensturm,
Wall ich auf und ab,
Webe hin und her
Geburt und Grab,
Ein ewiges Meer,
Ein wechselnd Weben,
Ein glühend Leben,
So schaff ich am sausenden Webstuhl der Zeit,
Und wirke der Gottheit lebendiges Kleid.”

In the floods of life,

in the storm of action,
I surge up and down,
I weave to and fro!

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 Birth and the Grave;
An eternal ocean,
A changing weaving,
A glowing life,
Thus I work on the whirring loom of Time
And weave the Godhead's living garment.

For Goethe, the Spirit of the Earth gradually becomes something that lives in the earth; he
acquires a soul-spiritual connection with the whole surrounding Nature.
Let me now explain to you more in detail one of the moods which can be found in Nature.
We have a Rosicrucian pupil walking across the fields. He sees the tiny pearls of dew upon each
plant. This reminds him of the ancient “Neflheim, the “Land of Mists”, where the air was filled with
a dewy mist and where the human beings had quite a different connection with Nature than they
have now. The Rosicrucian pupil who is thus walking over the meadows and who perceives the
pearls of dew upon the plants says to himself: In the ancient Land of Mists this was once dissolved
in the atmosphere. And within his soul rose up a deeply concealed memory of the Atlantean age.
Imagination was specially cultivated among the pupils of the medieval Rosicrucian Schools, and
als0 among the pupils of the Holy-Grail. Since I cannot express myself in any other way, let me
now convey to you in the form of a dialogue some of the truths which were taught in these Schools.
The teacher said to his pupil: — “Behold the plant: see how it springs out of the ground,
opening its calyx with the organs of fructification; see how the sun's rays come down upon it and
open the blossom, so that the fruit can ripen”. The Rosicrucian pupil, and also the pupil of the Holy
Grail, had to conjure up before their soul this image, this idea.
Now there is something very significant, even in materialistic science, whenever a plant is being
compared with the human being. You must, in that case, take the plant's root as corresponding to the
human head, whereas the flower corresponds to man's generative organs, to the which he shame-
facedly conceals. In the plant the root corresponds to the human head. Man is a reversed plant, the
animal is a half reversed pant. Rosicrucianism therefore says: Behold the plant: Its root is in the
ground and its organs of fructification are chastely turned towards the sun's ray. Behold the animal:
Its spine is horizontal ... and then behold man: There you have a complete reverse, a complete
transformation. In the cosmic process of evolution the plant, the animal and man are symbolized by
the Cross! The Cross is the plant, the animal and man. — Now you will be able to understand
Plato's words: The soul of the universe hangs upon the Cross of the universe. — the soul of the
universe, the cosmic soul which permeates everything, is stretched out upon the plant, the animal,
and man.
Now it was impressed upon the Rosicrucian student: “Behold the plant: In its kind, it is lower
than you, for it is not endowed with consciousness and with the power of thinking; but its substance
is pure and chaste; it turns its calyx towards the sun; its organ of reproduction is turned without any
passion towards the sun's ray, the holy spear of love. But physical substance has become permeated
with passion. Now think of the future ideal — a purified substance, producing itself in purest
chastity,” And his attention, was drawn towards the larynx, where man shall one day have attained
the purity and chastity of the flower's calyx. “Think of the plant's calyx, which is devoid of passion.

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It develops through passion, but it will become pure again and reproduce itself chastely, by allowing
itself to be fructified by the spiritual ray of the sun, by the Holy Spear of Love.” A prototype of this
“holy spear of Love” is the spear which pierced the heart of Christ-Jesus upon the Cross.
Yesterday we have seen that this blood which streamed out of the Redeemer's wound banished
egoism from the earth. The spear which pierced him is therefore a foreboding of that higher spear,
the sun's ray in a spiritual form. And the Holy Grail indicates the chalice of humanity which
develops out of the larynx, and which will be the purified generative organ of the future, as is the
case to-day in the plant.
This is the deeper meaning of the Holy Grail, which was brought to the knowledge of the
Rosicrucian students and of the disciples of the Holy Grail when they had reached the imaginative
stage. Now compare the vision which you obtain through these images — the plant's calyx, sex
filled with passion, the Holy Grail. the passionless chalice — compare this with the dry, intellectual
concept supplied by modern science; this will show you the difference between imagination and
mere intellectual thought: the whole cosmic process must be grasped in images! This is important,
for the more intellectual concepts which we have to-day are not creative; but if these concepts are
added to an image, then the images will become creative. This was felt in past times, and it should
be considered in the education of the child.
Let me now discuss an actual problem. To-day people say so easily: What nonsense our elders
taught us children, by telling us the story of the stork! Children should be told the truth.
If our descendants will treat us as we treat our forefathers, they will also laugh at us and say:
Our forefathers thought that that the human being arises through a physical act! — And they will
look back upon the time when this was explained to children in a spiritual way. In ancient times,
when the story of the stork arose, also adults believed in it, for they knew that when a human being
is born, his soul descend a from the spiritual world; and so they always connected birth with the
descent of a winged being. You may even find this again in nursery-rhymes, for instance in the
following one:

Flieg, Käfer, flieg! Fly, Beetle, fly!

Dein Vater ist im Krieg! Your father is in the war.
Deine Mutter ist im Pommerland Your mother is in Pommerland,
Pommerland ist abgebrannt; Pommerland is burnt to ashes!
Flieg, Käfer, flieg! Fly, Beetle, fly!

This “fly, beetle” is meant as an image for the human soul, because a faint knowledge still existed
of the astral world, from where the souls fly down into the physical world. And what is
“Pommerland”? “Pommer” is the sane word as “Pommerle” which means a small child, so that
“Pommerland”, or “Pommerleland”, is the Land of babies, where the mother goes to-fetch her baby.
Such things must simply be explained in the light of the spiritual world. If you bear in mind that the
image of the stork bringing babies is really an image for a spiritual process — reincarnation — you
will realise how immensely important it is that certain things should first be grasped in the form of
pictures; if the child is first taught to look upon the image of the spiritual process, he will develop
an entirely different frame of mind enabling him to listen reverently even to the description of the
physical process.

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 If you know that the stork is an image for the descending soul, you, yourself will once more
believe in the stork! Your words can wing a child's fancy, if you understand the truth underlying an
image; in that case a mysterious fluid will stream out of it and pass over to the child. This applies to
every image. Children can thus be taught everything.
How can you deal with the problem of life after death? Lead the child to a butterfly's cocoon
and tell him: Even as the butterfly flies out of its cocoon, so the soul flies out of the body when we
die, but we cannot see this. If you really believe in this, you will be able to convince the child that
when the butterfly leaves its cocoon, this is, upon a lower stage, the same as when the soul leaves
the body. If spiritual science enables us to dive down again into the spiritual world, so that living
images rise up in human hearts, education will change altogether; then the child will no longer be
taught dry intellectual facts which coarsen his soul. We should not pull things down to a grotesque
or comic sphere but we should realise instead what important things lie at their foundation.
The third thing which must be acquired for the paving of the “path” is the Learning of the
Occult Writing. This does not consist in learning a writing, as is the case in ordinary life. The letters
of the alphabet may indeed ba traced back to occult images but they are not by a long way an occult
writing. In occult writing we must penetrate into the real great cosmic forces which are active in the
universe. And all that we write down, must be so that one process of development passes over into
the next. Take a plant: It bears seeds; in the seed you have the starting point for a new plant. But if
you could really investigate the process, you would find that nothing of the old plant passes over
into the new plant. In reality, the old plant perishes completely in regard to its substance; while the
new plant builds up its form from entirely new substances — all that passes over into the new plant
is a kind of movement. Here you have some sealing wax and there a seal: you press the seal into the
wax. Of the seal itself nothing has gone over into the wax, only the form remains. — This is the
case in every process of development. When it perishes the old substance merely supplies the
opportunity for a new form to arise in accordance with the old form. This is designated
with two inter-twining spirals which do not meet. Such a transition existed after the Atlantea
epooh of culture; this epoch disappears and a new one arises in the Indian epoch of culture; also this
must be designated with two spirals. I have already told you that in the year 800 A.D. the sun rose
in the sign of Aries; before that in the sign of Taurus; further back in the sign of Gemini and still
further back in the sign of Cancer. The Graeco-Latin age, containing the seeds of our present epoch,
coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Aries; the preceeding civilisation; the
Chaldean-Assyrian-Egyptian one, coincided with the time when the sun rose in the sign of Taurus;
before that we have the Persien culture; when the sun rose in the sign of Gemini; and the ancient
Indian culture developed itself when the sun stood in the sign of Cancer. It was then that the sign of
Cancer; two inter-twining spirals was first written down.
Thus I might explain to you each sign of the Zodiac according to its true meaning. These signs
were formed out of Nature, they are an expression for the forces and laws which are active outside,
in Nature. If we learn to know the occult signs we begin to go outside ourselves; we penetrate into
the mysterious foundations of Nature.
Thus I have given you some indications 0n the first three stages of the Rosiorucian path: Study,
Imaginative Knowledge, and the Acquisition of the Occult Writing.

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 To-morrow we shall discuss the other stages, beginning with the Preparation of the Stone of the
Wise.

Notes:

Note 1. See lecture 5 of Life Between Death and a New Birth.

Note 2. See Macrocosm and Microcosm. Soul Problems, Life Problems, Spiritual
Problems.

Note 3. See The Path of Knowledge and its Stages

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Lecture 14

FURTHER STAGES OF ROSICRUCIAN TRAINING.

Yesterday I described to you the Rosicrucian Initiation up to the third stage the Knowledge of
Occult Writing. We therefore learned to know what is designated in the Rosicrucian meaning as
Study, then the Acquisition of Imaginative Knowledge, and then what is termed as the Penetration
into the Occult Writing into that writing which is taken out of the laws of Nature themselves. [ Note
1] Now it behooves us to proceed to the fourth stage of Rosicrucian Initiation, to the one which is
called The Preparation of the Stone and the Wise. We should realise that only in the present time
has it become possible to say something about that which the Rosicrucians really meant by the
Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.
By that name were known certain rules for the entrance into the higher worlds, and these rules
have existed ever since the founder of Rosicrucianism inaugurated this movement in 1459. You
must bear in mind that this spiritual current has always been handled with the greatest precaution
and has always been kept secret.
Towards the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, certain secrets of
Rosicrucianism leaked out in an unjustified manner, owing, to a kind of treason; at that time several
things connected with these secrets were printed, but from these publications one could gather that
the, people in question had an inkling of these secrets, but did not understand them; never the less
they at least heard the right words or picked them up so to speak, also in regard to the “Stone of the
Wise”. At that time a series of communications appeared even in the “Reichsanzeiger” on a society
whose task it was to prepare the Stone of the Wise; among these communications there is also one
which can only be understood by those who know what it is about. It states: “Yes, the Stone of the
Wise exists; it is known to almost everyone; indeed, most people have even held it in their hand; it
is not at all difficult to find it, — but most people do not know this!”
The idea of the Stone of Wise was connected with the meaning that little by little it enabled one
to know man's immortal part, which cannot decay after death, for it leads one up into the higher
worlds. If a human being realizes that this immortal part cannot fall a prey tOo death, he acquires an
immortal life through the possession of the Stone of the Wise, and thus he overcomes death. This
had been interpreted as meaning that one would never die. But it means instead that thereby one
learns to know the world where man lives after death. Moreover one saw in the Stone of the Wise
an elixir of life. All this rendered the Stone of the Wise extremely desirable. Those who knew the
true meaning of these things must have found these words strangely correct; for they are true — but
those who do not know the secret cannot do much with them.
Let me now show you quite briefly what these words really mean. If you wish to understand
them, please follow me in the contemplation of a plain, natural-scientific fact: — You must be clear
as to the relation existing between the human being and the vegetable kingdom. It is a fact that all
those who breathe as man breathes, could never exist if there were no plants. Now try to become
acquainted with the process which takes place between you and the plants.

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 You breath in the air and use the oxygen of the air. You could not live, if there were no oxygen.
When you take in the air and work upon the oxygen in your organism, you breathe out carbonic
acid, a combination of carbon and oxygen. You must therefore say: Man continually takes in oxygen
which maintains his body, and he breathes out carbonic acid; consequently he continually creates a
poison which could kill him. You continually fill your environment with a poison. — What does the
plant do? In a certain way it does exactly the contrary! It takes in carbonic acid, keeps the carbon,
and sends out the oxygen which it does not need. Thus you give the plant what it needs and the
plant gives you oxygen in return. What does the plant do with the carbon which it retains? To a
certain extent it uses the carbon to build up its own body. You therefore give the plant, so to speak,
the opportunity to build up its body out of carbon. — And after thousands of years, when you dig
the plant out of the earth in the form of coal,you have it in the same substance.
The plant gives you oxygen, You breathe it in. You give the plant carbonic acid, it retains the
carbon, uses it to build up its body and returns you oxygen. This is a wonderful alternating process,
which thus takes place. This is what happens to-day. But man is developing, and in the future, the
human body itself will have the organ which transforms carbonic acid into oxygen, retaining the
carbon.
Here I am indicating a future state of development of man, a different condition from that which
I pointed out to you yesterday, when speaking bf the Rosicrucian path of training. In the future man
will have a passionless body of a higher order, a body which you may find to-day upon a lower
stage in the plant; man will be able to build up a body which will be plant-Like upon a higher stage.
In the organ which now constitutes his heart he will have an apparatus which will be able to do that
which the plant does to-day. Now. the human being and the plant belong together; one could not
live without the other. If there were no plants, all the beings who breathe in oxygen would have to
die in a very short time, because it is the plant which supplies us with oxygen. We cannot imagine
life without plants. But what the plant now does outside, will in the future be done by that organ
into which our heart will develop when the heart shall have become a muscle which we ourselves
control. We spread out our consciousness over the plants; we grow together with the vegetable
world, so that in the future that which the plant now does outside our being will take place within
our being. Then we shall also retain the carbon which we now discard, and build up our body with
it. We shall be like the plants upon a higher stage of consciousness.
From primeval ages, occultism weaves all this into a wonderful legend. It is the Golden Legend.
And what I have explained to you to-day was imparted to the pupil of occultism in the form of an
image. The legend was more or less as follows: —
When Seth, the son whom God gave Adam and Eve in place of the murdered Abel, once entered
Paradise„ he found the Tree of Knowledge and the Tree of Life inter-grown; their branches
intertwined. From this tree Seth took three seeds, following the command of the Angel who guided
him. He kept the three seeds and when Adam died, he placed them into Adam's mouth. And a tree
grew out of Adam's grave; to those who knew how to look upon it in the right way, this tree
revealed a writing in flaming letters — the words: “Ejeh Asher Ejeh. I am He that was. He that is,
He that shall be.” Now Seth took some wood from this tree and many things were made out of it:
among them the rod which became the magic rod of Moses. And this tree multiplied; from its wood

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the portal of Solomon's temple was made, and later on, when it had passed through many other
destinies, it became the Cross upon which the Savior hung.
The legend thus connects the wood of the Cross of Golgotha with the tree which grew out of
Adam' s grave from the seeds of the Tree of Paradise. [Note 2]
This legend conceals the same mystery which I indicated to you to-day. It meant to say: In
primeval ages the human race had not yet sunk down to the flesh with passion; it was pure and
chaste like the plant which stretches out its calyx to the sun. The human beings then descended
through the “fall into sin”; their flesh was filled with passion. But everything which the human
being once possessed in the state of innocence will be regained if he succeeds in forming through
knowledge a body devoid of passion, the body which he once had before acquiring knowledge.
Bear in mind the origin of the Ego. That the human being no longer possesses that innocent body, is
connected with the fact that he began to breathe through the lungs and was able to form his red
blood. Man's present form, and the fact that this form is the bearer of knowledge in the present
meaning, is therefore connected with his breathing and the circulation of the blood.
Now transfer yourselves into the human body of to-day. You can imagine the oxygen streaming
into it and stimulating the red blood, you can look upon the blood as a tree with many branches
reaching into every part of the body, and you can see the blue blood streaming back filled with
carbonic acid.
You have two trees within you: the tree of the red blood, and the tree of the blue bl00d. Man, as
the bearer of an Ego, could not exist without these two trees. He had to take in the blood in order to
have an Ego, and that is how our modern knowledge arises; this forms its foundation. But death was
connected with this development, for you constantly transform the red blood into blue blood filled
with carbonic acid! The occult teacher of the Old Testament therefore said: “Look upon your own
being: you have within you the red tree of blood; without this tree you would never have become a
cognitive human being. You have eaten of the Tree of Knowledge; but this gave you at the same
time the possibility to give life.”
That which was once a Tree of Life became a death-bringing tree; the blue blood-tree within-us
is therefore the Tree of Death. This is the present state of things. But the initiate sees a future state,
when the human being shall have the plant-nature within him, when the heart-organ shall transform
the blue blood into red blood in a direct way, within the human being. Then the Tree of Death shall
have become the Tree of Life and man shall have become an immortal being. What man once was
upon a lower stage, he shall once more become upon a higher stage, and he will have within him the
apparatus which now exists in the plant.
Paradise thus shows us a final state of humanity. Seth' s mission, so the occult teachers
explained, was that he saw that which comes at the end of the times: the balancing of the two
principles within the human being. Thus the Tree of Life and the Tree of Knowledge intertwine in
Paradise; but in man they can only exist if he seeks aid from the plant. But how can he acquire the
faculty through which the two trees intertwine within his being? By developing within him the three
higher members of human nature.
We have learned that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, and
Ego, and we have seen that when the Ego works upon the astral body it produces the first higher

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member; when it works upon the etheric body, the second higher member; and when it works upon
the physical body, the third one. The future human being will therefore consist of seven parts, for he
will also have the Spirit-Self, the Life-Spirit, and the Spirit-Man.
When the human being thus transforms his lower nature, he will have the Tree of Life within
him. At the beginning of his development man has therefore been predisposed through his Ego for
the unfolding of his three higher members.
Seth took three seeds and the first Ego-man, Adam, let these seeds grow into a tree. This tree
contains that which passes through every incarnation. During your first incarnation your Ego was
upon a very low stage, but from incarnation to incarnation it reaches ever higher stages. What grows
out of it is the symbol for the eternal part in man. which will reach its greatest perfection at the end
of the Earth. But we shall only attain to this if we connect ourselves with everything that is highest
along the path of the Spirit. Everything which leads humanity upwards along this path — the rod of
Moses, Solomon' s Temple, and finally the Cross upon Golgotha — helps us to unfold fully the
higher trinity within us. The Cross of Golgotha indicates the path leading to the highest fulfillment
of man. At the beginning the seed from which that Tree grew was laid in Adam's mouth (this cannot
be expressed more beautifully than in this Legend!), it was the seed which Seth had gained in the
manner described. Here you have the path of humanity throughout the ages, the path of humanity
through Time. And in future, man will have to attain that which the plant can do to-day: the
transformation of his being, the capacity to produce carbon within himself, through his own power.
Man will in the future master the alchemy of the plant.
The alchemistic preparation of what I have just now described to you was reached by giving the
Rosicrucian pupil certain indications on the way in which he had to regulate his breathing process.
This can only be grasped if we bear in mind the proverb: The steadily falling drop hollows out the
stone. But the Rosicrucian pupil works towards this future goal. Even as the drop, small as it is,
after a long time achieves hollow in the stone, so the progress of the human bodies is brought about
by this regulation of the breathing process. The indications given to the Rosicrucian pupil enable
him to prepare, even to-day, a condition in which the Ego acquires the faculty to contemplate the
future state of being in the higher worlds. The Rosicrucian pupil therefore does two things: In the
first place he helps to prepare the future of humanity, and secondly he himself acquires the power of
looking into the spiritual worlds; he sees that which will later on come down into physical reality.
Now you will be able to understand the indications which were published by that strange man,
though he did not understand them. The Stone of the Wise is the ordinary black coal; but you must
learn the process enabling you to elaborate the carbon through your inner forces: this constitutes the
future of mankind. The present coal is a prototype of that which will one day constitute the most
important substance of the human being. Bear in mind the clear diamond: also the diamond is
nothing but carbon! This was called, the “Preparation of the Stone of the Wise” in the Rosicrucian
world-conception. It conceals a process of transformation in the human being and the call to work
upon future conditions of humanity,. All who work in this way help to prepare the human bodies of
the future, the bodies which will in future be needed by the human souls.
There is a saying which expresses very beautifully this work upon future states of being, and we
shall be able to understand it after having made a clean distinction between the development of
souls and of races.

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 In the past, all of you were Atlanteans, but these Atlantean bodies presented an entirely different
aspect, — as I have already explained to you. Within your present body lives the same soul which
once lived somewhere in an Atlantean body. But not every body has been prepared, as yours are
being prepared, today, by a few colonists, who at that time migrated from the West to the East.
Those who remained behind, those who connected themselves, aS one says, with the race, decayed,
whereas those who had progressed, founded new cultures. The last stragglers along the path leading
eastwards, the Mongolians, have preserved something of the Atlantean culture. They have not
progressed; they remained within the race. In the same way, when a new age dawns, the bodies of
those who do not progress, will become the Chinese of the future. Also in the future there will be
decadent races. In Chinese bodies live souls who had to incarnate again within the Chinese race,
because during the Atlantean time they were attracted too strongly by their race. The souls that
dwell within you to-day will in the future incarnate in bodies proceeding from those who are now
working in the manner described, producing the bodies of the future, in the same way in which the
first colonists of the Atlanteans prepared the bodies of coming ages. And those who cling to
everyday things, who do not wish to connect themselves with that which the future holds in store,
will melt together within the race.
There are people who wish to remain within traditional things, who do not wish to know
anything of progress and who do not listen to those who can lead them beyond the race to ever new
forms of humanity. The myth has preserved this tendency in a wonderful way; for it can not be
described more appropriately Than by pointing to one of the greatest, who spoke the words: “Those
who do not forsake father and mother, wife and child, brother and sister, cannot be my disciples”,
and by setting forth the tragic aspect of a man who says: “I do not wish to have anything to de with
such a guide!, and who rejects Him. How can this be expressed more clearly than by the image of
him who rejects the guide and who cannot progress! This is the legend of Ahasver, the Wandering
Jew, who sat at the feet of Christ Jesus and rejected the greatest of all Guides, who did not wish to
know anything of the course of evolution and must therefore remain with his race and always return
within his race. [Note 3] These are myths which are given to humanity as a perpetual reminder, so
that it may know the gist of things.
This fourth stage of Rosicrucian training must therefore be looked upon as something of
immense depth, and humanity thus gradually develops the “Preparation of the Stone of the Wise.”
The fifth stage is the correspondence of microcosm and macrocosm. The whole complicated
human body, such as it exists now, has arisen in a special way. My lectures have led you through the
Saturn, Sun, Moon and Earth conditions; Upon Saturn, only the first foundations of your sensory
system existed; only this existed of everything which now constitutes your physical body, and it was
embedded in the Saturn-substance, even as crystals are now embedded in the earth-substance. Your
eye was like a crystal of quartz. Upon the Sun, the glands which were your highest organs were
constituted in such a way that they covered the surface of the Sun. And upon the Moon the organs
which form your nervous system were spread over the Moon's surface. The Moon had a nervous
system in which the men-animals who lived upon the Moon had a share. Upon the Earth, man
acquired his osseous system; this was not possible upon the Moon, for it had no mineral kingdom.
This shows you hew wonderful is the structure of the human body. The organ of sight, the eye
such we have it now, was once spread over the whole of Saturn; and what was once spread out in

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the great cosmos outside, entered our being in regard to each organ, occult science can tell you how
it is connected with the macrocosm, with the great world outside, for something in the external
world corresponds to the liver, the spleen, the heart, etc. Spiritual science can also tell you what had
to take place in the external world so that these organs might arise. The Rosicrucian schooling
enables us to immerse ourselves in our sense-organs, to penetrate from within into our eyes and
ears, and to gain a clairvoyant knowledge of the development of these organs.
I have led you back to an epoch in the Atlantean evolution when the etheric body still emerged
so far above the physical body that it could not coincide with a point in our head which is just above
the root of the nose. We have seen that the etheric body then gradually penetrated into the physical
body and that tile physical body took on its present form. Now there is one method of immersion,
connected with a certain formula which can only be communicated by word of mouth. When you
thus concentrate yourself upon that point where the physical part of the head coincides with the
above-mentioned point of the etheric head, then you learn to know what the earth was like at that
time, when the etheric head began to enter the physical head. In a similar way you may enter every
part of your body, of your microcosm, and thus gain knowledge of the forces which hold sway in
the macrocosm. Man is the most complicated of all beings, and even as the message contained in a
telegram enables you to identify the sender, so the immersion in this or in that organ of your body
enables you to gain knowledge of the creative powers which gave rise to it.
This leads us on to the sixth stage, which is called the Immersion in the Cosmos. Those who
have learned to know, in the manner described above, the relationship between microcosm and
macroc0sm, have gained a knowledge which embraces the whole world. This fact is concealed
behind the ancient motto: “Know thyself!” But a very harmful influence has been exercised by
theosophists who say: Within you lies the whole godhead; the highest principle is contained within
your being. Thus all you need to do is look into your being , to look within yourself, and this will
enable you to know the whole world.
Yet this inner brooding is the most foolish thing we can do, for it only leads to the knowledge of
our lower self, which we have in any case. Self-immersion never shows us more than we have
already have. Real self-knowledge only arises in the complicated manner described above, and then
it is at the same time world-knowledge.
A genuine theosophical teaching does not make things easy for us, but it must say: Calm,
earnest meditation should lead you to the knowledge even of the most complicated Beings. You
cannot recognise the Godhead otherwise than by learning to know it piece by piece in the world
outside. Patience and perseverance are needed for this. Calm, slow progress leads you to a
knowledge of the world. Theosophy cannot give you a universal formula supplying knowledge all
at once; it can only indicate the path long which you can gain self-knowledge and world-
knowledge. This will lead you to a knowledge of God.
On the sixth stage of Rosicrucian schooling we do not attain to a dry, intellectual form of
knowledge, but to one which is intimately connected with the world, with the universe. Those who
have this knowledge, are intimately connected with everything in the universe; it is a connection
which a modern men can only understand by bearing in mind the mysterious love-relationship
between man and woman, which is based upon a secret knowledge of the other's being. The
contemplation of the macrocosm leads not only to an understanding of the world, but to an intimate

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connection with every being, resembling that of lovers. In that case you will have an intimate
relationship, a kind of love relationship with the plant, with the stone, with every creature in the
universe. You will develop a specialized love for every being; to each one you will say something
which you would not have said had you not reached this deeper understanding.
Animals eat the substances which suit its constitution and do not touch those that might harm it.
This is based on a sympathetic relation towards certain things and an antipathetic one towards
others. Man had to lose this direct connection with things in order to reach his present form of
knowledge, but he will regain this connection upon a higher stage. What enables a modern occultist
to know that the plant's blossom has another influence upon the human body than the root? And
how does he know that the influence of an ordinary root differs from that of a carrot? Because these
things speak to him, as they do to animals upon a lower stage. Animals do not have a conscious
understanding of such things, but man will regain this direct connection with the substances and
beings of the universe, upon the highest stages of consciousness.
The seventh stage of Rosicrucian schooling naturally follows the sixth one. Everything which I
have told you so far will have shown you that the knowledge involved is chiefly connected with
soul-impressions and feelings. No knowledge which we attain along this path does not at the same
time move the heart in the most living way, so that a clear distinction should be made between an
idea logical, intellectual and a spiritual knowledge.
The occultist does not mean to touch your feelings, and to tell you all manner of beautiful
things. He simply relates the facts of the spiritual world and he would consider it as shameless to
appeal to your feelings in a direct way. But he knows that when he tells you the truths of the
spiritual world, these truths themselves speak; these spiritual facts should stir your feelings. A
Rosicrucian therefore never takes into consideration the person of a teacher, for the teaching is in no
way connected with the person. The teacher is the instrument through which the truths themselves
speak to men. Those who still believe or have “views of their own” are not fit to be occult teachers.
For if we judge through feeling, instead of judging objectively, we might even say that twice two is
five!
This shows you how the Rosicrucian gradually penetrates into the knowledge of the higher
worlds by developing various things within him. He needs guidance in this, but all those who
earnestly seek this guidance will find it at the right moment.
We cannot say, however, that the Rosicrucian successively passes through these seven stages of
training under the personal guidance of a teacher. The occult teacher chooses what is more suited to
the one or to the other. I have already given you a description of the preparatory stages. Let me now
emphasize two things in in this preparation, in order to show you that other things must be
developed before proceeding to the stricter exercises.
There is one thing which must be practiced from the very outset, and that is concentration,
concentration of thought. Consider how your thoughts ramble about from morning to night! They
came from this or from that direction and draw you along with them, A rosicrucian pupil must
choose a time in which he is master of his thoughts; he should take an object as uninteresting as
possible and reflect over it. The length of time employed for this does not matter, essential are
energy, patience, and perseverance.

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 The other thing is what we call “positivity”, which consists in going in search of things in life
which are characterised best of all by a Persian legend relating to Christ Jesus.
One day, when Christ Jesus was walking along with his disciples, they found on the road's edge
the carcass of a dog, in advance stage of decomposition. The disciples who were not so highly
developed as Christ Jesus, turned away from this horrid sight, but Christ Jesus thoughtfully looked
upon the animal and said: “What beautiful teeth it has!”
No matter how ugly a thing may be, there is always some beauty concealed in it; in every lie
there is a grain of truth, in everything evil a grain of goodness. This does not mean, of course, that
you should abstain from criticism! You misunderstand positivity if you think that you should no
longer find anything bad, ugly, etc., but positivity means that you should see the grain of beauty in
everything evil. This develops the higher forces of your soul. All this forms part of the preparation.
To begin with, I wished to give you some idea of the Christian-Gnostic path of training. In the
Rosicrucian schooling you will find the deepest and most genuine Christianity. If you are a
Rosicrucian, you can be a Christian in the deepest meaning of the word, in spite of the demands of
modern life. In the past, one could be a good Christian by withdrawing from the world; this was
possible so long as man was not influenced by those forms of thinking which now render it so
difficult for him to be a Christian. For the thoughts which have developed out of the natural-
scientific way of thinking render it difficult for us to take in Christianity in its original form. The
noblest men are those who honestly say: “To-day I cannot connect anything real with Christianity”.
The spiritual world indeed lives round about us, but within us live the thoughts produced by our
materialistic age. We are incessantly surrounded by these thought-forms of materialistic life. A
conscientious person must therefore say: In the present time we need a remedy which can cope with
the ideas that continually stream into us, a remedy which enables us to hold our own and to remain
upright in the face of everything which streams into us from the world outside.
Spiritual science offers us this remedy. We are egoists if we reject it, if we refuse to take it.
Spiritual science feels that it is the executor of that which also constituted the will of medieval
theosophy. Everyone can understand spiritual science; even-those who are acquainted with the
justified objections raised against it by natural science. The Rosicrucian direction of theosophy
enables everyone to find that which leads to a knowledge of the universe, and to peace within the
soul, to be sure, a steady attitude in life. The theosophy of Rosicrucianism is not a merely
theoretical knowledge which can give rise to polemical discussions, but a living knowledge which
must flow into our whole modern civilisation. Theosophists who have passed through the
Rosicrucian schooling know every objection which can be raised against spiritual science and are
well acquainted with every counter-argument.
A polemical treatment of theosophy would produce the same result as, for instance, the
polemical treatment of Eduard von Hartmann's. “Philosophy of the Unconscious”. Eduard von
Hartmann published this book and made certain statements in it which appeared like a higher
standpoint in the face of the materialistic views of natural-scientific research. All the scientists rose
up in arms against hin and a flood of criticism was poured over the “Philosophy of the
Unconscious”. Eduard von Hartmann was called “the greatest amateur”. Among the many writings
which appeared against this book, there was an anonymous pamphlet which brilliantly opposed the

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“Philosophy of the Unconscious”, drawing in every possible argument available to a scientist who
has a thorough knowledge of the natural sciences of his time. This writing was greatly admired and
applauded. Oscar Schmidt, the famous zoologist, said for instance: “What a pity that we do not
know the author of this excellent pamphlet, for he stands at the very summit of modern science.”
And Ernst Haeckel wrote: “Let him come out of his anonymity, and we shall welcome him as one
of us.” In fact, this pamphlet created quite a sensation! Then a second edition appeared, with the
name of the author: Eduard von Hartmann! Now the scientists did not say a word and the matter
was hushed up. This really took place.
You see those who adopt a higher standpoint, are themselves able to advance counter-
arguments, for they only need to descend to another standpoint. We might also bring forward a few
counter-arguments; if we had sufficient time at our disposal. [ Note 4] But in the brief time available
it was essential above all to communicate some of the facts which spiritual science can proclaim to-
day concerning the higher worlds.
The chief point to bear in mind is that spiritual scientific truths should exercise a healing
influence upon men. Occult science can show that these truths are able to permeate every sphere of
human life and to fructify it. And when spiritual science will have exercised this healing, fructifying
influence it will have justified its existence in the best possible way. This, is the proof which
spiritual science seeks. Theosophists therefore do not grow alarmed when people come and say:
“This is pure fantasy!” Everything which has become a blessing in human civilisation has at first
been regarded as pure fantasy. In the history of the last forties of the 19th century; we could cite
many examples in support of this statement.
If spiritual science is to become a reality in life, it must penetrate into that which constitutes our
ordinary environment. When spiritual science has become a force which gives wings to our whole
life, permeating our daily actions, it will have stood the test. This is the standpoint adopted by the
Theosophy of Rosicrucianism, and from this standpoint you should view the lectures which I have
delivered to you. Spiritual science will one day develop into something which will influence
humanity and bring new impulses in art and science, in medicine and education. Its forces will
stream into every sphere of life, animating it.
This is the standpoint of these lectures, which should be accepted in this light.

Notes:

Note 1. See: “The Path of Knowledge and its Stages. The Rosicrucian
Path” “Imaginative Knowledge and Artistic Imagination”

Note 2. See: The Xmas Thought and the Mystery of the Ego. The Tree of
the Cross and the Golden Legend. Also: The Tree of Life and the Tree of
Knowledge. The Mysteries of Art (Paths of Spiritual Knowledge and the
Renewal of an World-Conception).

Note 3. See: Rudolf Steiner's Five Easters by Anasthasius Grün.

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 Note 4. See: Wie widerlegt man Geistesforschung (How does one
oppose Spiritual Research) and Wie begrandet man Goistesforschung (What
is the Foundation of Spiritual Research), double volume no. 1/2 of the series
Ergebnisse der Geistesforschung (Results of Spiritual Research), Lectures
by Rudolf Steiner, publd. by Phil. Anthropl. Verlag in Dornach, Switznrland.

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