THE EGO

THE GOD WITHIN

AND
THE GOD OF
EXTERNAL
REVELATION
Three lectures held at Munich in December
1909 and 1910 by

RUDOLF STEINER

From a manuscript unrevised by the lecturer

THE RUDOLF STEINER PUBLISHING CO.

BLOOMSBURY STREET, W.C. 1
AND
ANTHROPOSOPHIC PRESS NEW YORK CITY

This translation has been made from the

original of Rudolf Steiner, by permission of H.
Colisson, M.A. (Oxon), by whom all rights are
reserved.

PRINTED IN GREAT BRITAIN BY Mackays

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 The Ego
The Ego: Lecture 1

Schmidt Number: S-2115

LECTURE 1
4th December, 1909

My DEAR Friends,

Today we shall occupy ourselves with a general theme, and indeed with the question of the
significance and the tasks of anthroposophically orientated spiritual science in the present, and
then, on Tuesday, with a more individual theme concerning individual destiny and being.

We have indeed often emphasised that Anthroposophy has a special task and significance
for mankind in the present age. Whoever occupies himself with anthroposophy as a thinking
human being must put this question again and again to himself: What aims does this spiritual
movement pursue, and how are they related to the other tasks of our age? These tasks can be
illuminated from the most diverse points of view, as we have often done. Today we will try to
grasp the evolutionary path of mankind at that point on which we ourselves stand, to look a
little into the future, and then ask ourselves: What task has anthroposophy with especial
reference to the evolutionary stage of mankind at which we stand at present?

We know that since the great Atlantean Catastrophe, which entirely transformed the earth
as man's dwelling-place, up to our own time, five great epochs of civilisation are to be
distinguished. We have often designated these five epochs of culture as the old Indian, old
Persian, the Chaldaic-Egyptian, the Greco-Latin epoch, and then the epoch in which we
ourselves stand, the fifth, which prepared itself in — let us say — the eighth, ninth and tenth
centuries, and in the middle of which we now are. We must be clear that such divisions are
naturally not meant as if any one epoch of evolution sharply came to an end, and then a new
one began, but that the one gradually and slowly passes over into the other, and long before
one such epoch has run its course, the new one already prepares itself within it.

Thus we can say of our own epoch of culture, of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch: there is
already now being prepared, and indeed in a very significant way, that which will constitute the
real characteristic of the sixth epoch of civilisation. And in general, human beings of our
present age will separate themselves into two parts: those who today form no idea of all this,
who know nothing of the preparation of the sixth epoch, who live as it were blindly, for the day,
and those who form ideas for themselves that something new is preparing, and who also know
that what is being prepared is fundamentally something which must be accomplished through
human beings, must be prepared by mankind. We can in a certain connection place ourselves
in the time as a human being and say we are doing what is generally the custom, what the
others do, what our parents have educated us for, or, we can so place ourselves that we know
consciously the following: “If you will consciously be a link in the chain of humanity, then you
must do something — either in yourself or in your environment — which contributes to what
must come, i.e., to prepare the sixth period of culture as much as in you lies.” The possibility of
thus making preparations for the sixth period of culture can only be understood by entering a
little into the character of our own epoch. For this, the comparative method offers itself as the
best.

We know that these epochs of time are essentially different from each other, and in the
course of years, in our anthroposophical movement, we have brought forward various
characteristics whereby they are distinguished. We have pointed to the old Indian Period of
civilisation, and have shown that the soul-qualities of man then were different from what they
later were, how man then was still endowed to a high degree with clairvoyant consciousness.
And we have shown that evolution through the following epochs consisted in man losing this
clairvoyance ever more and more, and having to limit his power of perception and
understanding more and more to the physical world. We have seen how the fourth epoch of
civilisation was slowly prepared, in which man, as it were, appeared entirely in the physical
world, so that that Being Whom we call Christ Jesus could incarnate in the physical world as a
being, as a human being of the physical world. We have then seen how since that time, through
a certain stream, the following appeared: how all human powers strengthened themselves still
further in the physical world, how indeed the materialistic tendency of our age, the whole urge
of man only to hold as valid what offers itself in the physical surrounding world, is connected
with a further descent of man into the physical world. But by no means should things remain
thus in evolution. Humanity must ascend again into the spiritual world, ascend with all the
attainments men have acquired, with all the fruits of the physical world. And Anthroposophy
should be just that which can bring to people the possibility of again ascending into the
spiritual world.

Now we can say: “Immediately after the great Atlantean catastrophe, there were numerous
human beings who knew through their direct powers of perception: Around us is a spiritual
world. We live in a spiritual world.” Fewer and fewer became the human beings who knew this;
more and more were the powers of man limited to the perception of the senses. But if, on the
one hand, today, the power of perception for the spiritual world is the least conceivable, yet, on
the other hand, something is preparing in our age which is so significant that already for a
great number of people, quite different faculties will exist in that incarnation which follows the
present one. As the faculties of man have changed during the five epochs of culture, so they will
also change into the sixth, and a great number of people today will clearly show already in their
next incarnation through their whole mood of soul, that their faculties have essentially
changed. Today, we will make clear to ourselves how different these souls of human beings will
be in the future, with a great number already in the next incarnation, with others, in the
incarnation following.

We could also look back in another way into past epochs of human evolution. Then we
would see that the farther we go back to the ancient clairvoyance, at the same time, the more
we have united with the human soul, what one can call the character of group-soulness
[Gruppenseelenhaftigkeit]. It has often been pointed out to you that the consciousness of the
group-soulness was existing in the ancient Hebrew people in an eminent degree. He who felt
himself — really consciously felt himself as a member of the ancient Hebrew people — said to
himself — especial attention has been drawn to this — ” As an individual man I am a transitory
phenomenon, but in me lives something that has an immediate connection with all the soul-
being which has streamed down since the racial father Abraham.” A member of the old Hebrew
people felt that. We can indeed esoterically admit as a spiritual phenomenon what was thus felt
by the old Hebrew people. We understand better what then happened if we keep the following
in mind.

Let us consider an old Hebrew initiate. Although initiation was not so frequent among the
ancient Hebrews as among other peoples, we could not characterise such a real initiate
otherwise — not merely one initiated into the theories and the Law, but an initiate really seeing
in the spiritual worlds — than by taking into consideration the entire racial peculiarity. It is the
custom today in external science, which busies itself with documents without any misgiving, to
take everywhere what stands in the Old Testament, to test it by all kinds of external records,
and then find it unsubstantiated. We shall have occasion to point out that the Old Testament
gives the facts more faithfully than external historical records. In any case, spiritual science
shows that a blood relationship of the Hebrew people can really be demonstrated back to the
racial father Abraham, and that the assumption of Abraham as racial father is fully justified.
This was something especially known in the old Hebrew secret schools: Such an individuality,
such a soul-being as that of Abraham, was not merely incarnated as Abraham, but is an eternal
being, who remained existing in the spiritual world. And in truth a real initiate was inspired by
the same spirit, as he who inspired Abraham, and he could testify for him of himself, that he
was permeated by the same soul-nature as Abraham. There was a real connection between
every initiate and the racial father Abraham. We must hold that fast: that expressed itself in the
feeling of membership of the old Hebrew people. That was a kind of group-soulness. One felt
what expressed itself in Abraham as the group-soul of the people. One felt group-souls
similarly in the rest of humanity. Mankind in general goes back to group-souls. The farther we
go back in human evolution, the less do we find expressed the single individuality. That which
we still find today in the animal kingdom: that a whole group belongs together — that was
existing among mankind, and appears ever clearer and clearer, the farther we go back to
ancient times. Groups of human beings then belonged together, and the group-soul was
essentially stronger than what constituted the individual soul in the single human being.

We can now say: Today in our time, the group-soulness of people is still not yet overcome,
and whoever believes that it is completely overcome does not keep in mind certain finer
phenomena of life. Whoever keeps it in mind will very quickly see that certain human beings
not only appear alike in their physiognomy, but that also the soul-qualities are similar in
groups of human beings: that one can, as it were, divide human beings into categories. Each
person can still today be reckoned into a certain category; with reference to this or the other
quality, he will belong perhaps to different categories, but a certain group-soulness is not only
valid because the races exist, but also in other connections. The boundaries drawn between the
single nations fall away more and more; but other groupings are still perceptible. Certain basic
characteristics stand so connected in some people, that he who will only look, can still today
perceive the last relics of the group-soulness of man.

Now we, in our present age, are living in the most eminent sense, in a transition. All group-
soulness has gradually to be stripped off. Just as the gaps between single nations gradually
disappear, as the single parts of different nations understand each other better, so also will
other group-soul qualities be shed, and the individual nature of each single person come to the
foreground more and more.

We have therewith characterised something quite essential in evolution. If we want to

grasp it from another side, we can say: That idea whereby the group-soulness chiefly expresses
itself loses meaning ever more and more in the evolution of mankind, i.e., the idea of race. If
we go back beyond the great Atlantean catastrophe, we see how the human races are prepared.
In the old Atlantean age human beings were grouped according to external characteristics in
their bodily structure, far more strongly than today. What we call races today are only the relics
of those important distinctions between human beings as were customary in old Atlantis. The
idea of race is only really applicable to old Atlantis. Since we deal with a real evolution of
mankind, we have never employed the idea of race in the most eminent sense for the post-
Atlantean age. We do not speak of an Indian race, a Persian race, etc., because that is no longer
correct. We speak of an old-Indian period of civilisation, of an old-Persian period of
civilisation, etc. And it would be utterly devoid of sense if we would speak of our time
preparing a sixth race. If relics of the old Atlantean distinctions, of their group-soulness, are
still existing in our time, so that one can still say the racial division continues to work on — that
which is preparing for the sixth period of time consists just in the character of race being
stripped off. That is the essential. Therefore it is necessary that that movement which is called
the anthroposophical movement, which should prepare the sixth period of time, adopts in its
basic character this stripping off of the character of race — that especially it seeks to unite
people out of all “races,” out of all nations, and in this way bridges over these differences, these
distinctions, these gaps, which are existing between various groups of human beings. For the
old racial standpoint had in a certain connection a physical character, whereas what will fulfil
itself in the future will have a much more spiritual character. Therefore it is so urgently
necessary to understand that our anthroposophical movement is a spiritual one, which looks to
the spirit, and overcomes just that which arises from physical distinctions, through the force of
a spiritual movement, It is, of course, thoroughly comprehensible that any movement has, as it
were, its childish illnesses, and that in the beginning of the theosophical movement, matters
were so represented as if the earth fell into seven periods of time — they were called Root-races
— and each of these Root-races into seven sub-races, and that would always repeat itself, so
that one could always speak of seven races, and seven sub-races, etc. But one must get beyond
the illnesses of childhood, and be clear that the idea of race ceases to have any meaning,
especially in our age.

Something else, in addition, is being prepared — something connected with the

individuality of man in a quite special way — in man becoming ever more and more individual.
It is only a question of this occurring in the right sense, and the anthroposophical movement
should serve to this end, that human beings become individualities — or we could also say
personalities — in the right sense. How can it do this?

Here we must look to the most striking new quality of man's soul, which is preparing. The
question is often put: Well, if reincarnation exists, why does a person not remember the former
incarnations? That is a question which I have often answered. Such a question appears as when
one brings along a four-year-old child, and because it is a human being, and cannot reckon,
one would say: Man cannot reckon. But let the child become ten years old, and then it will
reckon. It is thus with the human soul. If today it cannot remember, yet, the time will come in
which it can remember — the time when it has the same powers as he possesses who is
initiated today. But just today that transition is happening. There exist today a number of souls
who are so far on in our time, who stand close to the moment where they will remember their
former incarnations, or at least the last one. A whole number of human beings today are, as it
were, before the self-opening of the door to that embracing memory, which comprises not only
the life between birth and death, but the previous incarnations, or at least, the last, in the first
place. And when, after the present incarnation, a number of human beings are reborn, then
they will remember this present incarnation. It is merely a question of how they remember.
Anthroposophical development should give help and direction to remember in the right way.

In order to characterise this anthroposophical movement from this point of view, it must
be said: Its character is that it leads man to realise in the right way what one calls the human
“I,” the innermost member of the human being. I have often pointed out that Fichte rightly
said, most human beings would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava on the moon, than
as an “I.” And if you consider how many people there are in our time who make any idea at all
of what is in the “I,” i.e., of what they themselves are, then in general, you would come to a very
dismal result.

When this question arises, I have always to call to mind a friend I had more than thirty
years ago, and who as a quite young student was completely inoculated at that time by the
materialistic mood — today it is more modern to say “monistic” mood. He was already injected
by it, in spite of his youth. He always laughed when he heard something was contained in man
which could be designated as spiritual being; for he was of the view, that what lives as thought
in us, was produced by mechanical or chemical processes in the brain. I often said to him:
“Look, if you earnestly believe this as a content of life, why do you continually tell lies?” He
really lied, continually, because he never said: “My brain feels, my brain thinks, but: I think, I
feel, I know this or that.” Thus he built up a theory which he contradicted with every word — as
every man does; for it is impossible to maintain what one imagines as a materialistic theory.
One cannot remain truthful, if one thinks materialistically. If one would say: My brain loves
you, then, one should not say “you,” but, my brain loves your brain. People do not make this
consequence clear. But it is something which is not merely humoristic, but something which
shows what a deep basis of unconscious untruthfulness lies at the basis of our present
education.

Now, most people really would sooner regard themselves as a piece of lava in the moon,
i.e., as a piece of compact matter, than as that which can be called an “I” And today one
naturally comes least of all to a grasp of the “I” through external science, which indeed, as such,
must think materialistically, according to its methods. How can one attain this grasp of the “I”?
How can one gradually get an idea, a concept of what he instinctively feels, when he says: I
think? Solely and alone through this, that he knows by means of the anthroposophical view of
the world, how this human being is constituted, how the physical body has Saturn character,
the etheric body Sun character, the astral body Moon character, and the Ego, Earth character.
When we keep in mind everything we thus get as ideas out of the entire cosmos, then we
understand how the “I,” as the real Master-worker, labours at all the other members. And so
we come gradually to an idea [Begriff] of what we profess with the word “I.” We gradually
struggle up to the highest ideas of this “I,” if we learn to understand [verstehen] such a word.
We not merely feel ourselves as a spiritual being if we feel ourselves within an “I,” but when we
can say: In our individuality lives something which was there before father Abraham. When we
cannot merely say: I and father Abraham are one, but: I and the FATHER, i.e., the Spiritual,
weaving and living through the world. What lives in the “I,” is the same spiritual substance that
weaves and lives through the world as Spirit. Thus we gradually work our way up to
understand this “I,” i.e., the bearer of the human individuality, that which goes from
incarnation to incarnation. In what way, however, do we grasp the “I”? Do we grasp the world
at all through the anthroposophical view?

This anthroposophical view of the world arises in the most individual way, and is, at the
same time, the most un-individual thing that can be conceived. It can only arise in the most
individual way by the secrets of the cosmos revealing themselves in a human soul, into which
stream the great spiritual beings of the world. And so the content of the world must be
experienced in the human individuality in the most individual way, but at the same time, it
must be experienced with a character of complete impersonality. Whoever will experience the
true character of cosmic mysteries must stand entirely on the standpoint from which he says:
Whoever still heeds his own opinion, cannot come to Truth. That is indeed the peculiar
[eigenartige] nature of anthroposophical truth that the observer may have no opinion of his
own, no preference for this or the other theory, that he may not love this or the other view
more than any other because of his own especial individual qualities. As long as he stands on
this standpoint, it is impossible for the true secrets of the world to reveal themselves to him.
He must pursue knowledge quite individually, but his individuality must develop so far, that it
no longer has anything personal, i.e., anything of his own peculiar sympathies and antipathies.
This must be taken strictly and earnestly. Whoever still has any preference for these or the
other ideas and views, whoever can incline to this or the other because of his education or
temperament, will never recognise objective truth.

We have attempted here, this summer, to grasp Oriental wisdom from the standpoint of
Western learning. We tried to be just towards Oriental wisdom, and truly presented it in such a
way that it received its full rights. (The East in the Light of the West, cloth, crown 8vo, pp. 222.
7s. 6d) One must strongly emphasise that in our time it is impossible for independent spiritual
knowledge to decide through any special preference for either the Oriental or the Occidental
view of the world. Whoever says according to his different temperament he prefers the nature,
the laws of the world as existing in the Oriental or correspondingly in the Occidental view, has
not yet a full understanding for what is here essential. One should not decide, e.g., for the
greater significance of, let us say, the Christ, as compared with what Oriental teaching
recognises, because one inclines to the Christ through one's Occidental education or one's
temperament. One is only fitted to answer the question “How is the Christ related to the
Orient?” when from a personal standpoint the Christian is as indifferent to one as the Oriental.
As long as one has preference for this or the other, so long is one unsuited to make a decision.
One first begins to be objective when one lets the facts alone speak, when one heeds no reasons
derived from personal opinion, but lets facts alone speak in this sphere.

Therefore something meets us in the anthroposophical world-view, if it meets us today in

its true form, which is inwardly woven with the human individuality, because it must spring
out of the “I”-force of the individuality, and on the other hand, must be independent, so that
this individuality is again quite indifferent. That person in whom anthroposophical wisdom
appears must be unconcerned by it, must be independent of it. This is essential, that he has
brought himself so far, that he forces nothing of his own colouring into these matters. Then
they will indeed be individual, because the spiritual cannot appear in the light of the moon, or
the stars, but only in the individuality, in the human soul; but then, on the other hand, this
individuality must be so far on that it can exclude itself in the production of what constitutes
the wisdom of the world. Thus that which appears to mankind through the anthroposophical
movement will be something which concerns each human being, no matter from what race,
nation, etc., he is born, because it applies itself only to the new humanity, to man as such, not
to an abstract, general man, but to each single human being. This is the essential. As it
proceeds out of the individuality, out of the kernel of man's being, so it speaks to the deepest
kernel of man's being, so it grasps this kernel of man. As we usually speak from man to man,
fundamentally it is only surface speaking to surface, something which we have not united with
the innermost kernel of our being. Understanding between man and man, full understanding,
is hardly possible today in any other sphere, than in that where what is produced comes from
the centre of man's being, and, when it is understood aright by another, speaks again to his
centre. Hence in a certain connection, it is a new speech that is spoken by Anthroposophy. And
if today we are still obliged to speak in the various national languages what has to be
announced, the content is a new speech, which is spoken by anthroposophy.

What is spoken today outside in the world is a speech which is only really valid for a very
limited sphere. In ancient times, when people still looked into the spiritual world through their
old, dreamy clairvoyance, their word then meant something which existed in the spiritual
world. The word signified something which existed in the spiritual world. Even in Greece,
things were still different from what they are today. The word “idea” used by Plato signified
something different from the word “Idea,” as used by our modern philosophers. These modern
philosophers can no longer understand Plato, because they have no perception of what he
called “Idea,” and they confuse it with abstract concepts. Plato still had something spiritual
before him, even if already rarefied; it was still something quite real. Then also, one still had in
the words the sap of the spiritual, if one may express it thus. You can trace that in the words. If
anybody today uses the word “wind,” “air,” then he means something external, physical. The
word wind here corresponds to something external, physical. If, e.g., in old Hebrew, the word
wind, “Ruach,” was employed, one did not merely mean something external, physical, but a
spiritual, which swept through space. When man breathes in today he is told by materialistic
science that he simply inhales material air; in ancient times, one did not believe one inhaled
material air, but then one was clear that one inspired something of spirit, or at least, of soul.
Thus the words then were absolutely designations for spirit and soul. That has ceased today;
today speech is limited to the external world, or at least, those who seek to stand at the peak of
the age busy themselves seeing only a materialistic meaning, even behind those things where it
is still obvious they are derived from soul and spirit. Physics speaks of an “impact” of bodies. It
has forgotten that the word “impact” is derived from that which a living being performs out of
its inner living nature, when it pushes another being. The original significance of words is
forgotten in these simple things.

And so today, our speech — and this is most of all the case with scientific speech — has
become a speech which is only able to express what is material. Because of this, what is in our
soul while we speak is only comprehensible to those faculties of our soul which are bound to
the physical brain as their instrument. And then the soul understands nothing more of all that
is designated with these words, when it is disembodied. When the soul has gone through the
gate of death, and no longer employs the brain, then all scientific considerations of today are
forms quite incomprehensible to the disembodied soul. It does not even hear or perceive what
one expresses in the speech of the time. This has no longer any meaning for a disembodied
soul, because it only has meaning for what is the physical world. That again is something which
is still more important to consider in what one can call the mode of thinking, the method of
representation. It is even more important to consider it there than in theory, because it is a
question of life, not of theory, and it is characteristic that one can see in the theosophical
movement itself how materialism has crept in. Because it is the mode of the time, it has often
crept into the theosophical view, so that real materialism prevails even in theosophy itself, e.g.,
when one describes the etheric or life-body. Whereas a person should exert himself to come to
a grasp of the spirit, one mostly describes it as if it were a finer matter; and the astral body also.
One starts as a rule from the physical body, goes further to the etheric or life-body, and says:
that is built after the pattern of the physical body, only finer — thus one progresses to Nirvana.
Here one finds descriptions which take their images from nothing else than the physical. I have
already experienced that when one wanted to express the good feeling present in a room
among those present, one did not do so directly, but one said: Fine vibrations are existing in
this room. One did not heed that one materialises what exists spiritually in a mood if one
thinks the space filled with a kind of thin cloud, permeated with vibrations. That is what I
should like to call the most material way of thinking possible. Materialism has even got by the
neck those who want to think spiritually. That is only a characteristic of our time, but it is
important that we are conscious of it. And therefore we must pay especial heed to what has
been said: that our speech, which is always a kind of tyrant for human thinking, has implanted
in the soul a tendency to materialism. And many, who today would so willingly be thorough
idealists, express themselves entirely in a materialistic sense, misled by the tyranny of speech.
That is a speech which can no longer be understood by the soul as soon as it no longer feels
itself bound to the physical brain.

There is, indeed, something else, you may believe it or not. For one who knows occult
perception, real spiritual perception, the method of presentation often employed today in
theosophical-scientific writings causes real pain — because it appears irrational to him, if he
begins to think, no longer with the physical brain, but with the soul, which is no longer bound
to the physical brain, i.e., which really lives in the spiritual world. As long as one thinks with
the physical brain, so long can he go on characterising the world thus. As soon, however, as one
begins to develop spiritual perception, then, to speak of things in this way ceases to have any
meaning. Then indeed it even causes pain if one must hear the utterance: There are good
vibrations in this room, instead of: A good feeling prevails here. That at once causes pain in
anyone who can really see things spiritually, because thoughts are realities. Space then fills
itself out with a dark cloud, if one forms the thought: Good vibrations are in this space, instead
of: A good mood is prevailing.

It is now the task of the anthroposophical way of thinking — and the method of thought is
more important than the theories — that we learn to speak a language, which is really not
merely understood by the human soul so long as it is in a physical body, but understood also
when this soul is no longer bound to the instrument of the physical brain; for instance, either
by a soul still in the body, but able to perceive spiritually, or by a soul gone through the gate of
death. And that is the essential! If we bring forward those ideas which explain the world, which
explain the human being, then that is a speech which cannot merely be understood here in the
physical world, but also by those who are no longer incarnated in physical bodies, but live
between death and a new birth. Yes, what is spoken on our anthroposophical basis, is heard
and understood by the so-called dead. There they are fully one with us on a basis where the
same speech is spoken. There we speak to all human beings. Because in a certain connection, it
is chance whether a human soul is in a body of flesh, or in the condition between death and a
new birth. And we learn through anthroposophy a speech comprehensible to all human beings,
whether they are in the one or other condition. Thus we speak a speech within the field of
anthroposophy which is spoken also for the so-called dead. We really contact the innermost
kernel of man, the innermost being of man, through what we cultivate in a real sense in
anthroposophical considerations, even if they appear apparently abstract. We penetrate into
the soul of man. And because we penetrate to the soul of man, we liberate man from all group-
soulness, i.e., man becomes in this way more and more capable of really grasping himself in his
ego, his “I.” And that is the characteristic, that those who come to anthroposophy today, who
really take up anthroposophy, appear in comparison with others who remain far from it, as if
through anthroposophical thoughts, their ego would crystallise as a spiritual being, which is
then carried through the gate of death. With the others, in that place where the I-being is,
which remains there — which is now there in the body, and which remains after death — there
is a hollow space, a nothingness. Everything else which one can take up as ideas today, will
become more and more worthless for the real kernel of man's soul-being. The central point of
man's being is grasped through what we take up as anthroposophical thoughts. That
crystallises a spiritual substance in man; he takes that with him after death, and with that he
perceives in the spiritual world. He sees and hears with it in the spiritual world, with it he
penetrates that darkness which otherwise exists for man in the spiritual world. And thereby it
is brought about that when through these anthroposophical thoughts and way of thinking man
develops this “I” in him today, which now stands in connection with all the world wisdom we
can acquire — if he develops it — he carries it over also into his next incarnation. Then he is
born with this now developed “I,” and he remembers himself in this developed “I.” That is the
deeper task of the anthroposophical movement today, to send over to their next incarnation a
number of human beings with an ego in which they remember themselves as an individual ego.
They will be the human beings who form the kernel of the next period of civilisation. These
people who have been well prepared through the anthroposophical spiritual movement, to
remember their individual “I,” will be spread over the whole earth. For the essential in the next
period of culture will be that these people will not be limited by single localities, but spread
over the entire earth. These individual people will be scattered over the whole earth, and within
the whole earth sphere will be the kernel of humanity, who will be essential for the sixth period
of civilisation. And so it will be the case among these people, that they will know themselves as
those who in their previous incarnation strove together for the individual “I.”

This is the right cultivation of that soul-faculty of which we have spoken. This soul-faculty
so develops, that not only those just described will have this memory. More and more human
beings will have this memory of their former incarnation — in spite of their not having
developed the “I.” But they will not remember an individual “I,” because they have not
developed it, but they will remember the group-ego, in which they have remained. Thus people
will exist, who in this incarnation have cared for the development of their individual “I” — they
will remember themselves as independent individualities, they will look back and say: You
were this or the other. Those who have not developed the individuality will be unable to
remember this individuality.

Do not think that through mere visionary clairvoyance one acquires the faculty of
remembering the previous ego. Humanity was once clairvoyant. If mere clairvoyance sufficed,
then all would remember, for all were clairvoyant. It is not merely a matter of being clairvoyant
— humanity will already be clairvoyant in the future — it is a matter of having cultivated the
ego in this incarnation, or not. If one has not cultivated it, it is not there as an inner human
being; one looks back, and remembers as a group-ego, what one had in common. So that these
people will say: Yes, I was there, but I have not freed myself. These people will then experience
that as their FALL, as a new Fall of mankind, as a falling back into conscious connection with
the group-soul. That will be something terrible for the sixth period of time; to be unable to look
back to oneself as an individuality, to be hemmed in by not being able to transcend the group-
soulness [Gruppenseelenhaftigkeit]. If one will express it strongly, one could say: The whole
earth with all it produces (this holds at least as an image) will belong to those who now
cultivate their individuality; those, however, who do not develop their individual “I,” will be
obliged to join on to a certain group, from which they will be directed as to how they should
think, feel, will, and act. That will be felt as a fall, a falling back, in the future humanity.

So we should regard the anthroposophical movement, the spiritual life, not as mere theory,
but as something which is given us in the present, because it prepares what is necessary for the
future of mankind.

If we grasp ourselves aright in that point where we are now, whence we have come from
out the past, and then look a little into the future, then we must say: Now the time is come
where man begins to develop the human faculty of remembering backwards. It is only a
question of our developing it aright, i.e., that we train in us an individual “I;” for only what we
have created in our own soul can we remember. If we have not created it, then there only
remains to us a fettering memory of a group-ego, and we feel it as a kind of falling down into a
group of higher animality. Even if the human group-souls are finer and higher than the animal,
yet they are but group-souls. Humanity of an early age did not feel that as a fall, because they
were intended to develop from group-soulness to the individual soul. If they are now held back,
they fall consciously into it, and that will be the oppressive feeling in the future of those who do
not take this step aright, either now or in a later incarnation. They will experience the fall into
group-soulness.

The real task of anthroposophy, is to give the right impulse. We must thus grasp it within
human life. If we keep in mind that the sixth period of time is that of the first, complete
conquest of the racial idea, then we must be clear, that it would be fantastic to think that even
the sixth “race” starts from one point on the earth, and develops like the earlier races. Progress
is made by ever-new progressive methods of evolution appearing. By progress we do not mean
that what was valid as ideas for earlier times should also hold for the future. If we do not see
this, the idea of progress will not be quite clear to us. We will as it were fall again and again
into the error of saying: So and so many rounds, globes, races, etc., and it all goes on revolving
round again and again in the same manner.* (*This refers to the descriptions set forth in the
books of the “Theosophical Society,” 1909.) One cannot see why this wheel of rounds, globes,
races, etc., should always revolve again. It is a question of seeing that the word “race” is a term
only having validity for a certain time. This idea no longer has any meaning for the sixth
period. Races have only in themselves the elements which have remained from the Atlantean
age.

In the future, that which speaks to the depths of man's soul will express itself more and
more in the external nature of man; and that which man on the one side as a quite individual
being has acquired, and yet, again experiences unindividually, will express itself by working
out even to the human countenance; so that the individuality of man — not the group-soulness
— will be inscribed for him on his countenance. That will constitute human manifoldness.
Everything will be acquired individually, in spite of its being there through the overcoming of
individuality. And we will not meet groups among those who are seized of the ego, but the
individual will express itself externally. That will form the distinction between human beings.
There will be such as have acquired their egoity; they will indeed be there over the whole earth
with the most manifold countenances, but one will recognise through their variety how the
individual ego expresses itself even into the gesture. Whereas among those who have not
developed the individuality, the group-soulness will come to expression by their countenance
receiving the imprint of the group-soulness, i.e., they will fall into categories similar to each
other. That will be the external physiognomy of our earth: a possibility will be prepared for the
individuality to carry in itself an external sign, and for the group-soulness to carry in itself its
external sign.

This is the meaning of earthly evolution, that man acquires more and more the power of
expressing externally his inner being. There exists an ancient script in which the greatest ideal
for the evolution of the “I,” the Christ Jesus, is characterised by the saying: When the two
become one, when the external becomes like the inner, then man has attained the Christ nature
in himself. That is the meaning of a certain passage in the so-called Egyptian Gospel. One
comprehends such passages out of anthroposophical wisdom.*
 After we have attempted today to grasp the task of anthroposophy out of the depths of our
knowledge, we will consider something on Tuesday which as a spiritual problem — as a
specially individual affair of man — can lead us to his destiny, to his being.

* Cf. Dr. Steiner's Gospel of St. Matthew, lecture 6, published by Rudolf Steiner Publishing
Company.

LECTURE 2
7th December, 1909

Out of the whole spirit of our anthroposophical work, you will have seen, in the
course of years, that its aim is not to work on, as it were, something directly
sensational, but to follow tranquilly those facts connected with spiritual
happenings, the knowledge and cognition of which can be important for our life.
One does not merely serve the day, spiritually, by always speaking on what
concerns the day, but one also serves it by assimilating a knowledge of the great
connections of life. Our own individual life is fundamentally connected with the
great events of existence, and we can only rightly judge our own life, when we
estimate it by the greatest phenomena of life. Hence it arises, that within our seven-
yearly cycle in the German Section of the Theosophical Society, for four years we
have occupied ourselves with the foundation of our views, of our knowledge, and in
the last three years we have tried to deepen these basic views with reference to
world-embracing questions. And you will have seen from what has come to you in
the explanations given in various lecture-cycles, that considerations concerning the
Gospels belonged to the latter. Not merely because the material and content of the
Gospels should be brought close to us, but because through their study, many
things touching human nature can be learnt. And so today, something can be said
about the Gospels, with various applications to the personal life of man.

These Gospels are regarded less and less by external science as a historical
document for the knowledge of the greatest Individuality, of the greatest Impulse,
which has entered the evolution of humanity — of Christ Jesus. The attitude to the
Gospels in the first Christian centuries, and for a long time through the middle
ages, was quite different from what it has become in recent times. The Gospels are
first felt today as four mutually contradictory documents, and nothing appears
more natural today than to say: How can four documents be historical, when they
contradict each other, as the four Gospels do, each of which professes to give us an
account of what happened at the beginning of our era in Palestine.

Yet one thing could strike human thinking, unless it tries today to avoid seeing
the most important matters. For example, it might be said: It does not really need
very much today to realise that if the four Gospels are read consecutively they do
indeed contradict themselves in that sense as one understands it today. Any child
could see that, one might retort! But it might be added: Now the Gospels are in all
hands, now everybody occupies himself with them. But there was a time before the
invention of printing, before the modern spread of books, when these Gospels were
by no means in all hands, when they were really read only by very few, and these
few, they were just the people who stood at the peak of the spiritual life.
Fundamentally, in the first centuries, only those had the Gospels in their hands
who stood at the summit of the spiritual life. The content was imparted to the
others, brought near so that they could grasp it. One might ask: Were then these
few, who stood at the summit of the spiritual life, really such terrible fools, such
mightily stupid people, that they could not see what any child can see today: that
they do contradict each other, in the ordinary sense? Were then all those people,
who endeavoured to grasp the gigantic Christ Event in the sense of the four
Gospels, really such fools, such terribly stupid men, that they did not see what the
critic sees, working in the modern sense with these contradictions? This is a
question for oneself.

If we pursue such a question, we soon notice something else: i.e., that the whole
world of man's feeling towards the Gospels stood differently to them than it does
today. Today it is the critical intellect, which has learnt its whole training, its whole
manner of thought, at the hand of external sense-reality, it is this which attacks the
Gospels, and for this it is truly not difficult to find these intellectual contradictions;
for they are childishly easy to find.

How, then, did those who stood at the summit of the spiritual life and centuries
ago took the Gospels in hand get on with what one today calls contradictions? You
see, these men of old had an infinite reverence, unthinkable today, for the great
Christ Event through the four Gospels, and they felt extraordinarily that because
they had four Gospels, they had all the more to revere and value this event. How is
that possible? That was because these old judges of the Gospels kept in mind
something quite different from what is kept in mind today. The modern critics do
not proceed more cleverly than one who, perhaps, photographs a nosegay from one
side — he thus gets a certain photograph of the nosegay. He now goes through the
world with this photograph. People notice what the photograph looks like, and say:
Now I have an exact idea of the nosegay. But then someone comes who
photographs it from another side. The picture is quite different. He shows the
picture of the same nosegay to people, but they say: That can't be a picture of the
nosegay. The pictures contradict each other. And if the nosegay is photographed
from four sides, then the four pictures do not appear similar, yet they are four
views of the same thing. This was how the old judges of the four Gospels felt. They
said: the four Gospels are representations of one event, from four different points
of view, and because this is the case, they give us thereby a complete picture,
because they are not alike — and first when we are in a position to form a complete
representation from the four sides, do we then get a complete idea of the events of
Palestine. And so these people said: We must look up with all the greater humility,
when we see the events of Palestine presented from four sides. For this event is so
great, that one cannot understand it, if it is only described from one side. We must
be thankful that we have four Gospels, which describe this great event from four
sides. We must only understand how these four different points of view have come
together, and then, when we have convinced ourselves of this, can we form a
perception of what the individual person can have from the four Gospels.

That which we call the Christ Event is a mighty happening in the spiritual
evolution of mankind. How can we insert what took place then in Palestine in the
whole of human evolution? We can regard it in such a way that we say: Everything,
all that mankind previously experienced spiritually, which humanity had gone
through spiritually, all that flowed together streamed together into the event of
Palestine, in order from then to flow on farther in one common stream.

There we have — just to mention but one thing — let us say, the old Hebrew
teaching, as is laid down in the Old Testament, if we understand it aright. That is
one contribution. It flowed in, as the event of Palestine took place.

There was then another stream which proceeded from Zarathustra. This flowed
into that which from then streamed on through the world as Christianity as a main
stream.

There is that which we can call the Oriental spiritual stream, which found its
most significant expression in Gautama Buddha. That also flowed into the one
great main stream, and still others, in order then to flow on together. All of these
single streams are today within Christianity.

You are not shown what Buddhism is today by one who warms up again the
teachings which Buddha gave out 600 years before our era. These teachings have
flowed into Christianity. You are not shown what Zarathustrianism really is by one
who takes the old Persian documents, and from thence will show the nature of
Zarathustrianism today; for he who taught in ancient Persia what exists in the
ancient Persian documents has evolved further, and has let his contribution flow
into the spiritual life of mankind, and we must seek Zarathustrianism also within
Christianity, as well as Buddhism, and the old Hebrew stream.

And now we must ask ourselves, in order to have, in a slight degree, a picture of
the real relationship: How have these three streams of Buddhism,
Zarathustrianism, and ancient Hebrewism, flowed into Christianity.

If we will understand how Zarathustrianism flowed in, then we should call to

mind something which has often been mentioned here: that that individuality
whom we mention as Zarathustra, was the great teacher of the second post-
Atlantean epoch, and first taught in the so-called ancient Persian people, and then
incarnated again and again. After he ascended higher and higher through each
incarnation, he appeared about 600 years before our era as a contemporary of the
great Buddha. He appeared in the secret schools of the old Chaldean-Babylonian
sphere of culture. This Zarathustra was incarnated there, he was the teacher there
of Pythagoras, who went to Chaldea, in order to perfect himself in the right
manner. Then this Zarathustra, who at that time 600 years before our era appeared
under the name of Zarathas or Nazarathos, was born again at the beginning of our
era, reborn so that he appeared in a body which sprang from the parental pair
called Joseph and Mary, mentioned and described in the Matthew Gospel. We
designate this child of Joseph and Mary, of the so-called Bethlehem parents, as one
of the two Jesus children who were then born at the beginning of our era.
Zarathustra incarnated in him. Therewith we have implanted in that old Palestine
the individuality who was the bearer of Zarathustrianism, the one significant
spiritual stream.

But not only this spiritual stream has to live again, in order to be able to stream
into Christianity in a new form, but other spiritual streams also. Many different
things had to come together and combine for this. For instance, it had to happen
also that Zarathustra was born in a body, which as a body, through its physical
organisation, made it possible for Zarathustra in that incarnation at the beginning
of our era, to develop those faculties which he possessed, through having ascended
so high from incarnation to incarnation. For we must permit ourselves to say: If
such a high individuality descended and found an unsuitable body (which could
happen through his being unable to find a suitable body), then he would not be able
to express the faculties which he possessed in soul and spirit, because the
instruments were not there, in order to express on earth the corresponding powers.
One must have a definitely formed brain, if one will express such powers as
Zarathustra possessed. That means, one must be born in a body, which, as a body
inherited from forefathers, has those qualities which render it a suitable instrument
for the faculties which come over from an earlier incarnation. And so, in the case of
that Jesus child described in the Matthew Gospel, care had to be taken, that he did
not merely have inwardly, in that which reincarnated such a high psychic-spiritual
organisation, that he could exercise that mighty effect which had to be exercised,
but that also, this soul could be born in a perfect physical organisation, which was
inherited. Zarathustra had to find forthcoming this suitable physical brain.

What was thus worked out as a perfectly adapted physical organisation was now
the contribution which the ancient Hebrew people had to make to Christianity. A
suitable physical body had to be created out of it with the utmost conceivable
perfect physical instruments. A suitable body had to be created through purely
physical heredity for him who incarnated here. Preparation had to be made for this
throughout all the generations lying far back, so that the right qualities could be
passed on to that body which was born at the beginning of our era. To transmit the
right body was again the mission of the ancient Hebrew life.

Now we will form for ourselves an idea of how this life flowed into the great
main stream of our present spiritual life. That means, just as we have seen the
mission of Zarathustra within Christianity, so we will now seek the mission of the
ancient Hebrew people for the entire civilisation of our earth.

Here it must be said that the more spiritual science progresses, the more it sees
in the Bible, compared with what we have today as external history. What is
unearthed in the latter really appears childish compared with what stands in the
Bible, only one must read it rightly to understand it. This is really the more correct,
to the eyes of true spiritual investigation. And so, among other things, it is correct
that in a certain connection, that which was the later Judaism, arose from a tribal
father, from the father Abraham or Abram. Something absolutely correct lies
behind that if we go back along the generations, we come to a tribal father, to
whom quite special powers are imparted from out of the spiritual world itself. And
in the sense of spiritual science, we can speak of a tribal father of the Jewish
people, of Abraham or Abram. Quite special powers were imparted to him from out
of the spiritual world. What were these? If we want to understand what special
faculties were imparted to him, then we must call to mind a little the various things
we have already said here.

We have said: If we go back to earlier times, we find that human beings had
other powers of soul, which we can designate as a kind of dim clairvoyance
compared with those of today. They could not look out into the world in such a self-
conscious intellectual way as modern human beings, but they still had the faculty to
see the spirit which exists in the outer world, spiritual phenomena, facts and
beings; even if this seeing, because it occurred in a dimmed consciousness, was
more like a living dream, yet it had a living connection with reality. This old
clairvoyance had to become weaker and weaker, so that man could educate himself
to our present modern perception and intellectual culture.

The whole evolution of mankind is a kind of education of humanity. The various

faculties are gradually acquired. Our present way of seeing, without our perceiving,
for instance the astral body winding round a flower, when we behold it in ordinary
consciousness — whereas the ancient observer saw the flower and the astral body
round it — this modern perception, which beholds objects with the sharp contours
of the intellect, had to be trained in man, through the disappearance of the old
clairvoyance. But one definite law prevails in spiritual evolution. Everything which
man acquires must take its starting point from one individuality. Faculties which
are to become common to a large number of people must, as it were, first begin in
one. Those faculties which relate especially to a combination turned away from
clairvoyance, to the judging of the world according to measure, number, and
weight, these faculties which tend especially not to see into the spiritual world, but
to combine sensible phenomena, were first implanted from out of the spiritual
world in that individuality who is designated as Abraham or Abram. He was chosen
first to develop especially those powers which are bound in the most eminent
degree to the instrument of the physical brain. Abraham or Abram is not for
nothing called the discoverer of arithmetic, that means, that faculty which judges
and combines the world according to measure and number. He was, as it were, the
first of those, in whose soul-powers the old dreamy clairvoyance was extinguished,
and whose brain was so prepared as a perfect instrument, that just that faculty
which makes use of the brain, comes most to the fore.

And so in Abraham or Abram, there was a man, in whom the physical brain was
so developed, that it was applied most of all to external perception on the physical
plane, whereas all human beings earlier made less use of the physical brain, while
they saw clairvoyantly in the outer world the spiritual world, without always using
the physical brain. That was a significant, mighty mission which was especially
allocated to Abraham.

And now this faculty, which was laid as a seed from out the spiritual world in
Abraham, like any other seed, had to develop more and more. You can easily
conceive that whatever appears in the world must develop. Similarly this power of
considering the world through the physical brain had gradually to develop from the
seed. The evolution of this faculty now occurred through the succeeding
generations, while that which was given to Abraham was carried over to the
succeeding generations through the times which followed. But something else had
to happen than formerly when the mission of older people was carried over to the
younger. For the other missions were not yet bound to a physical body; the greatest
missions especially were not bound to a physical brain. Let us take Zarathustra.
What he gave to his disciples was a higher clairvoyant vision than other people had.
That was not bound to a physical instrument; that was carried over from teacher to
pupil, the pupil again became teacher, carried it over to his pupils, and so on. Now
it was not a question of a teaching, of a method of clairvoyant perception, but of
something bound to the instrument of the physical brain. Something of this nature
can only be implanted into later times by being inherited physically. Therefore,
what was given to Abraham as mission was bound up with its being inherited
physically from one generation to the other. That means, this perfect organisation
of the physical brain must be inherited from Abraham by his descendants from
generation to generation. Because his mission consisted in the physical brain
becoming more and more perfect, this had to happen from generation to
generation.

Thus the mission of Abraham was something bound up with procreation, in

order to become ever more perfect in the course of physical evolution. But now
something else was united with this contribution which the old Hebraic people had
to perform. This we will understand if we consider the following.
 If we take the other people in other civilisations, with their old dim
clairvoyance, then we must say: How did they receive that which was most
important, which they venerated most of all in the world? They received it in such a
way that it shone as Inspiration in their inner being, shone entirely inwardly. One
did not have to investigate so far afield as today. Today man acquires his science by
investigation outwardly, by experimenting, he derives his laws by combining
external facts. The ancients did not experience what they sought to know in this
way, for it shone in them as inspiration. They received it in the inward being. The
soul had to give birth to it inwardly. They had to turn the gaze away from the outer
world if they let the highest truths arise as inspirations. This had now become
different in that people who derived their mission from Abraham or Abram.
Abraham had to bring to men just that which can be won through observation
outwardly, and through combination. If then a member of other civilisations, which
were built on the old clairvoyance, looked up to the highest, then he said to himself:
I am thankful to the God Who reveals Himself to me within. I turn my gaze away
from outside, and the God becomes present to me in the spirit, if, without looking
outwards, I let the inspirations of the Divinity shine within. That people which
arose from Abraham, however, had to say: I will renounce the inspirations which
merely come from within. I will prepare myself to turn my gaze into the world
around. I will observe what reveals itself in the air, and water, in mountain and
plain, in the starry world, there will I send my gaze, and then I will be able to
ponder how one thing stands by another. I will combine the things outside with
each other, and will see how I can win an all-embracing thought. And when I
comprise what I see in the outer world with an all-embracing thought, bringing it
into one single thought, then I will name that which the outer world says to me
Jahve, or Jehova. I will receive the highest through a revelation from outside,
through a revelation which speaks through the outer world. That was the mission of
the Abrahamitic people: to give mankind that which came as revelation from
outside, in contrast to that which the other peoples had to give. Therefore this
instrument of the spiritual life had to be inherited so that it corresponded in its
formations to the revelations from outside, just as earlier the inner soul-powers
had to correspond to the revelations from within.

Now let us ask ourselves: What happened there, when the old clairvoyants gave
themselves to the revelations from within? Then they turned their gaze from
outside, for what revealed itself in the external world could say nothing to them
about the spiritual world. They even turned their gaze from sun and stars, for they
listened solely to what was within, and then the great inspirations about the secrets
of the world revealed themselves. Then the perceptions appeared concerning the
structure of the world. And that which they knew about the stars and their
movements, about the laws of the starry world, about the spiritual worlds, was not
acquired by them through external observation, these members of the ancient
civilisations. They knew something of Mars, Saturn, etc., because the nature of
these stars revealed itself in their inner being. Thus it was the laws of the entire
cosmos, which as it were, were inscribed in the stars, were at the same time
inscribed in the souls of these people. They revealed themselves there through
inspiration. As the laws of the world which dominate the hosts of the stars revealed
themselves in the soul, so now the external laws which rule the world should reveal
themselves through external combination to the Abrahamitic people, which now
should be won through external observation. For this, heredity had to be so guided
that thereby the brain got those qualities through which it could see the right
combinations there outside. That wonderful conformity to law was implanted in
the seeds which were transmitted to Abraham, which could so develop through i.e.
generations, that their development corresponded with the great world-laws. The
brain had to be inherited so that its inner powers, its configuration, developed like
the laws of number of the stars, out there in the cosmos. Therefore, it was said by
Jahve to Abraham: Thou wilt see generations arise from thee, which in their
ordering are arranged as the number of stars in the heavens. As the stars in the sky
are arranged in harmonious relationships of number, so should the generations
also be arranged in harmonious relationships of number. That means these
generations should carry laws in themselves, like the starry laws in the heavens,
There we have twelve constellations. An image of this had to appear in the twelve
tribes, as they arose from Abraham, so that the corresponding faculties, which were
implanted as seed in Abraham, could be led down through the generations. And so,
in the whole organic structure of this people developing from age to age, an image
was created of the number and measure in the heavens. A translation of the Bible
has rendered this by saying: Thy descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in
heaven.... Whereas in truth, the passage should run: Thy descendants shall be
arranged regularly in the blood relationship, so that their arrangement is an image
of the laws of the stars in the heavens. O, the Bible is deep! But what is today
offered as Bible is coloured by the modern view of the world. There it runs, “Thy
descendants shall be as numerous as the stars in the sky,” whereas in truth it is
said: Everything shall be so regular in thy descendants that, for example, twelve
tribes result, which correspond to the number twelve in the constellations of
heaven.
 And so the individual characteristics had to appear that all the time there came
to expression the mission of the Abrahamitic people: I get as a gift from outside —
not as something which shines in my innermost — that which forms my mission.
There is given to me from outside that which I have to bring to the world. That is
wonderfully expressed in the Bible, that the mission of Abraham is something given
to him from outside, in contrast to the old revelations which were given from
within. What had the mission of Abraham to be? The mission of Abraham had to be
this: to provide the blood, and what flows through the blood, to Christ Jesus. That
is the mission of Abraham. The entire spirituality of a certain stream had to be
permuted in this. That had to work as if it came from outside, a gift from outside.
Abraham had to give to the world the old Hebrew people. That is his mission. If
that is to correspond to the whole nature of his mission, then this people itself,
which is his mission, this people itself must be a gift from outside, must be given by
him as a gift. Abraham had a son — Isaac — whom he had to sacrifice, as related in
the Bible. And as he came to sacrifice him, this son was given anew to him by
Jahve. What is thus given him? From Isaac originate the entire people. If Isaac had
been sacrificed, there would have been no Hebrew people. The whole people were
thus given him as a gift. In the sacrifice of Isaac is this character of gift wonderfully
expressed. The people itself is the mission of Abraham; and with Isaac, he receives
the entire Hebrew people from Jahve as a gift.

The presentations in the Bible are thus deep, and all correspond in detail to the
inner character in the progressive evolution of humanity. This old Hebrew people
had to give up bit by bit the old clairvoyance, which the other civilisations
comprised within themselves. This old clairvoyance was bound to faculties which
came out of the spiritual world. One designated these clairvoyant faculties,
according to their nature, by expressions derived from the starry constellations.
The last faculty which was given up, for the old Hebrew people to be bestowed on
Abraham, was the one connected with the starry sign of the Ram. Therefore a ram
is sacrificed in place of Isaac. That is the external expression for the sacrifice of the
last clairvoyant power so that the old Hebrew people could be bestowed on
Abraham. Thus this people was chosen to develop just those powers which depend
on the observation of the outer world. But atavistic relics of the earlier appear in all,
and so it came about that again and again the old Hebrew people was forced to
exclude what did not lie purely in the blood. The carrying over of these faculties
directed externally that which still remained of the old clairvoyance. That which
came as an inheritance from other peoples had always to be excluded.
 We here touch a chapter which is only described with difficulty today, because it
contains a truth which lies as far as possible from modern thinking. But it is
nevertheless a truth, and one may make the demand, that those who have worked a
longer time in anthroposophical groups, can bear such truths, withdrawn
somewhat from modern habits of thought.

We must be clear that for certain human classes in ancient times, they retained
older faculties into later ages, especially with reference to knowledge; the old
clairvoyant powers were once with them in the soul. Man was more united with
spiritual beings; they revealed themselves in him. That expressed itself in certain
people, who represented as it were decadent products of this older humanity, that
they maintained a lower form of this connection with the spiritual outer world.
Whereas the really clairvoyant people were more bound up with the entire universe
through spiritual intuition and inspiration, the human beings who were in
decadence, were lower human types, who in their decadence developed their
ancient connection with the surrounding world. They were not independent; the I-
ness or Ego-hood, Ego-nature, did not come out in them, but also, the old
clairvoyant faculties were no longer at their corresponding height. Such human
beings constantly appeared, and in them was shown the connection between
certain physical human organs, and the so-called ancient clairvoyant organs. And
now comes that truth which must sound so strange. What one calls the old
clairvoyance, this shining of world secrets in the innermost, must come by some
path or other into the soul. What shone in man must stream in; that means, we
have to conceive that “streamings-in” (influxes) occur in people. The ancient
human being did not perceive these streams, but when they took place and shone
in him, he perceived them as his ancient inspirations. Certain streams thus flowed
into man from out his environment. These were later transformed in him. These
streams in ancient times were purely spiritual streams, were, for instance,
perceptible to a clairvoyant as pure astral-etheric streams. But later, these pure
spirit streams dried up, as it were, condensed to etheric-physical streams. And
what arose thus? The hair arose in this way. The hair is a result of the ancient
streams. The hair today on a human body was formerly spiritual stream in man,
coming from outside into his inner being. Our hair is a dried-up astral-etheric
stream. And such things are only preserved where — one might say — the old truths
have remained, purely externally, in writing, through tradition. Therefore, in
Hebrew, the word HAIR and the word LIGHT are designated by approximately the
same signs, because one had a consciousness of the relationship between the astral
in-streaming light, and the hair; as, in general, in old Hebraic writings, originally,
purely in the words themselves, the greatest truths are contained.

Thus one can say: there is a progressive evolution of mankind. With those
human beings, however, who retained the old faculties in decadent form, these
streamings-in indeed transformed themselves, dried up, as it were, but no new
faculties appeared instead. They were in an old way bound with the new, and yet
again, not bound, because these streams were dried up. Such people were very
hairy, while those who developed further were less hairy, because new powers
appeared instead of those which later condensed to hair.

Science will only come again to these significant truths after a long time. In the
Bible they stand. The Bible is far more learned than our modern science, still
standing at the childish stage guarding its A.B.C. Just read the story of Jacob and
Esau. Jacob is he who has progressed a stage, who has developed the faculty of the
later age, Esau has remained at an earlier stage. It is he who is the simpleton, as it
were, compared with Jacob. As the sons are presented to Isaac, the mother has
covered Jacob with false hair, so that Isaac confuses the younger son with Esau. We
should thereby be shown that the old Hebrew people still had something in them as
an inheritance from other civilisations which had to be stripped off. Esau is thrust
out; through Jacob is implanted what should live on as external combination.

And just as that which had been retained in a form remaining behind was thrust
out in Esau, so were the old clairvoyant powers, which came to expression as an
atavistic remnant in what Joseph represents, thrust out by his brothers, towards
Egypt. He had dreams, and could interpret the world through them; that is the
faculty which should not develop in the mission of the Abrahamitic people.
Therefore he is thrust out, and must go to Egypt.

So we thus see how a stream is worked out in the old Hebrew people, which is
built on blood relationship through the generations, and out of which by stages that
which remains over as relics is expelled. The old Hebrew has this as its own
peculiar tendency, to make that which is inherited down through the generations
into an ever more and more perfect instrument, so that when the whole generations
have run their course, that body can be evolved from it which can furnish the
instrument for him who is to be incarnated again. If the old Hebrew people could
not receive revelations from within, they must receive them from outside. Even that
which the other peoples received through direct inspiration, had to be received by
the old Hebrew people through an external revelation. That means, the Jews had to
go over to another people — led by Joseph — who had the old inspirations. And
while Joseph was initiated into the Egyptian Mysteries, they attained through
external means what they needed to know about the characteristics of the spiritual
worlds. They even received the moral law from outside, not as something which
shone to them from within. That was the mission of the old Hebrew people. Then,
after they had assimilated what they had to absorb from outside, they withdrew
with an externally acquired revelation — they returned back again to their
Palestine.

And now, after this old Hebrew people had undergone all this, there should be
shown how it gradually developed from generation to generation, so that finally the
body which became the body of Jesus could be born from this people, whereby the
old Hebrew stream flowed into Christianity.

Remember how we have discussed the development of tendencies in the case of

single human beings. The life of the individual falls into periods of seven years. The
first period extends from birth until the change of teeth, at the age of seven, and in
this the physical body simply builds its forms. Then we have the second seven-
yearly period to the age of puberty, in which the etheric body is active in the growth
of form, in enlarging the forms. The forms are made definite till the age of seven,
then the already definite forms merely enlarge, letting those tendencies prevail
down in them. From 14 to 21, the astral body is especially predominant. And so we
see in the twenty-first year the real “I” of man is first born, and becomes
independent. Thus the life of the individual runs its course in certain periods, till
the birth of the human “I” or Ego. Similarly, those germs or aptitudes must
gradually develop in that people which as people had to provide a body for a most
perfect Ego or “I.” In this case, what appears in man in the course of years, so
develops here that it appears in the course of generations. A following generation
must have developed other tendencies than a previous generation. Everything
cannot develop all at once merely in one generation. To explain why this is so from
occult bases would lead too far, but one can call to mind a quite ordinary
phenomenon. Just remember that in heredity, certain qualities are not
immediately inherited, but leap over one generation and it is the grandson who
appears similar to the grandfather in inherited qualities. Thus it is in the
inheritance of qualities in the successive generations of the Hebrew people. One
generation had always to be leaped over. And so what corresponds in the single
individual to one period of age, corresponds in the successive generations to two.
We can therefore say: This people, like a great individual, must so develop from
generation to generation, that what occurs in the case of the individual from birth
to change of teeth, here requires 2 x 7 = 14 generations. Then a second period
comes, again comprising 2 x 7 generations. This corresponds to the period between
the change of teeth and puberty. Then a third period, again comprising 2 x 7
generations, corresponding to the age between 14 and 21, where the astral body is
especially prominent. Then the “I” or Ego can be born. The “I” or Ego could be born
in the Hebrew people after 3 (2 x 7) = 3 x 14 generations had elapsed. He who
wanted to describe to us the body which was given as instrument to Zarathustra,
had to show how, through 3 (2 x 7) generations, the seed which was given to
Abraham developed, so that after 3 x 14 generations, the “I” could be born, just as
in the individual, the “I” could be born in its threefold corporality after 3 x 7 years.
The writer of the Matthew Gospel does this. He describes 3 X 14 generations, the
generations from Abraham to David, those from David to the Babylonian Captivity,
and those from the Babylonian Captivity to the birth of Jesus.

Thus from the depths of knowledge, out of the Matthew Gospel, we have
pointed to the mission of the old Hebrew people, how gradually the forces were
developed which made it possible for the most perfect Ego or “I” which Zarathustra
had attained to be born in a body from this people.

And if we now see what the destinies were of this old Hebrew people, we find
that the Captivity appeared to the entire people where, in the individual after the
fourteenth year, preparation takes place for individual life, where that springs up
which can be accomplished in life, and what man absorbs between the ages 14 and
21; the hopes of youth; that the Captivity was the time when, as it were, the astral
body of the old Hebrew people came into consideration, where that was implanted
through the last fourteen generations, which gives it its impulse. Therefore the old
Hebrew people are led into the Babylonian Captivity — there, where, 600 years
before our era, Zarathas or Nazarathos was then in his incarnation, at that time the
teacher in the secret schools of the Babylonians. Those who were the most
prominent leaders of the old Hebrew people then came into contact with the great
teacher of ancient times, with Zarathas. He there became their teacher, united
himself with them, they took up there the great impulse which so worked that in
the last fourteen generations this people were prepared for the birth of Jesus.

Events then went on further, as you know. And then we see something
noteworthy. We see a law observed in the spiritual sphere by the writer of the
Matthew Gospel, which will be recognised more and more as a law significant for
all life. This is the law, that whatever has happened earlier is repeated at a higher
stage. Modern science has it already in a somewhat distorted form when it declares
that what has been undergone at a lower stage throughout long epochs is repeated
shortly in each single being. The writer of the Matthew Gospel shows us this in a
magnificent way. He shows it by saying: The Ego of Zarathustra had to incarnate in
a body which was gradually developed within the Abrahamitic people. Abraham
proceeded from Ur in Chaldea, from the place where Babylonian civilisation
started, and took his path through Asia Minor towards Palestine. His descendants
were led farther south through the dreams of Joseph, towards Egypt, and after they
had here received the Egyptian Impulse, returned to Canaan. That is the fate of the
entire people. First, the whole people are led through Canaan, towards Egypt, and
then back again to Canaan. What thus transpired as the fate of a people, had now
shortly to be repeated. There, where the Ego is born for whom the vehicle had been
thus prepared, after all had been developed that was laid down in Abraham, there
this Ego again takes its starting point from Chaldea. In Chaldea, Zarathustra was
the secret teacher in his last incarnation, his spirit was united with Chaldea. What
path does the soul of Zarathustra take, when it will incarnate in Bethlehem?
Zarathustra had remained united with those who had been initiated in the
Chaldean secret schools, with the Magi. They called well to mind how they had
heard from their teacher that he would reappear, that this soul who from the
beginning was designated as Zarathustra — the golden star — would take his path
at a definite point of time towards Bethlehem. And as the time came, they followed
the path which this soul took, repeating the path of the old Hebrew people. As
Abraham followed the path to Canaan, so that star took this path to Canaan: that
means, the soul of Zarathustra; and the three Magi followed the star Zarathustra,
and he led them to that place where he was born in that body destined for him from
out the Abrahamitic people. Thus Zarathustra, the Ego of Zarathustra, was led
along that path — repeating in spirit — which Abraham had traversed to Palestine.
Then the old Hebrew people had had to seek the path to Egypt. It had been led over
through the dreams of the elder Joseph. And now, that Ego which was born in the
Bethlehemitic Jesus, was led through the dreams — again of a Joseph — led to
Egypt, the same path which the Abrahamitic people had pursued through the
dreams of the elder Joseph. This Ego of Zarathustra, repeating in Spirit, undergoes
the whole destiny of the old Hebrew people in the body of Jesus. He goes to Egypt,
and then again back to Palestine. Here we have the repetition in spirit which is
undergone by the soul of the Ego of Zarathustra. And that is an image of the fate of
the old Hebrew people.
 In the Matthew Gospel, out of the knowledge of the law, we have that faithfully
described, that what appears at a higher stage, is a repetition in short of what was
there earlier. Oh, how deeply these gospels describe the event that stands at the
beginning of our era, that is so mighty, that four writers have said: Each one of us
can only describe from his standpoint this great event. Each of these four has
described the one event according to his own limited power. As when we picture a
being from four sides, we retain but one picture, and through the combination of
mutually contradictory pictures know the total being, so has the writer of the
Matthew Gospel described what he knew about the law of 3 (2 x 7), about the
preparation of the body for the great Ego of Jesus through the mission of the old
Hebrew people, according to these secrets, of which he was conscious just through
his initiation. The writer of the Luke Gospel has described according to the
initiation of which he was conscious, whereby he presented how in another way the
Buddha stream flowed into Christianity, in order to flow on farther into it. And the
other gospel writers have described from out of the presuppositions of other
initiations. The event they describe is so great, that we must be thankful when we
find it described from four sides, from the aspects of four initiations.

Today we have only been able to indícate the inflow of the Zarathustra stream,
and the contribution of the old Hebrew people. Next time we will discuss
something else, which has been transmitted as a contribution in order to stream
further into Christianity at a newly-arisen stage. Only some details were mentioned
today from the spirit of the origin of Christianity, to show how our knowledge of the
world grows, our knowledge of man grows, if we follow the greatest event in
humanity. An idea should be awakened of how deeply this event is to be taken, and
how deep the gospels are, when we really understand how to read them.

LECTURE 3
12th December, 1910

In the course of years, considerations have been brought forward in the various
groups in different lecture-cycles, for a great number of the anthroposophical
friends sitting here, on the John Gospel, the Luke Gospel, the Matthew Gospel, and
we have attempted in these considerations, on the three gospels, to let appear
before our spiritual eye the great event of Palestine, the Mystery of Golgotha, from
three different sides, as it were, in three varying ways. And perhaps these
considerations have proved adapted to lay in our souls the foundations for an ever-
increasing valuation of this unique event. We have already pointed out how the
reason why we have four gospels is to be sought essentially in the fact that the
writers of the gospels, as inspired occultists, wanted to represent this great event
each from his own side, just as one copies or photographs something external from
one standpoint. And if one takes photographs of a thing from different sides, so
through a combination of what results, through bringing them together before the
soul, one can come to the true reality. Each of the evangelists really gives us
opportunity to consider the great event of Palestine from one special side. From a
side which we can call at the same time the opening of the highest human, occult
and other aims, and beside this highest human principle, also taking into account
the highest world principle — from this side it is the John Gospel which gives us an
insight into the great event of Palestine.

The Luke Gospel opens for us an insight into the secrets, which hover round the
personality of Jesus of Nazareth, of the Solomon and Nathan Jesus, up to the
moment where the great inspiration of Jesus of Nazareth is replaced by the Christ.

The Matthew Gospel, for those who have heard the lecture-cycle on it, or have
read it later, has to show how from the people of ancient Hebraism, from the folk-
secrets of the Hebrew people, the physical principle of life (as it were) was
prepared, in which the Christ-Principle should incarnate for three years.

In a certain connection it is again the Mark Gospel which can lead us into the
highest summits of the anthroposophical, Christian method of observation, and
through the Mark Gospel opportunity is given us to look into many things which
should be imparted to us through the gospels, but are not brought near to us in
such a way by the other evangelists. And I have laid on myself the task of saying a
few words because opportunity offers itself today to speak of the Mark Gospel.

If we speak of this, we must be quite clear how necessary it is to look into many
things for which the superficial world of the present has no real inclination. If one
is to understand the Mark Gospel and all its depths, one must become acquainted
with the quite different method of expression among men at the time when Christ
Jesus walked on earth. Do not take it amiss, if I attempt to say to you what I really
intend, through a distinct shading, a distinct twilight.
 We express through speech what we want to say. And what lives in our soul
should in a certain way be made obvious in the words of speech. In this method of
expressing through speech what lives in our soul, the various epochs of human
development are very different from each other. If we went back to the epoch of the
old Hebrew evolution, to that wonderful method of expression which was still
possible in the old Hebraic temple-speech, we should find quite another method of
clothing the secrets of our soul in words, than people today have any idea of. When
a word sounded in the old Hebraic speech — only the consonants were written, the
vowels were then added — then there did not merely sound in this word what
sounds in it today; a more or less abstract idea... but a whole world. Because of this,
the vowels were not really written, because he who spoke gave out his most inner
being just through his way of vocalising, whereas in the consonants, there lay more
the description, the portraying of what is outside. One can say that when, e.g., an
ancient Hebrew drew a “B” — what corresponds today with our “B” — he always felt
something like a portraying of external relationships, of something which formed a
warm, hut-like enclosure. The letter “B” always evoked the picture of something
which, house-like, could surround a being. One could not utter the “B” without that
living in the soul. And if one vocalised an “A,” one could not do it without
something of strength, of force, even of radiating power, living within it. Thus the
soul lived further. The soul-content worked outwards with the words, soared into
space and into other souls. Thus speech was then a far more living affair. It entered
far more into the secrets of existence than our speech.

That is the light which I wanted to place before you. And the shadows I must
represent in contrast; that we in our time have become to a high degree in this
connection pedants. Our languages only express abstractions, generalities. One
does not even feel that any more. Speech only expresses now pedantry,
fundamentally. How should this be different in an age when people even begin to
manipulate it in literary fashion long before they have a spiritual content; in an age
when such an infinite amount goes into the broad masses as print, when each one
thinks he must write something, when everything becomes an object for writing. I
have had to experience that even in the founding of our society, authors turned up
from curiosity, who had the intention of being able to extract perhaps a novel out of
the matter: why should not forms exist there which one can have on tap and retail
in a public writing shop? Thus we must be quite clear that we have a speech which
has become abstract, empty, pedantic — in contrast to the way in which one
formerly conceived it as something holy, to which one felt the responsibility that
GOD should speak from out of it. Hence it is so infinitely difficult to squeeze into
modern words those great, tremendous facts, which are imparted to us and which
sound to us, for instance, in the gospels. Why should the man of today not also
believe that one can give everything in our speech? He cannot understand that our
speech says something empty with what even the Greek speech still meant with a
word. And if we read the Bible today, we read something which, compared with its
original content, has been sifted once, twice, three times, but so sifted, that there
remains not the best but always the worst. Therefore it is naturally cheap in a
certain way to appeal to the modern words of the Bible. But we go astray most of all
if we appeal to the Bible in the case of the Mark Gospel, as it lies before us today. In
any case we must not do that.

Now you know that the Mark Gospel had in its first lines as its basis the words
which the translation by Weizsacker, regarded as exceptionally good (but it is
conceivable that what is regarded today as so excellent, need not be so really),
renders as follows: “As stands written in the prophet Isaiah; Behold, I send my
messenger before thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the
wilderness; prepare the way of the Lord; make straight his paths.”

Honest people must really say to themselves, if the Mark Gospel begins thus in
this Weizsacker: I do not understand a single word of it all. Whoever will
understand it must really resolve to do something. Whoever goes sincerely to work,
cannot understand anything when it is said: “Behold, I send my messenger before
thee, who shall prepare the way for thee; listen how it calls in the wilderness;
prepare the way of the lord; make straight his paths.” For either a triviality is
uttered, or something is said which one cannot understand. One must first bring
together those ideas which make it possible to understand such an utterance as that
of Isaiah's here. For Isaiah points to that great, mighty event, which should be the
most significant event in human evolution. What is he really pointing to? Now from
what we have already described, we can well indicate what Isaiah predicted. We can
indicate it by saying: In ancient times, man had a kind of clairvoyance; he had the
possibility of growing with his soul-forces into the divine spiritual world. What
really happened with man when he grew thus into the divine spiritual world? Then
it was the case that when he grew into the divine spiritual world he ceased to
employ his Ego, so far as it was developed at that time. He used his astral body, in
which were those forces which were the forces of vision, of seership, whereas all the
forces rooted in the Ego were gradually awakened through the perception of the
physical world. It is the Ego which employs the instruments of the senses. The
ancient human being, however, when he sought illumination about the world,
employed his astral body. The ancient human being saw, perceived in the astral
body. Further evolution consisted in this, that the transition was found from the
astral body to the use of the Ego. With reference to this Ego, the Christ-Impulse
had to be the most intense impulse. If, now, the Christ is taken up into the Ego so
that the phrase of Paul is true, “Not I, but the Christ in me,” then the Ego has the
power of growing into the spiritual world through itself. Formerly, only the astral
body could do this.

Thus we have an evolution of humanity before us of which we can say: Man

employed his astral body as organ of knowledge, but he lost more and more the
possibility of developing an organ of knowledge in his astral body. And the more
one approached the Christ Event, that stage of evolution arose of which man must
say: My astral body has less and less the possibility of looking into the spiritual
world. Nothing arose through its union with the spiritual world, and the Ego was
not yet forceful enough to get, from its side, any illumination from the world. That
was the age when the Christ drew near.

Now in the real evolution of mankind, it is a question of certain great strides

being gradually prepared, which then occur. This was the case with the Christ-
Impulse. But a transition had to exist. Things could not so run their course that
man saw how his astral body gradually became dull towards the spiritual world, so
that he would have felt utter barrenness and desolation in himself, until the Ego
was kindled through the Christ-Impulse. Things could not take this course. But in
the case of a few it happened through an especial influence from the spiritual
world, they saw something already in the astral body similar to the way one should
later see and know through the Ego: The egoity (Ego-hood) was, as it were,
prepared in the astral body. That was an anticipation of the egoity in the astral
body. Man indeed first became earthly man through the Ego and its development.
The astral body really belonged to the ancient moon. At that time, the angel, the
angel-man, was at the human stage. The angel was man on the old moon. Man is
man on the earth. We know that. On the old moon, it was man's task to use his
astral body. Everything else was only preparation for the Ego-evolution. The
beginning of our earth evolution was a repetition of the moon evolution. For man
could never become fully man in the astral body; but on the moon, only the angel
could become man in the astral body. Therefore — just as in the earth-man the
Christ lived in order to inspire the Ego — so for the preparation of this Ego-hood
the possibility had to be given, that from the angels of the moon — from the moon-
men, the angels — prophets were so inspired in their human astral body, that the
Ego could be prepared. There had thus to occur what a prophet could have
characterised in the following way: There will come in human evolution a time
when man will be ripe for the ego-evolution. In the astral body only the angels of
the moon have raised themselves to the highest. But in order that man can be
prepared for this egoity, certain human beings must be so inspired on earth,
through grace, in exceptional conditions, that they work as angels, in spite of their
being human; that they are angels in human form.

Here we come to an important occult idea, without which you cannot

understand at all the evolution of humanity in the sense of occultism. Externally
uttered, it is naturally easy if one simply says that all is Maya. Well, all right. But
that is an abstraction. One must really take it earnestly. Therefore one must be able
to say: There stands a man before me... that, however, is Maya! Who knows... is
that, anyhow, a man? Perhaps the human existence is but the external veil,
employed by quite another being than man is, just to bring about something which
cannot yet be effected by man. I have indicated something of this in my Portal of
Initiation.

In ancient times, such an event was actualised for humanity, when that
individuality who lived in Elias was reborn in John the Baptist, and when, in the
soul of John the Baptist, an angel entered for that incarnation, and employed the
corporality, and also the soul-nature of John the Baptist, in order to effect what no
human being would have been able to bring about. In John lived an angel, an angel
who had to go before, and announce before, that which should live in Jesus of
Nazareth, in the widest sense, as true Ego-hood [Ichheit]. It is extremely important
to know that John the Baptist is a Maya (illusion), and in him there lives an angel, a
messenger. This stands also in the Greek: “Behold, I send my messenger = Angel.”
The German alone thinks no more of this, that in the Greek “Angel” stands in this
place. “Behold I send my angel before him.” And so there is indicated a deep world-
mystery which, preceded with the Baptist, was prophesied by Isaiah. He
characterises John the Baptist as a Maya, as an illusion, he who in truth comprises
the angel, who, as angel, has to announce what man really should become through
the reception of the Christ-Impulse — because the angel has to announce
beforehand — what man only later has to become. And so, at this place, there
should be said: “Behold, that which gives the egoity to the world, sends the angel
before thee, to whom the egoity should be given.”
 Now we pass to the third sentence. What does it signify? Here one must call to
mind the whole historic world-situation. How had things become in the human
breast, since the astral body had gradually lost the power of stretching out its forces
like tentacles, to look clairvoyantly into the divine spiritual world? Formerly, when
the astral body was put in activity, it could see in the divine spiritual world. This
possibility disappeared more and more, and it became dark in man. Man could
formerly spread out his astral body over all the beings of the divine spiritual world.
Now he was alone in himself — alone is the same as eremos [Greek ernmos] That
which the soul was now, lived in the solitude. That also stands there in the Greek
text: Behold, how it appears, how it there speaks in the solitude of the soul (or you
could say “in the wilderness of the soul “) — when the astral body could no more
spread itself out to the divine spiritual world. Give heed how it calls in thy soul-
wilderness, in thy soul-loneliness.

What is it that announces itself beforehand? Here we must be clear as to the

meaning of one quite definite word, when one uses it of soul-phenomena, or of
spiritual phenomena in general, above all in the Hebrew, but also in the Greek: the
word Kyrios. If one translates it by “the lord,” as generally happens, then one is
translating truly absolute nonsense. What is meant by it? Everybody in ancient
times, who had such an utterance on his tongue, knew that something was meant
thereby which was connected with the soul-progress of the human race. He knew,
therefore, that the word “Kyrios” pointed, indeed, to secrets of soul. We have in the
soul, when we look to the astral body, various forces. We usually call them thinking,
feeling, and willing. The soul thinks, feels, and wills. Those are the three forces that
work in the soul. But they are the serving forces of the soul. As man progressed in
evolution, these forces which formerly were the lords, to whom man was given over
— (man had to wait whether his thinking, feeling, willing was called) — these single
soul forces became subject to the Kyrios, the Lord of the soul forces, the “I.”
Nothing else was understood by this word, when it referred to the soul, than the “I,”
though it no longer held in the old sense: the divine spiritual thinks, feels, wills in
me, but I think, I feel, I will: The Lord makes itself valid in the soul forces. Prepare
yourselves, ye human souls, to go such soul paths, that ye let the strong “I” awaken
in your souls: Kyrios, the Lord in your souls. “Listen, how it calls in the solitude of
soul. Prepare the force or the direction of the soul — Lord, of the I. Make open his
forces!” Thus one must translate it, approximately. “Make its forces open, so that it
can come in, so that it is not the slave of thinking, feeling, and willing.” And if you
translate these words: “Behold, that which is the ego, sends its angel before thee,
who should give thee the possibility to understand how it calls in the solitude of the
astral soul: prepare the directions of the I, make the forces open for it, for the I,”
then you have a meaning in these significant words of the prophet Isaiah; then you
have an indication of the greatest event in human evolution; thus you understand
from this how Isaiah speaks of John the Baptist, how he points out thereby that
man's soul-solitude longs for the approach of the Lord in the soul, of the “I.” Then
the words get force and weight. Thus, we must grasp such words.

Why could John the Baptist be the bearer of the angel? He could be this,
because he had had a quite special initiation, The various initiations are
specialised. These initiations are not something general; they are specialised. With
those individualities who have a quite special task, an initiation had to occur
according to a quite special kind of secret. Now for everything which happens at all
in the spiritual world, it is so provided that there is revealed in the heavens, in the
starry script what spiritual facts there are. One can receive the sun-initiation, that
means, enter the secrets of the spiritual world, which is the world of Ahura Mazdao,
for which the sun is the external expression. But one can be initiated into the sun
secrets in a twelve-fold way, and each initiation is in a certain connection a Sun-
Initiation, but yet is differently constituted with reference to the other eleven.
According as man has this or the other task for the whole of mankind, he receives a
sun-initiation of which one can say: This is a sun-initiation but such that one must
express by saying: The forces flow in so that the sun stands in the sign of Cancer.
That is different from the initiation one receives which one must express by saying:
The forces flow in as if the sun stands in the sign of the Balance or Scales. They are
the expressions for different specialised initiations. And those individualities who
have such a high task, a high mission, as characterised here for John the Baptist,
they must be initiated in a quite special manner in a special initiation, because only
from this can they get the strong force necessary to bring about this mission in the
world, also, under conditions in a quite one-sided way. And so, John the Baptist, in
order that he could become the bearer of the Angelos, had that sun-initiation,
which one can call the initiation from the sign of the Waterman. As the sun stands
in the sign of the Waterman, that is a symbol for that kind of initiation which John
the Baptist received, in order to become the bearer of the angel, while he received
the force of the sun, as it flows down when it stands in the sign of the Waterman,
when it stands in such a relation to the other stars, that one designates it with the
expression: It stands in the sign of the Waterman. That was the symbol that John
had the Waterman-initiation. The sign indeed received this name Waterman,
because he who had the Waterman-initiation received especially the power as a
spiritual initiate, of effecting in human beings what John effected as the Waterman,
as the Baptist: namely, to bring human beings to this, that with the immersion in
water, they got their etheric bodies so free, that they came to such a self-knowledge,
which made possible what was the most important thing at the time. Human
beings were immersed, and the etheric body became free for a moment. Through
the baptism in the Jordan, man could feel the quite especial importance of the
world-historic epoch. Therefore John was initiated just in the Baptism Initiation.
And because one must express that symbolically, with the flowing-down of the
sunrays out of the sign in which the sun stands, so one called this sign also — the
Waterman. Thus the name of the human power is carried over.

Today a whole number of learned ignoramuses make the attempt to interpret

spiritual events by bringing down the heaven, as it were, to the earth. They say:
Now, that signifies the prominence of the sun. All these learned people, who really
do not know much, interpret human events from out of the heavens. The reverse
was the case. What lives in man spiritually was carried over to the heavens, while
one made use of the heavens as a means of expression. So that John the Baptist
could say: I am he who baptises you with water. And that was the same as if he had
said: I am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. I baptise you with water, I
am endowed with the initiation of the Waterman. That was the word which John
would have been able to say to his intimate disciples. And just as the sun progresses
in opposition to its sense-path: if you proceed in opposition to Waterman, there
arises — Virgin; then it passes to Balance. If we have initiation in mind, we must
consider the opposite path, on the other side: from Waterman to Fishes. Thus John
could say: Something will come that no longer has to work as corresponds to the
sun from out of the Waterman, but as corresponds to the working of the sun from
out of the Fishes. One will come who will bring a higher baptism. When the
spiritual sun mounts higher, then there arises from the Waterman-baptism, the
baptism from spiritual water. The sun ascends in spirit from Waterman to the
Fishes: hence the well-known fish-symbol for the bearer of the Christ, which is an
ancient symbol. For just as in John through quite special spiritual influences a
Waterman initiation took place, so the initiation, of which I have spoken here and
there to you, which arose through all mysteries in a secret way which transpired
around Jesus, a Fish-initiation — a progression of the sun by one constellation.
That was what placed Jesus of Nazareth in his age, that he was first subject to a
Fish-initiation.

This is, one might say, sufficiently indicated to us in the gospel of Mark. Yet
such things can only be indicated in image form. Christ Jesus draws together all
those who are seeking fish. Therefore all his first apostles are fishermen. And we
can find obvious what I have said — the progress to the Fishes, when we are told: I
have baptised you with water. He will baptise you with the Holy Spirit. And as he
drew to the sea of Galilee — that means, when the sun was so far advanced, that
one could see its counterpart from the Fishes — those are inspired who were called
Simon, and Simon's brother, James, and James' brother, fishers — they are
inspired in the corresponding way. How can we understand all that? We cannot
understand it, unless we enter a little more closely into the means of expression of
that time.

Our modern means of expression is pedantic. If a man stands before us, we say:
there is a man. If a second stands before us, we say again: there is a man. A third —
another one, etc. But we have merely Maya before us. If a being has two legs, and a
human countenance, then in our pedantic way of expression we have but the one
word: there is a man. But what is a man for occultism? Nothing but Maya! Really,
as he stands there before us, man is — nothing. He is about as much as the rainbow
which stands in the sky. How long is this anything? Only so long as the necessary
conditions are given between rain and sunshine. If the sun and rain alter their
relationship, it is gone. It is just the same with man. He is only a streaming together
of forces of the macrocosm. We must seek the forces in heaven, here or there in the
macrocosm. There, where one assumes perhaps a man somewhere on the earth,
there is nothing for the occultist. But forces are streaming from above down, from
below up, and they intersect. And as the peculiar constellation of rain and sunshine
results in the rainbow, so forces streaming out of the macrocosm from above and
below result in a phenomenon, and this appears as man. That is the man. Man is
nothing as he stands before us. In truth, he is a schema, a Maya, an illusion. It is
the cosmic forces which are real, which intersect there where our eyes think they
see a man. Just try and take this expression earnestly: Man is nothing as he stands
before us. He is but the shadow of many forces. The being, however, who reveals
itself in man, can quite well be elsewhere, than at that point where this man is
walking on two legs. There are three men: The one is an ancient Persian, who
works at the plough in the old Persian agriculture. He looks like a man — in truth
he is one of the souls, who are nourishing their forces out of this or that world from
below or above. The second is perhaps an old Persian official. He is built through
forces from another world which intersect in him. If we will know him, we must
mount to these forces. All of you, as you are sitting here, are in your reality quite
somewhere else. Only the forces from your own real being ray here.... Then stood a
third Persian there, of whom one had to say: He is really utter deception — he is
utterly a schema, which stands there. What was there in reality? One must go up to
the sun, there are the forces which nourished this model. There above, among the
secrets of the sun, one finds that which one can call the Gold Star — Zarathustra;
that sends the rays down, and here below stands a model, which one calls
Zarathustra. In truth, his being is not there at all. That is the third.

Now it is important that in ancient times one was aware of what was meant by
such designations. One did not give names as one does today, but one named
people according to what lived in them, not according to their external illusory
appearance. We must be quite clear of this. So that one should have been able to
say: An ancient human being at the time of Christ should have well understood
when one pointed to John the Baptist, and said: Here is the angel of God. One
would only have heeded that which had taken up the place. One spoke of the chief
matter, not of the subsidiary ones. Now let us assume the same mode of expression
was applied to Christ Jesus Himself. How must one have spoken of Christ Jesus if
one understood such things? No man at that time would even have dreamt of
naming that which then wandered over the earth, this wandering body in flesh, the
Christ Jesus; but that was the sign, that what streamed down spiritually from out of
the sun, was caught up in this point in a quite special manner. If this body, which
was the body of Jesus, went from one place to another, that was the rendering
visible of the sun-force which went from one place to another. This sun-force could
also go alone. At times the expression was so used, that Christ Jesus was in his
home in the flesh, but what was in him moved further, even without his body.
Especially in the John Gospel the expression is so used, that under conditions,
when this being moved purely spiritually, the writer of the gospel speaks quite
exactly as if this sun-force dwelt in a fleshly body. Hence it is so important that the
deeds of Christ Jesus are always brought into connection with the physical sun,
which is the external expression for the spiritual world, which has been collected,
been caught up, at that point where the fleshly body wanders. If thus the Christ
Jesus heals, for instance, then it is the sun-force which heals there. This must
stand, however, at the right place in the heavens. “When evening was come, as the
sun went down, they brought to him all who were sick, diseased, etc.” It is
important that one indicates that this healing power can flow down when the
external sun has set, when the sun only still works spiritually. And as He needs a
definite force in order to work, he had to take this out of the spiritual sun, not out
of the physical visible sun. “And early in the morning, while it was still dark, he
arose and went out.” The path of the sun, and the sun-force is expressly indicated
to us: that this sun-force works, and that fundamentally Jesus is only the external
sign: that this path of the sun-force could also be visible to the weak external eyes.
And everywhere in the Mark Gospel where we have mention of the Christ, the sun-
force is meant, which for that epoch of our earthly evolution was quite especially
active on that part of the earth called Palestine. And one could see the sun-force.
“At this or that time, Christ went from this place to that place.” One could just as
well say: “At this time, the spiritual force of the sun, as if gathered into a focus,
went from this to that place,” And the body of Jesus was the external sign which
made visible to the eyes how the sun-force moved. The paths of Jesus in Palestine
were the paths of the sun-force come down to earth. And if you draw the steps of
Jesus as on a special map, then you have a cosmic event; the working of the sun-
force out of the macrocosm in the land of Palestine. It is a question of this
macrocosmic event. It is especially the writer of the Mark Gospel who points this to
us; the writer of the Mark Gospel, who well knew that a body, which was the vehicle
of such a principle as the Christ-Principle, must be subdued in a quite special way
by his principle. It was the pointing to that world which Zarathustra had so
powerfully announced behind the world of sense, the pointing to that world as it
works into the human world. And so now there was indicated through Christ Jesus
how the forces work on into the earth. Therefore a kind of repetition of the
Zarathustra-events must occur in that body which, as we have seen, even if it was
the body of the Nathan Jesus, was in a certain way influenced by the Zarathustra
Individuality.

Now let us hear the great, beautiful legends of Zarathustra. As his mother gave
him birth, the first wonder of Zarathustra showed itself as the famous Zarathustra
smile. The second wonder was when the king of the district where Zarathustra was
born, Durasrav, resolved to murder Zarathustra, of whom the decadent magicians
had said special things. As the king appeared to stab the child, his arm was
paralysed. That was the second miracle after the birth of Zarathustra. And then, the
king who could not use his dagger against Zarathustra, had the child taken among
the wild beasts of the desert. That is the expression for the fact that in earliest
childhood, Zarathustra had to see what man sees when he appears impure. Instead
of the noble group-souls, and the noble, higher spiritual beings, he sees the outflow
of his wild fantasy. That is the exposure in the desert to the wild animals, among
which Zarathustra remains unharmed. That is the third miracle. The fourth was
again a miracle among the wild animals, etc. Always it was the good spirit of Ahura
Mazdao who served Zarathustra.
 We find these wonders again in the Mark Gospel repeated: “And then the Spirit
drove him into the wilderness — (really it means solitude) — for forty days... and
the angels ministered unto him.” Here we are shown that the body was prepared to
take up, as it were, in a focus, that which transpired in the macrocosm. What
happened with Zarathustra must happen again; being led to the wild beasts.... This
body took up what came in from out of the macrocosm.

The Mark Gospel already in its first lines places us within the greatest cosmic
connections. And I wanted to show you how basically, if one but first understands
the words in the right sense — not as in our modern pedantic speech, but as in the
ancient speech, where each word had living worlds behind it — when one
understands it in the sense of this ancient speech, how then the Mark Gospel gets
new life, new force. But one must say: Our modern speech can only find what was
already laid in the words in these ancient speeches, after much paraphrase. What
we utter when we say: “Man lives on the earth and develops his ego. Man formerly
lived on the moon, then it was the angels who went through their human stage.” All
of that lies behind, when it runs: “Behold, I send my angel before man.” And the
words are not to be understood, without the presupposition of what is offered in
spiritual science. And people in the present should be sincere, and say of the words
at the beginning of the Mark Gospel: That is incomprehensible. Instead of doing
this, they stand there in petty pride and explain spiritual science as fantasy, which
puts all kinds of things into what they know in a simple way. But these people of
today do not know it at all. And today one no longer has the principle that one had,
for instance, in ancient Persia, where from epoch to epoch, the ancient holy
documents were rewritten, in order to be clothed anew for each epoch. Thus the
divine spiritual word as Zend-Avesta was transformed, and again transformed, and
what exists today is the last form. Seven times the Persian Bible was written anew.
And anthroposophy should teach men how necessary it is that books in which the
holy secrets are written must be transformed from age to age. For especially when
one will preserve the mighty style of old, one may not as it were attempt to remain
as much as possible with the old words. One cannot do it, one understands them no
more, but one must attempt to transform the ancient words into a direct
understanding of the present. We have tried this summer to do that with Genesis.
You saw, then, how many of the words must be transformed. You have perhaps
today got a little idea of how the words must also be transformed in the Gospel of
Mark.