Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 28 February 1910, Essen

26. The Inauguration of a Branch

The small Kali Yuga (3101) began in the third millennium before Christ; before that was the old dim clairvoyance, of which remnants still exist. There were two ways to see into the spiritual world: firstly, through the outer shell of the sensory carpet, the spiritual beings behind it, or secondly, into one's own soul, where there are also undergrounds of existence; feeling, thinking and willing are the outflow of spiritual beings.

Now one says: I think, feel, will - without suspecting spiritual beings behind it. On the other hand, what is taken away is given, namely the possibility of being led back into the spiritual world through the sensory world to which we are bound: ego consciousness.

The Druid initiation took place in northern Europe, more to the east the Drotten. There [people] felt themselves to be a part of the cosmos, they experienced the great world events, for example the course of the starry world. At Christmas, the sun was in a completely different position to the stars than usual. Joy of the sun and distance from the sun were not just concepts, they were experienced as a feeling. When the melancholy of being far from the sun was heightened to the highest level, the soul was given a substitute. It became open, opened up to the spiritual sun, looked sensitively into the hierarchies of existence. One lived with the position of the sun, experienced how the sun moved. Man experienced this in exultant joy, the effect of the sun in the world of the senses as an echo of the course of the sun. He experienced the whole universe. But the ecstasies were taken away from man in the Kali Yuga. The substitute for this was the ego, in preparation for the entity that appeared in the Christ. The Christ event was prepared through three millennia.

Abraham fulfilled a mission to humanity in the third millennium. Abraham, with his ego, was first able to unite with the Godhead, which became possible for him through the tool of intelligence. He was able to combine physical events and recognize the I-entity. Formerly one could recognize archangels, spirits of personality and so on, not the world ego. As such, Abraham could first understand it by way of the physical brain. He was able to comprehend the knowledge of the spirit as far as the physical brain. Before that, there was only knowledge of God by leaving the physical brain, through Abraham first with the physical brain. Because it was bound to the physical body, this ability could only be passed on through heredity. Mankind had to feel that this quality was given to them by God.

The second step happened around two thousand years before Christ. Moses had increased the abilities of Abraham to such an extent that he then perceived [God] as an ego-God in thunder and lightning. In the first millennium before Christ, the event of Jesus of Nazareth is prepared to be properly understood through those teachings that follow on from Solomon. These ages can only be understood through repetition. Solomon is to be placed approximately in the year one thousand before Christ.

One thousand years after Christ is a repetition of the age of King Solomon. Calculations with physical numbers cannot decide. Two thousand years after Christ: repetition of the Moses impulse. Conversely, the facts from Sinai are repeated. Moses saw through the veil of the natural elements. The reverse event was the same through the deep insight into the soul, as with the medieval mystics. It was the reverse Moses event. The ego deity reveals itself to the Christian mystics in the soul, radiates out of the soul. We are living in a special age where we are entering the third thousand years. Then comes the repetition of the age of Abraham. It announces itself little by little. Self-consciousness becomes an experience. Man will break through the skin of his ego, penetrate out of the narrow circle of self-consciousness. He will now radiate out of the human brain what was previously radiated in. The small Kali Yuga expired around 1899.

The development of humanity is going in two directions. There are two currents! Firstly in the mystery initiations and secondly in a natural way. Before the Kali Yuga, people were not in a position to consciously miss out on anything. Now people have to take their own development into their own hands. Theosophical preaching also takes care of this. Man becomes ever freer. He experiences three incarnations in order to make up for what he has missed, and only in the fourth or fifth will this no longer be possible. Now new abilities are developing, for example, etheric clairvoyance is beginning again in our time. We must be able to make people understand what is to come. Materialistic worldviews can crush this. Now understanding is to be acquired for what must come. The first elements will be seen through natural qualities. Between 1930 and 1940 there will be a recognition of the spiritual world without the instrument of the brain. Thus in the twentieth century.

In the next two thousand five hundred years there will still be a possibility for those who do not experience it now. Then there will be a sufficient number of such people. This is unspeakably important for earth evolution.

What will people experience? A renewal of the event of Damascus, the Christ. To acquire an understanding of these things between birth and death is the last thing of the Kali Yuga period. Mere knowledge from the documents of the Christ is not enough. Unbelief in the Christ-Jesus according to the external documents will undermine the documents. Then they will see the Christ-Jesus in the immediate presence. Then Theosophists will be tested. This is the great touchstone: whether Theosophists believe in the spirit or only when the spirit confronts them in material form.

False messiahs, like Christ in the flesh, will be challenged by the materialistic view. In 1137 there was a false messiah in France, sixty years earlier in Spain and North Africa. In the seventeenth century Sabbatai Zewi was still in Smyrna. People from half of Europe traveled there to see him, the reincarnated Messiah. At that time it was still without harm, because people had not yet taken their own development into their own hands. Now man must distinguish Maya from reality by truly penetrating the spiritual world. Then the Christ will become the leading spirit of humanity.