NormalizeHEADmain

1 files changed, 0 insertions, 2416 deletions

diff --git a/old/54260-0.txt b/old/54260-0.txt
deleted file mode 100644
index dfaa3d7..0000000
--- a/old/54260-0.txt
+++ /dev/null
@@ -1,2416 +0,0 @@
-The Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind, by 
-Rudolf Steiner
-
-This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and most
-other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no restrictions
-whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of
-the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at
-www.gutenberg.org.  If you are not located in the United States, you'll have
-to check the laws of the country where you are located before using this ebook.
-
-Title: The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind
-
-Author: Rudolf Steiner
-
-Editor: Harry Collison
-
-Release Date: February 28, 2017 [EBook #54260]
-
-Language: English
-
-Character set encoding: UTF-8
-
-*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE OF MAN, MANKIND ***
-
-
-
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-                         The Spiritual Guidance
-                          of Man and of Mankind
-
-                                   BY
-
-                           DR. RUDOLF STEINER
-
-                          EDITED BY H. COLLISON
-
-                   THE AUTHORIZED ENGLISH TRANSLATION
-
-
-
-
-COPYRIGHT, 1915, BY H. COLLISON
-
-
-The copyright, the publishing rights, and the editorial responsibility
-for the translation of the works of Rudolf Steiner, Ph.D., with the
-exception of those already under the editorial supervision of Max Gysi,
-are now vested in Mr. Harry Collison, M.A., Oxon.
-
-
-
-
-PREFACE
-
-
-In the following pages are reproduced the contents of some lectures
-delivered by me at Copenhagen in June last, in connection with the
-General Meeting of the Scandinavian Theosophical Society. What is here
-set forth was therefore spoken to an audience acquainted with occult
-science, or theosophy. A similar acquaintance is assumed in this work.
-It is throughout based on the foundations given in my books, “Theosophy”
-and “An Outline of Occult Science.” To anyone taking up the present
-work who is unacquainted with these premises, it must needs appear the
-strange outpouring of mere fancy, but the above-named books point out the
-scientific basis of everything stated in this one.
-
-I have completely re-written the shorthand report of the lectures;
-nevertheless it has been my intention on publishing them, to preserve the
-character given in oral delivery. This is specially mentioned because
-it is in general my opinion that the form of work intended for reading
-should be quite different from that used in speaking. I have expressed
-this principle of mine in all my earlier writings, as far as they were
-intended for the press. If in this instance I have worked out my
-subject in closer connection with the spoken word, it is because I have
-reasons for letting the work appear at this juncture, and an adaptation
-completely in accordance with the above rule would take a great deal of
-time.
-
-                                                          RUDOLF STEINER.
-
-_Munich, August 20, 1911._
-
-
-
-
-The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind
-
-
-
-
-LECTURE I.
-
-
-A man reflecting on his own nature soon becomes conscious that there is
-within him a second and more powerful self than the one bounded by his
-thoughts, his feelings and the fully-conscious impulses of his will. He
-becomes aware that he is subject to that second self, as to a higher
-power. It is true that at first he will feel it to be a lower entity as
-compared with the one limited by his intelligent and fully-conscious
-soul, with its inclinations towards the Good and True. And at first he
-will strive to overcome that lower entity.
-
-But closer self-examination may reveal something else about the second
-self. If we often, in the course of our lives, make a kind of survey of
-our acts and experiences, we make a singular discovery about ourselves.
-And the older we are, the more significant do we think that discovery.
-If we ask ourselves what we did or said at a particular period of our
-lives, it turns out that we have done very many things which are only
-really understood in later years. Seven or eight, or perhaps twenty years
-ago, we did certain things, and we know quite well that only now, long
-afterwards, is our intelligence ripe enough to understand what we did or
-said at that earlier period.
-
-Many people do not make such discoveries about themselves, because they
-do not lay themselves out to do so. But it is extremely profitable to
-hold such communion frequently with one’s own soul. For directly a man
-becomes aware that he has done things in former years which he is only
-now beginning to understand, that formerly his intelligence was not ripe
-enough to understand them,--at a moment such as this, something like the
-following feeling arises in the soul: The man feels himself protected by
-a good power, which rules in the depths of his own being; he begins to
-have more and more confidence in the fact that really, in the highest
-sense of the word, he is not alone in the world, and that everything
-which he understands, and is consciously able to do, is after all but a
-small part of what he really accomplished in the world.
-
-If this observation is often made, it is possible to carry out in
-practical life something which is very easy to see theoretically. It is
-easy to see that we should not make much progress in life if we had to
-accomplish everything we have to do, in full consciousness, with our
-intelligence taking note of every circumstance affecting us. In order
-to see this theoretically, we have only to reflect as follows: In what
-section of his life does a human being perform those acts which are
-really most important as regards his own existence? When does he act most
-wisely for himself? He does this from about the time of his birth up to
-that period to which his memory goes back when in later life he surveys
-his earthly existence. If he recalls what he did three, four or five
-years ago, and then goes farther and farther back, he comes at last to
-a certain point in childhood, beyond which memory cannot go. What lies
-beyond it may be told by parents or others, but a man’s own recollection
-only extends to a certain point in the past. That point is the moment
-at which the individual felt himself to be an ego. In the lives of
-people whose memory is limited to the normal, there must always be such
-a point, but previously to it, the human soul has worked in the wisest
-possible manner on the individual, and never afterwards, when man has
-gained consciousness, can he accomplish such vast and magnificent work on
-himself as he carries out, from subconscious motives, during the first
-years of childhood.
-
-For we know that at birth man takes into the physical world what he
-has brought with him as the result of his former earthly lives. When
-he is born, his physical brain, for instance, is but a very imperfect
-instrument. The soul has to work a finer organization into that
-instrument, in order to make it the agent of everything which the soul
-is capable of performing. In point of fact the human soul, before it is
-fully conscious, works upon the brain so as to make it an instrument for
-exercising all the abilities, aptitudes, qualities, etc., which appertain
-to the soul as the result of its former earthly lives. This work on a
-man’s own body is directed from points of view which are wiser than
-anything which he can subsequently do for himself when in possession of
-full consciousness.
-
-Moreover, man during this period not only elaborates his brain
-plastically, but has to learn three most important things for his earthly
-existence. The first is the equilibrium of his own body in space. The
-man of the present day entirely overlooks the meaning of this statement,
-which touches upon one of the most essential differences between man and
-animals. An animal is destined from the outset to develop its equilibrium
-in space in a certain way; one animal is destined to be a climber,
-another a swimmer, etc. An animal is so organized from the beginning as
-to be able to bear itself rightly in space, and this is the case with
-all animals up to and including the mammals most resembling man. If
-zoologists would ponder this fact, they would lay less emphasis on the
-number of similar bones and muscles in man and animals, etc., for this is
-of much less account than the fact that man is not endowed at the outset
-with the complete equipment for his conditions of equilibrium. He has
-first to form them out of the sum total of his being. It is significant
-that man should have to work upon himself, in order to make, out of a
-being that cannot walk at all, one that can walk erect. It is man himself
-who gives himself his vertical position, or his equilibrium in space.
-He brings himself into relation with the force of gravitation. It will
-obviously be easy for anyone taking a superficial view of the matter to
-question this statement, with apparently good reason. It may be said
-that man is just as much organized for his erect walk as, for instance,
-a climbing animal for climbing. But more accurate observation will show
-that it is the peculiarity of the animal’s organization that causes
-its position in space. In man it is the soul which brings itself into
-relation with space and controls the organization.
-
-The second thing which man teaches himself, and that by means of the
-entity which proceeds from one incarnation to another as the same being,
-is speech. Through speech he comes into relation with his fellow-men.
-This relation makes him the vehicle of that spiritual life which
-interpenetrates the world primarily through man. Emphasis has often been
-laid, with good reason, on the fact that a human being removed, before he
-could speak, to a desert island, and kept apart from his fellows, would
-not learn to talk. On the other hand, what we receive by inheritance,
-what is implanted in us for use in later years and is subject to the
-principles of heredity, does not depend on a man’s dwelling with his
-fellows. For instance, his inherited conditions oblige him to change
-his teeth in his seventh year. If it were possible for him to grow up
-on a desert island, he would still change them then. But he only learns
-to talk, when his soul’s inner being, i.e., that which is carried on
-from one life to another, is stimulated. The germ, however, for the
-development of the larynx must be formed during the period at which man
-has not yet acquired his ego-consciousness. Before the time to which his
-memory goes back, he must plant the germ for developing his larynx, in
-order that this may become the organ of speech.
-
-And then there is a third thing: It is not so well known that man learns
-this of himself, from that part of his inner being which he carries on
-from one incarnation to another. It is the life within the world of
-thought itself. The elaboration of the brain is undertaken because the
-brain is the instrument of thought. At the beginning of life, this organ
-is still plastic, because the individual has to form it for himself as
-an instrument of thought, in accordance with the intention of the entity
-which is carried on from one life to another. The brain immediately
-after birth is, as it was bound to be, in accordance with the forces
-inherited from parents and other ancestors. But the individual has to
-express in his thought what he is as an individual being, in accordance
-with his former earthly lives. Therefore he must re-model the inherited
-peculiarities of his brain, after birth, when he has become physically
-independent of his parents and other ancestors.
-
-We thus see that man accomplishes momentous things during the first
-years of his life. He is working on himself in the spirit of the highest
-wisdom. In point of fact, if it were a question of his own cleverness,
-it is possible that he might not accomplish what he does without
-that cleverness during the first period of his life. Why is all this
-accomplished in those depths of the soul which lie outside consciousness?
-This happens because the human soul and entire being are, during the
-first years of earthly life, in much closer connection with the
-spiritual worlds of the higher hierarchies than is afterwards the case.
-A clairvoyant who has gone through sufficient spiritual development to
-be able to witness actual spiritual events, sees something exceedingly
-significant at the moment when the ego acquires consciousness, _i.e._,
-the earliest point to which the memory of later years goes back. Whereas
-what we call the child’s aura floats round it in its earliest years
-like a wonderful human and superhuman power, and, being really the
-higher part of the child, is everywhere continued on into the spiritual
-world,--at the moment to which memory goes back, this aura sinks more
-into the inner being of the child. A human being is able to feel himself
-a continuous ego as far back as that point of time, because then that
-which was previously in close connection with the higher worlds, passed
-into his ego. Henceforward the consciousness is at every point brought
-into connection with the external world. This is not the case with a very
-young child, to whom things appear only as a surrounding world of dreams.
-
-Man works on himself by means of a wisdom which is not within him. That
-wisdom is mightier and more comprehensive than any conscious wisdom of
-later years. The higher wisdom becomes obscured in the human soul, which
-in exchange receives consciousness.
-
-The higher wisdom works from out of the spiritual world deep into the
-bodily part of man, so that man is able by its means to form his brain
-out of spirit. It is rightly said that even the wisest may learn from
-a child, for in the child is working the wisdom which does not pass
-later into consciousness. Through that wisdom man has something like
-telephonic connection with the spiritual beings in whose world he lives
-between death and re-birth. From that world there is something still
-streaming into the aura of a child, which is, as an individual being,
-immediately under the guidance of the entire spiritual world to which
-it belongs. Spiritual forces from that world continue to flow into a
-child. They cease so to flow at the point of time to which memory goes
-back. It is these forces which enable a child to bring itself into a
-definite relation to gravitation. They form the larynx, and so mould the
-brain that it becomes a living instrument for the expression of thought,
-feeling and will.
-
-What is present in childhood to a supreme degree, so that the individual
-is then working out of a self which is still in direct connection with
-higher worlds, continues to some extent even in later years, although
-the conditions change in the manner indicated above. If at a later stage
-of life we feel that we did something years before which we are only
-now able to understand, it is just because we previously let ourselves
-be guided by higher wisdom, and only after the lapse of years have we
-attained to an understanding of the reasons of our conduct.
-
-From all this we can feel that, immediately after birth, we had not
-escaped so very far from the world in which we were before entering
-upon physical existence, and that we can never really escape from it
-wholly. Our share in higher spirituality enters our physical life and
-accompanies us throughout it. We often feel that what is within us is not
-only a higher self which is gradually being evolved, but is something
-higher which is there already, and is the motive cause of our so often
-developing beyond ourselves.
-
-All ideals and artistic creations which man is able to produce, as well
-as all the natural healing forces in his own body, by means of which he
-is continually able to adjust the injuries that befall him in life,--all
-these powers do not proceed from ordinary intellect, but from those
-deeper forces which in our earliest years are at work on our equilibrium
-in space, on the formation of our larynx and on the brain. For these
-same forces are still at work in man in later years. When sickness
-attacks us, it is often said that external forces cannot help us, but
-that our organism must develop the healing powers latent within it:
-by this is meant that there is a profoundly wise activity present in
-humanity. Moreover, it is from the same source that proceed these best
-forces whereby knowledge of the spiritual world is attained, _i.e._, true
-clairvoyance.
-
-The question now suggests itself, why do the higher forces which have
-been described work upon human nature only during early childhood?
-One-half of the answer may be easily given as follows: If those higher
-forces went on working in the same way, man would be always a child.
-He would not attain the full ego-consciousness. From within his own
-being must proceed the motive power which previously worked on him from
-without. But there is a more important reason, which explains still more
-about the mysteries of human life than what has just been said, and that
-is the following:
-
-It is possible to learn through occult science, that the human body, as
-it exists at its present stage of evolution, must be regarded as having
-arrived at its present form under different circumstances. It is known to
-the occultist that this evolution was effected by means of the working
-of various forces on the sum-total of man’s being; certain forces worked
-on the physical body, others on the etheric, others on the astral body.
-Human nature has arrived at its present form through the action of those
-beings whom we call the Luciferic and Ahrimanic. By their means it has,
-in a certain way, become worse than it need have been if those forces
-only had been active within it which proceed from the spiritual rulers
-of the cosmos who desire to evolve man along straight lines. The causes
-of sorrow, disease and even of death are to be sought in the fact that,
-besides the beings who are evolving man in a straight line forwards,
-there are also ruling the Luciferic and Ahrimanic spirits, who are
-continually crossing the line of straightforward, progressive development.
-
-There is something in what man brings into existence at birth, which is
-better than what he can make out of it in later life. This is so, because
-the Luciferic and Ahrimanic forces have but little influence over man
-during early childhood; they are virtually only operative in what man
-makes out of himself by his conscious life. If he were to retain in full
-force beyond early childhood that part of his being which is better than
-the rest, he would be unable to endure its influence, because his whole
-being is weakened by the opposite forces of Lucifer and Ahriman. Man’s
-organism in the physical world is so constituted that it is only when
-he is, so to speak, as soft and pliable as a child, that he can endure
-within him those direct forces of the spiritual world which operate
-within him during early childhood. He would be shattered, if during
-his later life there were still directly working in him those forces
-which underlie the faculty of equilibrium in space, and the formation
-of the larynx and the brain. Those forces are so tremendous that, if
-they were to go on working, our organism would pine away under the
-influence of their holiness. Man must only have recourse to such forces
-for the purpose of that kind of activity which brings him into conscious
-connection with the supersensible world.
-
-But out of this there arises a thought which is of great significance,
-if rightly understood. It is expressed in the New Testament in the words
-“Except ye become as little children, ye cannot enter into the Kingdom
-of Heaven.” What then becomes manifest as man’s highest ideal, if what
-has just been said be rightly received? Surely this,--the drawing ever
-nearer and nearer to what we may call a conscious relation to the forces
-which work in man unknown to him during early childhood. Only it must be
-borne in mind that man would collapse under the power of those forces,
-if they were at once to operate in his conscious life. For this reason,
-careful preparation is necessary for the attainment of those faculties
-which induce the perception of supersensible worlds. The object of such
-preparation is to qualify man to bear what he is unable to bear in
-ordinary life.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Now the passing of the individual through successive incarnations is of
-importance for the collective evolution of the human race. The latter has
-advanced through successive lives in the past, and is still advancing,
-and parallel with it the earth too is moving forwards in its evolution.
-The time will come when the earth will have reached the end of its
-career. Then the earthly planet will fall away as a physical entity from
-the sum-total of human souls, just as the human body falls away from the
-spirit at death, when, in order to continue living, the soul enters the
-spiritual realm which is adapted for it between death and re-birth. When
-once this is realized, it must appear as man’s highest ideal to have
-progressed far enough at earthly death, to be able to reap all possible
-benefits which may be obtained from earthly life.
-
-Now those forces which prevent man from being able to endure the forces
-working upon him during early childhood come out of the substance of
-the earth. When this has fallen away from a human being, the latter,
-if he has attained the aim of his life, must have advanced far enough
-to be able actually to give himself up, with his whole being, to the
-powers which at present are only active in man during childhood. Thus
-the object of evolution through successive earthly lives is gradually to
-make the whole individual, including therefore the conscious part, into
-an expression of the powers which are ruling in him under the influence
-of the spiritual world,--though he does not know it,--during the first
-years of his life. The thought which takes possession of the soul after
-such reflections as these, must fill it with humility, but also with a
-due consciousness of the dignity of man. The thought is this: man is
-not alone; there is something living within him which is constantly
-affording him proof that he can rise above himself to something which is
-already growing beyond him, and which will go on growing from one life to
-another. This thought can assume more and more definite form; and in that
-case it affords something supremely soothing and elevating, at the same
-time filling the soul with corresponding humility and modesty. What is it
-that man has within him in this way? Surely a higher, divine human being,
-by whom he is able to feel himself interpenetrated, saying to himself,
-“He is my guide within me.”
-
-From such a point of view, it is not long before we arrive at the thought
-that by all the means in our power we should strive to be in harmony with
-that within our being which is wiser than conscious intelligence. And
-we shall be referred on from the directly conscious self to an enlarged
-self, in the presence of which all false pride and presumption will be
-extinguished and subdued. This feeling develops into another, which
-opens the way to accurate understanding of the nature of present human
-imperfection; and the consciousness of this leads to the knowledge that
-man may become perfect, if once the larger spirituality ruling within him
-is allowed to bear the same relation to his consciousness which it bore
-to the unconscious life of the soul in early childhood.
-
-If it often happens that memory does not go back as far as the fourth
-year of a child’s life, it may nevertheless be said that the influence
-of the higher spirit-sphere, in the above sense, lasts through the first
-three years. At the end of that span of time a child becomes capable of
-linking its impressions of the outer world to the ideas of its ego. It is
-true that this coherent ego-conception can only be reckoned as existing
-as far back as memory extends. Yet we must say that _virtually_ memory
-extends to the beginning of the fourth year, only it is so weak at the
-beginning of distinct ego-consciousness as to be imperceptible. It may
-therefore be granted that those higher powers which dispose of a human
-being in the early years of childhood can be operative for three years;
-therefore man, during the present middle period of the earth, is so
-organized that he can receive these forces for _only_ three years.
-
-Supposing a man now stood before us, and that some cosmic powers could
-cause his ordinary ego to be removed. (For this purpose we must assume
-that it would be possible to remove from the physical, etheric and astral
-bodies the ordinary ego which has gone through the incarnations with the
-man.) And now suppose that an ego could then be introduced into the three
-bodies which is working in connection with spiritual worlds, what would
-happen to a person thus treated? At the end of three years his body would
-necessarily be shattered. Something would occur, through cosmic karma,
-which would prevent the spirit-being which would be in connection with
-higher worlds, from living more than three years in that body.[1] Only
-at the end of all his earthly lives will man have that within him which
-will enable him to live more than three years with that spirit-being. But
-then, it is true, man will be able to say to himself, “Not I, but that
-Higher One within me, Who was always there, is now working in me.” Till
-that time comes, he is not able to say this. The most he can say is that
-he feels that higher being, but has not yet progressed far enough with
-his real, actual human ego, to be able to bring the other to full life
-within him.
-
-Supposing then that, at some time in the middle earth-period, a human
-organism were to come into the world, and later in life be freed from his
-ego by the action of certain cosmic powers, receiving in exchange the ego
-which usually only works in man during the first three years of life,
-and which would be in connection with the spiritual worlds in which man
-exists between death and re-birth: how long would such a person be able
-to live in an earthly body? About three years. For at the end of that
-time, something would arise through cosmic karma, which would destroy the
-human organism in question.
-
-What is here supposed is, however, a historical fact. The human organism
-which stood in the river Jordan at John’s baptism when the ego of Jesus
-of Nazareth left the three bodies, contained, after the baptism, in
-complete conscious development, that higher Self of humanity which
-usually works with cosmic wisdom on a child without its knowledge. At the
-same time, the necessity arose that this Self which was in connection
-with the higher spirit-world could only live for three years in the
-appropriate human organism. Events had then to take place which brought
-the earthly life of that being to a close. The outer events in the life
-of Christ Jesus are to be interpreted as absolutely conditioned by the
-inner causes just set forth, and present themselves as the outward
-expression of those causes.
-
-We are now able to see the deeper connection existing between that which
-is man’s guide in life, which streams in upon our childhood like the dawn
-and is always working below the surface of our consciousness as the best
-part of us, and that which once upon a time entered the whole of human
-evolution and was able to dwell for three years in a human frame.
-
-What then is manifested in that “higher” ego, which is in connection with
-the spiritual hierarchies, and which in due time entered the body of
-Jesus of Nazareth? This entrance being symbolically represented by the
-sign of the Spirit descending in the form of a dove, and by the words,
-“This is my well-beloved Son, to-day have I begotten him” (for so stood
-the words originally). If we fix our eyes upon this picture, we are
-contemplating the highest human ideal. For it means nothing else than
-that the history of Jesus of Nazareth is a statement of this fact: “The
-Christ can be discerned in every human being.” And even if there were no
-Gospels and no tradition, to tell us that once a Christ lived on earth,
-we should yet learn through knowledge of human nature that the Christ is
-living in man.
-
-The recognition of the forces working in human nature during childhood is
-the recognition of the Christ in man. The question now arises, does this
-recognition lead to the further perception of the fact that this Christ
-once really dwelt on earth in a human body? Without bringing forward
-any documents, this question may be answered in the affirmative. For
-genuine clairvoyant knowledge of self leads the man of the present day
-to see that powers are to be discovered in the human soul which emanate
-from the Christ. These powers are at work during the first three years
-of childhood without any action being taken by the human being. In later
-life they _may_ be called into action, if the Christ be sought within the
-soul by inner meditation. Man was not always able, as he is now, to find
-the Christ within himself. There were times when no inner meditation
-could lead him to the Christ. This again we learn from clairvoyant
-perception. In the interval between that past time when man could not
-find the Christ in himself, and the present time when he can find him,
-there took place Christ’s earthly life. And that life itself is the cause
-of man’s being able to find the Christ in himself in the manner that has
-been pointed out. Thus to clairvoyant perception the earthly life of
-Christ is proved without any historical records.
-
-It is just as if the Christ had said, “I will be such an ideal for you
-human beings as, raised to a spiritual level, will show you that which
-is fulfilled in each human body.” In his early childhood man learns from
-the spirit how to walk physically, _i.e._, he is shown by the spirit his
-way through earthly life. From the spirit he learns to speak, _i.e._,
-to form _truth_; or in other words, he develops the essence of truth
-out of sound during the first three years of his life. And the _life_
-too, which man lives on earth as an ego-being, obtains its vital organ
-through what is formed in the first three years of childhood. Thus man
-learns to walk, _i.e._, to find “the way,” he learns to present “truth”
-through his physical organism, and he learns to bring “life” from the
-spirit into expression in his body. No more significant re-interpretation
-seems possible of the words “Except ye become as little children, ye
-cannot enter into the kingdom of heaven.” And momentous is that saying
-in which the ego-being of the Christ comes into expression thus, “I am
-the Way, the Truth and the Life.” Just as, unknown to a child, the higher
-spirit-forces are fashioning its organism to become the bodily expression
-of the way, the truth and the life, so the spirit of man, through being
-interpenetrated with the Christ, gradually becomes the _conscious_
-vehicle of the way, the truth and the life. He is thereby making himself,
-in the course of his earthly development, into that force which bears
-sway within him as a child, when he is not consciously its vehicle.
-
-This saying about the way, the truth and the life is capable of opening
-the doors of eternity. It sounds to man out of the depths of his soul, if
-his self-knowledge is true and real.
-
-Such reflections as these open up, in a double sense, the vision of the
-spiritual guidance of the individual and of collective humanity. As human
-beings we are able, through self-knowledge, to find the Christ within us
-as the guide Whom, since His life on earth, we can always reach, because
-He is always in man. And further, if we apply to the historical records
-that we have apprehended without them, we discover their real nature.
-They express historically something which is revealed of itself in the
-depths of the soul. They are therefore to be accounted as _guiding_
-humanity in the same direction as the soul itself is proceeding.
-
-If we thus understand the suggestion of eternity in the words, “I am
-the way, the truth and the life,” we cannot feel ourselves justified
-in asking, “Why does a person who has passed through many incarnations
-always re-enter life as a child?” For it becomes evident that this
-apparent imperfection is an ever-recurring reminder of the Highest that
-is in man. And we cannot be reminded often enough,--at any rate each time
-we enter earthly life is not too often to be reminded,--of the great fact
-of what man really is with reference to that Being who underlies all
-earthly existence, without being touched by its imperfections.
-
-It is not well to make many definitions or summaries in occult science
-or theosophy, or indeed in occultism generally. It is better to give
-a description, and to try and call forth a feeling of what really
-exists. On this account we are now attempting to induce a feeling of
-what distinguishes the first three years of human life, and of the way
-in which this is related to the light that streams from the cross on
-Golgotha. The meaning of this feeling is that an impulse is passing
-through human evolution, and that through this impulse the Pauline
-saying, “Not I--but the Christ in me,” will become a fact. We have only
-to know what man is in reality, in order to be able to proceed from such
-knowledge to insight into the nature of the Christ. When once, however,
-we have arrived at the Christ-idea through true observation of humanity,
-we know that we discover the Christ in the best way if we first look for
-Him in ourselves, and if we then return to the Bible records, these are
-for the first time rightly valued. And no one prizes the Bible more, or
-more consciously, than one who has found the Christ in this way. It is
-possible to imagine a being, let us say an inhabitant of Mars, descending
-to earth, without ever having heard of the Christ and His work. Much
-that has taken place on earth would be incomprehensible to the Martian;
-much that interests people nowadays would not interest him. But it would
-interest him to discover the central impulse of earthly evolution,
-_i.e._, the Christ-idea, as it is expressed in human nature itself.
-
-One who has grasped this, is able for the first time rightly to
-understand the Bible, for he finds expressed there in a marvellous way
-what he has previously observed in himself, and he says: It is not
-necessary to have been brought up with any special reverence for the
-Gospel; they need only be presented to me, a fully-conscious human
-being, to stand revealed in all their greatness, by means of what I have
-learnt through occult science.
-
-It is indeed not too much to say that a time will come when it will be
-recognized by people who have learned through occult science rightly
-to appreciate the contents of the Gospels, that these are guides of
-the human race in a sense which is more just to those writings than
-people have hitherto been to them. It is only through knowledge of human
-nature itself that humanity will learn to see what is latent in those
-profound records. It will then be said: If there is to be found in the
-Gospels that which forms an integral part of human nature, it must have
-come from the people who wrote these documents on earth. Therefore what
-genuine reflection brings home to us about our own lives,--the more
-so the older we grow--must hold especially good with regard to those
-writers. We ourselves have done many things which we only understand
-years afterwards, and in the writers of the Gospels may be seen people
-who wrote out of the higher self which works in man during childhood,
-so that the Gospels are writings emanating from the wisdom which moulds
-human nature. Man through his body is a manifestation of spirit, and the
-Gospels are such a manifestation in writing.
-
-On this assumption the idea of inspiration regains its true and loftier
-meaning. Just as higher forces are at work on the brain during the first
-three years of childhood, so there were higher forces from spiritual
-worlds impressed on the souls of the Evangelists, under the influence
-of which they wrote the Gospels. The spiritual guidance of humanity is
-expressed in such a fact as this. For the human race must surely be
-_guided_, if within it there are people working who write records under
-the influence of the same powers that are at work on the moulding of man
-in profound wisdom. And just as the individual says or does things which
-he only understands at a later period of life, so collective humanity
-has produced in the Evangelists means of revelation which can only be
-understood by degrees. The farther humanity progresses, the greater will
-be the understanding of these records. The individual can feel spiritual
-guidance within himself; and collective humanity can feel it in those of
-its members who work as did the writers of the Gospels.
-
-The idea thus gained of the guidance of humanity may be extended in many
-directions. Let us suppose that a man finds disciples,--a few people
-who follow him. Such an one will soon become aware, through genuine
-self-knowledge, that the very fact of his finding disciples gives him
-the feeling that what he has to say does not originate with himself.
-The case is rather this,--that spiritual powers in higher worlds wish
-to communicate with the disciples, and find in the Teacher the fitting
-instrument for their manifestation.
-
-The thought will suggest itself to such a man: when I was a child I
-worked on myself by the aid of forces proceeding from the spiritual
-world, and what I am now able to give, of my best, must also proceed
-from higher worlds; I may not look upon it as belonging to my ordinary
-consciousness. Such a man may in fact say: something demonic, something
-like a “daimon”--using the word in the sense of a _good_ spiritual
-power--is working out of a spiritual world through me on my disciples.
-
-Socrates felt something of this kind. Plato tells us that he spoke of
-his “daimon” as of the one who led and guided him. Many attempts have
-been made to explain this “daimon” of Socrates, but it can only be
-explained by supposing that Socrates was able to feel something like
-that which results from the above reflections. Then we are able to
-understand that throughout the three or four centuries during which the
-Socratic principle was active in Greece, a state of feeling permeated
-the Greek world through Socrates, which prepared the way for another
-great event. The feeling that man, as he now is, is not the whole of
-what comes through from higher worlds,--this feeling went on working.
-The best of those in whom it was present were those who afterwards best
-understood the words, “Not I, but the Christ in me.” For they could say
-to themselves: Socrates used to speak of a being working as a “daimon”
-from higher worlds; the Christ-ideal makes clear what Socrates meant.
-Only Socrates could not as yet speak of Christ, because in his time no
-one was able to find the Christ-nature _within himself_.
-
-Here again we feel something of the spiritual guidance of the race, for
-nothing can be established in the world without preparation. Why was it
-that Paul found his best disciples in Greece? Because the ground had been
-prepared there by the teaching of Socrates and the state of feeling that
-has been described. That is to say, what happens in human evolution may
-be traced back to events which operated previously, and made people ripe
-for what was afterwards to be brought to bear upon them. Do we not feel
-here how far the guiding impulse passing through human evolution extends
-and how at the right moment it places people where they will be best used
-to further evolution? In such facts is manifested the guidance of the
-human race in a general way.
-
-[1] The vitality of the human organism is maintained at the transition
-from childhood to later life, because the organism is capable of change
-at that period. Later in life, it is no longer susceptible of change, and
-on this account cannot continue to exist with that other Self.
-
-
-
-
-LECTURE II.
-
-
-If we turn our attention to what was said by the teachers and leaders
-of ancient Egypt about the direction and guidance of the spiritual
-life of their country, we may trace a remarkable parallel between what
-is manifested in the individual life of man, and what governs human
-evolution as a whole. It is related that when a Greek once asked an
-Egyptian, who had guided and led his nation from ancient times onwards,
-he answered, “In far off times of yore, the gods ruled and taught us, and
-only afterwards men came to be our leaders.” The Egyptians named Menes to
-the Greeks, as their first leader on the physical plane to be recognized
-as a _human_ leader. That is to say, the directors of the Egyptian people
-alleged that in earlier times the gods themselves--as Greek records
-say--guided and led the Egyptian nation. Such an assertion, coming down
-to us from ancient times, must, however, be rightly understood. What did
-the Egyptians mean when they said, “Our kings and great teachers were
-gods”?
-
-The man who thus answered the question of the Greek meant that if any
-one had gone back into the ancient times of the Egyptian nation, and
-had asked those people who felt something within them like a higher
-consciousness, or wisdom from higher worlds, “Who are really your
-teachers?” they would have answered, “If I wanted to tell you about my
-real teacher, I should not point to such and such a person and say, ‘That
-is my teacher,’ but I should first have to put myself into a clairvoyant
-state, (it is known from occult science that this was comparatively
-easier in ancient times than it is now,) and then I should find my real
-inspirer and teacher, who comes to me only when the eyes of my spirit
-are opened.” For in ancient Egypt, beings who were not incarnated in a
-physical human body came down amongst men. In those remote ages, it was
-the gods who still ruled and taught the Egyptians, and by “gods” they
-understood beings who had preceded man in evolution.
-
-According to occult science, the earth passed through an earlier
-planetary condition, called the “Moon-state,” before it became “Earth.”
-During this condition man was not yet human in the present sense of the
-word; but there were on the old Moon other beings, not possessed of the
-present human form and differently constituted, who nevertheless were
-then at the evolutionary stage which man has now attained on earth. We
-may therefore say, that on the ancient Moon-planet which has perished,
-and out of which the earth afterwards originated, there lived beings who
-were man’s predecessors. In Christian esoteric language they are called
-Angel-beings (Angeloi) and the beings immediately above them--Archangels
-(Archangeloi). The latter were human at a still earlier period than the
-angels. What are called angels or Angeloi in Christian esotericism, and
-Dhyanic beings in Eastern mysticism, were “men” during the Moon-period.
-Now these beings, during the present earth-period, are a stage farther
-advanced than man,--those of them, that is to say, who completed their
-evolution on the Moon. Only at the end of the earth’s evolution will man
-have arrived at the stage which those beings had reached at the end of
-the Moon-period.
-
-When the earth-state of our planet began, and man appeared on earth,
-these beings were not able to appear in an external human form, for the
-human body of flesh and blood is essentially a product of earth, and
-is only adapted to the beings who are now human. The beings, who are a
-stage farther advanced than man, could not be incarnated in human bodies
-when the earth was beginning its evolution. They were only able to take
-a part in the government of the earth by illuminating and inspiring
-people in primeval times in the condition to which these attained when
-clairvoyant. Indirectly, then, through these clairvoyant people, the
-angels intervened to guide the destinies of earth.
-
-Thus the ancient Egyptians still remembered a condition of things during
-which the leading personalities of the nation were clearly conscious of
-their connection with what are called gods, angels, or dhyanic beings.
-Now what sort of beings were these, who were not incarnated in a human
-form of flesh and blood, but influenced mankind in the way we have
-described? They were man’s predecessors, who had progressed beyond the
-human stage.
-
-There is in these days much misuse of a word which may in this connection
-be applied in its true meaning, the word “Superman.” If we really wish
-to speak of “Supermen,” it is these beings who may rightly be so called,
-who were human during the Moon-period, the planetary stage preceding
-our earth and who have now outgrown humanity. They were only able to
-appear in an etheric body to clairvoyants. It was thus that they came
-down to earth from spiritual worlds, and ruled there even as late as
-post-Atlantean times.
-
-These beings had, and still have, the remarkable quality of not being
-obliged to think; in fact, we might even say that they cannot think at
-all as man does. How then does man think? More or less in this way. He
-starts from a certain point and says, “I understand this or that,” and
-from that point he then tries to understand various other things. If this
-were not the method of human thought, school-life would not be such a
-difficult period for many. We cannot learn mathematics in a day, because
-we have to begin at a certain point, and go slowly forwards. This takes
-a long time. We cannot survey a whole world of thought at a glance, for
-human thought runs its course in _time_. A system of thought does not
-enter the mind in a flash. We have to make an effort, and have to exert
-ourselves, in order to find the sequence of thought. The beings described
-above are without this human peculiarity. A far-reaching train of thought
-comes into their minds with the same rapidity with which an animal makes
-up its mind that it will snatch at something which its instinct tells it
-is eatable. Instinct and reflective consciousness are in no wise distinct
-in these beings, they are one and the same thing. Just as animals have
-instinct at their stage of evolution, in their kingdom, so these dhyanic
-beings or angels have direct spiritual thought and conceptions. By virtue
-of this instinctive inner life of conception, they are of an essentially
-different nature from human beings.
-
-Now we can easily form an idea of the impossibility of the use by these
-beings of a brain or physical body such as we have. They have to use an
-etheric body, because the human body and brain only allow of thoughts in
-_time_, whereas these beings do not develop their thoughts in _time_,
-but feel the wisdom that is approaching them blaze forth, as it were,
-spontaneously within them. It is impossible for them to think erroneously
-in the sense in which man does. The process of their thought is a direct
-inspiration. Hence the personalities who were able to come into contact
-with these superhuman or angelic beings, were conscious that they were in
-the presence of unerring wisdom. Therefore, even as late as in ancient
-Egyptian times when the man who was the human teacher or king was in
-the presence of his spiritual guide, he felt thus: the command which he
-is giving, the truth which he is enunciating, is _literally_ right, and
-cannot be wrong. (This was also felt by those to whom the truths were
-passed on.)
-
-The clairvoyant guides of the human race were able to speak in such a
-manner that in their words people believed they were receiving exactly
-what came down from the spiritual world. In short, there was a direct
-current down from the higher spirit-hierarchies which were directing
-humanity. Thus what works on the individual in early childhood may
-be seen working on humanity at large in the form of the next world of
-spirit-hierarchies which hovers over human evolution as a whole. This
-is the next kingdom of the angels or superhuman beings, standing a
-step higher than man, and extending directly into spiritual spheres.
-They bring down to earth from those spheres what is worked into human
-civilization. In the child, it is on the formation of the body that the
-higher wisdom leaves its impress; in human evolution of past ages, it was
-civilization that was so matured.
-
-Thus the Egyptians, who described themselves as being in connection
-with divinity, felt that the soul of humanity was open to the action of
-spirit hierarchies. Just as the soul of a child opens its aura to the
-hierarchies up to the time mentioned in the preceding pages, so, through
-its work, did the whole of humanity open its world to the hierarchies
-with which it was connected.
-
-This connection was most important in those teachers whom we call the
-holy teachers of India, the great teachers of the first post-Atlantean
-or Indian civilization, which unfolded itself in Southern Asia. When the
-Atlantean catastrophe was over, and the physiognomy of the earth had
-changed, so that the new conformation of Asia, Europe and Africa had
-evolved in the Eastern hemisphere, the civilization led by the ancient
-great teachers of India began. This was before the time we have mentioned
-as reported in ancient records. The man of to-day is apt to get quite
-a wrong idea about these teachers. If, for example, one of the great
-Indian teachers were to be confronted with an educated man of the present
-day, the latter would gaze upon him with astonishment, and perhaps say,
-“Is that a great teacher? I should never have thought it.” For using
-the words “clever” or “learned” in the sense in which modern people of
-culture do, the holy teachers of ancient India had nothing clever to say.
-They were, in the present sense of the words, simple, homely people,
-who would have answered even questions of everyday life in the simplest
-fashion possible. And there were many periods during which scarcely
-anything could be elicited from them but what would seem, to an educated
-man of to-day, most insignificant. But on the other hand, there were
-certain times when these holy teachers were revealed as something more
-than simple, homely men. At these times they were obliged to be together
-to the number of seven, because what each individual was able to feel
-had to combine harmoniously with the other six teachers, as though in a
-consonance of seven sounds. For it was then possible for each one to see
-something according to his particular gift and degree of development,
-so that from the harmony of the separate parts which each individual
-was able to see, there arose what comes down to us from ancient times
-as primeval wisdom, that is supposing we know how to decipher the real
-occult records. These records are not the revelations of the Vedas,
-however much we may admire them. What the Indian holy teachers taught
-is of much earlier date than the composition of the Vedas, and it is
-only a feeble echo of their wisdom which lies before us in these mighty
-works. But when each of these men was in the presence of a superhuman
-predecessor of humanity, was gazing clairvoyantly into higher worlds
-and listening clairaudiently to what was being taught through that
-predecessor, it was as though the sun shone out of their eyes. What
-they were then able to say worked with overpowering force on their
-environment, so that all who heard them knew that it was not human life
-or wisdom that was speaking, but that _gods_, superhuman beings, were
-influencing human civilization.
-
-The ancient civilizations had their rise in this sounding through to
-mankind of the knowledge of the gods. Only by degrees in post-Atlantean
-times was the door, so to speak, closed into the divine spiritual world
-which in the Atlantean period had still been wide open for the human
-soul. And in the various countries and nations it was felt that man was
-thrown ever more and more on his own resources. What is revealed in the
-case of a child appears in humanity at large in a different way. The
-divine spiritual world is first diffused into the unconscious soul of a
-child, and the soul works upon the formation of the body. Then comes the
-moment at which the child learns to feel itself an “ego” and this is the
-moment to which its memory goes back in later life. This is what makes
-it possible to say that the wisest of men may still learn something from
-the soul of a child. From this point, however, the individual is left to
-himself. The ego-consciousness comes into being, and everything combines
-to make it possible for him to remember his experiences.
-
-So, too, in the life of nations there came a time when they began to
-feel themselves more shut off from the divine inspiration of their early
-forefathers. Just as the child becomes gradually shut off from the
-aura that floats about its head in its earliest years, so in the life
-of nations did the divine ancestors withdraw themselves more and more,
-and mankind was left to its own research and to its own knowledge. When
-history speaks in this manner, the fact of the guidance of humanity
-is realized. “Menes” was the Egyptian name of him who inaugurated the
-first “human” civilization, and it is at the same time hinted that man
-thereby became liable to error, for thenceforward he was left to look
-for guidance to the instrument of his brain. That man was liable to fall
-into error is symbolically indicated by the fixing of the date of the
-construction of the labyrinth at the time when humanity was abandoned by
-the gods; for the labyrinth is an image of the convolutions of the brain
-as the instrument of man’s own thoughts,--windings in which the thinker
-is able to lose himself. The Orientals called man as a thinking being
-“Manas” and Manu stands for the first great thinker. The Greeks called
-the first organizer of the human principle of thought Minos, and with him
-is associated the myth of the labyrinth, because it was felt that, since
-his time, mankind had gradually passed from the direct guidance of the
-gods to a guidance in which the “ego” feels the influence of the higher
-spirit-world in a different way.
-
-Besides those predecessors of man, the true supermen, who had completed
-their humanity on the Moon and had become angels, there are, however,
-other beings who did not perfect their evolution on the Moon. The
-beings called dhyanic in Oriental mysticism and angelic in Christian
-esotericism, consummated their evolution on the ancient Moon, and when
-man began his earthly career were already a stage higher than he was.
-But there were other beings who had not finished their evolution on the
-ancient Moon, any more than the higher categories of Luciferic beings had
-finished theirs. When the earth-state of our planet began, man as we have
-described him was not the only being there. He felt also the inspiration
-of divinely-spiritual beings; otherwise, like a child, he would have been
-unable to progress. Accordingly, besides these childlike human beings,
-there must have been also present on the earth, acting through them,
-beings who had completed their evolution on the Moon. But between these
-and man there were yet other beings who had not finished their evolution
-on the Moon,--beings of a higher order than man, because, even as early
-as the ancient Moon-period, they might have become angels or dhyanic
-beings. At that time, however, they had not come to full maturity. They
-were angels in a backward state, yet they far out-distanced man as
-regards everything which man called his own. Generally speaking, they are
-beings occupying the lowest grade in the ranks of Luciferic spirits. They
-hold a middle position between men and angels, and with them begins the
-kingdom of Luciferic spirits.
-
-Now it is extremely easy to get an erroneous idea about these spirits.
-We might ask why did the divine spirits, the vicegerents of good, allow
-them to fall short, and thereby admit the Luciferic principle into
-humanity? And it might further be objected on this ground, that surely
-the good gods turned everything to good. This question is obvious. And
-another misunderstanding which might arise, is expressed in the idea
-that these are “evil” spirits. Both ideas are merely misunderstandings:
-for these spirits are by no means purely “evil,” although the origin of
-evil in human nature is due to them, but they stand midway between man
-and superman. In a certain way they are more perfect than men. In all
-the qualities which human beings have to acquire for themselves, these
-spirits have attained a high standard, and they only differ from man’s
-predecessors described above in being able to incarnate in human bodies
-whilst man is being evolved on earth. This is because they did not
-consummate their humanity on the Moon.
-
-The dhyanic or angelic beings proper, who are the great inspirers
-of humanity, and to whom the Egyptian referred as being still their
-teachers, did not appear in human bodies, but could only manifest
-themselves _through_ human beings. On the other hand, the beings in a
-mid-position between men and angels were still able, in very early
-times, to incarnate in human bodies. Hence amongst the human race
-inhabiting the earth in the Lemurian and Atlantean periods, we find
-people whose innermost soul-nature was that of an angel in a backward
-state; _i.e._, in the ancient Lemurian and Atlantean periods, there
-were not only ordinary people going about the earth, who through their
-successive incarnations were to arrive at what corresponds to the ideal
-of humanity, but beings who only outwardly appeared like the others. They
-had to bear a human body, for the outward form of a human being in the
-flesh is dependent on earthly conditions. Especially in the more ancient
-times did it happen that beings belonging to the lowest category of
-Luciferic individualities were present amongst men. And so at the same
-time when the angel-beings were working on human civilization through
-man, Lucifer-beings were also incarnated and founding human civilizations
-in various places. And when in the old folk-legends it is related that in
-some place there lived a great man who was the founder of a civilization,
-we are not to understand that a Lucifer-being was incarnated who must
-necessarily have been the vehicle of evil, for, on the contrary, human
-civilization received countless blessings through those beings.
-
-Now it is known through occult science that in ancient times,
-particularly in the Atlantean period, there existed a kind of primitive
-human language, a manner of speech which was similar all over the
-earth, because “speech” in those days came much more out of the depths
-of the soul than it does now. This may be gathered from the following:
-In Atlantean times, people felt all outward impressions in such a way
-that if the soul wished to express anything _outward_ by a sound, it
-was constrained to use a _consonant_. What therefore existed in space
-pressed for imitation in a consonant. The blowing of the wind, the murmur
-of the waves, the shelter given by a house were felt, and imitated by
-man in consonants. On the other hand, the sorrow or joy which was felt
-_inwardly_, or even what in another being might be feeling, was imitated
-in a _vowel_. From this we can see that the soul became one, in speech,
-with outer events or beings. The following instance is taken from the
-Akashic Records: A man drew near a hut, which was arched in the ancient
-fashion and gave shelter and protection to a family. He noticed this, and
-expressed the protective arch by a consonant; and by a vowel he expressed
-the fact, which he was able to _feel_, that within the hut the souls in
-bodies were comfortable. Thence arose the thought, “Shelter.” “There is
-a shelter for me,--shelter for human bodies.” The thought was then poured
-forth in consonants and vowels, which could not be otherwise than they
-were, because they were a direct impression of experience and had but one
-meaning. This was the same all over the earth. It is no dream that there
-was once a primitive human root-language. And, in a certain sense, the
-initiates of all nations are still able to feel that language. Indeed
-there are in all languages certain similar sounds which are nothing else
-than the remains of that universal language.
-
-This speech was prompted in human souls by the inspiration of the
-superhuman beings, man’s true predecessors, who had perfected their
-evolution on the Moon. From this it may be seen that if that evolution
-alone had taken place, the entire human race would practically have
-remained one great unity, and there would have been uniformity of speech
-and thought all over the earth. Individuality and diversity could not
-have been developed, nor at the same time could human freedom. In
-order that man might become individual, cleavages had to take place in
-humanity, and the difference of language in different parts of the world
-is due to the work of those teachers in whom a Luciferic spirit was
-incarnated. According as a particular angel-being, who had fallen short
-in his evolution, was incarnated in a particular race, was he able to
-instruct its people in a particular language. Thus the ability to speak
-a separate language is, in all races, traceable to the illuminating
-presence of these great beings, who were angels in a backward state and
-stood far above the people of their immediate environment. For instance,
-the beings described as the original heroes of the Greeks and other
-nations, and who worked in a human form, were those in whom an angel who
-had fallen short was incarnated. Therefore these beings must by no means
-be characterized as entirely “evil.” On the contrary, they brought to man
-that which predestined him to be a free human being all over the globe,
-and they differentiated what otherwise would have constituted a uniform
-whole everywhere on earth. This is not only true of languages but of many
-other departments of life. Individualization, differentiation,--freedom,
-we may say, comes from the beings who fell short in their Moon-evolution.
-It is true that we might say that it was the purpose of the wise
-government of the cosmos to bring all beings in planetary evolution to
-their goal, but if this had been done in a direct way, certain things
-would not have been attained. Certain beings were therefore arrested in
-their development because they were to have a special mission in the
-progress of humanity. Since the beings who had fulfilled their mission
-on the Moon would only have been able to educate a uniform human race,
-beings who had fallen short on the Moon were set over against them, and
-it thereby became possible for these backward ones to turn into good what
-had been really a fault on their part.
-
-This opens up the question, why do evil, wickedness, imperfection and
-disease exist in the world? This problem should be looked at from
-the point of view from which we have just considered the imperfect
-angel-beings. Everything which at any time exhibits imperfection or
-backwardness will nevertheless be turned into good in the course of
-evolution. It is of course unnecessary to mention that such a truth as
-this affords no justification for bad actions on man’s part.
-
-Thus we already have an answer to the question, why does a wise
-Providence allow certain beings to lag behind and not reach their goal?
-This happens just because there will be good reason for it at the time
-following upon the formation of such a purpose. For it was when nations
-were not yet able to guide and govern themselves that the teachers
-of particular periods and individuals arose. And all the different
-race-teachers, Cadmus, Cheops, Pelops, Theseus, etc., are, in one
-aspect, angel-beings in the depths of their souls. From this it appears
-that in this respect also, humanity is really subject to direction and
-guidance.
-
-Now at every stage of evolution there are beings who lag behind and do
-not attain the possible goal. Let us then look once more at the ancient
-Egyptian civilization, which ran its course thousands of years ago in
-the Nile valley. Superhuman teachers were manifested to the Egyptians,
-who said that these teachers guided mankind like gods. At the same time,
-however, other beings were also at work, who had only half or partially
-attained the angelic stage. Now we must fully understand that in ancient
-Egypt man reached a definite stage of evolution, _i.e._, that the souls
-of people of the present day had attained a definite stage in the
-Egyptian period. But it is not only man who gains by letting himself be
-guided; the beings also who direct and guide him attain thereby something
-which furthers their evolution. For instance, an angel is something
-_more_ after he has guided humanity for a while, than he was before that
-guidance began. His guiding work helps him to progress, and this is true
-not only of one who has completed his evolution as an angel, but also of
-one who has lagged behind. All beings are able continually to advance;
-everything is in a state of perpetual development; but at every stage
-beings are left behind. Thus, in accordance with what has just been
-said, there can be distinguished in the ancient Egyptian civilization
-the divine leaders or angels, the semi-divine leaders who did not quite
-attain the angelic stage, and the men. But certain beings in the ranks
-of the angels again lag behind, _i.e._, they do not bring all their
-powers into expression when guiding humanity, but remain behind as angels
-during the ancient Egyptian stage of civilization. Similarly some of the
-incomplete angels lag behind. Thus whilst men below were progressing,
-certain individuals of the beings above, the dhyanic spirits or angels,
-fell behind in their evolution. When the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization
-came to an end, and the Graeco-Roman period began, certain guiding
-spirits from the former period, who had fallen behind in their evolution,
-were present. But they could not use their powers, for other angels or
-half-angelic beings had replaced them, and that meant that their own
-evolution was at a standstill.
-
-Hence there comes under our notice a category of beings who might have
-used their powers during the Egyptian period, but did not at that time
-use them fully. In the ensuing Graeco-Roman period they were not able
-to use them, because then they were replaced by other guiding spirits,
-and all the conditions of that time made their intervention impossible.
-But just as the beings who had not reached the angelic stage on the old
-Moon were afterwards allotted the task of once more actively interposing
-in human evolution during the earth-period, so also the beings who as
-guiding spirits in the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization had stopped short in
-their development, afterwards received the mission, as beings who had
-lagged behind, of again intervening in civilization. Thus we shall be
-able to watch a later period of civilization in which beings sent to be
-guides are certainly there to direct the normal progress of evolution,
-but in which, at the same time, other beings are intervening who were
-left behind at an earlier stage, and more particularly those who fell
-behind during the ancient Egyptian period. The civilization to which we
-are referring is our own. We live at a time when, side by side with the
-normal directors of humanity, others are interposing who were left behind
-in the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic period.
-
-Now we have to look upon the evolution of events and beings in such a
-way that occurrences in the physical world must be considered only as
-effects or manifestations, the true causes of which are to be sought in
-the spiritual world. On the one hand our civilization is in the main
-marked by an upward movement towards spirituality, and this tendency
-of certain people towards spirituality is the manifestation of the
-spiritual directors of our contemporary humanity, who have attained
-their own normal stage of development. In everything which tends to
-lead man up to the great spiritual wisdom-truths transmitted to us by
-theosophy, these normal guides of our evolution are manifested. But the
-beings out-distanced during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization are also
-affecting the tendencies of our age. They are manifested in much that is
-being thought and done at the present time, and will again be manifested
-in what lies in the near future. They are revealed in everything which
-gives a materialistic stamp to our civilization, and may often be seen
-even in aspirations after spiritual things. In our age we are virtually
-experiencing a revival of Egyptian civilization. The beings who are to
-be looked upon as the invisible directors of what takes place in the
-physical world, fall accordingly into two classes. The first includes
-those spiritual individualities who have passed through their own normal
-course of development up to the present time. Hence they were able to
-interpose in the guidance of our civilization, whilst the directors of
-the preceding Graeco-Roman period were gradually finishing their task
-of guiding civilization during the first thousand years of Christianity.
-The second class, who work simultaneously with the first class of beings,
-are spiritual individualities who did not complete their evolution
-during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. They were obliged to remain
-inactive during the ensuing Graeco-Roman period, but are now able to
-resume their activity because our present age has points of resemblance
-to the Egypto-Chaldæic period. It thus comes about that many things
-arise in contemporary humanity which look like a revival of ancient
-Egyptian forces, but there is also much which is like a materialistic
-resuscitation of forces which then worked spiritually. To illustrate
-this, we may point to an example of the way in which ancient Egyptian
-knowledge has been revived in our days.
-
-Let us think of Kepler. He was quite possessed by the feeling of the
-harmony of the cosmos, and this idea was expressed in his important
-mathematical laws of the mechanism of the heavens, the so-called laws of
-Kepler. These are outwardly very dry and abstruse, but in Kepler they
-were the outcome of an understanding of the harmony of the universe. We
-may read in Kepler’s writings that in order to discover what he did,
-he was obliged to go to the sacred Egyptian mysteries, purloin their
-temple-vessels, and by this means bring knowledge into the world, the
-importance of which to humanity would only be known in later times.
-
-This utterance of Kepler’s is by no means an empty phrase, but contains
-a dim consciousness of a revival of what he had learned in the Egyptian
-period, during a former incarnation. We may certainly entertain the
-idea that Kepler assimilated the ancient Egyptian wisdom during one of
-his previous lives, and that it reappears in his soul in a new form,
-adapted to a later age. That a materialistic impulse should enter our
-civilization through the Egyptian spirit is quite intelligible, for
-Egyptian spirituality was wrapped in a vigorous materialism, which found
-expression, for instance, in their embalming the physical bodies of the
-dead. This meant that they attached value to the preservation of the
-physical body. This has come down to us from the Egyptian period in a
-different form, but in one corresponding to our time. The same forces
-which had not then run their course, affect our age, but in a different
-way. The temper of mind which embalmed dead bodies gave rise to that
-which idolizes the merely material. The Egyptian embalmed dead bodies
-and thereby preserved what he accounted valuable. He thought that the
-development of the soul after death was connected with the preservation
-of the physical, material body. The modern anatomist dissects what he
-sees, and thinks that in this way he understands the laws of the human
-organism. Thus in our modern science there are living the forces of
-the ancient Egyptian and Chaldæic world, which then were progressive
-forces, but which now represent what has lagged behind, and which must
-be recognized for what they are, if a correct estimate is to be formed
-of the character of the present time. These forces will injure a man of
-the present day if he does not know their real significance. He will take
-no harm from them, but will turn them to good account, if he knows their
-effect and thereby brings himself into the right relation to them. They
-have their value, for without them we should not have the present great
-achievements in technique, industries, etc. They are forces belonging to
-Luciferic beings of the lowest stage, and the danger lies in the fact
-that if they are not recognized aright, the materialistic impulses of
-the present time are thought to be the only possible ones, and the other
-forces, which lead up to the spiritual world, are not seen. For this
-reason any clear diagnosis is certain to discern two currents of thought
-in the present age.
-
-Now if a wise Providence had not allowed certain beings in the
-Egypto-Chaldæic period to fall short in their evolution, our contemporary
-civilization would have been wanting in necessary weight. In that
-case only those forces would be operative which would bring man into
-the spiritual world by main force. People would be only too ready to
-yield themselves up to those forces, and would become dreamers. The
-only life they would wish to know about would be one which is being
-spiritualized as fast as possible, and their standard of action would
-be a view of life which showed a certain degree of contempt for what is
-physical and material. But the present epoch of civilization can only
-fulfill its mission if the forces of the material world are brought
-to the fullest perfection, and if thus by degrees their sphere too is
-won for spirituality. Just as the fairest things may become corrupters
-and tempters of mankind if pursued in a one-sided way, so if this
-one-sidedness took root, there would be great danger that all kinds of
-good efforts would come into manifestation as fanaticism. True though
-it is that humanity is helped forward by its noble impulses it is also
-true that wild and fanatical advocacy of the noblest impulses may bring
-about the worst of results as far as true evolution is concerned. Only
-when people strive after the highest modestly and sensibly, not out of
-wild fanaticism, can anything beneficial to the progress of humanity take
-place. In order that the work done on earth at the present day may have
-the necessary weight, and that material beings of the physical plane may
-be understood, the wisdom which directs the government of the world left
-those forces behind which would normally have completed their evolution
-during the Egyptian period; and it is they who are now directing man’s
-attention to physical life.
-
-It is obvious from the foregoing that evolution takes place under the
-influence both of normally progressive beings and of those who lag
-behind. Clairvoyant vision is able to trace the co-operation of both
-classes of beings in the supersensible world, and hence is able to
-comprehend the spiritual events of which the physical facts surrounding
-humanity are the manifestations.
-
-We observe that, in order to understand cosmic events, it is not enough
-to have spiritual eyes and ears opened to the spiritual world by some
-kind of exercise. This only means that we _see_ what is there, that we
-are cognizant of spiritual beings and know that they are entities of
-the soul-world or spirit-sphere. But it is also necessary to recognize
-what kinds of beings they are. We may meet some being of the soul or
-spirit world, but we do not necessarily know whether it is progressing
-in its evolution, or whether it belongs to the category of powers that
-have lagged behind; whether therefore it is pushing evolution onwards,
-or hindering it. Those people who acquire clairvoyant faculties and do
-not at the same time gain complete understanding of the conditions of
-human evolution which we have described may know absolutely nothing
-of the nature of the beings whom they meet. Mere clairvoyance must be
-supplemented by clear judgment of what is seen in the supersensible
-world. There is urgent necessity for this especially in our own time, but
-it had not always to be so much considered. If we go back to very ancient
-civilizations, we find different conditions. If in the most ancient
-Egyptian times a person was clairvoyant, and was confronted with a being
-from the supersensible world, the latter had, as it were, written on his
-forehead who he was. The clairvoyant could not mistake him. Now, however,
-the possibility of misunderstanding is very great. Whereas humanity
-in early times still stood very near the kingdom of the spiritual
-hierarchies and could see what beings it was meeting, it is now very easy
-to be mistaken, and the only protection against being severely injured is
-the effort to gain ideas and conceptions like those indicated above.
-
-A person who is able to look into the spiritual world is called
-esoterically a “clairvoyant,” but merely to be clairvoyant is not
-enough, for such a man might be able to see well enough but not able to
-discriminate. He who has acquired the faculty of distinguishing one from
-another the beings and events of higher worlds, is called an “Initiate.”
-Initiation brings with it the possibility of distinguishing between
-different kinds of beings. Thus it is possible to be clairvoyant in the
-higher worlds without being an Initiate. In ancient times distinguishing
-between spirits was not specially important, for when the ancient occult
-schools had brought a pupil so far as clairvoyance, there was no great
-danger of error. Now, however, this danger exists to a high degree.
-Therefore in all esoteric training, care should be taken that initiation
-should be acquired in condition to clairvoyance. In proportion to the
-extent of his clairvoyance must a man become capable of distinguishing
-between the various kinds of supersensible beings and events.
-
-In modern times the powers guiding humanity are faced by the special task
-of bringing about a balance between the two principles of clairvoyance
-and initiation. Leaders of spiritual training had necessarily to pay
-attention to this at the beginning of the modern era. Therefore the
-esoteric spiritual movement which is adapted to present conditions,
-always makes a point of maintaining the right proportion between
-clairvoyance and initiation. This became necessary at the time when
-mankind was passing through a crisis with regard to its higher knowledge.
-That time was the thirteenth century. About the year 1250 was the point
-of time when mankind felt itself most shut out from the spiritual world.
-A clairvoyant looking back upon that period sees the following: The most
-eminent minds of that time who were striving after some kind of higher
-knowledge, could only say to themselves, “What our reason, our intellect,
-our spiritual knowledge are able to find out is limited to the physical
-world around us. With all our human endeavor and power of perception,
-we cannot reach a spiritual world. We only know of it by accepting the
-information concerning it which our forefathers bequeathed us.” This was
-the time when direct view of the higher worlds was obscured. That this
-can be said of the era in which scholasticism flourished, is not without
-significance.
-
-About the year 1250 was the time when men were compelled to fix a
-boundary between what they were able to apprehend for themselves,
-and what they had to believe from the impression made upon them by
-the traditions which had been handed down. What they could find out
-for themselves then became limited to the physical world of sense.
-Afterwards, however, came the time when there was more and more
-possibility of again winning a view of the spiritual world. But the
-new clairvoyance was of a different kind from the old, which virtually
-became extinct just about the year 1250. In the new form of clairvoyance,
-western esotericism was obliged strictly to uphold the principle that
-initiation must be the guide of spiritual sight and hearing. This was
-the special task assigned to an esoteric current which then entered the
-stream of European civilization. As the year 1250 drew near there arose a
-new kind of guidance into the supersensible worlds.
-
-This guidance was prepared by the spirits then standing behind outer
-historical events, who centuries before had provided for the kind of
-esoteric training which would be rendered necessary by the conditions
-prevailing in 1250. If the term “modern esotericism” be not misused,
-it may be applied to the spiritual work of those very highly evolved
-personalities. External history knows nothing of them, but what they did
-is apparent in every form of civilization which has developed since the
-thirteenth century.
-
-The importance of the year 1250 for the spiritual evolution of humanity
-is specially apparent if we look at the result of clairvoyant research
-given in the following fact: Even those individualities who had attained
-high stages of spiritual development, in previous incarnations, and who
-were reincarnated about 1250, were compelled for a while to undergo a
-complete clouding over of their direct view of the spiritual world.
-Quite enlightened individuals were as though cut off from the spiritual
-world, and their only knowledge of it was through their remembrance of
-earlier incarnations. Thus we see how necessary it was that from that
-time onwards a new element should be brought into the spiritual guidance
-of humanity. This element was true modern esotericism. By its means it is
-for the first time possible rightly to understand how that which we call
-the “Christ-impulse” may intervene to guide the whole of mankind and the
-individual also, in all possible eventualities.
-
-Between the accomplishment of the Mystery of Golgotha and the beginnings
-of modern esotericism, lies the first period of the working of the
-Christ-principle in human souls. During that period, people received
-Christ to a certain degree unconsciously as far as their higher
-spirit-forces were concerned, and this caused them afterwards, when
-they were obliged to receive them consciously, to make all kinds of
-mistakes, and to lose themselves in a maze instead of understanding
-Christ. In primitive Christian times we may trace the adoption of the
-Christ-principle by the lower soul-forces. Then came a new period, in
-which mankind of to-day is still living. Indeed, in a certain respect,
-people are only now beginning to understand the Christ principle with
-the higher faculties of their souls. In the further course of this work
-it will be shown that the decline of supersensible knowledge down to the
-thirteenth century, and on the other hand its slow revival since that
-time, coincide with the interposition of the Christ-impulse in human
-evolution.
-
-We may therefore take modern esotericism to mean the raising of the
-Christ-impulse to be the motive power in the guidance of souls desiring
-to work their way to a knowledge of higher worlds, in accordance with the
-evolutionary conditions of modern times.
-
-
-
-
-LECTURE III.
-
-
-In accordance with what has been said in the preceding chapters, the
-spiritual guidance of the course of human evolution may be sought for
-among those beings who went through their stage of humanity during the
-previous embodiment of the Earth-planet, _i.e._, during the ancient Moon
-period. This guidance stood contrasted with another which checked, and
-yet in a certain sense furthered, whilst checking the first, and which
-was carried out by those beings who had not completed their own evolution
-during the Moon-period. Reference is made in both these cases to those
-guiding beings immediately above man--to those who lead humanity forward,
-and to those who provoke resistance, thereby strengthening and confirming
-the forces arising through the progressive beings, by bestowing on them
-balance and individuality. In Christian Esotericism, these two classes of
-superhuman beings are called Angels (Angeloi). Above these beings in an
-ascending order, stand those of the higher hierarchies, the Archangels,
-the Archai, etc., who likewise take part in the guidance of humanity.
-
-Within the ranks of these different beings there are all possible
-gradations in regard to perfection. In the category of the Angels there
-are at the beginning of the present Earth-evolution, some standing
-high and others less developed. The former have progressed far beyond
-the minimum of their Moon-development. Between these and those who had
-just reached this minimum when the Moon-evolution had come to an end,
-and the Earth-evolution had begun, there are all possible gradations.
-Conformably with this gradation of rank, the beings in question entered
-during the Earth-period upon the leadership of human evolution. Thus the
-evolution of the Egyptian civilization was effected under the guidance
-of beings who had become more perfected on the Moon than those who were
-the leaders of the Graeco-Roman period, and these again were more perfect
-than those who have the leadership at the present time. In the Egyptian
-as also in the Greek Period, those who later on assumed the direction,
-were meanwhile developing, and making themselves ready to guide the
-civilization of later periods.
-
-Since the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe, seven consecutive
-epochs of civilization have to be differentiated; the first is the
-ancient Indian epoch, and it is followed by the ancient Persian.[2]
-The third is the Egypto-Chaldæic, the fourth is the Graeco-Roman,
-and the fifth is our own, which, since about the twelfth century, has
-been gradually developing and in which we are still living. And as the
-separate periods overlap, we see already in our times those early events
-preparing which will lead over into the sixth post-Atlantean epoch. And a
-seventh epoch will succeed the sixth in due course. On closer observation
-we find the following evidence with regard to the guidance of mankind.
-It was during the third epoch of civilization, the Egypto-Chaldæic, that
-the Angels (or lower dhyanic beings according to Oriental mysticism)
-were to some extent independent leaders of humanity. They were not so
-during the ancient Persian civilization. For then they were subject to
-a higher direction in a much greater degree than in the Egyptian times,
-and had to regulate everything in conformity with the impulses of the
-hierarchies immediately above them. In this way everything was under the
-immediate guidance of the Angels, but these themselves submitted to the
-rulership of the Archangels. And in the Indian epoch when post-Atlantean
-life had reached such a height in spiritual matters as has never been
-attained since--a natural height under the direction of great human
-teachers--then the Archangels themselves were subject in a similar sense
-to the guidance of the Archai or Primal Powers. Thus if we trace the
-evolution of humanity from the Indian epoch through the ancient Persian
-and Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, we may say that certain beings of the
-higher hierarchies withdrew as it were, ever more and more from the
-direct guidance of humanity. And in the fourth post-Atlantean period of
-civilization, _i.e._, the Graeco-Roman epoch, man had become in a certain
-sense quite independent. The guiding superhuman beings were certainly
-intervening to develop humanity, but only in such a way that the reins
-were tightened as little as possible, and also that the spiritual leaders
-themselves might profit as much through the deeds of men as men profited
-through them. Hence arose that peculiar and quite “human” civilization in
-the Graeco-Roman time in which man was made to rely entirely on himself.
-For all the distinctive characteristics of Art and political life in
-Greek and Roman times are traceable to the fact that man had to live out
-his own life in his own way.
-
-So, when we look back to the most ancient times of civilization, we then
-find evolution guided by beings who had accomplished their evolution
-as far as the human stage, in earlier planetary conditions. But the
-fourth post-Atlantean period of civilization was intended as a time
-when man should be put to the test as much as possible, and consequently
-was the time when the whole spiritual guidance of humanity had to be
-re-organized. We are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean period of
-civilization. The leading beings of this period belong to the same
-hierarchy as that which ruled the ancient Egyptians and Chaldæans. In
-fact those beings who then took the lead, have again begun to be active
-in our times, for it has been stated that certain beings remained behind
-during the Egypto-Chaldæic civilization, and that these are to be found
-manifested in the materialistic feelings and perceptions of our own
-period.
-
-Now the progress made by the beings of each class of Angels or lower
-dhyanic beings--the class which leads mankind forward and the class which
-obstructs--consists in their being able to be leaders among the Egyptians
-and Chaldæans by means of those qualities which they had acquired in
-primordial times, and which they had further developed by their work as
-leaders. Thus the progressive Angels are intervening to guide the fifth
-post-Atlantean civilization by means of capacities which they themselves
-had won during the third or Egypto-Chaldæic civilization. Through the
-progress they make they are acquiring for themselves quite special
-capabilities, for they are qualifying themselves to receive the influx
-of forces emanating from the most important Being in the whole evolution
-of the Earth. The power of the Christ is working in them; for that power
-works not only on the physical world through Jesus of Nazareth--but also
-in the spiritual worlds upon the superhuman beings. The Christ exists
-not only for the earth but also for these other beings. The beings who
-guided the old Egypto-Chaldæic civilization were not at that time under
-the direction of the Christ, but have only placed themselves under His
-guidance since. And their progress consists in their following Him in the
-higher worlds, so that they may guide our fifth post-Atlantean period of
-civilization in accordance with His influence. And the remaining behind
-of those beings of whom it has been said that they operate as obstructive
-powers, is due to their not having put themselves under the leadership of
-the Christ, and thus they continue to work independently of Him. Hence
-the following state of things will become more and more evident in human
-evolution: There will be a materialistic movement under the guidance
-of the backward Egypto-Chaldæic spirits. It will have a materialistic
-character, and the greater part of what in all countries, may be called
-contemporary materialistic science is under this influence. There
-are, for example, people to-day who say that our earth in its primary
-origin consisted of atoms. Who instils this thought into men’s minds?
-It is the superhuman angel beings who had remained behind during the
-Egypto-Chaldæic period. But, side by side with this movement, there
-is another making itself felt, the one which has as its goal that man
-shall eventually find in all that he does, that which may be called the
-Christ-principle.
-
-Now what will those beings teach who attained their goal in the old
-Egypto-Chaldæic sphere of civilization, and who then learned to know
-the Christ? They will be able to instill into man other thoughts than
-that there are only material atoms; for they will be able to teach that,
-even to the minutest particle of the world, the substance is permeated
-with the Spirit of the Christ. And, strange as it may seem, there will
-be in the future, chemists and physicists who will not teach chemistry
-and physics as they are now taught under the influence of the backward
-Egypto-Chaldæic spirits; but who will teach that “Matter is built up
-in the way in which the Christ gradually ordained it.” The Christ will
-be found working even in the very laws of chemistry and physics. It is
-a spiritual chemistry, and spiritual physics that will come in the
-future. To-day such a statement appears certainly to many people as
-something fanciful or worse than that, but in many cases the sense of the
-future is folly to the past. The factors which in this sense enter into
-the evolution of human civilization are already there for the careful
-observer; but such an one will know quite well the objections which may,
-with apparent justice, be urged against such alleged folly from the
-modern scientific or philosophic point of view.
-
-From such hypotheses we are able to understand what advantage the guiding
-superhuman beings have compared with man. Humanity learned to know Christ
-in the fourth civilization period of the post-Atlantean times, _i.e._,
-in the Graeco-Roman epoch, for it was in the course of this civilization
-that the Christ-event found its place in evolution, and it was then
-that man learned to know the Christ. The guiding superhuman beings,
-however, learned to know Him during the Egypto-Chaldæic times, and worked
-themselves up to Him. Then during the Graeco-Roman civilization they had
-to leave man to his own fate in order that, later on, they might re-enter
-the sphere of human evolution. And if nowadays theosophy is cultivated,
-that signifies nothing else than a recognition of the fact that the
-superhuman beings who formerly guided humanity are now continuing their
-task as leaders in such a way as to be under the direct guidance of the
-Christ themselves. Thus it is with other beings also.
-
-In the ancient Persian epoch, the leadership of humanity was apportioned
-to the Archangels. They put themselves under the direction of the Christ
-earlier than did the beings in the rank next below them. Of Zarathustra
-it can be said that pointing to the sun, he spoke to his followers and
-his people in some such words as these: “In the sun there lives the
-great Spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will one day come down to the earth.” For
-the beings out of the region of the Archangels who guided Zarathustra,
-pointed to the great sun-leader, who had not at that time come down upon
-the earth, but had only begun his journey thither in order, later on,
-to enter directly into the earth evolution. And the guiding beings who
-directed the great teachers of the Indians, also pointed these to the
-Christ of the future; for it is a mistake to think that these teachers
-had no foreknowledge of the Christ. They said that He was “beyond their
-sphere” and that they “could not attain” unto Him.
-
-As now in our fifth period of civilization, it is the Angels who bring
-down the Christ into our spiritual evolution, so the sixth period of
-civilization will be directed by beings who belong to the ranks of the
-Archangels who guided the ancient Persian civilization. And spirits of
-Personality--the Primal Powers--or Archai--who guided humanity during the
-ancient Indian epoch will have to guide humanity in the seventh period
-of civilization. In the Graeco-Roman period, the Christ descended from
-the heights of the spirit-world and revealed Himself in the physical body
-of Jesus of Nazareth. He then came down as far as the physical world. It
-will be possible to find Him in the world immediately above ours when
-humanity shall have become sufficiently ripe. It will not be possible
-in the future to find Him in the physical world, but only in the world
-immediately above, for human beings will not always remain the same; they
-will become more mature, and will then find the Christ in the spiritual
-world, as Paul found Him in his experience before Damascus, which event
-prophetically foreshadowed the future means of finding the Christ. And
-since in our times the same great teachers who have already guided
-mankind through the Egyptian Civilization are working, so also in the
-twentieth century it will be these same teachers who will lead men out
-to behold the Christ as Paul beheld Him. They will show mankind how the
-Christ not only works upon the earth, but how He spiritualizes the whole
-solar system. And those who will be the reincarnated holy teachers of
-India in the seventh period of civilization will proclaim the Spirit Who
-was foreshadowed through the undivided Brahma, to whom however the right
-content and meaning could only be given through the Christ, as the great,
-the immense Spirit, of Whom they formerly said that He hovered above
-their sphere. Thus will humanity be led upwards from stage to stage into
-the spiritual world.
-
-To speak in this way about the Christ--how He is the leader of the higher
-hierarchies also in the successive worlds, is to teach the science which,
-under the title of modern esotericism, has endured into our civilization
-since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries, and which, as has been shown,
-had from that time become necessary. If from this aspect we observe more
-closely the Being Who lived in Palestine, and Who consummated the Mystery
-of Golgotha, then we find the following:
-
-Up to the present time many ideas concerning the Christ have found
-expression. There was for instance the idea of certain Christian Gnostics
-in the first centuries, who said that the Christ Who lives in Palestine
-was not present in any physical body of flesh at all; that He had only an
-apparent body--an etheric body which had become physically visible; so
-that His death on the Cross had been no real death but only an apparent
-one, for the very reason that only an etheric body was present. Then we
-find the various disputes among those who professed Christianity, as for
-example, the well-known controversy between the Arians and Athenatians,
-etc., and the most varied explanations concerning what the Christ really
-was. And indeed right up to our own times people express and have
-expressed the most varied ideas concerning the Christ.
-
-Now spiritual science must recognize in Christ not merely an earthly but
-also a _cosmic_ Being. In a certain sense man is, taken as a whole, a
-cosmic being. He lives a twofold life--one in a physical body from birth
-to death, another in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth.
-When he is incarnated in a physical body, he is living in dependence on
-the earth, because the physical body is restricted by the forces and
-conditions of existence belonging to the earth. A man, however, does not
-only take the substances and forces of the earth into himself, but is
-joined to the whole of the earth’s organism. When he has passed through
-the gate of death, he does not any longer belong to the forces of the
-earth; but it would be incorrect to imagine that he then belongs to no
-forces at all, for he is then connected with the forces of the solar
-system and the more distant star-systems. In this way, between death
-and a new birth, he lives in the domain of the cosmic, just as in the
-period between birth and death he lived in the domain of the earthly.
-From death to a new birth he belongs to the cosmos, as on the earth he
-belongs to the elements--Air, Water, and Earth. Accordingly, while he
-is passing through a life between death and a new birth, he comes into
-the region of cosmic influences, for the planets send forth not merely
-the physical forces of what astronomy teaches, such as gravitation and
-others, but also spiritual forces, and with these spiritual powers of the
-cosmos man is connected--each person in a special manner according to
-his own individuality. If he is born in Europe, he lives in a different
-relation to warmth conditions, etc., than if he had been born, let us
-say, in Australia. Similarly, during his life between death and a new
-birth, one person may stand more closely related to the spiritual powers
-of Mars, another to those of Jupiter, others again to those of the whole
-planetary system in general, and so on. It is also these forces which
-bring man back again to the earth. Thus before he is born he is living in
-connection with the collective whole of stellar space.
-
-According to the way in which a man stands individually related to the
-cosmic system, so are the forces directed which lead him to this or that
-set of parents and to this or that locality. The impetus, the inclination
-to incarnate here or there, in this or that family, in this or that
-people, at this or that time, depends on how the person was organically
-connected with the cosmic before birth. In former times, in that
-territory where the German tongue was spoken, a specially apt expression
-was used whereby to indicate a person’s entrance into the world through
-birth. When a person was born, people said that in such and such a place
-he had “become young” (jung-geworden). Therein lies an unconscious
-reference to the fact that man in the time between death and a new birth
-continues at first to be subject to the powers which had made him old in
-a previous incarnation, but that before birth there come in their place
-such forces as again make him “young.” Thus Goethe in “Faust” still uses
-the expression “to become young in Nebelland”--Nebelland being the old
-name for mediæval Germany.
-
-The truth underlying the casting of a horoscope is that those who know
-these things can read the forces which determine a person’s physical
-existence. A certain horoscope is allotted to a person because, within
-it, those forces find expression which have led him into being. If,
-for example, in the horoscope, Mars stands over Aries (the Ram) that
-signifies that certain of the Aries forces are not allowed to pass
-through Mars--and are weakened. Thus is a man put into his place within
-physical existence, and it is in accordance with his horoscope that he
-guides himself before entering upon earthly existence. This subject,
-which in our times seems so much a thing of chance should not be
-touched upon without our attention being called to the fact that nearly
-everything practiced in this connection to-day is simply dilettantism--a
-pure superstition--and that for the external world the true science of
-these matters has been for the most part completely lost. Consequently,
-the principal things which have been said here are not to be judged
-according to that which nowadays frequently leads a questionable
-existence under the name of Astrology.
-
-Now it is the active forces of the stellar world that impel man into
-physical incarnation; and when clairvoyant consciousness observes a
-person, it can perceive in his organization how this has resulted from
-the co-operation of cosmic forces. We may now attempt to illustrate this
-hypothetically, but in a form corresponding entirely with clairvoyant
-observations: If a person’s physical brain were extracted and its
-construction clairvoyantly examined, so that it might be seen how certain
-parts are situated in certain places, and send out appendages, it would
-be found that the brain of each individual is different. No two people
-have brains alike. Then let us imagine further that this brain could be
-photographed in its complete structure so that one would have a kind
-of half-sphere in which every detail was visible, then this would make
-a different picture in the case of each person. And if one were to
-photograph a person’s brain at the moment of birth and then photograph
-also the heavens lying exactly over the person’s birthplace, then this
-latter picture would be of exactly the same appearance as that of the
-human brain.
-
-As certain centres were arranged in the latter, so would the stars be
-in the photograph of the heavens. Man has within himself a picture of
-the heavens, and every man has a different one, according to whether he
-was born in this place or that, and at this or that time. This is one
-indication that man is born from out of the whole cosmos.
-
-When we keep this clearly in view we can rise to the idea of how the
-macrocosm manifests itself in each separate individual, and then,
-starting from this point, we can attain a conception of how it showed
-itself in the Christ. But if we were to imagine the Christ _after_ the
-Baptism of John as though the macrocosm had then been living in Him in
-the same way as in other people, we should be mistaken.
-
-Let us first consider Jesus of Nazareth: His conditions of existence
-were quite exceptional. At the beginning of our era _two_ boys were born
-and named Jesus. The one came through the Nathan line of the house of
-David, and the other through the Solomon line of the same house. These
-two children were not born quite at the same time, but nearly so. In
-the Jesus descended from Solomon, Who is described in the Gospel of St.
-Matthew, there was incarnated the same individuality who had formerly
-lived on the earth as Zarathustra, so that in this Child Jesus there
-appears the reincarnated Zarathustra or Zoroaster. The individuality
-of Zarathustra grew up in this Child until, as St. Matthew says, His
-twelfth year. In that year, Zarathustra left the body of this Child and
-passed over into that of the other Child Jesus Whom the Gospel of St.
-Luke describes. In consequence of this the latter child became suddenly
-quite different. The parents were astonished when they found Him in
-Jerusalem in the temple after the spirit of Zarathustra had entered into
-Him. This is intimated when it is said that the Child after having been
-lost and found again in the temple, so spake that his parents did not
-recognize Him. They only knew Him--the Child descended from Nathan as
-He had been before up to this time. But when He began to reason with
-the doctors in the temple, it was possible for Him to speak as He did
-because the spirit of Zarathustra had come into Him. Until the thirtieth
-year did the spirit of Zarathustra live in the Jesus who was descended
-from the Nathan line of the house of David. In this body He ripened to a
-still higher perfection. The remark must here be added that as regards
-this personality in which the spirit of Zarathustra _now_ lived, an
-extraordinary feature was, that from the spiritual worlds the Buddha
-rayed forth his impulses into its astral body.
-
-The oriental tradition is correct which says that the Buddha was born as
-a “Bodhisatva,” and only during his time on earth, in his twenty-ninth
-year, rose to the dignity of a Buddha. When the Gautama Buddha was a
-little child, the Indian sage Asita came weeping into the royal palace
-of his father, Suddhodana. He wept because, as a seer, he knew that
-this King’s son would become the Buddha, and because as an old man, he
-felt that he would no longer be living to see that event take place.
-Now this sage was born again in the time of Jesus of Nazareth. It is he
-who is brought before us in the Gospel of St. Luke as the priest of the
-temple who saw the revelation of the Buddha in the Child Jesus descended
-from Nathan. And seeing this he was able to say: “Lord, now lettest Thou
-Thy servant depart in peace for I have seen my Master.” What he had not
-been able to see previously in India, he saw through the astral body of
-the Boy Jesus, Who comes before us in St. Luke’s Gospel, the Bodhisatva
-become a Buddha.
-
-All this was necessary in order that that body might be produced which
-received the baptism of St. John in the Jordan. At that moment the
-individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body, the physical,
-the etheric and the astral body of that Jesus Who had grown up in so
-complicated a manner, in order that the spirit of Zarathustra might be
-able to dwell in Him. Through two possibilities of development which
-were given in the two Jesus-Children, the reincarnated Zarathustra had
-to pass, and thus there stood before the Baptist the body of Jesus
-of Nazareth and in it from that time onwards there acted the cosmic
-individuality of the Christ. Now, as we have shown, in the case of any
-other human being, the cosmic spiritual laws work upon him only in so far
-that they give him a start in earth-life. Afterwards there appear in
-opposition to these laws, others which arise out of the conditions of the
-earth-evolution. In the case of the Christ Jesus, after the baptism of
-John the cosmic-spiritual forces alone remained effective without being
-influenced in any way through the laws of the earth evolution.
-
-Thus in Palestine during the time that Jesus of Nazareth walked on
-earth as Christ-Jesus,--during the three last years of his life, from
-his thirtieth to his thirty-third year, the entire Being of the cosmic
-Christ was acting uninterruptedly upon Him, and was working into Him.
-The Christ stood always under the influence of the entire cosmos--He
-made no step without this working of the cosmic forces into and in
-Him. That which here took place in Jesus of Nazareth was a continual
-realization of the horoscope, for at every moment there occurred that
-which otherwise happens only at a person’s birth. This could be so only
-because the whole body of Jesus descended from Nathan had remained open
-to the influence of the sum total of the forces of the cosmic spiritual
-hierarchies which direct our earth. If thus the whole spirit of the
-cosmos worked into the Christ Jesus, who was it that went, for example,
-to Capernaum or anywhere else? He who went about as a being upon the
-earth appeared quite like any other man. The forces active within Him,
-however, were the cosmic forces, coming from the sun and stars; and these
-directed His body. And it was always in accordance with the collective
-Being of the whole Universe with whom the earth is in harmony, that all
-which the Christ Jesus did took place. It is because of this that in
-the case of the acts of the Christ Jesus there is so often some slight
-hint given in the Gospels, about the relative grouping of the stars at
-the time. We read in St. John’s Gospel how the Christ finds His first
-disciples. There we are told: “It was about the tenth hour,” because in
-this fact the spirit of the whole cosmos found expression in conformity
-with the appointed moment of time. Such intimations are less clear in
-the other Gospel passages, but he who can truly read the Gospel finds
-them everywhere. From this point of view also the miracles are to be
-judged. Let us take one passage,--The one that runs thus: “When the sun
-was set, they brought the sick unto Him, and He healed them.” What does
-that mean? The evangelist is drawing attention to the fact that this
-healing was connected with the whole position of the constellations, and
-that at the time in question, the constellations throughout the heavens
-stood in such a way as could only have happened when the sun had set.
-The meaning of that, at the time, the requisite healing forces could make
-themselves felt after sun-set, and the Christ Jesus is represented as the
-intermediary Who brought the sick into connection with the forces of the
-cosmos which, just at that time could work curatively. These forces were
-the same as those which worked as Christ in Jesus. It was through the
-presence of Christ that the healing took place, because in consequence
-of the same, the sick person was exposed to the healing forces of the
-Cosmos which could only work as they did when they were in the right
-relationship to time and space. Thus these forces worked on the sick
-person through their representative the Christ. But it was only just
-during the time of Christ on earth that they could so work. It was only
-then that such a connection existed between the cosmic constellations and
-the powers of the human organism, that for certain illnesses, healing
-could intervene when through the instrumentality of the Christ Jesus, the
-cosmic grouping of the same forces was able to work on men. A repetition
-of this relationship in the evolution of the cosmos and the earth is
-as little possible as is a second incarnation of the Christ in a human
-body. Regarded in this way, the life of the Christ Jesus appears as the
-earthly expression of a definite connection between the cosmos and the
-forces of man. The tarrying of a sick person by the side of Christ means
-that through the proximity of Christ, this sick person found himself in
-such a relation with the macrocosm that the latter could work upon him
-curatively.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-Therewith the points of view have been specified which enable us to
-discern how the guidance of humanity has come under the influence of
-the Christ. The other forces, however, which had remained behind in the
-Egypto-Chaldæic times worked further side by side with those that are
-permeated by the Christ. This is evident even in the attitude frequently
-adopted to-day towards the Gospels. Literary works appear in which great
-pains are taken to show that the Gospels can be understood through an
-astrological interpretation. The greatest opponents of the Gospels
-employ this astrological interpretation in such a manner that, the way,
-for example, taken by the Archangel Gabriel from Elizabeth to Mary is
-supposed to signify nothing more than the progress of the sun from the
-constellation of Virgo to another. This, in a certain sense, is correct,
-except that these thoughts were poured in this manner into our age by the
-beings who had remained behind during the Egypto-Chaldæic Period. Under
-such an influence people are induced to a make-belief that the Gospels
-present only allegories in the place of definite cosmic relations. The
-truth really is, that in the Christ the whole cosmos finds expression
-and therefore one can express the life of the Christ by connecting its
-separate events with the cosmic relations which work into Earth existence
-unceasingly _through the Christ_. A right understanding of this matter
-will thus lead to a full recognition of the Christ, as having lived on
-earth, whereas the above mentioned error, if it were true, would mean
-that the Christ life in the Gospels is expressed by cosmic constellation
-and shows that it was only a matter of constellations being treated
-allegorically, and that there was no real earthly Christ at all.
-
-If a comparison were to be used, we might think of each human being as
-represented by a spherical mirror--which, if it were set up, would give
-pictures of all its surroundings. Let us suppose we were to trace with a
-pencil the outline of all that is shown from the surroundings. We could
-then take the mirror and carry the picture about with us wherever we
-went. Let this be a symbol for the fact that when a person is born, he
-brings with him a copy of the cosmos in himself, and afterwards carries
-about with him all through his life the effect of this one picture. The
-mirror might, however, be left untouched by the pencil, so that wherever
-the person carried it, it would depict the immediate surroundings. It
-then would always be giving a picture of the collective environment. This
-would be a symbol of the Christ from the baptism by St. John up to the
-mystery of Golgotha. That which, in the case of any other person, passes
-into his earthly existence at birth only flowed into the Christ-Jesus
-at every moment. And when the mystery of Golgotha was consummated,
-that which had been radiating from out the cosmos passed over into the
-spiritual substance of the earth, and has from that time forward been
-united with the spirit of the earth.
-
-When St. Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, he could recognize
-that That which had formerly been in the cosmos has passed over into the
-spirit of the earth. Of this every one can be convinced who can bring his
-soul into such a condition that he can have the same experience as had
-St. Paul. It is in the twentieth century that those people will first
-appear who will have St. Paul’s experience of the Christ event in a
-spiritual way.
-
-Whereas up to our times this event would be experienced only by such
-persons as had gained clairvoyant powers by means of an esoteric
-training, hereafter to look upon the Christ in the spiritual sphere
-surrounding the earth will be possible for the advanced powers of the
-soul in the course of the natural evolution of humanity. This--as a
-repeated experience of the event before Damascus--will be possible for
-some people from a certain point of time in the twentieth century. The
-number of such people will afterwards increase, until in the distant
-future, it will be a natural faculty of the human soul.
-
-       *       *       *       *       *
-
-With the entrance of Christ into the evolution of the earth an entirely
-new impulse or direction was given to evolution. External facts of
-history also express this. In the early times of post-Atlantean evolution
-men knew very well that above them there was not merely a physical Mars,
-but that what they saw as Mars, Jupiter or Saturn was the expression
-for a spiritual being. In later times this perception was completely
-forgotten. The heavenly bodies became, according to human ideas, mere
-bodies to be estimated according to their physical condition. And in
-the Middle Ages people saw in connection with the stars only what the
-eyes can see--the sphere of Venus, the sphere of the Sun, the sphere
-of Mars, etc., up to the sphere of the fixed stars; and then came the
-eighth sphere like a solid blue wall behind. Then Copernicus appeared
-and broke down the idea that only that which is perceptible to the senses
-can be authoritative. The modern physical scientists may indeed say:
-“It is madness to declare that the world is Maya, or illusion, and that
-you must look into a spiritual world in order to see the truth, for in
-spite of all you say true science is that which relies on the senses and
-notifies what these senses tell.” But when did astronomers rely only on
-the senses? Surely at the very time when that astronomical science was
-dominant which is attacked by the science of to-day! It was at that time
-when Copernicus began to think out what exists in the cosmic space beyond
-the evidence of the senses, that our modern astronomy as a science began.
-And so it is in every domain of science. Everywhere that science, in the
-most modern sense of the word, has arisen, it has done so in opposition
-to what had been apparent to the senses. When Copernicus declared “what
-you see is Maya--or deception, rely on what you cannot see,” then the
-science came into being which is recognized as such to-day. It might thus
-be said to the representative of modern science “your science itself only
-became ‘science’ when it was no longer willing to depend upon the senses
-only.”
-
-Giordano Bruno came as philosophical interpreter of the teachings of
-Copernicus. He led the gaze of man out into cosmic space, and announced
-that what people had called the limitations of space, what they had
-placed there as the eighth sphere limiting everything in space--was
-in reality _no_ limitation; it was Maya, or illusion; for an infinite
-number of worlds had been poured forth into cosmic space. That which was
-formerly considered to be the boundary of space was shown to be only the
-boundary of the sense-world of man, and if we direct our gaze _beyond_
-the sense-world, we shall no longer see the world only as known to the
-senses, but we shall also recognize Infinity.
-
-From this it is apparent how the course of human evolution has been
-such that man started from an originally spiritual view of the cosmos
-and in the course of time lost it. In its place there came a mere
-sense-perception of the world. Then there came into evolution the Christ
-Impulse. Through this, mankind was led to stamp the spiritual view once
-more upon the materialistic. At that moment when Giordano Bruno burst the
-fetters of the sense illusion, the Christ evolution was so far advanced,
-that the soul power, which had been kindled by the Christ Impulse, could
-then be active within him. Therewith an indication is given of the whole
-significance of how the life of Christ penetrates all human evolution, an
-evolution only at the beginning of which humanity stands to-day.
-
-To what then does spiritual science now aspire? It completes the work
-begun for external science by Giordano Bruno and others in that it says:
-that which external science is able to perceive is Maya, or illusion.
-Just as formerly one looked to the “eighth sphere” and thought that space
-was thereby bounded, so contemporary human thought believes that man is
-shut in or enclosed between birth and death. Spiritual science, however,
-expands man’s vision by directing his attention out and beyond the limits
-of birth and death.
-
-There is a continuous chain in human evolution which such ideas as
-these make us recognize. And in the true sense of the words, that
-which resulted in the conquest of sense illusion through Copernicus
-and Giordano Bruno, already proceeded from the inspiration due to
-that spiritual current which is now working in the modern spiritual
-science of theosophy. What one might call the newer esotericism worked
-in a mysterious manner on Copernicus, Bruno, Kepler and others. Those
-therefore who now stand, base their thought on foundations laid by
-Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not wish to accept theosophy, are
-unfaithful to their own traditions in desiring to hold fast by sense
-illusion. But spiritual science demonstrates that, as Giordano Bruno
-forced a way through the blue firmament of heaven, even so does this
-science break down the barriers of birth and death for man by showing how
-he originates from out of the macrocosm, lives in a physical existence,
-passes through death, and re-enters macrocosmic life. And what we see
-in a limited degree in each individual meets us unrestrictedly and in a
-larger sense in the representative of the spirit of the cosmos--in the
-Christ-Jesus. Once and once only could that impulse be given which the
-Christ gave. Once only could the whole cosmos be thus reflected, for the
-conjunction of the stars which then took place can never be repeated.
-In order to give an impulse to the earth, this conjunction was obliged
-to work through a human body. As it is true that this same grouping
-cannot occur a second time, so it is equally true that the Christ was
-only once incarnated. Only if one did not know that the Christ is the
-representative of the whole universe and only if it were impossible to
-win one’s way to this Christ-Idea, the elements for which are given
-through spiritual science--only then would it be possible to maintain
-that Christ could appear more than once upon the earth.
-
-Thus we see how an idea of Christ arises out of the new spiritual science
-or theosophy, which reveals to man in a new form his connection with the
-whole macrocosm. Certainly, in order to gain a true knowledge of the
-Christ, those inspiring forces are absolutely necessary which are now
-being bestowed by those same superhuman beings who formerly guided the
-Egypto-Chaldæic epoch and who have now put themselves under the Christ.
-There is need of a new inspiration of this kind, of an inspiration which
-the great esoteric teachers of the middle ages had prepared from the
-thirteenth century onwards, and which from this time forth must ever come
-more and more into publicity. When man, according to the meaning of this
-science, prepares his soul aright for the knowledge of the spirit-world,
-he can then hear clairaudiently and he can see clairvoyantly what is
-revealed by the old Chaldæic and Egyptian angel beings who are now again
-acting as spiritual leaders under the guidance of the Christ. That
-which humanity will some time later actually gain thereby could only be
-_prepared_ in the first centuries of Christianity and up to our times.
-
-Consequently we may say that in the future there will live in the
-hearts of men an idea of the Christ incomparable in greatness with
-anything which humanity has so far recognized. That which arose as a
-first impulse through the Christ, and has lived as an idea of Him up to
-the present time--even in the case of the best representatives of the
-Christ-principle--is only a preparation for the true understanding of the
-Christ. It would be strange indeed if, against those who in the West gave
-expression in such a way as this to the Christ-idea, it were brought as
-a reproach that they do not stand on the foundation of western Christian
-tradition, but it is quite possible, for this western tradition does not
-by any means suffice to help us to comprehend the Christ of the near
-future.
-
-From the hypothesis of eastern esotericism we can see the spiritual
-direction of humanity gradually flowing into what may be in a real, true
-sense called the guidance, which comes from the Christ-impulse. That
-which is appearing as the new esotericism will flow slowly into the
-hearts of men, and the spiritual guidance of men and of humanity will
-ever more and more be consciously seen in such a light. We realize to
-ourselves how at first the Christ-principle flowed into the hearts of
-men because the Christ had gone about Palestine in the physical body of
-Jesus of Nazareth. Later men gradually surrendered themselves entirely
-to a reliance on the world of sense, and could only receive the impulse
-which corresponded to their perception. Afterwards that same impulse so
-worked through the inspiration of the new esotericism that such spirits
-as Nicholas Cusamus, Copernicus and Galileo were able to be inspired
-and Copernicus, for instance, was enabled to make this assertion: “That
-which is evident to the senses cannot teach the truth about the solar
-system; if we want to find the truth we must investigate behind sense
-appearances.” At that time men, even spirits like Giordano Bruno, were
-not yet ripe enough to join _consciously_ to the new esoteric stream. The
-spirit of the movement had to work in them _un_consciously. Yet powerful
-and magnificent was the announcement of Giordano Bruno: “When a human
-being enters into existence by means of birth, then it is something
-macrocosmic that concentrates itself as a monad; and when a human being
-passes through death the monad spreads itself out again; that which was
-enclosed within the body spreads itself out in the cosmos in order to
-draw itself together again in other stages of existence, and again to
-spread itself out.” There Bruno gave expression to mighty conceptions
-which, even if expressed in stammering tongue, were yet in entire accord
-with the sense of the new esotericism.
-
-The spiritual influences which lead humanity need not work in such a way
-that man is always conscious of them. For example, they put Galileo in
-the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands had seen the old church lamp there, but
-they have not seen it as did Galileo. He saw the church lamp swinging;
-compared the time of its oscillation with the beat of his own pulse;
-found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm resembling his
-pulse-beat; and from this discovered the laws of the pendulum in the
-sense of modern physics. Anyone acquainted with contemporary physics
-knows that these would not be possible without Galileo’s principle. In
-this way the force was then working which is now appearing as spiritual
-science; Galileo was placed in the cathedral of Pisa before the
-oscillating church lamp, and modern physics gained its principles. In
-such a mysterious way do the guiding spiritual forces of humanity perform
-their work.
-
-We are now approaching the time when people are to become conscious
-of these guiding powers. We shall always come to a better and better
-understanding of what has to happen in the future if we rightly
-understand what is working inspirationally as the new esotericism, and
-which shows that the same spiritual beings, indicated by the ancient
-Egyptians when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, who then ruled
-as gods, are now again assuming control, through having placed themselves
-under the leadership of the Christ. Ever more and more will men feel how
-they can cause to reappear in a brighter lustre, in a nobler style and on
-a higher level, that which was pre-Christian. The consciousness necessary
-for the present time, which must be an intensified consciousness, ought
-to give us a feeling of our high duty and great responsibility in
-reference to the recognition of the spiritual world, and this can only
-penetrate into our soul when we have recognized in the sense indicated,
-what is the task of spiritual science.
-
-[2] By “Ancient Persian” is not meant “Persian” in the usual historic
-sense, but a pre-historic Asiatic (Iranian) civilization which developed
-in that land over which, later on, the Persian Kingdom extended.
-
-THE END.
-
-
-
-
-
-End of the Project Gutenberg EBook of The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of
-Mankind, by Rudolf Steiner
-
-*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK SPIRITUAL GUIDANCE OF MAN, MANKIND ***
-
-***** This file should be named 54260-0.txt or 54260-0.zip *****
-This and all associated files of various formats will be found in:
-        http://www.gutenberg.org/5/4/2/6/54260/
-
-Produced by Chris Curnow and the Online Distributed
-Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net (This file was
-produced from images generously made available by The
-Internet Archive)
-
-Updated editions will replace the previous one--the old editions will
-be renamed.
-
-Creating the works from print editions not protected by U.S. copyright
-law means that no one owns a United States copyright in these works,
-so the Foundation (and you!) can copy and distribute it in the United
-States without permission and without paying copyright
-royalties. Special rules, set forth in the General Terms of Use part
-of this license, apply to copying and distributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works to protect the PROJECT GUTENBERG-tm
-concept and trademark. Project Gutenberg is a registered trademark,
-and may not be used if you charge for the eBooks, unless you receive
-specific permission. If you do not charge anything for copies of this
-eBook, complying with the rules is very easy. You may use this eBook
-for nearly any purpose such as creation of derivative works, reports,
-performances and research. They may be modified and printed and given
-away--you may do practically ANYTHING in the United States with eBooks
-not protected by U.S. copyright law. Redistribution is subject to the
-trademark license, especially commercial redistribution.
-
-START: FULL LICENSE
-
-THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE
-PLEASE READ THIS BEFORE YOU DISTRIBUTE OR USE THIS WORK
-
-To protect the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting the free
-distribution of electronic works, by using or distributing this work
-(or any other work associated in any way with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg"), you agree to comply with all the terms of the Full
-Project Gutenberg-tm License available with this file or online at
-www.gutenberg.org/license.
-
-Section 1. General Terms of Use and Redistributing Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-
-1.A. By reading or using any part of this Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic work, you indicate that you have read, understand, agree to
-and accept all the terms of this license and intellectual property
-(trademark/copyright) agreement. If you do not agree to abide by all
-the terms of this agreement, you must cease using and return or
-destroy all copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in your
-possession. If you paid a fee for obtaining a copy of or access to a
-Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work and you do not agree to be bound
-by the terms of this agreement, you may obtain a refund from the
-person or entity to whom you paid the fee as set forth in paragraph
-1.E.8.
-
-1.B. "Project Gutenberg" is a registered trademark. It may only be
-used on or associated in any way with an electronic work by people who
-agree to be bound by the terms of this agreement. There are a few
-things that you can do with most Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-even without complying with the full terms of this agreement. See
-paragraph 1.C below. There are a lot of things you can do with Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic works if you follow the terms of this
-agreement and help preserve free future access to Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works. See paragraph 1.E below.
-
-1.C. The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation ("the
-Foundation" or PGLAF), owns a compilation copyright in the collection
-of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works. Nearly all the individual
-works in the collection are in the public domain in the United
-States. If an individual work is unprotected by copyright law in the
-United States and you are located in the United States, we do not
-claim a right to prevent you from copying, distributing, performing,
-displaying or creating derivative works based on the work as long as
-all references to Project Gutenberg are removed. Of course, we hope
-that you will support the Project Gutenberg-tm mission of promoting
-free access to electronic works by freely sharing Project Gutenberg-tm
-works in compliance with the terms of this agreement for keeping the
-Project Gutenberg-tm name associated with the work. You can easily
-comply with the terms of this agreement by keeping this work in the
-same format with its attached full Project Gutenberg-tm License when
-you share it without charge with others.
-
-1.D. The copyright laws of the place where you are located also govern
-what you can do with this work. Copyright laws in most countries are
-in a constant state of change. If you are outside the United States,
-check the laws of your country in addition to the terms of this
-agreement before downloading, copying, displaying, performing,
-distributing or creating derivative works based on this work or any
-other Project Gutenberg-tm work. The Foundation makes no
-representations concerning the copyright status of any work in any
-country outside the United States.
-
-1.E. Unless you have removed all references to Project Gutenberg:
-
-1.E.1. The following sentence, with active links to, or other
-immediate access to, the full Project Gutenberg-tm License must appear
-prominently whenever any copy of a Project Gutenberg-tm work (any work
-on which the phrase "Project Gutenberg" appears, or with which the
-phrase "Project Gutenberg" is associated) is accessed, displayed,
-performed, viewed, copied or distributed:
-
-  This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere in the United States and
-  most other parts of the world at no cost and with almost no
-  restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it
-  under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this
-  eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org. If you are not located in the
-  United States, you'll have to check the laws of the country where you
-  are located before using this ebook.
-
-1.E.2. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is
-derived from texts not protected by U.S. copyright law (does not
-contain a notice indicating that it is posted with permission of the
-copyright holder), the work can be copied and distributed to anyone in
-the United States without paying any fees or charges. If you are
-redistributing or providing access to a work with the phrase "Project
-Gutenberg" associated with or appearing on the work, you must comply
-either with the requirements of paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 or
-obtain permission for the use of the work and the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark as set forth in paragraphs 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.3. If an individual Project Gutenberg-tm electronic work is posted
-with the permission of the copyright holder, your use and distribution
-must comply with both paragraphs 1.E.1 through 1.E.7 and any
-additional terms imposed by the copyright holder. Additional terms
-will be linked to the Project Gutenberg-tm License for all works
-posted with the permission of the copyright holder found at the
-beginning of this work.
-
-1.E.4. Do not unlink or detach or remove the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-License terms from this work, or any files containing a part of this
-work or any other work associated with Project Gutenberg-tm.
-
-1.E.5. Do not copy, display, perform, distribute or redistribute this
-electronic work, or any part of this electronic work, without
-prominently displaying the sentence set forth in paragraph 1.E.1 with
-active links or immediate access to the full terms of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm License.
-
-1.E.6. You may convert to and distribute this work in any binary,
-compressed, marked up, nonproprietary or proprietary form, including
-any word processing or hypertext form. However, if you provide access
-to or distribute copies of a Project Gutenberg-tm work in a format
-other than "Plain Vanilla ASCII" or other format used in the official
-version posted on the official Project Gutenberg-tm web site
-(www.gutenberg.org), you must, at no additional cost, fee or expense
-to the user, provide a copy, a means of exporting a copy, or a means
-of obtaining a copy upon request, of the work in its original "Plain
-Vanilla ASCII" or other form. Any alternate format must include the
-full Project Gutenberg-tm License as specified in paragraph 1.E.1.
-
-1.E.7. Do not charge a fee for access to, viewing, displaying,
-performing, copying or distributing any Project Gutenberg-tm works
-unless you comply with paragraph 1.E.8 or 1.E.9.
-
-1.E.8. You may charge a reasonable fee for copies of or providing
-access to or distributing Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works
-provided that
-
-* You pay a royalty fee of 20% of the gross profits you derive from
-  the use of Project Gutenberg-tm works calculated using the method
-  you already use to calculate your applicable taxes. The fee is owed
-  to the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm trademark, but he has
-  agreed to donate royalties under this paragraph to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation. Royalty payments must be paid
-  within 60 days following each date on which you prepare (or are
-  legally required to prepare) your periodic tax returns. Royalty
-  payments should be clearly marked as such and sent to the Project
-  Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation at the address specified in
-  Section 4, "Information about donations to the Project Gutenberg
-  Literary Archive Foundation."
-
-* You provide a full refund of any money paid by a user who notifies
-  you in writing (or by e-mail) within 30 days of receipt that s/he
-  does not agree to the terms of the full Project Gutenberg-tm
-  License. You must require such a user to return or destroy all
-  copies of the works possessed in a physical medium and discontinue
-  all use of and all access to other copies of Project Gutenberg-tm
-  works.
-
-* You provide, in accordance with paragraph 1.F.3, a full refund of
-  any money paid for a work or a replacement copy, if a defect in the
-  electronic work is discovered and reported to you within 90 days of
-  receipt of the work.
-
-* You comply with all other terms of this agreement for free
-  distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm works.
-
-1.E.9. If you wish to charge a fee or distribute a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work or group of works on different terms than
-are set forth in this agreement, you must obtain permission in writing
-from both the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation and The
-Project Gutenberg Trademark LLC, the owner of the Project Gutenberg-tm
-trademark. Contact the Foundation as set forth in Section 3 below.
-
-1.F.
-
-1.F.1. Project Gutenberg volunteers and employees expend considerable
-effort to identify, do copyright research on, transcribe and proofread
-works not protected by U.S. copyright law in creating the Project
-Gutenberg-tm collection. Despite these efforts, Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, and the medium on which they may be stored, may
-contain "Defects," such as, but not limited to, incomplete, inaccurate
-or corrupt data, transcription errors, a copyright or other
-intellectual property infringement, a defective or damaged disk or
-other medium, a computer virus, or computer codes that damage or
-cannot be read by your equipment.
-
-1.F.2. LIMITED WARRANTY, DISCLAIMER OF DAMAGES - Except for the "Right
-of Replacement or Refund" described in paragraph 1.F.3, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation, the owner of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm trademark, and any other party distributing a Project
-Gutenberg-tm electronic work under this agreement, disclaim all
-liability to you for damages, costs and expenses, including legal
-fees. YOU AGREE THAT YOU HAVE NO REMEDIES FOR NEGLIGENCE, STRICT
-LIABILITY, BREACH OF WARRANTY OR BREACH OF CONTRACT EXCEPT THOSE
-PROVIDED IN PARAGRAPH 1.F.3. YOU AGREE THAT THE FOUNDATION, THE
-TRADEMARK OWNER, AND ANY DISTRIBUTOR UNDER THIS AGREEMENT WILL NOT BE
-LIABLE TO YOU FOR ACTUAL, DIRECT, INDIRECT, CONSEQUENTIAL, PUNITIVE OR
-INCIDENTAL DAMAGES EVEN IF YOU GIVE NOTICE OF THE POSSIBILITY OF SUCH
-DAMAGE.
-
-1.F.3. LIMITED RIGHT OF REPLACEMENT OR REFUND - If you discover a
-defect in this electronic work within 90 days of receiving it, you can
-receive a refund of the money (if any) you paid for it by sending a
-written explanation to the person you received the work from. If you
-received the work on a physical medium, you must return the medium
-with your written explanation. The person or entity that provided you
-with the defective work may elect to provide a replacement copy in
-lieu of a refund. If you received the work electronically, the person
-or entity providing it to you may choose to give you a second
-opportunity to receive the work electronically in lieu of a refund. If
-the second copy is also defective, you may demand a refund in writing
-without further opportunities to fix the problem.
-
-1.F.4. Except for the limited right of replacement or refund set forth
-in paragraph 1.F.3, this work is provided to you 'AS-IS', WITH NO
-OTHER WARRANTIES OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING BUT NOT
-LIMITED TO WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY OR FITNESS FOR ANY PURPOSE.
-
-1.F.5. Some states do not allow disclaimers of certain implied
-warranties or the exclusion or limitation of certain types of
-damages. If any disclaimer or limitation set forth in this agreement
-violates the law of the state applicable to this agreement, the
-agreement shall be interpreted to make the maximum disclaimer or
-limitation permitted by the applicable state law. The invalidity or
-unenforceability of any provision of this agreement shall not void the
-remaining provisions.
-
-1.F.6. INDEMNITY - You agree to indemnify and hold the Foundation, the
-trademark owner, any agent or employee of the Foundation, anyone
-providing copies of Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works in
-accordance with this agreement, and any volunteers associated with the
-production, promotion and distribution of Project Gutenberg-tm
-electronic works, harmless from all liability, costs and expenses,
-including legal fees, that arise directly or indirectly from any of
-the following which you do or cause to occur: (a) distribution of this
-or any Project Gutenberg-tm work, (b) alteration, modification, or
-additions or deletions to any Project Gutenberg-tm work, and (c) any
-Defect you cause.
-
-Section 2. Information about the Mission of Project Gutenberg-tm
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm is synonymous with the free distribution of
-electronic works in formats readable by the widest variety of
-computers including obsolete, old, middle-aged and new computers. It
-exists because of the efforts of hundreds of volunteers and donations
-from people in all walks of life.
-
-Volunteers and financial support to provide volunteers with the
-assistance they need are critical to reaching Project Gutenberg-tm's
-goals and ensuring that the Project Gutenberg-tm collection will
-remain freely available for generations to come. In 2001, the Project
-Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation was created to provide a secure
-and permanent future for Project Gutenberg-tm and future
-generations. To learn more about the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation and how your efforts and donations can help, see
-Sections 3 and 4 and the Foundation information page at
-www.gutenberg.org
-
-
-
-Section 3. Information about the Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation
-
-The Project Gutenberg Literary Archive Foundation is a non profit
-501(c)(3) educational corporation organized under the laws of the
-state of Mississippi and granted tax exempt status by the Internal
-Revenue Service. The Foundation's EIN or federal tax identification
-number is 64-6221541. Contributions to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation are tax deductible to the full extent permitted by
-U.S. federal laws and your state's laws.
-
-The Foundation's principal office is in Fairbanks, Alaska, with the
-mailing address: PO Box 750175, Fairbanks, AK 99775, but its
-volunteers and employees are scattered throughout numerous
-locations. Its business office is located at 809 North 1500 West, Salt
-Lake City, UT 84116, (801) 596-1887. Email contact links and up to
-date contact information can be found at the Foundation's web site and
-official page at www.gutenberg.org/contact
-
-For additional contact information:
-
-    Dr. Gregory B. Newby
-    Chief Executive and Director
-    gbnewby@pglaf.org
-
-Section 4. Information about Donations to the Project Gutenberg
-Literary Archive Foundation
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm depends upon and cannot survive without wide
-spread public support and donations to carry out its mission of
-increasing the number of public domain and licensed works that can be
-freely distributed in machine readable form accessible by the widest
-array of equipment including outdated equipment. Many small donations
-($1 to $5,000) are particularly important to maintaining tax exempt
-status with the IRS.
-
-The Foundation is committed to complying with the laws regulating
-charities and charitable donations in all 50 states of the United
-States. Compliance requirements are not uniform and it takes a
-considerable effort, much paperwork and many fees to meet and keep up
-with these requirements. We do not solicit donations in locations
-where we have not received written confirmation of compliance. To SEND
-DONATIONS or determine the status of compliance for any particular
-state visit www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-While we cannot and do not solicit contributions from states where we
-have not met the solicitation requirements, we know of no prohibition
-against accepting unsolicited donations from donors in such states who
-approach us with offers to donate.
-
-International donations are gratefully accepted, but we cannot make
-any statements concerning tax treatment of donations received from
-outside the United States. U.S. laws alone swamp our small staff.
-
-Please check the Project Gutenberg Web pages for current donation
-methods and addresses. Donations are accepted in a number of other
-ways including checks, online payments and credit card donations. To
-donate, please visit: www.gutenberg.org/donate
-
-Section 5. General Information About Project Gutenberg-tm electronic works.
-
-Professor Michael S. Hart was the originator of the Project
-Gutenberg-tm concept of a library of electronic works that could be
-freely shared with anyone. For forty years, he produced and
-distributed Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks with only a loose network of
-volunteer support.
-
-Project Gutenberg-tm eBooks are often created from several printed
-editions, all of which are confirmed as not protected by copyright in
-the U.S. unless a copyright notice is included. Thus, we do not
-necessarily keep eBooks in compliance with any particular paper
-edition.
-
-Most people start at our Web site which has the main PG search
-facility: www.gutenberg.org
-
-This Web site includes information about Project Gutenberg-tm,
-including how to make donations to the Project Gutenberg Literary
-Archive Foundation, how to help produce our new eBooks, and how to
-subscribe to our email newsletter to hear about new eBooks.
-