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The Mysteries of the East and of Christianity

By Rudolf Steiner

GA 144

Translated from shorthand reports unrevised by the lecturer. The German text of the following lectures is

published with the titleDie Mysterien des Morgenlandes und des Christentums in the Complete Edition of the

works of Rudolf Steiner. (Bibl. No. 144.)

This English edition is published by permission of theRudolf Steiner Nachlassverwaltung, Dornach,

Switzerland.

Copyright 1972

This e.Text edition is provided with the cooperation of:

The Rudolf Steiner Press

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CONTENTS

Cover Sheet

Synopses

Lecture 1 February 03, 1913

Everything belonging to the Mysteries is founded on the experiences of Initiates in the higher worlds. The

principles of Initiation change in the successive epochs. Attainment of Initiation in the present age is possiblewithout personal guidance, but the experiences must be carried through in the right way. Sense-impressionsbecome merely a means of experiencing what lies behind them. Opinions and points of view must be

transcended. The moral qualities of courage and fearlessness. Certain experiences are common to all Mysteries,whether Eastern or Western: contact with death, passage through the elementary world, seeing the Sun at

midnight, meeting with the Upper and Lower Gods. The path into the higher worlds is bound up with astrengthening of the soul's inner powers.


Natural laws and moral laws intermingle in the spiritual world. The fate of morally irresponsible souls after death

is to become the servants of terrible beings. Untimely deaths, also epidemics and illnesses, are caused by forcesand beings of the spiritual world. Love of ease a widespread attribute. Souls subject to it become servants of the

gods of opposition (under the rulership of Ahriman), after death. Suitable and unsuitable characteristics for thedevelopment of seer-ship. A seer has direct perception of the interaction of influences from the Earth and thosefrom stellar space. Experience at a definite stage of the Mysteries is that in respect of the higher members of his

being (astral body and ego) man belongs not only to the Earth but is also at home in the Cosmos.


Ascent into the spiritual worlds is accompanied by certain unavoidable experiences. Possibility of a retrospect

into the far past, a reading of the Akashic Record. In the higher worlds a seer is able to discern the activities ofbeings associated with the Sun and the Moon in engendering the physical and etheric bodies of men. How the

astral body and ego are brought into being is veiled in secrecy. The Zarathustrian Initiation. The HermesInitiation. Two phases of the Isis Initiation, separated by the point of time when Moses lived. When Moses led

his people out of Egypt he took with him the part of the Egyptian Initiation which added the Osiris Initiation tothat of the mourning Isis. Sons of the Widow. In the later Egyptian Initiation the candidate experienced the

dying of a God in the Heavens in order to descend into another world.


The Being formerly known spiritually as the Creative Word first became manifest in physical life when Moses
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heard the Ejeh asher Ejeh. Candidates in the later Egyptian Mysteries felt that the Creative Word wasdisappearing. When it reappeared, belonging now to Earth-evolution, it was spoken of as the Holy Grail.

Repetition in every epoch of the earlier experiences of humanity. Secrets of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch were

related to the inpouring forces of the Zodiac and planets, particularly of the Sun and Moon. In the fifth epochthese secrets must work right into the Consciousness Soul, into that which constitutes human personality.

Inspirations from the twelve directions of the Zodiac flowed into the Twelve Knights of King Arthur's RoundTable. Something in the human organism is now dead, withdrawn from the sovereignty of the soul; it must be

made living again through the new wisdom of the Grail. Montsalvat. Teaching is now no longer tied toparticular localities. Hostility to the Grail. Klingsor. The fastness known as Calot bobot. Chastel Merveille. Dual

nature in Goethe and in many men of the modern age still under the influence of the Intellectual Soul. Parsifal:the ideal of later Initiation. Present-day Mysteries are an after-effect of the Grail Mystery. The Amfortas nature

in man must be recognised before the forces of Parsifal can be developed in human nature.

Synopses

The following lectures were given by Rudolf Steiner to an audience familiar with the general background of hisanthroposophical teachings. He constantly emphasised the distinction between his written works and reports of

lectures which were given as oral communications and were not originally intended for print. It should. also beremembered that certain premises were taken for granted when the words were spoken. These premises, Rudolf

Steiner writes in his autobiography, include at the very least the anthroposophical knowledge of Man and of theCosmos in its spiritual essence; also of what may be called anthroposophical history, told as an outcome of

research into the spiritual world.

A list of publications in English translation suggested for reading and a summarised plan of the Complete Editionof Rudolf Steiner's works in the original German will be found at the end of the present volume.

LECTURE 1

IN THESE lectures I should like to bring before you a picture of the nature of the Mysteries and their connection with the spiritual lifeof humanity. First, by way of introduction, we must come to an understanding with regard to various experiences on the path to the

higher worlds. We shall have to bring forward things which in a certain connection have already been touched upon in the course of

our anthroposophical studies; but during the next few days we shall need certain points of view which may have so far received lessattention, at least in their necessary setting.

Everything that belongs to the Mysteries in their true nature is founded ultimately on the experiences of Initiates in the higher

worlds. It is from the higher worlds that the knowledge and the impulses for practical training in the Mysteries have to be brought. Wehave often emphasised that as human evolution in different regions takes on different forms in successive periods, so is it with

everything that we call the nature of the Mysteries. It is not for nothing that our souls pass through successive human lives; we gothrough them because in every incarnation we experience something fresh and can add it to what we have garnered in previous

incarnations. In most cases the appearance of the external world has completely changed when, after our passage through the spiritualworlds between death and a new birth, we enter again through birth into physical existence, And for reasons that we can easily

recognise, the principle of Initiation must also change in the successive epochs of humanity. In our own time the principle of Initiationhas already undergone a great change, in that Initiation can be attained up to a certain stage without any personal guidance; for it has

been possible to set out publicly the principles of Initiation as far as has been done, for example, in my book, Knowledge of the

Higher Worlds. Anyone who tries quite seriously to work through the experiences described in this book can go very far in relation tothe principle of Initiation. He can go so far that the existence of the spiritual world becomes for him a matter of knowledge, equally

with his knowledge of the external physical world. By slowly and gradually applying to his soul in due sequence the exercises given,he will break through to an understanding of the spiritual worlds. The Way of Initiation can now be described and pursued without

exposing the soul to certain events which could lead it into particular catastrophes and revolutions.

Up to this point, accordingly, it is possible to-day to discuss in public the Way into the higher worlds. But it must be said also thatfor anyone seriously resolved to go further, the Way is even to-day bound up with the enduring of certain pains and sorrows, and with

some quite special experiences which can have a dismaying, revolutionary effect on a man's life, and for these he must haveundergone a thorough preparation. I must again emphasise, however, that anyone can follow through everything that has been

published without risk of harm, and by this means he can go very far along the Way. The path to the higher worlds, one need hardlysay, is never closed, but anyone who wishes to follow it beyond a certain frontier must be specially prepared if he is to reach the end

of it without having his inner life shaken not morbidly, but shaken through and through. Even these shocks pass quite naturallyover the soul when the whole course of Initiation is carried out rightly. But it is very necessary that it should be carried through in the

right way.

Now we must understand clearly that if anyone wants to plunge into the Mysteries, everything in his soul-life must gradually

become different. The change can be characterised in a few words by saying: for anyone wishing to penetrate the Mysteries, the aims

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and goals that figure in ordinary soul-life must all become a means to higher purposes, higher goals. In ordinary life a man perceivesthe external world through his senses. He perceives it in colours, forms and sounds and other sense-impressions. He lives within this

world of sense-impressions. At the moment when Initiation is to enter a certain stage, he must not simply experience blue or red orany other colours all the time; without losing these experiences he must learn to make them a means to higher ends. In ordinary life a

man looks out on a clear day into space and sees the blue sky and enjoys the sight. But if he wants to be an Initiate of a certain degree

he must come to the point of being able to see the blue of the heavens as completely transparent. While normally it is a limit orboundary, it must now become transparent, and he must be able to see what he wants to see through the blue sky. For him it must no

longer be a boundary. Or let us take a rose: for external vision the surface of the rose is bounded by its red colour. At the moment of

Initiation the red colour ceases to be a boundary. It becomes transparent, and behind it appears that which is being sought. The colourdoes not cease to produce its own natural effect; but the Initiate perceives something different when he looks through the blue sky,

when he looks through the red of the rose, and again when he looks through the rosy dawn, and so on. The colour is experienced in aquite definite manner, but for unmediated vision it becomes transparent and is eliminated by the soul-force which has been acquired

through the training that leads to clairvoyance. So it is with all sense-impressions. Whereas previously they were in themselves acomplete experience, after Initiation they become merely a means of experiencing what lies behind them.

Thus it is with the whole thought-world. In ordinary life man thinks ... I beg you not to misunderstand this in any way; if youcompare it in the right sense with other explanations you will see the agreement, but it is none the less true to say that from a certain

stage of Initiation, thinking in the usual sense of the word ceases. It is not that the Initiate could ever come to a time when he wouldregard thinking as of no significance, but instead of being the aim and object of the life of the soul, thinking must become merely a

means to an end. The Initiate, in fact, is entering a new world. In order to experience it, it is necessary for him besides other thingsof which we shall have to speak to pass beyond the standpoint of ordinary thinking on the physical plane. When a man lives on the

physical plane he judges things and forms opinions about them. After a certain stage of Initiation these opinions no longer have anymeaning or value. But as we are speaking about regions of the soul-life so different from those to which we are accustomed, I must

point out that it is very easy for misunderstandings to arise. When this stage of Initiation, which I shall have to describe later on, isreached, then as a rule a person will have to lead a kind of double life. For in everyday life it is impossible not to reflect and form

judgments upon things. On the physical plane we are forced to form judgments and to think. Suppose you were sitting in a train and

were not thinking, you would go past your station. It could even happen that although an Anthroposophist ought to take care of hismembership card, a thoughtless person might leave it lying about, which would be against all the principles that should be observed in

looking after it. Well, life is such that we must use our judgment and reflect.

But with this attitude towards judging and thinking we cannot attain to the higher worlds. A mixing of the two attitudes may occur:one can be so absorbed in the urge to reach the higher worlds as to be guilty of such a lapse of memory as I have just mentioned.

However, on the whole it should. certainly be possible to keep these two things apart: a truly sound power of judgment for thephysical plane, holding all life's duties in view and at the same time never forgetting that what we develop so assiduously for the

physical plane can be only a means to an end where the higher worlds are concerned.

Thoughts, ideas, judgments, must be for the would-be Initiate what colours, for example, are for the painter. For him they are not an

end in themselves but a means of expressing what he wants to say in his picture. In ordinary physical life thoughts and ideas are anend in themselves; for the Initiate they become the means of expressing what he experiences in the higher worlds. This stage can be

reached only when a certain attitude of soul towards one's personal views and opinions has been acquired. A person who has anypreference for one view or another; who still prefers one thing or another to be true, cannot enter the stage of Initiation referred to

here, but only he who esteems his own views as little as he does those of others, and is prepared to set aside his own opinions and toobserve quite objectively what is really there. In general, one of the greatest difficulties of inner experience is to get beyond the

standpoint of opinions and points of view. Here we touch upon certain difficulties which may arise in living together with other

people when one is seeking to follow the path into the higher worlds. Anyone who is seeking this path, or has already arrived at acertain stage on it, will take an attitude towards many things in life, through the soul-condition he has attained, which will be different

from the ordinary one. Above all, he will reveal the characteristic of knowing quickly, let us say, how one ought to behave in this or

that circumstance of life. Then perhaps he is asked by those around him: Why should we do that? Certainly, when he can appreciate

the other person's point of view, he will always be able to account for this why. But first he will have to come down from the levelwhere he sees in a flash what has to be done, and take his stand beside the person, forcing himself to follow the train of thought ofordinary life in order to show what proof there is for what he sees through in a flash. This rapid comprehension of widely varying and

complicated circumstances of life is a phenomenon, which accompanies the faculty of rising above personal opinions and views andstandpoints.

Apart from this, the attainment that must be sought is connected with various other inner moral qualities. Of these we shall have tospeak later. We will point now to only one quality to which allusion has often been made. It is fearlessness. For we must bear in mind

that, when the entire soul-life is reduced to being a means, instead of ranking as an end in itself, the experiences into which one entersare transformed. In the first place there will be a quite new mode of experiencing. One is indeed entering into the unknown, and this is

at first always accompanied by conditions of fear. And because the whole experience takes place in the intimate depths of the soul, thestate of fear may lead to all kinds of inner soul-experiences. Hence the preparations for the path into the higher worlds involves the

achievement of a certain fearlessness. This fearlessness must be won by means of definite meditations. It can be done. Only, generally

speaking, people lack sufficient perseverance for the kind of meditations required. A good meditation is to give oneself up again andagain to the thought that knowing about something makes no difference to the thing itself. If, for instance, someone were at this

moment to know that something bad is going to happen in an hour's time, and that nothing he can do could prevent it, his knowledgeof it would probably cause him anxiety and fear. But his knowledge does not alter the thing in the least. Hence the fear and anxiety are

entirely futile. It is a futility to which all souls quite naturally give way; a folly which assuredly would assail anyone at a certain stage

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of Initiation if his training had not prepared him for fearlessness by requiring him to say to himself again and again: Is anything at allaltered by the fact of knowing about it?

The person who is meditating, who has worked up to certain stages of Initiation, then comes to a very remarkable piece of

knowledge: the knowledge that in a certain sense things are in a bad way with regard to his inner being, his own human soul.

Beneath the threshold of the consciousness there is indeed something that one would wish to be different, judging by the opinionsof ordinary life. In a certain respect it is something quite terrifying. And it would be in the natural order of things that if a man were to

be led unprepared into the depths of his own soul, he would get an incredible shock. One must prepare oneself, then, by an ever-repeated meditation on the thought: Things cannot be altered by knowing about them. Of a truth, the thing that is terrifying in the

subliminal regions of the soul is not called forth only when one approaches it and looks at it. It is always there, even when one is notaware of it. But through constantly repeated meditation on the thought that things cannot be altered by knowing about them, one

expels a great part of the fear that must be got rid of.

Thus you see from just a few things I have mentioned that in the moment when one is preparing to rise into higher worlds,

intellectual and moral qualities of the soul intermingle. For the ordinary external knowledge of our time one requires only intellectualqualities. In this connection I call courage and fearlessness moral qualities. Without them, certain stages of Initiation cannot be

reached.

Whether we are speaking of Eastern Mysteries or Western Mysteries, all have certain stages in common, Hence for all Mysteries

certain expressions have a valid meaning and can be rendered somewhat as follows. Every soul that wishes to attain to a certain stage

of Initiation and the Mysteries must go through certain experiences. The first can be called Coming into contact with the Experience

of Death; the second is Passing through the Elementary World; the third was called in the Egyptian and other Mysteries Seeingthe Sun at Midnight; and a fourth one is The Meeting with the Upper and the Lower Gods. These experiences must be gone

through by everyone who attains to a certain stage of Initiation. Through inner experience he must come to know what these phrasesmean and must be capable, so to speak, of living in two worlds the actual world in which man lives to-day, the world of the

physical plane; and a world in which a man can live only when he knows what is meant by having come into contact with Death, byhaving gone through the Elementary World, by having seen the Sun at Midnight, and by meeting with the Upper and. the Lower

Gods.

To come into the vicinity of Death. The point here is that in his waking condition between birth and death a man really lives

continually, in so far as he lives consciously, in all that concerning which I have just been saying: it must be overcome, must becomefor the Initiated a mere means to an end. Let us try now to be quite clear as to what a man lives in while he is on the physical plane.

On the physical plane he lives in his sense-impressions and in the ordinary experiences of his soul. All this must become merely ameans, as soon as he enters into the Mysteries. What then remains, over and above what a man feels himself to be in ordinary life?

Nothing remains. Everything sinks down into a reality of secondary degree. A man must lay aside all his usual experiences, both of aninward and of an outward nature. Only think, the blue vault of heaven becomes transparent, is no more there; all boundaries produced

by colour on the surface of things vanish, are no longer there. The sounds of the physical world cease, are no longer there; theexperience of touch ceases, is no longer there. And I beg you to take note that this becomes actual experience. Thus, for example, the

feeling, to stand with one's feet on solid ground which is nothing else than an expression of the sense of touch, ceases, and the

person feels as if the ground has been taken away from under him and he were standing upon nothing; but he cannot draw back andcannot rise. So it is with all impressions of the senses with everything for which the physical body is an instrument. All that a man

goes through in his normal life between waking and sleeping is brought about through the instrumentality of the body, and all this

ceases. A condition from which man in ordinary life is preserved now actually occurs the condition that would come about ifsomeone while sleeping were suddenly to become conscious without waking up again in his physical body. This is not a condition

reached in ordinary dreams. The dream is in a certain sense an extra-physical experience, but the consciousness of it is so lessenedthat the person is not aware of being outside all physical experience. This intensity of consciousness, Thou standest outside all

physical life, is not produced until Initiation. During the ascent into the higher worlds a moment comes when a man confronts his

physical body, whose hands he can move during waking life, with whose feet he can walk, whose knees he can bend, whose eyelidshe can open and shut and so on, but now he feels as though his whole physical body were petrified, as though it were impossible tomove the eyelids, the legs, the hands, etc. A moment then comes when he knows that there are eyes in this physical body, but they are

of no use for seeing. On the one hand all things become transparent, and on the other the possibility of approaching these things withthe usual and familiar means ceases completely. Try to grasp what a contradiction this is, in the ordinary sense of the word. When a

man prepares himself to reach this point, he finds all things are, so to speak, transparent, that he sees through everything. But at themoment when this begins e.g. when the heavens become transparent the eye ceases to have the power of seeing the blue vault of

heaven at all. This means that the first moment in the Mysteries consists in a person coming to the point when he overcomes themethod of perception by the senses, and also the act of thinking, but what he should thereby attain is at the same moment taken from

him. He has worked his way through to the moment where something quite new is given to him; he reaches precisely the moment inwhich this new thing comes to meet him but in this very instant it is also taken away. He now knows nothing but: Thou hast won

thy way through in such manner that thou standest before the Higher Worlds, and now in that very moment they are taken from thee.

Picture this experience to yourselves, and you have the moment which has been designated in the Mysteries of all ages as TheApproach to the Gate of Death. For the person knows now what is meant by the words: the world is taken from you, i.e. the entire

world of impressions. And he knows that he consists of nothing but these experiences of inner impressions. For in reality there exists

nothing but these experiences, these inner impressions. As soon as a person falls asleep, when all impressions cease, he normally fallsinto unconsciousness. This means that he lives in his impressions. Now he overcomes these impressions of ordinary life; he knows he

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has progressed so far that he can see through everything, but at this moment a new world is taken from him. We shall have to speakmore in detail on this point; but first we want to make still clearer what is meant by the expressions used.

In face of this unavoidable halt, with no way of getting further, the only deliverance lies in having developed the inner life in

advance of the actual moment to such a degree that the aspirant is able to carry with him the only thing which it is at all possible totake beyond that point. He must come to the point where the external world actually denies him all power, and he must have

progressed so far in his inner development that at this moment, through training in self-reliance, in self-confidence and presence of

mind and other inner virtues (virtues here meaning capabilities), he possesses inner power, inner energy, so that at the moment whenthe world is taken from him, he has at his disposal a surplus of inner energy. But this brings with it at the same moment an

extraordinarily significant experience. Imagine a man coming to the boundary he has striven for, where the world is transparent; then

it is taken from him. Now he has preserved nothing; he cannot have saved anything but a certain inner strength through having trainedhis self-reliance, presence of mind, fearlessness and similar inner qualities. Thereby he comes to the significant experience, one thatforces itself upon him: Thou art alone in the world. Thou art quite alone in the world. And then comes an experience which I cannot

indicate otherwise than in the words: Thou alone art the whole world. This experience becomes ever stronger and stronger, more andmore comprehensive. And the remarkable thing is that from this experience in the soul a whole new world can arise, and truly must

arise in him who is to be initiated. He feels he has come to a certain boundary where he has confronted the Void, but that he hasbrought with him a certain power. It is perhaps quite small at first, but it becomes ever greater and greater and spreads out on all sides.

He begins to penetrate into the whole world, to permeate himself with the whole world; and the more he permeates the world with hisown being, the more does it appear always different. He extends the power that he has brought with him to one side or the other, and

according as he extends it, he will always experience something different. But at first these experiences will be felt to be quiteterrifying, because two things are entirely lacking from them. At a certain stage of knowledge the lack of these things may not seem

dreadful before it is experienced, because in the ordinary experience of the physical plane the thing is always there, and one first getsa real idea of it only when it is no longer there.

One thing that ceases is every feeling for physical materiality. Everything material has disappeared into indefinite nothingness, the

Void it is not there. The feeling of contacting something hard, or even something soft like water or air in short, the feeling of

being surrounded by matter ceases, is not there. One is concerned only with the qualities of things, not the things themselves. Ofheavy, dense physical bodies only the density remains, not the substantiality; of fluid bodies, only the fluidity, but not the water or the

fluid; of the air there remains only the tendency to expand in all directions, but not the substantiality. One grows into the qualities ofthings, but with the feeling that one is growing only into the qualities; that the objects have vanished, all materiality has gone. This is

one thing that ceases.

The other thing that ceases for the aspirant at this stage of experience is everything connected with what in ordinary physical life we

call sense-perception. This follows from what has already been described. Nothing makes an impression on him, but he is everythinghimself. The only impression that remains is at the most that of time Now art thou not yet anything, and after a while thou wilt

be something. But as for having objects external to himself, which are present elsewhere and make an impression on him, nothinglike that remains. Either he is something himself, or nothing at all is Elementary there. Everything he encounters becomes himself; he

becomes submerged in it, becomes one with it, and finally he becomes as great as the world that is at his disposal; he becomes onewith it.

I am picturing actual experience. It is what is generally known in the Mystery centres as Experiencing the Elementary World. Theaspirant has risen beyond the mere Contact with Death, but he is, so to speak, an undifferentiated unity with the whole world that is

available to him.

There are now two possibilities. Either the preparation was good or it was not good. If it was good, then the intending Initiate, after

having poured himself out to a certain extent over the world, must have so far progressed that he still has surplus strength. In that case you see that I am describing to-day from a different point of view things I have often described., but we now need this other point

of view then he now has the following experience.

Whereas in the ordinary world, one confronts an object, gazes at it, and the object makes an impression on the eye so that one then

knows something about the object, when the point of Initiation which has just been described is reached, such a thing no longerhappens. For the aspirant is not concerned with a reproduction of the ordinary world, but from a definite point onwards he must now

have sufficient forces at his command to pour more out of himself. Thus, after he has spent force enough in becoming one with theworld, he must now have sufficient strength to spin forces out of himself as the spider spins a web. You see how the whole process of

the Mysteries shows the importance of developing strong inner energy in the life of the soul; for one must have large reserves in orderthat all this may take place.

Then the following may happen. The aspirant naturally has no physical eyes, for they belong to the physical body and he has longleft this behind. But because he has poured out something from himself and can pour out still more, as the spider spins her web out of

herself, something akin to organs is built up, and he can discern that together with what he is himself producing, something absolutely

new appears. Things present themselves not as if, for instance, I had my watch here and my eyes there, but as if the eyes were to sendout a ray which formed itself into a watch, so that the watch was there through the activity of the eyes. It is not a matter ofconstructing or creating a subjective world, but of spinning soul-substance out of ourselves, and the higher worlds we are beginning to

live in have to choose this indirect way, in order that we may be able to confront them and recognise them. They must first infiltrateour own soul-substance which we have placed at their disposal. In the physical world things confront us without our co-operation. In

the higher worlds nothing confronts us unless we first place our own soul-substance at its disposal. That is why it is so difficult at this

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point to distinguish the subjective from the objective, for what we spin out of our soul-substance is bound to be entirely subjective,and whatever uses our soul-substance in order to become perceptible is bound to be entirely objective.

I have brought forward these things so that you may experience a definite feeling that all training in the Mysteries consisted pre-

eminently in a strengthening of the energies of the soul. That was the important thing to make the soul powerful, strong, energetic.From the outset the candidate for Initiation had to give up the hope that anyone would hand, him the objects and entities of the higher

worlds as though on a platter. He had first to develop himself point by point towards the higher worlds. Nothing without effort,

absolutely nothing without effort! So it is for everything that has to be reached individually in the higher worlds; so it is for everythingthat has been reached in the course of human evolution with regard to the higher worlds.

Let us suppose that some being, the Moses individuality for example, was to be incarnated in the course of human evolution andhad to work upon this evolution through his spiritual power. It would be childish to suppose that nothing now needed to happen

except that human evolution would proceed on its way, and that at some point or other in its course Heaven would send Moses. Mosesis now there; men know that he is Moses, and need only carry out what was being done when Moses came! If Moses had been sent

anywhere in this way, the result could only have been that those around him would not have recognised him. The point is not that thisor that external personality was there, but that a number of persons should be capable of judging what spiritual being lived in this

particular personality. One would never have needed to tell these persons: This one or other is Moses. One would. have needed onlyto prepare their souls in the proper way. Then their souls, without being told, This one or the other is Moses, would have known that

this was the particular spiritual being who was to be recognised as a certain person.

This, then, is what we have to recognise: that the path into the higher worlds is bound up with an energising, a strengthening of the

inner soul-powers; nothing can be given from outside, but it all can be attained only through the strengthening of the inner life; for

only by this means can the Threshold be passed into those worlds through which a man passes between death and a new birth. That iswhat I wished to bring before you to-day as an introduction.

To-morrow we will go further, by describing first of all what the worlds are like between death and a new birth, and in how far it

has become necessary and important that through the Mysteries something should. be communicated to man during his physical lifeconcerning the knowledge of these higher worlds.

LECTURE 2

FROM what has been said we can well see that the ascent into the spiritual worlds depends upon the strengthening of the inner forces

of the soul-life, so that through the exercises which a person undertakes for the purpose of penetrating into the higher worlds, he

develops forces in his soul which far surpass those needed in ordinary life. This requirement is shown by the fact that when the soul

becomes independent of the physical body in ordinary life, i.e. in sleep, it falls at once into unconsciousness. This means that in

normal life the individual lacks sufficient force to unfold inner activity and maintain consciousness when, as in sleep, the physical andetheric bodies are not helping him to do so. The other members of the human organism, the ego and the astral body, must be workedupon and illuminated through the exercises of meditation, concentration and contemplation, so that they become capable of conscious

experience when they are separated from the physical and etheric bodies, as in ordinary sleep. The stronger-than-ordinary soul-forcesthat a man develops are what enable him to reach the stage we spoke of yesterday. They give him the power, after he has confronted

the Void, to enter a new world which he can experience through the fact that as the spider spins its web out of itself he pours outinto space the spiritually substantial content of his soul, and receives into it the spiritual worlds which then present themselves to him.

So now, after having left behind him the physical sense-world in this way, and gone through the stage of having stood over theabyss for that is how it feels when one confronts the Void the aspirant is in a new world. And in this new world he not only

experiences something different, but he experiences it in a quite new way. We can begin from an ordinary experience on the physicalplane. There, events occur in two apparently quite separate domains. In one domain the events are subject to the laws of nature; in the

other they are subject to moral laws. When in ordinary physical life we observe the events of nature, even when we ascend to theanimal kingdom, we know that we are looking only for natural laws and that moral standards are inapplicable there. We do not

enquire, for example, why a rock crystal has the form of a six-sided column ending in two six-sided pyramids; we do not ask why thismineral substance aggregates itself in such a way that this crystal form appears. We expect no answer except that it obeys a natural

law. We do not ask what good thing the rock crystal has done that it should have become a rock crystal. We do not ask what its

intentions are, We do not apply moral standards to the mineral world. Neither do we apply them to the plant world. And only in asomewhat indirect sense and, one might say, according to the sympathies of Darwinistically-inclined persons do we apply moral

concepts to the animal kingdom. What interests us in the animal kingdom, first of all, is its conformity to natural law. When we rise to

the human kingdom, we feel obliged to judge men according to the standards of goodwill, love, and so forth. As already said, weregard the facts of the physical world as enmeshed in the web of natural laws, while we judge human actions and soul dispositions by

the standard of moral laws; and we are indeed not doing well in our estimate of the physical plane if we mix up these two sets of facts.We are accustomed on the physical plane to judge the world in this twofold way. Hence it is not very easy, after one has sprung, as it

were, over the abyss of the Void, to pass into the spiritual world where a different kind of judgment is necessary; where, in fact, there

is no separation between something that could be ascribed to natural laws, as with natural events on the physical plane, and a purelymoral happening, which likewise exists on the physical plane. When, therefore, the point is reached of which we spoke yesterday, onemust accustom oneself to judge events in like manner as we judge natural facts, but also as we judge moral facts in the physical world.

The world of natural law and the world of moral law intermingle when one enters the spiritual world.

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That shows itself at once, for example, when a man is confronted with the realm that he inhabits between death and a new birth.When the seer has in all earnestness come as far as we have already indicated, he can and will meet those souls who, having passed

through the Gate of Death, are going through their development between death and a new birth. He then learns to know the kind ofexperience these souls are encountering, and if he is to form any judgment of what their experience is, he must adopt quite different

habits of thought. A few examples will explain this.

In that realm we find souls which for a certain period between death and a new birth have to undergo very hard conditions. The seer

has at first the impression that in the spiritual world these souls of a certain category have become the servants of very terriblebeings, and that it was through their own lives before death that they condemned themselves to this labour for the terrible spirits. As

seer he gradually learns to understand their hard fate, and he does so in the following manner. He cultivates the thought of how a man

lives in his physical body from birth to death and how as has often been described in the course of our lectures on spiritual science so-called natural death is brought about through an inner conformity to law, when a man has in old age expended his life-forces.We will not speak of this death at present. But there are other deaths. There are those deaths by which a man is snatched away,

through accident or illness, in the very flower of his life. We do not all die after having fulfilled our measure of life. Men die at allages, and we must ask ourselves: Whence come the forces which are responsible for these deaths at different ages? We understand

that a man must die when his measure of life is fulfilled. We have often seen how that is brought about by the spiritual worlds. Buteverything that happens in the physical world comes about through influences from the spiritual worlds. Those deaths which are to a

certain extent untimely also happen through influences from the spiritual worlds; that is, they are caused by forces and beings of thespiritual world.

There is something else in the physical world to which we must pay attention if we want to understand the life between death andthe next birth. We see the physical world permeated by illnesses and diseases, and in earlier times afflicted by well-known pestilences.

One need but recall those devastating visitations among earlier European peoples when the plague, cholera, etc., swept through the

land. In this present age we are comparatively fortunate in regard to such things. But already as indicated in the course of ourlectures certain epidemics are preparing. So we see what appears to be untimely death pass over the Earth; we see disease and

pestilence. And. the seer sees souls living between death and a new birth who are helping those spirits who bear from the

supersensible worlds into the sense-world the forces which bring epidemics and illnesses, and so-called untimely death.

It makes a terrifying impression to perceive how during certain periods of their lives between death and a new birth human souls

have become servants of the evil spirits of illness and death, and have condemned themselves to this servitude. If one tries to traceback the lives of such persons to the time before they went through the Gate of Death, one always finds that during their life on the

physical plane they were lacking in conscience, lacking in feelings of responsibility. A fixed law is evident here. The seer perceiveshow souls who were morally irresponsible in their dispositions in their lives on Earth have to co-operate, for a period after death, in

bringing epidemics, illnesses and untimely deaths into the physical sense-world. Here we see a natural ordinance to which these soulsare subject, but we cannot say of it that, like a crystallisation, or like the concussion between two elastic balls, it has no connection

with morality. These souls show us how in the higher worlds there is an interweaving of natural law with the moral world-order. Themanner in which things come about in the higher worlds is dependent on beings whose fate is conditioned by their moral behaviour in

the world.

To take another example, we can look at what the seer learns when he turns his attention to a characteristic, the desire for ease and

comfort, that is very widespread among men more widespread than is generally supposed. People indulge far more in indolencethan one realises. They are indolent in their thinking, indolent in their manners and behaviour and particularly so when they are

required to alter their thinking or their habits. If men were not so ease-loving in their innermost souls, they would not have so often

resisted a necessary change in their ideas. They struggled against it because to have to unlearn anything is uncomfortable. Afterhaving thought so long that the Earth stood still and that the

Sun and Stars went round it, it was tiresome to have to learn something different when they suddenly heard through Copernicus

about the movement of the Earth! It was an uncomfortable thing when theoretically, at least the ground was taken from under

their feet. All the resistance of those times against this new idea sprang from indolence of thought, from the love of ease, for tounlearn anything is tiresome. But one need merely consider the most ordinary everyday life and one will find how widespread is thequality really a vice of indolence. In recent times we have gained some idea of the enormous extent of indolence, love of ease,

among humanity. This will be seen from the following example.

There are many theories of political economy. I need not speak about them now. But there is one theory of political economy which

is somewhat out of date to-day but once played a great role. It was based upon the idea that all men should be free to compete in theexchange of commodities, etc.; and that the best social structure would be obtained if completely free competition were allowed. Then

other, more socialistic theories took root. But latterly some political economists have drawn attention to the fact that all these theorieswere in the highest degree one-sided. For what takes place in the world of commerce and in social life is much more dependent on the

love of ease than on the law of competition or the law of getting on in the world yes, even more than on the laws of consciousegoism. Thus even into political economy a knowledge of the law of slothfulness finds entry which means that even in this realm

one can discern good sense, and a readiness to recognise facts that cannot be overlooked, unless one adopts an ostrich policy towards

life.

Love of ease is a general and widespread attribute of mankind. And if one follows up after death the souls who were subject to it,one sees how this love of ease persists, and how for a certain time after death these souls have to live in a region where as a result

of indolence they become servants of the god or gods of Opposition, those gods who place particular obstacles in the path of

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evolution. And these again are spirits under the rule of Ahriman. Ahriman has various things to do; one of his tasks, is to conduct outof the spiritual worlds into the physical world the forces which call forth opposition in physical life. Thus men are on the one hand

ease-loving, but on the other hand the fate of lovers of ease is such that when they want to do anything they run up against a generalcosmic law. Obstacles are everywhere, and even if they are not in the grotesque form once pictured by a German poet, they are there

in the most tragic guise. He called them the malice of things. This malice of things is especially apparent when, for instance, a

preacher in the pulpit is in the midst of a tremendously long tirade and a fly alights on his nose, causing him to sneeze violently. Thatis the malice of things. But it appears first in full force when persons who in this sense are the children of misfortune are exposed to

it at every step. Friedrich Theodor Vischer once wrote a novel in which someone was continually exposed to this malice of things.

In truth, these things rise from the grotesque to the tragic. All such obstacles are directed from the spiritual worlds and the Lord of

Opposition is Ahriman. And souls that are lovers of ease make themselves into servants of Ahriman for a certain time between deathand a new birth. On the whole it is not so terrible to see the punishment of the devotees of ease as it is to see the souls who are livingin servitude to the spirits of illness and. death. But it shows again how moral and natural law intermingle as soon as we come into the

higher worlds.

Such are the experiences that are gone through when one has come to the point described yesterday; and a man has to go through

these experiences in order that he may also experience other necessary conditions (we shall see later why necessary) and so mayadvance still further in regard to higher experiences. This matter of ascending into the higher worlds is not such that one can say: To-

day you are beginning your ascent into the higher worlds, and then you will mount upwards stage by stage. For him who wants tobecome an Initiate, things go forward unnoticed in relation to external happenings amid the affairs and events of ordinary life. He

does indeed come stage by stage into the higher worlds, but from this sojourn in the higher worlds he must again come forth and livein the ordinary world. From the experiences in the spiritual worlds, however, he brings with him something into the physical world.

He realises, after he has become an Initiate, that while moving around in the physical world he is endowed with feelings and

perceptions other than those pertaining to anyone who is not a seer. He need only train himself (and a correct schooling will see tothis) not to be misled in ordinary life through the alteration of his perceptions and feelings. He must learn to be a seer only for the

higher worlds, and not to bring into the ordinary world the characteristics and attitude of soul needed for the higher worlds. This must

be strictly avoided. He should be able to be a seer, while remaining as rational as anyone else in the ordinary physical world.

Hence the least suitable persons for the development of seership are those who from the outset are predisposed to be visionaries.

Enthusiasts and intellectual idealists, those who already experience in the physical world that which has its justification in the spiritualworld; people who in the physical world hear the grass grow, who see everywhere the visions of the dreamer, not the realities

perceived by a sober disposition; people who indulge their imagination there are many more such than is generally supposed such people are of no use for training in seership. Persons who stand with both feet on solid ground, who understand something of

actuality and judge things as they are these are the people best fitted for developing seership.

This will have indicated how a person should not let feelings and perceptions necessary for the physical world be misled throughwhat he acquires for the ascent into the higher worlds. Quite definite feelings and perceptions remain with him, once he has become aseer; in the physical world he will be too, a different person. But in order that this may do him no harm he must also apply these new

feelings and perceptions to things in the external physical world to which he had previously paid no attention or had not noticed. Thenhe will find not in a bad sense but emphatically in a good one that his relations with nature are somewhat altered. For instance,

he will feel differently towards the plant world which spreads itself like a carpet over the Earth. Formerly he looked at the plants andwas delighted with their greenery, with the wealth of flowers and their colours, with everything that the plant world offered to him as

it grows out of the Earth and delights the eyes and perhaps the other senses. Let us not think in this connection of some dull, prosaic

person, but of someone who can really enjoy to the full the effect which the beauty of the Earth's plant-cover can evoke in the soul.And do not let us imagine that anyone who has become a seer must forfeit in the very least any part of his feeling for the plant-vesture

of the Earth. Something else, however, arises within him. When he looks at the plant world he feels that a certain inner relationship

links it with Sun, Moon and Stars. In his feeling and perception the green carpet of plants grows together with the out-there in theCosmos.

Nowadays men build up plenty of abstract ideas on this subject. Everyone with a mere smattering of learning knows how the Earth'scarpet of plants is connected with the activity of the light from the Sun; how the plants cannot grow without the specific action of the

Sun's rays. And men have some inkling that not only the Sun's activity has an influence on the plant world, but that the rest of thestarry world also has an influence. Certainly some people are incredulous about this, but not so long ago there lived a great and

significant thinker who applied himself in a thoroughly scientific way to studying the influence of the Moon on the weather, and so onthe vegetation of the Earth. I refer to Gustav Theodor Fechner. Not from the standpoint of any superstition, but from that of quite

empirical observation, he tried to show that the influence of the new Moon on rainfall is different from that of the full Moon, and soon. There were many people who wanted to prove their scientific outlook by laughing at Gustav Theodor Fechner and his studies of

the Moon. One of those who laughed loudest was the celebrated botanist, Schleiden, who voiced his opinion that it certainly does notdepend on the full Moon or the new Moon whether for fourteen days we have more rain or less. Fechner replied (conditions then were

somewhat more patriarchal than they are to-day): Let the matter be put to the test indirectly through the women; learned men soonbegin to quarrel. Now the two wives, Frau Professor Schleiden and Frau Professor Fechner, always put out tubs in their Leipzig

backyards to catch rain-water for washing-day. Fechner proposed that Frau Professor Schleiden should put out her tubs at new Moon,while his own wife put out hers at full Moon, and they would soon see in which period. the greater quantity of rain would fall. Andbehold, Frau Professor Schleiden was by no means in agreement with her husband, for she caught the smaller quantity of rain-water!

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Thus ironically, one might say a decision was reached, though we would not want to attach any value to it now. Later on,however, it will emerge that sunlight, sun-heat, and also the other stellar influences, all have effects on the plant world. At first, this is

theoretical knowledge. But the seer has direct perception of how influences from the Earth interact with those from stellar space. Heregards them ultimately as one, and he feels as a vital occurrence the pouring out of the sunlight upon the vegetation of the Earth, and

again the withdrawal of the sunlight. He feels how it is with the plants when the sunlight is withdrawn from them. As one feels

sympathy with a child that is very much attached to its mother when the mother is removed from its sight for a while, so does the seerfeel sympathy when the sunlight is withdrawn from the plants? This sympathy with the plant world is an experience that comes to the

seer; so that when he has reached the point spoken of in the preceding lecture, he acquires perceptions of such a kind that he becomes

a participant in the relations between Earth-growth and plant-growth and the Sun and Stars.

Through the birth of this feeling he is adapted for feeling something else besides. He can feel this something when he returns intothe physical world from the spiritual world and looks for instance, at a waking or sleeping person. Also when he has, so to speak, laidaside his seer's gift and sees only the physical world and the sleeping person, then, too, comes the feeling that the sleeper has been

forsaken by something. This is very similar to the feeling one has when, for example, in autumn the relation of the Sun's rays to theEarth's vegetation changes in the usual way. Quite similar are the feelings towards nature now forsaken by Sun and Stars to the

feelings towards the human organism forsaken by its ego and astral body. And now one has the specific experience that in this respectman is independent of his relation to the physical heavens, whereas the plant-growth is dependent on this relationship. Concerning the

plants we know that they cannot go to sleep as they like, owing to their inner constitution; they must wait until the Sun sets in theevening, or until autumn comes. Concerning man we know that in our time, and especially under our conditions of civilisation, he is

no longer in the least guided by the Sun. For instance, if we had to guide ourselves by the Sun, as do the plants, we could not beassembled here together. The transition, which for the plants is so strictly ruled by the course of the Sun and Stars, has no influence on

man. Certainly if we come into primitive rural conditions and see how not only the fowls but also the village folk go to sleep at acertain time and wake at a certain time, we feel as if there were something of a plant-like connection between human beings and the

course of the Sun and Stars. But we have to conclude that in the course of human evolution man has emancipated himself from thecosmic course of events. With his physical and etheric bodies he is able to come into the situation which the plant comes to through

the position of the Sun and Stars he comes to it through inner conditions, I will not say by dint of inner free will. A man can have

his afternoon nap through his own inner condition; that is he can come out of his physical and etheric bodies. The plant cannot havean afternoon sleep at will; it has to regulate itself entirely in accordance with the course of the stars. But what is man when as physical

and etheric body he lies asleep, with his astral body and his ego outside? His physical and etheric bodies then have the value of the

plant. A physical and an etheric body are what the plant has. Considering all this, you may say: A plant grows gradually intoconnection with the Sun and the starry world, becomes one with them. Hence we must direct our feeling from the plant to the world of

the Stars and Sun. This same direction of feeling applies to the sleeping man, who also consists of physical body and etheric body,and has the value of a plant in relation to his ego and astral body, for these, quite independently of the Sun's position, are outside his

physical and etheric bodies when he sleeps, just as the physical Sun is outside the physical body and etheric body of the plant.

What I have here explained to you is experienced by the seer. Now when, proceeding from such perceptions, a man deliberately

brings about the independence of the ego and astral body from the etheric and physical bodies; when he has got so far as deliberatelyto make the physical body and the etheric body into a kind of plant by passing out of them, then he comes to know something very

strange it is as if the Sun were speaking, as if it were looking down on the plants and observing itself in relation to them, and thensaying: Yes, this physical and this etheric body of the plants belong to me, for they need what I can send them! Exactly as the Sun

might speak to the plant growing below, so can the ego of a person say of his physical and etheric bodies: They belong to me as theplant does to the Sun; I am like a Sun to the physical and etheric bodies. A Sun to the physical and etheric body so does a man

learn of necessity to speak of his ego. And just as he learns to speak of his ego with reference to his physical and etheric bodies as theSun would speak to the plant, so does he learn to speak of his astral body as the Moon, and also the planets, would have to speak to

the plant. That is a quite special and important experience in the Mysteries. It was cultivated as a real and immediate experience, first

in the Mysteries of Zarathustra and then wherever the world was developing, right on to the Mysteries of the Holy Grail.

This experience was always called Seeing the Sun at midnight, because a man had it most clearly especially at the time of the

Egyptian Mysteries when in sleep he saw the Sun spiritually at midnight and felt himself united with the forces of the Sun in themanner described. It was an experiencing of the Sun-element in one's own ego, as a Sun-force that shines upon the physical andetheric bodies. This, then, was a third experience common to all the different Mysteries. Common to them all were, and are, the

Pressing forward to the boundaries of Death, the Experiencing of the Elementary World, and now Seeing the Sun at midnight.But it must be clearly understood that at the moment when the seer feels himself isolated and as though sun-like or star-like in relation

to his own etheric and physical bodies, he no longer feels the Sun and Stars only in their physical substantiality but becomesacquainted with the spiritual beings and worlds belonging to them. The experiencing of the Cosmos is an experience in the spiritual

worlds one must be quite clear about that.

Now in order to grow up correctly into the higher worlds, and to have the experiences which correspond with the spiritual realities,

it is important and necessary that one should first gain acquaintance with the quite different nature of the spiritual world as comparedwith the physical world. One learns enough of this when, as a seer, one can test and observe the consequences of indolence, or of a

lack of conscience for the experience of the soul in the time between death and a new birth, and much else besides. Through these

things the seer must, so to speak, open out his soul for conditions essentially different from those on the physical plane. Only then ishe ripe for gaining living experience of the spiritual Cosmos, for recognising the inner connection of the ego and the astral body with

the Cosmos. Directly one comes to the experience that man, in regard to the highest members of his being, belongs not only to theEarth but is at home in the whole Cosmos, then all previous theorising is seen as a mere playing with words. One knows then that

every person, when on going to sleep in the evening he passes out of his physical and etheric bodies, enters into participation with

cosmic forces. He seeks strength for himself out of the whole universe, and on reawaking brings back the forces he has gathered

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during sleep in order to use them in the physical world. The connection with the Cosmos is experienced. at a quite definite stage of theMysteries. From this stage we will go on to-morrow.

LECTURE 3

WHEN a man of our time goes through an occult training which leads him to such experiences as were described in the last two

lectures, he enters by means of this training into the spiritual worlds; and there he experiences certain facts and meets with certainbeings. The phrase, To see the Sun at Midnight, is fundamentally only an expression for spiritual facts and for the meeting with

spiritual beings who are connected with the Sun-existence. But when this man of our time ascends into the higher worlds, he goesthrough certain experiences which one cannot describe otherwise than by saying: A man experiences much that is significant in the

higher worlds through such an ascent, but he also feels himself forsaken and alone. He feels that he can gather up his experience insome such words as these: Much, very much, you are seeing here, but the very thing you must long for above all else, after all you

have gone through that you are not able to experience. And he would like to question all the beings whom he meets after such anascent concerning certain secrets he longs to understand. That is the feeling he has. But all these beings, who unveil much that is

immense and powerful, remain silent when he wants to learn from them about those mysteries which he must now regard as the mostimportant of all. Hence the man of our time, when he has thus mounted to the higher worlds, feels it to be above all painful that in

spite of all the splendour, in spite of his meeting with those glorious beings, he has an immense emptiness in his inner life. And if

nothing else were to happen, a protracted experience of this loneliness, this forlorn condition in the higher worlds, would finally bringabout something like despair in his soul.

Now at this point something can happen and usually does happen if the ascent has been undertaken according to the true rules of

Initiation which may be a protection from this despair, at first, though not permanently. Something like a remembrance may arisein the soul, or one might say a retrospect into far-off times of the past, a kind of reading in the Akashic Record about long-past

happenings. And what is then experienced (one cannot characterise these things except by trying to clothe them in approximatewords) might be put in the following way: When as a modern man you ascend into these higher worlds, you are met by forlorn-ness,

despair. But pictures call up for you long-past happenings, showing you that in distant times men ascended into the worlds into whichyou now wish to rise. Yes, from these memory pictures you may well come to recognise that in earlier incarnations your own soul

took part in what these men experienced when formerly they rose into the higher worlds. It might even appear that the soul of apresent-day man, in contemplating these pictures, looks at experiences of his own, gone through in times long since past. Then in

those remote ages this soul would have been an Initiate. In other cases, the man would know only that his soul had been connectedwith those who as Initiates had then risen into the higher worlds; but his soul now feels lonely and forsaken, whereas those once

initiated souls did not feel lonely and forsaken in the same worlds, but experienced innermost bliss. He will recognise further that thiswas so because in those ancient times souls were differently constituted, and for this reason they experienced differently what they

beheld in the higher worlds. What is it, then, that is really experienced?

The experience now in question is such that it brings before the soul beings of higher worlds who are working upon the sense-worldfrom the supersensible worlds; beings are perceived who stand behind our sense-world; conditions are seen such as were described

yesterday. But if one tries to summarise all one sees, it can be characterised in some such way as the following: The seer feels himself

to be in the higher worlds, and gazing down, as it were, into the sense-world; he feels himself united in some way with spirits whohave passed through the Gate of Death, and, with them, too, he gazes downward, and sees how they will again employ their forces in

order to enter physical existence. He looks down and sees how forces are sent out of the supersensible worlds in order to bring aboutthe processes of the different kingdoms of nature in the sense-world. He sees the whole current of events which are prepared for our

world out of the higher worlds. Because in the course of a sojourn of this kind in the higher worlds he is outside his physical andetheric bodies, he looks down upon them and sees also those forces in the Cosmos, in the whole spiritual universe, which are working

on the physical and etheric bodies of man. And through the activity of the beings into whose company he has entered, he learns tounderstand how physical and etheric bodies come into existence within the physical world. He learns to understand this thoroughly.

He comes to understand how certain beings who are associated with the Sun send their activity into the Earth and work onengendering the physical and etheric bodies of man. He learns also to know certain beings associated with the Moon-existence, who

work down out of the Cosmos in order likewise to co-operate in bringing about the physical and etheric bodies of human beings.

Then, however, arises a great longing, a longing that becomes terrible for a man of the present time. It is the longing to know

something of how the astral body and the ego are born out of the Cosmos, how they come into existence. Whereas the seer can discernexactly how the physical body and the etheric body arise out of the forces of the Cosmos, completely hidden from him is everything

that could point to how the astral body and the ego of man are brought into being. In deepest darkness and secrecy is veiled everythingthat has to do with the astral body and ego. Thus the feeling grows: What you are in your innermost nature, what you yourself really

are, is veiled from your spiritual sight; and that in which you sheathe yourself when you are living in the physical world is disclosed to

you precisely enough!

All this is experienced by a man of the present time when he rises to higher worlds in the manner described. It was experienced.also by those who in ancient times undertook the ascent. But they did not feel the great longing we have spoken of: they had no need

to behold their innermost being, for they were so constituted that they felt a deep inward satisfaction in perceiving how the spiritualbeings whose company they had reached were at work in building physical and etheric bodies on the Earth. In contemplating how

these beings worked down from the Sun to accomplish this task, the souls who were initiated in past times found their highestsatisfaction. It must be added that the work performed by these beings presented itself under a different aspect in those times; hence

the satisfaction it could afford. In our time the work appears in such a light that one asks: Wherefore all this preparation of thephysical and etheric bodies, if one cannot understand what these sheaths conceal? That is the difference between a person of the

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present time and a man of old. And the period in the past which was connected particularly with these experiences is that in whichZarathustra initiated his pupils and guided them up into the higher worlds. If aspirants were to be led up into the higher worlds in the

same way to-day as they were by Zarathustra, they would feel that emptiness and loneliness to which reference has been made. In thetime of Zarathustra those who were to be initiated experienced the working of Ahura Mazdao on the physical body and the etheric

body, and in the unveiling of this wonderful mystery they felt bliss and satisfaction, for they were so disposed that they felt inwardly

stirred when they saw how the sheaths which man needs if he is to accomplish his Earth-mission are brought into existence. In thisthey found satisfaction.

Thus it was with the Zarathustrian Initiation. For the initiates could See the Sun at Midnight; that is, they were not looking upon

the physical form of the Sun but upon the spiritual beings who are linked with the Sun. They saw emanating from the Sun the forces

which play into the physical body; saw how the forces which the Sun is able to send forth mould the human head and form thedifferent parts of the human brain. For it would be folly for anyone to think that a marvellous construction such as the human braincould come into existence merely through terrestrial forces; solar forces must work into it. These forces bring together the complex

lobular formations of the human brain, poised above the human face. Engaged in this task are quite numerous beings; Zarathustragave them the name of Amshaspands. They furnish the stimulus for the forces of the Cosmos which make possible the building of

the human brain and the upper nerves of the spinal cord, with the exception of the lower twenty-eight pairs of nerves. ThenZarathustra also pointed out how other currents flow from beings who are linked with the life of the Moon; he showed how

wonderfully the structure of the Cosmos is adapted so that from twenty-eight groups of entities Izeds as they are called currents proceed which build up the spinal cord with its twenty-eight lower pairs of nerve fibres. Thus are physical and etheric bodies

formed out of currents which stream forth from cosmic beings.

They were powerful impressions that the initiates of Zarathustra received in this way. And in receiving them as an expression of the

work of Ahura Mazdao, they felt an inner bliss concerning all that is thus accomplished. in the world. If a modern man were to raise

himself in the same way into the higher worlds, he would of course also be capable of wonderment; he, too, would be able to begin toexperience the same bliss. But gradually he would pass on to the feeling which one cannot clothe in words other than these: What is

the purpose of it all? I know nothing about that being who passes from incarnation to incarnation! I know solely about those beings

who in each new incarnation build up sheaths out of the Cosmos, but they build only sheaths. That was precisely the essence of theZarathustra Initiation: its revelation of the connection between the earthly part of man and the life of the Sun. It was characteristic of

the time of Zarathustra that men were able to absorb into their occult knowledge those mysteries we have now described.

Again, it was in a different way that souls in ancient Egypt entered the higher worlds at Initiation souls, for example, who went

through the Hermes Initiation. We have already spoken about all these things; but in these lectures they will be presented in rathermore detail than was possible previously. When in ancient Egyptian times souls were raised into the higher worlds through the

Hermes Initiation, then as it must always be after Initiation they felt themselves to be outside their physical and etheric bodiesand knew that they were now within a world of spiritual facts and spiritual beings. Wide was the circuit of vision through which these

souls were then led. They were shown the individual beings and facts, as can happen also with the soul of to-day. But one must notthink of it as though they went about on physical feet; it was their vision that was guided, as if a person's sight were to be led all round

a region as wide as the universe. Thus it was in this Initiation.

Then came a moment of experience wherein the initiates felt as though a traveler in a country encircled by the sea had reached the

shore. They knew they had come to the farthest point attainable. In the Egyptian Initiation they experienced what one cannot clothe inother words than these: In your vision you have been led far and wide through cosmic realms and have come to know the beings and

forces that work on your physical body and your etheric body. But now you are entering the most holy place. You are entering a

region where you can feel yourself united with the Being who works with others on the part of you that goes from one incarnation toanother, and on your astral body. It is a significant experience that occurs at this point, for after it all things become in some sense

different.

For the initiate, after that, one possibility is closed. In the world he has now entered, on the shores of cosmic existence, he is no

longer able to make use of his former ways of thinking and judging. If he cannot cast off all this earthly, physical power of judgment;if he cannot disregard what has guided him so far, then he cannot have this experience on the borders of existence; he cannot feelhimself united with that Being who is active when the human being as spirit and soul approaches his birth into a new incarnation, and

seeks nation, family and parents in order to clothe himself with new sheaths. All the beings whom he has already come to know, andwho make it clear to him how the etheric and physical sheaths arise and are formed out of the Cosmos, are unable to explain what

kind of forces are working in that Being with whom he now feels himself united, and who is building and weaving in the innermostastral being of the man himself. It becomes quite apparent to the seer, as it was to the Egyptian soul who was going through the

Hermes Initiation, that now, after the soul is outside its sheaths and has passed through the cosmic existence already alluded to, itfeels itself united with a Being. The soul can feel the qualities of this Being, only it feels itself as if it were within these qualities and

not outside this Being, and it can know that this Being is really there, but that it is at the same time within this Being. And the firstimpression that the aspirant receives of this Being is such that one says to oneself: In this Being lie the forces which bring the soul

from one incarnation to another, and also the forces which illuminate the soul between death and a new birth. All that is there within.But when there surges towards you a force like unto spiritual cosmic Warmth, one that conveys the soul from death to a new birth;

and when there presses towards you the spiritual Light that illumines souls between death and a new birth, and when you feel how thisWarmth and this Light stream out from the Being with whom you are united, you are now in a quite peculiar situation. You have hadto drink the waters of Lethe, to forget the art of understanding which formerly guided you through the physical world, to lay aside

your former power of judgment, your intellectuality, for here these would only lead you astray; and as yet you have gained nothing of

a new kind. In your experience of the cosmic Warmth which brings the soul to a new birth, you are within the ocean of forces which

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illuminate the soul between death and a new birth. You experience the force and the light which issue from this Being. You beholdthis Being in such manner that you can do no other than ask of it: Who art Thou? For Thou alone canst tell me who Thou art, and

only then can I know that which takes the essential inward part of me as a human being from death to a new birth. Only when Thoutellest me this can I know what my innermost nature is as man! And mute remains the Being with whom the aspirant knows himself

to be united. He feels with the deepest part of himself that he is united with the deepest part of the Being. The urge towards self-

knowledge arises, to know what a man is and yet the Being remains silent. The aspirant must first have stood for a while beforethis silent Being, and have felt deeply the longing to have the riddle of the universe solved after a new manner, as it never can be on

the physical Earth; he must have brought into this world, to this Being, as a force out of himself, the deep longing to have the riddle of

the universe solved in a way foreign to physical existence, and the soul must entirely live in the longing to have the cosmic enigmasolved in this manner. Then, when he has felt himself united with the mute spiritual Being, and has lived in him with longing for the

solution that we have indicated, then he feels that there streams forth into this spiritual Being with whom he is united, the force of hisown longing. And because this force of the aspirant's own longing for the solution of the riddle streams out into the spiritual Being,

after a time it gives birth to something like another being projected from it. But what is born is not after the manner of an earthly birth,as the aspirant knows at once through his own vision. An earthly birth arises in time; it enters into the stream of time. But

concerning the birth from this Being, the aspirant knows: It is born from Him, it has been born from Him since primordial times always, and this birth continues from primordial ages up to the present. Only this birth-process of one being from another has hitherto

not been visible to man; until now it has been withheld from his sight. This birth-process consists in his: it is really continuous, butman, owing to his having prepared himself by means of his yearning for the solving of the riddle, now sees it it is now perceived in

the spiritual world. The aspirant knows this. Thus he does not say: Now a being is born, but: From the Being with whom you haveunited yourself, ever since primordial times, a being has always been born; but now the process of the being's birth, and the being

itself who is born, are perceptible to you.

What I have now pictured to you, as far as it can be done in the words of our language, is that to which the Hermes Initiator led. his

pupils. And the feelings that I have just described (I might say with stammering words, for the things contain so much that the wordsof our tongue can express them only in a stammering way) these feelings were the experiences of the so-called Egyptian Isis

Initiation.

When the aspirant who was going through the Isis Initiation had reached the furthest shore of existence and had gazed upon the

beings who build up the physical body and the etheric body, when he had stood before the silent Goddess from whom Warmth andLight come forth for the innermost of the human soul, he said to himself: That is Isis. That is the mute and silent Goddess whose

countenance can be unveiled to no-one who sees only with mortal eyes, but only to those who have worked themselves through to theshores which have been described, so that they can see with those eyes which go from incarnation to incarnation and are no longer

mortal. For an impenetrable veil hides the form of Isis from mortal eyes.

When the aspirant had thus gazed upon Isis and had experienced in his soul the feeling described, he understood what has been

described. as the birth. What was this birth? He understood that it can be designated as The resounding through all space of theMusic of the Spheres, and as the merging of the tones of this Sphere-music with the creative cosmic Word the Word which

permeates space and pours into the beings everything that has to be so poured into them, as the soul has to be poured into the physicaland etheric body after passing through the life between death and a new birth. Everything that has to be thus poured out from the

spiritual world into the physical world, so that what is poured out acquires the inward character of soul, is poured in from theHarmony of the Spheres resounding through space. The Harmony of the Spheres gradually assumes such a form that through the inner

significance it expresses it can be understood as the Cosmic Word the Word which ensouls the beings that are vitalised by theforces of Warmth and Light which pour into those bodies that arise from the divine forces and beings perceived with the vision

already attained.

Thus did the aspirant look into the world of the Harmony of the Spheres, the world of the Cosmic Word; thus did he look into the

world which is the veritable home of the human soul during the time between death and a new birth. That which is hidden deep in thephysical earthly existence of man, but lives between death and a new birth in the splendour of the Light and Warmth; that which

deeply veils itself in the physical world as the world of the Harmony of the Spheres and the Cosmic Word, was experienced in theHermes-Initiation as coming to birth from Isis. There Isis stands before the aspirant, Isis herself on the one side, and on the other side

the being she has borne, whom one must speak of as Cosmic Tones and the Cosmic Word. The aspirant feels himself in the companyof Isis and of the Cosmic Word born of her. And this Cosmic Word is in the first place the appearing of Osiris. Isis in association

with Osiris: thus do they appear before direct vision; for in the very oldest Egyptian Initiation it was said that Osiris was at the sametime spouse and son of Isis. And in the older Egyptian Initiation the essential thing was that the aspirant, through this Initiation,

experienced the mysteries of soul-life, which remains united with man during the period between death and a new birth. Through theunion with Osiris it was possible to recognise oneself in one's deeper significance as man.

So it was brought to pass that the Egyptian Initiate met the Cosmic Word and the Cosmic Tones as the elucidators of his own beingin the spiritual world. But that was up to a certain point of time only in the old Egyptian period. After that it ceased. There was a great

difference this is shown also by the Akashic Records when one looks back into ancient times between the experiences of theEgyptian Initiate in the ancient Egyptian temples and what he experienced later on.

Let us bring before our souls what the Initiate experienced in these later times. He could still be led through the vast spaces of the

universe to the confines of existence; there he could meet with all the beings who build up the physical and etheric bodies of man;

there he could approach the shores of being and could have the vision of the mute, silent Isis, and could apprehend in her the CosmicWarmth which contains for man the forces that lead from death to a new birth. There he could also become acquainted with the Light

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which illumines the soul between death and a new birth; and the longing arose to hear the Cosmic Word and the Cosmic Harmony;longing lived in the soul when it united itself with the silent Isis. But the Goddess remained dumb! In that later age no Osiris could be

born, no Cosmic Harmony resounded, no Cosmic Word expounded that which now showed itself only as Cosmic Warmth andCosmic Light. And the soul of the aspirant could not have expressed. these experiences otherwise than by saying something like the

following; Thus, 0 Goddess, do I look up i

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