Supplements to Member Lectures

GA 246 — 8 June 1911, Copenhagen

44. The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity IV

We emphasized yesterday that there are two kinds of human leaders, and we explained this: If we look back into the development of mankind since the great Atlantean catastrophe until today, we find - the further back we go, the more, just as the ancient Egyptians said - that people are under the leadership of those individualities who were already human beings during the ancient lunar period.

These individualities - we have said - cannot fully incarnate in a human physical body because they have already outgrown the stage that makes it necessary to incarnate in a human physical body. We refer to these entities as dhyanic entities when we speak in terms of oriental mysticism, or as Angeloi or angels when we speak in terms of Christian mysticism. They guide the tone-setting, actually significant people who rise up to them clairvoyantly or clairaudiently and submit to their orders and teachings.

A second kind of teacher of humanity we have found in those individualities who have remained behind on the moon and have not reached their complete goal. These are half angelic - half dhyanic - beings, standing between men and angels; in ancient times they were embodied in the great leaders of nations, whom we call “heroes” according to the various customs of the peoples, to whom, for example, the Egyptian Hermes or Thoth, Pelops, Kadmos, Kekrops also belong, who were present as personalities in the flesh, but were nevertheless more than the rest of the population of their time. They contained souls that were actually angelic beings of the moon that had remained behind.

But if we look up to the higher hierarchies, we find that the matter is not at all such that we could say that only “angels” were the leaders, but that in a certain respect the beings of each hierarchy are again subject to the guidance and direction of the higher hierarchies. Thus in Christian mysticism we speak of the angels being under the guidance of the “archangels”, “archangeloi”, and these again under the guidance of the ‘archai’ or “elemental forces”, and so on. This is how we get up into the various classes of the hierarchies. - In the strictest sense of the word, the angels were more or less great leaders - as I have said - in the time when the Egyptians and Chaldeans were dominant on earth, that is, during the third post-Atlantean cultural epoch. For we distinguish seven successive cultural epochs from the time of the great Atlantean catastrophe onwards: The first is the ancient Indian cultural period, followed by the Ur-Persian, the third is the Egyptian-Chaldean, the fourth is the Greco-Latin and the fifth is our own, which has gradually developed since around the twelfth to fifteenth centuries and in which we find ourselves in the middle. However, the first processes that will lead to the sixth post-Atlantean cultural period are already taking place in our time. This sixth epoch will be followed by a seventh. Only for the third cultural period, the Egyptian-Chaldean, were the angels or dhyanic beings the independent leaders and guides of mankind. This was not the case in the Persian period. There the angels were subject to a higher leadership and arranged everything in such a way that - if we speak trivially - it corresponded to the orders of the next higher hierarchy, so that everything was indeed under the direction of the angels, but these themselves again submitted to the order of the archangels or archangeloi. And in the Indian cultural period, in which the post-Atlantean life had such a height as for the time being not again afterwards - a natural height under the guidance of the great Rishis - the Archangels themselves were again subject in what they had to lead to the guidance of the Archai, who are also called the Spirits of the Primordial Beginning.

So if we follow the development of humanity from the Indian period through the Persian and Egyptian-Chaldean cultures, we can say that certain beings of the higher hierarchies withdrew more and more from the leadership of humanity. And what was it like in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, the Greco-Latin period? Man had become completely independent, completely autonomous. Hence that peculiar, completely “human” culture in the Greco-Roman period, where man is completely left to his own devices.

All peculiarities in art, in state life in the Greek and Roman world can be traced back to the fact that man was supposed to try things out for himself, so to speak. So if we go back to these oldest times, we find leading beings who had completed their development up to man in earlier planetary states. The fourth post-Atlantean cultural epoch was there to test man most of all. Therefore, this was also the time in which the entire spiritual leadership of humanity had to establish itself in a new way. I said that we are now living in the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch, which will be followed by a sixth and then a seventh. Yesterday I pointed out where we have to look if we want to find the leaders of our cultural epoch. Where are they? What kind of hierarchies do they belong to?

I have already indicated in the lecture that they belong to the same hierarchy that prevailed among the ancient Egyptians and Chaldeans. In fact, the same entities that led then are beginning their activities again in our time. We have said that certain entities remained behind during the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, and that we find them in the materialistic feelings and sensations of our time.

Now the question arises: If in our time not only these retarded entities of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture are active, but also higher ones that lead up into the spiritual world, what kind are they? How do they differ? Or rather, in what way are these entities that are now guiding us spiritually higher entities? What have these non-retarded beings achieved?

The real progress of these entities, the angels or dhyanic entities, consists in the following. With the Egyptians and Chaldeans they simply led through the abilities they themselves had acquired from ancient times. Now, through this guidance of the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, they themselves have developed further, have acquired new abilities; for that was their work. And the ability they have acquired is the ability to act in accordance with a basic nature. For the worlds of the next higher plan, to which these angels or Angeloi belong, this basic being is the Christ.

For the Christ exists not only for the earth, but also for these beings. The same beings who led the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean culture were not then under the guidance of the Christ, but only since the Egyptian-Chaldean period have they placed themselves under the guidance of the Christ. And therein lies their progress, so that they now lead our fifth post-Atlantean cultural period under the influence of the Christ, whom they follow on the higher plan. And the lagging behind of those beings of whom we have said that they are also there consists in the fact that they have not submitted themselves to the guidance of the Christ, so that they continue to work independently of the Christ. Therefore, the following will emerge more and more clearly in the culture of humanity: There will be a materialistic current that is under the guidance and leadership of the backward Egyptian-Chaldean spirits; it will have a materialistic character. Most of what we call today's science in all countries is under this influence. But alongside this, another current is asserting itself, which aims to ensure that man can finally find what can be called the “Christ principle” in everything he does. This may seem strange, but it is true. There are people today, for example, who say: What is our material world made of? It consists of atoms! - Who instills in people the idea that the world consists of atoms? These are the angelic beings who remained behind during the Egyptian-Chaldean period!

What then will the beings teach who have reached their goal in the old Egyptian-Chaldean cultural area and who got to know the Christ then? They will be able to instill in man other thoughts than that there are only material atoms; for they will be able to teach man that substance is permeated by the spirit of Christ right down to the smallest part! And as strange as it may seem, chemists and physicists will come along in the future who will not teach chemistry and physics as they are taught today under the influence of the Egyptian-Chaldean spirits that have been left behind, but who will teach them: Matter is constructed in the sense in which the Christ has gradually arranged it! - The Christ will be found even in the smallest substances of chemistry and physics! A spiritual chemistry, a spiritual physics is what is to come. Today this certainly seems like madness to many people. But what is often the reason of the times to come is madness for the present times. The most astonished people will be those who today would like to place the science that intervenes most in human affairs under the influence of the angelic beings left behind during the ancient Egyptian-Chaldean period - namely the people who today practice official medicine; for today's materialistic medicine is entirely under the influence of these spirits, is entirely inspired [by them]. In contrast, the medicine of the future will become completely spiritual; it will know how to reckon in a completely different sense with the factors that are to be found in nature but are permeated by the spirit.

Now we also understand what these leading beings have ahead of human beings. When did people in the post-Atlantean period come to know the Christ? That was in the fourth post-Atlantean cultural period, in the Greco-Latin era. For while this cultural epoch was taking place, the Christ event coincided with the development, and it was then that people came to know the Christ. The angels, the leading beings, got to know him during the Egyptian-Chaldean period and ascended to him - and then had to leave people to their own fate during the Greek-Latin period, only to intervene in human development again later. And when we teach Theosophy today, it means nothing other than that we can know: They are coming down again, the spirits that have guided humanity! But now they are coming down in such a way that they themselves are under the guidance of the Christ.

So it is with other entities. We have said that in Persian times the archangels were involved in the guidance of humanity. Now they have come to know the Christ even earlier and have proclaimed him in their own way. But how? From Zarathustra himself we have often emphasized that he pointed his followers and his people to the sun and said: "In the sun lives the great spirit Ahura Mazdao, who will come down to earth! - For the beings from the region of the archangels, who guided Zarathustra, pointed him to the great leader of the sun, who had not yet come down to earth at that time, but had only just set out to guide the earth.

And the leading beings who presided over the holy Rishis pointed them again to the Christ; for it is only a belief if one thinks that these Rishis did not know the Christ. They only said that he is “above their sphere”, that they “cannot reach him”. But the rishis will also rise again and will teach [about the] Christ. For just as it is the angels in our fifth cultural period who carry the Christ down into our spiritual sphere, so in the sixth cultural period those beings from the archangels who led the Persian cultural period will lead the culture. And the spirits of the primordial beginning, the Archai, who led humanity during the ancient Indian period, had already become acquainted with the Christ at that time and submitted themselves to him. They will have to lead humanity under the Christ in the seventh cultural epoch - until a new great catastrophe. In this way, the whole of humanity will ascend again as the high hierarchical beings submit to the leadership of the Christ.

In the Greco-Latin period, the Christ descended and revealed himself in the fleshly body of Jesus of Nazareth. He descended to the physical plane. He will be found on the next higher plan when our cultural period has matured. He cannot be found on the physical plan, but only on the next higher one. For people will not have remained the same; they will have matured and found the Christ, as Paul found him through grace from the spiritual world in the event before Damascus. And just as in our time it is the same great teachers who already guided mankind in the Egyptian-Chaldean culture, so they will also be the ones who in the twentieth century will lead people up to the Christ as Paul saw him. They will show mankind how the Christ not only works on earth, but also spiritualizes the entire solar system.

And as a spirit that was foreshadowed by the unified Brahman, but into which the right content has only entered through the Christ, those who will be the re-embodied holy rishis in the seventh cultural period will proclaim the great mighty spirit of which they said at that time that it reigned over their sphere, and which will enter their sphere. In this way humanity will be led upwards from level to level.

To speak of the Christ in this way, as he is leader in the successive worlds towards the higher hierarchies, is what the science teaches us, which has entered our culture under the signature of the Rosy Cross since the twelfth, thirteenth century, and which we have shown has become necessary since that time. So we can see how these things fit together. We must now take a closer look at the Rosicrucian view of the Being who first lived in Palestine and then accomplished the Mystery of Golgotha.

There have been many mental images of the Christ. There was, for example, the mental image of the Christian Gnostics of the first centuries, who said: The Christ who walked in Palestine was not present in any physical, fleshly body at all; he would only have had an apparent body, an etheric body that had become physically visible, so that his death on the cross would not have been a real death either, but only an apparent one, because only an etheric body was present.

Then we find the various disputes among the different followers of Christianity, for example the well-known dispute between the Arians and Athanasians and so on, and with them the most diverse interpretations of what the Christ actually was. Even today, people have the most diverse mental images of the Christ.

What do we actually mean by the Christ? You will have to go through some, I would say, difficult concepts with me if you want to rise completely to the Rosicrucian idea of this Christ entity. We must be clear that what has lived in the Christ since John's baptism in the Jordan is not merely an earthly being, but a cosmic being, a real cosmic being. Man is a cosmic being in general, and we now want to form a primitive mental image of the extent to which man is a cosmic being, and then move on from the cosmic being of man to the cosmic being of Christ.

We know that man lives a twofold life: a life in the physical body from birth to death and a life in the spiritual worlds between death and a new birth, where he does not live in a physical body. If the human being is embodied in a physical body, then he lives - because the physical body is dependent on the substances and forces of the earth - in dependence on the earth. But we not only absorb the substances and forces of the earth, we also breathe the air of the earth and are thus essentially integrated into the whole physical earth organism, we belong to it. When we pass through the gate of death, we do not belong to the forces of the earth; but it would be wrong to have the mental image that we then belong to no forces at all, but even then we are actually connected with the forces of the solar system and the other star systems. We live in the cosmic between death and the new birth, just as we live in terra, in connection with the earth, from birth to death. From death to the new birth we belong to the great cosmos just as we belong to the elements of air, water, earth and so on on earth. As we live through life between death and the new birth, the forces of Mars, Jupiter, Saturn and so on, but also of the more distant star worlds, continually come to us. For from these other planets or starry worlds come not merely the physical forces invented by a fantastic physical astronomy - gravity or the other forces - but above all spiritual forces. And we are in contact with these spiritual forces of the cosmos - each person in a special way, depending on their individuality. If we are born in Europe, we live in a different context with the thermal conditions and so on than if we were born in Australia, for example. Similarly, we are related in life between death and rebirth - one more to Mars, the other more to Jupiter, one more to the planetary system in general, the other more to the zodiac or others to more distant constellations.

And it is also these forces that lead us back to earth, that push us down to earth, as it were, until, after the earth has fulfilled its mission, we have become completely mature enough to be able to live without the earth. Thus we live the years before our birth in connection with the entire starry space, one in this way, the other in that way, one more related to Mercury, another more related to Mars, yet another more related to the constellation of Leo and so on. And the forces that lead a person to this or that pair of parents, to this or that region, are determined according to this. The drive, the impulse to incarnate here or there, into this or that family, into this or that people, at this or that point in time, depends on what we are more connected to. And the connection with the star forces becomes more and more intense as the time of our birth approaches.

In the German Middle Ages, there was an expression that was extremely characteristic of the birth of a human being, and you will find it very apt in a moment. When a person was born, it was not said: A child was born here or there. - But rather: A child has become young there or there!

Think that this is the awareness of a person's entry into physical existence. And so, for example, in the second part of “Faust” you also used the expression: “Became young in the land of fog”, whereby “land of fog” is the old name for [medieval] Germany. People don't understand the expression because it means entering physical existence.

When a person is incarnated again, you can, if you know how to read correctly, read in the horoscope the forces according to which the person has thrown himself into physical existence. Why does a person have a horoscope? Because the horoscope shows the forces according to which he was born. If, for example, Mars is over Aries in the horoscope, this means that certain Aries forces are not allowed through, that they are weakened. The human being is therefore placed in physical existence, and the horoscope is what he is guided by before he enters earthly existence. But you have to know how to read the horoscope correctly. What drives man into physical embodiment are the effective forces of the starry world. The human being carries the entire heavenly realm within him and is placed into earthly existence with the forces of the entire heavenly realm.

So let us imagine a human being standing before us: the whole macrocosm lives in him. The clairvoyant consciousness sees this in the strangest way. It may seem strange - but it is true: if you were to take out the physical brain of a human being and look at it clairvoyantly to see how it is constructed differently, so that you could see how certain cells sit in certain places and send out projections, you would find that the brain is different in every person. No two people have the same brain. But if you imagine that you could photograph this brain with its entire structure - which you can never and will never be able to do - so that you had a hemisphere with all the processes lined up, you would get a different picture for each person. And if you didn't just photograph a person's brain, but also photographed the celestial space at the moment he was born, you would get the same photograph. You would get a different picture of the celestial space at every moment. But a person has an image of the celestial space within him - and each person has a different image - depending on how he is born. This is an indication that man is born out of the whole world.

If you take this into consideration, you will also rise with me to the mental image that shows us the macrocosmic in the individual human being, as well as the macrocosmic in Christ. What happened at the baptism of John? If you imagine the Christ after John's baptism to be like another human being, in whom a human individuality lives incarnated as in another human being, you are forming a false mental image. For what existed after John's baptism was the following.

First we have Jesus of Nazareth. He came into being in such a way that at the beginning of our era two Jesus boys were born. One came from the Nathanian line of the House of David, the other from the Solomonic line of the House of David. These two boys were not born at exactly the same time, but approximately. In the Solomonic boy Jesus, whom the Gospel of Matthew describes to us, the same individuality incarnated that once lived on earth as Zoroaster, so that in this child Jesus of Matthew's Gospel we have before us the re-embodied Zoroaster. Thus, as Matthew describes him, the individuality of Zoroaster grows in this infant Jesus until his twelfth year. In this year Zoroaster leaves the body of this boy and passes over into the body of the other boy Jesus described in the Gospel of Luke. That is why this child suddenly becomes something completely different. The parents are astonished when they find him again in the temple in Jerusalem after the spirit of Zoroaster has entered him. This is indicated by the fact that the boy, after he had been lost and was found again in the temple in Jerusalem, spoke in such a way that the parents did not recognize him because they only knew this child - the Nathanian Jesus boy - as he had been before. But when he began to speak to the scribes in the temple, he was able to speak like this because the spirit of Zarathustra had entered him. Until the age of three, the spirit of Zoroaster lived in the boy Jesus, who came from the Nathan line of the House of David. In this other body he matured to an even higher perfection. I note that in this other body, in which the spirit of Zarathustra now lived, the peculiar thing was that the Buddha lived in his astral body.

You know that the Oriental tradition is correct, that the Buddha was born as a Bodhisattva - and only ascended to the Buddha dignity during his time on earth, in the twenty-ninth year. And you also know that Asita, the great Indian sage, came to the royal palace when the Gautama Buddha was a small child and wept. Why did he cry? Because, as a shearer, he could see that this royal child would become the Buddha, and because he felt like an old man who would not live to see the son of Suddhodana become the Buddha in this incarnation. The wise Brahmin foresaw this. - This Brahmin was also reborn. This is the same Brahmin who is presented to us in the Gospel of Luke as the temple priest who now sees the Buddha opposite the Nathanish boy Jesus, who is working down into the astral body of this boy. And because he saw: This is the Buddha. - Therefore the priest said: “Lord, let your servant depart in peace, for I have seen my Master!” What he could not see in India at that time, he saw through the astral body of this boy Jesus, who appears to us as the one in the Gospel of Luke.

All this was necessary so that the sanctified body could come into being, which then received the baptism of John at the Jordan. At that time the individuality of Zarathustra left the threefold body - physical body, etheric body, astral body - of that Jesus who had grown up in such a complicated way so that the spirit of Zarathustra could be in him, but for which two physical bodies were necessary. In other words, the reborn Zarathustra had to go through two developmental possibilities.

So the threefold sanctified body of Jesus of Nazareth stood opposite the Baptist, and the cosmic individuality of the Christ now worked into him - but in such a way that the transition did not take place that takes place at the birth of another human being, where everything we have in cosmic laws enters into us and is then within us; but while Jesus of Nazareth walked the earth in the last three years of his life from the thirtieth to the thirty-third year in Palestine, the whole cosmic Christ-entity was always working into him. The Christ was always under the influence of the whole cosmos and never took a step without the cosmic forces working into him. What took place here with Jesus of Nazareth was a continual realization of the horoscope; for at every moment that which otherwise only happens at birth took place: At every moment, the entire cosmic forces were at work in the Jesus of Nazareth. This could only happen because the whole body of the other boy Jesus was different, because it had remained soft and was formed according to the great forerunner of the Christ, Zarathustra. - If the whole spirit of the cosmos worked in this way, who then went - let us say - to Capernaum or somewhere else? What went there on earth, however, was something that looked like [some other person. But the active forces in it were the cosmic forces that came from the sun and the stars; they directed the body. And what the Christ did depended on the constellation of the stars. That is why the constellation of the stars is important everywhere. Read in the Gospel of John, where the Christ finds his first disciples, how it is stated: “Now it was about the tenth hour”, because the spirit of the whole cosmos is working in. - And if you want to know what is happening below, you only need to look at the horoscope. So it is with all individual deeds.

What makes a person ill but the fact that the forces of the earth are not working in proper harmony! What works inharmoniously from the earth can always be brought back into harmony by the forces of the cosmos. But everything in an appropriate way! People think that all sorts of superstitions and stupid things happen with the so-called miracles of healing the sick. But they only believe this because they can't read. I would just like to point out one passage where it says: “When the sun had set, they brought the sick to him and he healed them.” What does that mean? The evangelist makes the grandiose point that this healing was connected with the whole constellation of stars, that such a constellation of the world was brought about precisely at that point in the world, which could only have been brought about at that point in the world. For it is not written there for fun: “When the sun had set ...”, but it is written there because the corresponding healing powers could only develop after sunset, because they work differently for a being that expands into the whole cosmos. And the body of Jesus of Nazareth was the instrument for the forces working from all sides of the cosmos. This is what spiritual wisdom tells us. This is what Rosicrucian wisdom teaches us and will teach us more and more.

But the other forces that remained behind in the Egyptian-Chaldean period also continue to work - and you will notice that they work very powerfully. For more and more literary works will appear which will endeavor in a strange way to show that the Gospels can be understood by interpreting them astrologically. The greatest opponents of the Gospels refer to this astrological interpretation, so that, for example, Mary's path to Elizabeth meant nothing other than the progression of the sun from the constellation of Virgo to Aries. This is something that is correct in a certain way; only these thoughts of our time are instilled in this way by the forces that remained behind during the Egyptian-Chaldean period, while the forces that lead our evolution upwards teach us that it is not the external material conditions that matter, but always only the cosmic forces that worked through Jesus of Nazareth from the baptism of John onwards, working in such a way that humanity was taught for the first time at that time: You must gather together all spiritual wisdom if you want to recognize the whole man!

Now you will no longer consider it strange when I say, for example, that healing science will become a spiritual science. More and more, the basic principles drawn from the entire cosmos will be taken into account. And one will know more and more that one passes from illness to health by invoking all the harmonious forces against the forces that cause the illness. And so the Christ principle is a healing principle in the right sense of the word! If one understands correctly what is said in the various Gospels, then one sees the way indicated to a spiritual wisdom. If we cannot say for the ordinary human being that he belongs entirely to the earth - for he brings his individuality from the cosmos, which dwells within him - then we must say of the Christ that through him the whole spiritual cosmos accessible to us radiates and shines.

If I may use a comparison, I would like to say: Think of every human being as a reflecting sphere. If you imagine a spherical mirror, it will give you images of the whole environment. Let us now assume that we trace the outlines of the whole environment with a pencil and draw the image of the whole environment on this mirror, so to speak. Then we take the mirror, have the image - and can carry this image everywhere. In other words, an image of the cosmos is drawn on the mirror. This is how it is when a person is born. A person carries such an image with them from birth to death. - But you could also leave the mirror as it is. Then it gives an image of the entire environment everywhere. That would be the image of Christ from the baptism of John to the Mystery of Golgotha! What flows into man at birth flows into Christ at every moment. And when the Mystery of Golgotha took place, that which was radiated from the cosmos entered into the substance of the earth and has been connected with the spirit of the earth since that time, living in it.

When Paul became clairvoyant before Damascus, what was he able to convince himself of? That what used to be in the cosmos had passed into the spirit of the earth! Anyone who can bring their soul to it will be able to convince themselves of this. In the twentieth century, the first people will appear who will experience Paul's Christ event in a spiritual way. This will provide more and more confirmation that the Christ was an entity, placed and bound to the narrowest limits of the earth. Man is indeed bound to the narrowest boundaries. Think of the ancient Greeks, for example: The Greek state was their territory through which they wandered. Today, man's arena is the whole earth! The arena of mankind is expanding more and more. However, to the same extent that the scene expanded, the spiritual view narrowed. Whereas in the first times of post-Atlantean development, people were well aware of this: There is not just a physical Mars up there. Rather, what we see as Mars or as Jupiter or Saturn, that is the expression for spiritual beings - thus, while the scene of mankind on earth became larger and larger, their view became more and more materialistic and materialistic. And in the Middle Ages, people only saw what their eyes could see of the stars: The sphere of Venus, the sphere of the sun, Mars and so on up to the sphere of the fixed starry sky - and then the eighth sphere came behind it like a blue, solid wall.

Then Copernicus came along and broke the belief that only what the senses see could be decisive. - Today's physical scientists say: There are such confused minds who claim that the world is maya, is illusion, is the great deception, and that one must look into a spiritual world in order to recognize the truth -- while true science is that which adheres to the senses and records what the senses say! - One could speak in the spirit of true Christianity: May they be forgiven, for they know not what they do! When did the astronomers trust in the senses? When the science that is being fought against today prevailed?

When Copernicus began to think about what is present in the universe beyond the appearance of the senses, only then did modern astronomy begin as a science. And so it is everywhere. Wherever science has arisen in the most modern sense, it has arisen against the appearance of sense! When Copernicus declared: "What you see is maya, is deception - rely on what you cannot see! -that is when science became what we have today. So you could say to the representatives of today's science: your science itself only became “science” when it could no longer rely on the senses!

Then came Giordano Bruno, equipped with the thoughts of Copernicus, looked out into the universe and proclaimed: 'What you have called the limit of space, what you have put down as the eighth sphere, which spatially limits everything, that is no limit! That is maya, illusion! For there is a myriad of worlds poured into world space. What you previously believed to be the boundary of space was only the boundary of your own sensory world, the boundary of your own cognition. Look beyond the world of the senses, no longer look at the world as the senses show it! Then you will recognize infinity! - This was the great moment of which a Nordic spirit said that the egg shell broke when Giordano Bruno sensed the infinity of space.

What does spiritual science do? What is Rosicrucian theosophy doing? It completes the work that was then done for external physical science by saying: Maya, illusion is what external science can recognize. Just as you used to look as far as the “eighth sphere” and believed space to be limited, so today's materialistic thinking believes man to be trapped between birth and death. Spiritual science, however, expands your view beyond birth and death - like Giordano Bruno spatially, so spiritual science temporally to that which is beyond what the senses can perceive between birth and death.

It is a closed chain that takes place there. And in the true sense of the word, what was carried out as a preparation for space by Copernicus and Giordano Bruno already emerged from the inspirations of the Rosicrucians. It was not known that something was mysteriously trickling into the guidance and leadership of mankind under the inspiration of the Rosicrucians! And those who today stand on the ground of Giordano Bruno and Copernicus and do not want to accept Theosophy, they are being unfaithful to their own traditions by wanting to hold on to the semblance of meaning. But today we hear it in a conscious way from Rosicrucian theosophy: Just as Giordano Bruno broke through the blue vault of heaven, so the clairvoyant breaks through the boundaries of birth and death for the human being by showing how the macrocosmic human being lives in physical existence and through death re-enters a macrocosmic existence. And what we see in each individual human being to a limited extent, we encounter on a large scale in the great cosmic representative, in Christ Jesus. And this impulse, which the Christ gave, could only be given once. Only once could the whole cosmos be reflected in this way; for this constellation, as it existed at that time, will not come again. This constellation had to work through a human body so that it could give the impulse on earth. As true as this same constellation does not occur a second time, so true is it that the Christ came to incarnate only once! Only if one does not know that the Christ is the representative of the whole universe, and [only if one] cannot rise to the high, noble idea of Christ, for which the elements are only now being given, only then can one claim that the Christ will appear several times on earth.

So we see how a Christ-idea of that Christ-entity springs from the Theosophy of the Rosicrucians, which teaches man his kinship with the whole macrocosm in a renewed way. In order to really get to know the Christ, we truly need those inspiring forces that now appear through the ancient Egyptian and Chaldean angelic beings who are themselves guided by the Christ. Such a new inspiration is needed, the inspiration which the Rosicrucians have prepared and which they will give more and more. If, in the sense of Rosicrucian theosophy, man prepares himself in his soul in the right way, then he can hear clairaudiently, see clairvoyantly, what the old Chaldean and Egyptian powers reveal, which have now become multitudes under the guidance of the Christ-being. What will one day come to mankind, penetrating all human knowledge, could only be prepared in the first Christian centuries up to our time. Therefore we may say: an idea of Christ will live in the hearts of future men, in no way comparable in greatness and glory to the mental images that a still youthful humanity was able to form in the first centuries until today.

What arose as the first impulse and has lived as a mental image of the Christ until today - even among the best representatives of the Christ principle - is only a preparation for the real knowledge of the Christ. It is therefore possible that those who want to remain on the standpoint of the old idea of Christ will be the fiercest opponents of the Rosicrucian idea of Christ.

O, it [would be] quite strange if those in the West who represent Christ in the Rosicrucian sense were accused of not standing somehow on the ground of the Christian tradition of the West! For this Christian tradition of the West is by no means sufficient to understand Christ for the near future. And it requires a complete lack of prejudice towards all religious denominations on earth in order to comprehend what can be known through the Rosicrucian inspiration about the guiding entities and their guiding Christ, about this spiritual guidance of man and humanity, which is called the Christian guidance in the real, true sense.

So we see how that which confronts us as Rosicrucian science flows into the hearts of men, and how we can recognize the spiritual guidance of man and mankind. Think for a moment how the Christ principle first flowed into the hearts of men: the Christ walking in the physical body of Jesus of Nazareth in Palestine and giving the impulse to men. - There the most simple-minded were able to receive the impulse! Then the same impulse worked through the inspiration of Rosicrucian science in such a way that spirits such as Nicholas Cusanus, Copernicus and Galileo could be inspired, so that Copernicus, for example, could assert the proposition: Sense cannot teach you the truth; if you want to seek the truth, you must go beyond sense! - At that time, people were not yet mature enough, not even spirits like Giordano Bruno, to consciously incorporate themselves into the Rosicrucian leadership; they had to have the spirit of Rosicrucianism unconsciously active within them. And when Giordano Bruno proclaimed so grandly and powerfully: When a man enters into existence through birth, it is a macrocosmic thing which concentrates itself as a monad; and when a man passes through death, the monad expands again; what was contracted in the body expands in the universe in order to contract and expand again in other stages of existence - powerful concepts spoke from him which were entirely the image of Rosicrucian inspiration.

For the spiritual influences that guide humanity do not need to work by man becoming aware of them. No, for example, they place the man Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa. Thousands and thousands have seen the old church lamp there - but have not done as Galileo did. Galileo, however, saw the old church lamp swinging, took his pulse and compared the times at which the lamp swung back and forth regularly with the regularity of his pulse beat and found that the church lamp swung in a regular rhythm, similar to the rhythm of the pulse. From this he then discovered the “laws of the pendulum” in the sense of modern physics. Anyone familiar with modern physics knows that it would not be possible without Galileo's principle. - This is how the Rosicrucian inspiration worked: it placed Galileo in the cathedral of Pisa in front of the swinging church lamp - and today's physics is completely permeated by Galileo's principle. And so the spiritual guiding forces continue to work.

Then the time will come when people will also become aware of these guiding forces. This grace has come to our time. We will understand more and more what is to come if we understand correctly today that which works as Rosicrucian inspiration, which teaches us that the same spiritual beings to whom the ancient Egyptians pointed when the Greeks asked them about their teachers, that these same beings who then ruled as gods now rule again, but have now placed themselves under the guidance of the Christ. More and more, people will feel how they can resurrect that which is pre-Christian in a higher splendor and style, on a higher level.

One figure of ancient Greek culture is Asclepius, the physician. His symbol [is] the staff entwined with the serpent. He heals, heals out of the powers that come from the wisdom that those beings could give who had already completed their development on the moon. These lunar beings are also depicted in paradise under the image of the serpent. They are always depicted under the image of the serpent. The serpent that carries Asclepius is very closely related to the serpent of Paradise: It is one and the same serpent. For the healing powers that work on earth are very much related to the powers that came from the moon when it completed its development.

When these forces that worked in ancient Egypt come down again, they will have placed themselves under the guidance of the Christ. And when those individuals who lived in ancient Egypt consciously awaken and become aware of the origin of the world's organization, they will rejoice when they hear: Here has been understood the guidance of humanity as it could have come into being under the leadership of the Rosicrucians!

And when the disciples of Zarathustra will reappear in the sixth cultural epoch and will have prepared for such an understanding of the guidance of humanity, they will rejoice that the great Sun Spirit, of whom Zarathustra has already taught, is now here. And the holy Rishis, who once said in India that the Christ was above their sphere, will reappear in the seventh post-Atlantean cultural epoch and will say: "From those who understood the Rosicrucian influence in the fifth cultural period of the post-Atlantean age and recognized how the pre-Christian entities worked in the post-Christian age, from them has been prepared what we suspected: It has moved into our sphere what was then above our sphere!

But our consciousness, which we need and which is a strengthened consciousness, which is supposed to be a higher responsibility of duty, can only enter our soul when we know this. And when do we know this Theosophy of the present time best? Then, when we have not only absorbed it through the intellect - but that we know from the way it has now been characterized: This is what it has to do, this is its task and mission!

And when our soul becomes strong, we will also be able to bear it when Theosophy brings us opponents in our time. May they appear in all places, those who do not understand Theosophy at all or misunderstand it; may some deny what Rosicrucian Theosophy has to say or even say: It contradicts the ancient sacred teachings of the Rishis or Brahmanism or Zarathustra. - He who understands Rosicrucian theosophy as it has now been characterized, will easily bear it [if] he is told that it contradicts the teachings of the Rishis or Brahmanism or other Oriental teachings. For he knows that the holy Rishis, from whom the most sacred oriental teachings originate, will agree when they reappear and see the progress of culture on earth! He knows that the true Rishis, the true confessors of Zarathustra, will agree with us! We know that and we can know that. With such an inwardly strengthened soul, the one who understands Theosophy in the present time in the sense of the Rosicrucians understands it. But if we understand it in this way, then it will become the deepest standard and impulse of modern morality, and we will then be able to speak in the same way as in the introductory lecture. Like balm, like strengthening medicine, the healing Rosicrucian spirit will enter into the hearts of men and will not fail to lead culture further, to lead men and humanity further, as it has led them, in order to realize what has been begun since the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. Just as the Rosicrucian spirit lived behind the shoulders of Giordano Bruno, Nicholas Cusanus or Galileo and led them unconsciously, so it will live on. We only have to consciously absorb it because people have to consciously absorb more and more - and because they were not yet ready for it and had to absorb it unconsciously.

In this sense, Theosophy becomes more than science to us; in this sense, it becomes the highest, innermost necessity of the life of our soul, inflaming that which comes to our minds from Theosophical revelation in what we think, feel and want. In this sense we become images of the theosophical spirit. This is the best thing we can carry out of Theosophy into the world at any time, and we will then see how new life can also come into the world of everyday life. This is what the spiritual guidance of man means, and this is the explanation that the inspiration of Rosicrucian wisdom has to give of the spiritual guidance of man and mankind.

With this I may conclude this short series of lectures and hope that the few suggestions I have been able to give will prove to be what I would prefer them to be understood as: as thoughts that are not merely to be thought about, but as thoughts that are effective forces that continue to work in your own souls and can prove fruitful therein. If you grasp these thoughts in this way, they will live on, and you will then be able to discover many things that rest in these three lectures.

This is how Theosophy wants to live in people's hearts. I would also like to have spoken to you in this style during these days, so that what these short lectures contained may become your own soul and life property in your souls. The highest beings - as we have seen - always develop further by submitting themselves to the guidance of the Hierarchies and their beings. And people understand themselves correctly in their souls when they understand the spiritual guidance of man and mankind in the right way. The powers revealed to us by this guidance then come alive within them. And so to progress from week to week, from hour to hour, from moment to moment as human beings, that is our real theosophical task!