# The History of the Esoteric School 1904–1914, Volume One

## GA 264 — Leipzig

### Diagram of the Cultural and Historical Influence of the Masters

Recorded for Elise Wolfram, Leipzig between 1906 and 1908)[^1]


*Regarding the upper scheme*:

1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6 signify the post-Atlantean cultural periods.

*Regarding the lower scheme*:

KH = Kuthumi, inspirer of the transition from Egypt to the Greek period.[^2]

L. auf d.W. = Inspirator of “Light on the Path” (his occult name Hilarion), inspired the Greek period.[^3]

J.v.N. = Jesus of Nazareth, inspiring the transition from the Greek to the Germanic era.

S.G. Saint-Germain, inspirer of the Germanic culture.

M = Morya, inspirer of the Slavic culture.

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[^1]: The original is not available. Rendering based on an authentic copy.

[^2]: Regarding the term “inspirer of the transition”: In the lecture Munich, May 29, 1907, it says: “It is said of the master: he is born in the same body. He needs it for centuries, even millennia. This is the case with the vast majority of leading individuals. An exception is made for certain masters who have their very special mission. With them, the physical body is preserved, so that death does not occur for them at all. These are the masters who are responsible for the transition from one race to another.” But how the physical immortality of adepts is to be understood in reality is explained in the lecture Berlin, December 16, 1904 as follows: “It is not a matter of physical death, but of the following. The physical death of the one who has recognized the Philosopher's Stone for himself and has understood how to extract it is only an apparent event for him. For other people, however, it is a real event that marks a major stage in his life. For the one who [...] understands how to use the Philosopher's Stone, death is only an apparent event. It does not even constitute a particularly important stage in life; it is something that only exists for others, who may observe the adept and say that he is dying. But in reality, he does not die at all. The fact of the matter is that the person in question has learned not to live in his physical body at all; that he has learned to let all those processes that suddenly occur in the physical body at the moment of death gradually occur during his lifetime. Everything that would otherwise happen at the moment of death has already happened to the body of the person in question. Then death is no longer possible, because the person in question has long since learned to live without the physical body. He discards the physical body in much the same way as one takes off a raincoat, and puts on a new body, like putting on a new raincoat.

[^3]: That Master Hilarion was the inspirer of Mabel Collins' writing “Light on the Path” was generally known in the T.S. The daughter of Oskar von Hoffmann, who translated “Light on the Path” into German, passed on Rudolf Steiner's personal statement to her that Master Hilarion had helped her father with the translation in an inspiring way. He was a Greek, hence the beautiful language of his translation, which is even more effective than the English text in a mantric sense.