Spiritual Teachings Concerning the Soul

GA 52 — 4 January 1904, Berlin

IV. Theosophy and Christianity

Even today, people often confuse the Theosophical Society with the Buddhist worldview. I have often remarked at these monthly meetings that at the Theosophical Congress in Chicago in 1893, the Indian Brahmin G. N. Chakravarti himself said that for him, too, Theosophy had brought something completely new, or at least a complete renewal of his worldview. He said at the time that all spiritual worldviews, including those of his people in India, had given way to materialism, and that it was the Theosophical Society that had renewed the spiritual worldview in India. — One can already conclude from this that we did not bring Theosophy from India, just as, on the other hand, if one follows the theosophical movement as it has developed in recent decades, one must admit that it has increasingly endeavored to be the explainer of all other religious systems, that it has increasingly endeavored to bring to light the kernel of truth not only in Eastern but also in Western religious creeds.

Today, my task is simply to show in a few strokes how true, genuine theosophy can be found in correctly understood Christianity, or rather, I must characterize the task of the Theosophical Society in relation to Christianity.

The Theosophical Movement wants to be nothing more than a servant to Christianity. It wants to serve by seeking to extract the deepest core, the very essence, from Christian religious beliefs. In doing so, it hopes not to take anything away from anyone who is attached to Christianity, whose heart is connected to Christianity. On the contrary, those who understand the Theosophical Movement know that it is precisely through it that Christians can gain infinitely much, that infinitely many of the disputes that have arisen everywhere in Christian confessions today must disappear when the true core, which can only be the one core, comes to light.

Of course, I cannot exhaust this vast topic in all its breadth and detail, and I therefore ask you to be content with the few strokes I am able to give. But it is surely time, especially in the present, to give what I am able to give.

Our present time is not a time that loves to rise to the spirit in its liveliness. There are ideals that people look up to, and they talk a lot about ideals, but the 19th and early 20th centuries do not want to know much about the possibility of realizing these ideals, about the spirit being present and active, and about the task of recognizing it. This distinguishes our time quite significantly from the time of the great spirits who originally developed Christianity in accordance with the founder of Christianity. Go back to the early days of Christianity, to Clement of Alexandria, for example, and you will find that at that time all scholarship, all knowledge, was there for one purpose only: to understand how the living Word, the Light of the world, could become flesh. Our age does not like to rise to such heights of spiritual perception. Just as we have limited ourselves in our scientific view to seeing only what is purely factual, what the eyes can see and the senses can perceive, so too are religious creeds full of such materialistic views. And it is precisely the representatives of such materialistic views who believe they understand the creed best. They do not know how strongly materialistic thoughts have taken hold unconsciously. Let me show you just one example.

The 19th century attempted to come to terms with Christianity through serious work. Above all, a critical approach was taken and attempts were made to examine the documents in a strictly scientific manner to determine the extent to which they contain historical and factual truth. Yes, “actual” truth is what religious scholars today are also seeking. The letter of the text was examined in every way to determine whether one or another evangelist was speaking the pure, actual truth about what might really have happened, what might once have taken place before the eyes of men. Investigating this is the task of so-called historical-critical theology. We see how, under these tasks, the image of God incarnate has gradually taken on a materialistic coloring. Let me mention one thing that always preoccupies those who seek the truth.

David Friedrich Strauss began in the 1830s to examine the actual core of the Gospels from a historical perspective. And after he had attempted to clarify what such a historical core of truth is, he sought to develop his own image of Christianity. This image he created is indeed born of the spirit of his time, of a spirit that could not believe that something far beyond human beings, something originating from the heights of the spiritual, could ever have been realized in the world; something born of the actual spirit. What David Friedrich Strauss found is this: the real Son of God cannot be represented in a single personality. No, only the whole of humanity, the human race, the species alone can be the real representation of God on earth. The struggle of the whole of humanity, understood symbolically, is the living God, but not a single individual. And all that was formed in the times when Christianity arose in the stories about the person of Christ is nothing more than myths created by the imagination of the people. — Through his effort to represent the Son of God as the struggle and striving of the entire human species, David Friedrich Strauss has reduced the Son of God to a divine ideal.

But now look around in the Gospels, search the Christian creeds — you will never find a word in them, and you will never find a mental image anywhere in Jesus: that is the mental image of the ideal human being as Strauss has constructed him. The human race, thought of abstractly, is nowhere to be found in the Gospels. It is significant that the 19th century arrived at an image of Jesus based on a mental image that Jesus never hinted at or expressed in his life.

Gradually, others also took up the task of critically examining the content of the Gospels. I cannot list the various phases here; that would go too far. But in recent years, a phrase has often been used that really shows how unsympathetic it is to our time to look up to God, to the spirit being who is said to have realized himself in a personality, in a similar way to the first Christian century, when all scholarship, all wisdom, all knowledge was used solely to comprehend and understand this unique phenomenon. A word has been used, and that word is: the simple man from Nazareth. The concept of God has been abandoned. The tendency underlying these words is ultimately to regard this personality, who stands at the beginning of Christianity, merely as a human being, and to regard everything that is considered dogma as a fantasy floating in the clouds. They want to remove all of that and regard the personality of Jesus as a pure human being, as a human being who is indeed of a higher nature than other human beings, but who is a human being among human beings, who is in a certain sense equal to other human beings. In this way, they also want to drag the image of Christ down into the realm of the purely factual from a theological point of view.

These are two extremes that I have presented to you: on the one hand, David Friedrich Strauss's concept of God, which dissipates the image of God, and on the other hand, the simple man from Nazareth, who contains nothing but a pure teaching of universal humanity. This is basically nothing other than what even those who want to know nothing about the founder of Christianity can acknowledge. We have also seen how followers of a general moral doctrine construct the idea that Jesus basically had and taught the same moral doctrine that is preached today by the “Society for Ethical Culture.” And they believe they can elevate Jesus by showing that even before the 19th century, people professed what we have achieved through Kantian speculation or through the Enlightenment. — In truth, however, these are teachings that were once the highest mystery, and the content of this wisdom was only given to those who had risen to the heights of humanity.

Let us ask ourselves, if we take one or the other of these concepts of Christ, are we still somehow standing on the ground of the Gospels? I cannot explain today why I cannot share the view of many learned theologians that the fourth Gospel is less authoritative and less authentic than the first three. Anyone who clearly and distinctly examines and investigates the course of events sees no reason why the Gospel of John, which is precisely the one that uplifts us so much, should be set aside, so to speak, in the pursuit of pure factuality. It is believed that the first three Gospels—Matthew, Mark, and Luke—represent more the man, the pure, simple man from Nazareth, while the Gospel of John claims to recognize the Word made flesh in Jesus. Here, the unconscious desire that lives in the soul became the father of the idea. But if the Gospel of John has less claim to authenticity, it is impossible to maintain Christianity. Then it is impossible to say anything else about the Christian teaching of the personality of Jesus other than that he was the simple man from Nazareth. But no one, neither I nor others who keep the old confessional writings in mind, can say anything other than that those who originally spoke of Jesus Christ were really speaking of God incarnate, of the higher spirit of God, which was realized in this personality of Jesus of Nazareth.

It is now the task of theosophy above all to show how we are to understand this word, used above all by John, of the Word made flesh. For even the other Gospels cannot be truly understood unless one starts from the Gospel of John. What the other evangelists tell us becomes light and clear when we take the words of the Gospel of John as an interpretation, as an explanation.

I cannot describe in detail what leads to the individual statements I will make today. But I can at least point to the main thing that is offensive to the materialistically minded theologian above all else. This includes the story of the birth, which says that Jesus was not born like other human beings. This is something that David Friedrich Strauss also used to argue against the truth of the Gospels.

What was meant by the higher birth? It becomes clear to us when we understand the Gospel of John correctly. The first sentences of the Gospel of John, the actual message of the Word made flesh, tell us: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God. All things were made through the Word, and without the Word nothing was made.” It is communicated that the Word was always there in another way, but that it manifested itself externally in this personality. And we hear that through the same Word, or let us say, through the same Spirit of God that lived in Jesus, the world itself came into being. "And in this Word was life, and the life was the light of men. And the light shone in the darkness, but the darkness did not comprehend it. A man named John was sent so that they might all believe. He was not the light, but he was to bear witness to it, for the true light was yet to come into the world." — What was to come in Jesus Christ? But we immediately hear that it was already there. “It was in the world, but the world did not recognize it. It came to individual people, but individual people did not receive it. But those who did receive it were able to reveal themselves as children of God through it. Those who trusted in his name were not born of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of man, but of God.”

Here you have, in what I believe to be a reasonably accurate and meaningful translation, the meaning of God incarnate and, at the same time, the meaning of what it means to say, “And Christ was not born in the human way.” The “Word” was always there, and every single person should give birth to a Christ within themselves, in their innermost being, in their very beginning. In our hearts, we all have the right to Christ. But while this living Word, this Christ, should have a place in each individual, people have not preserved him in this place, have not perceived him. This is precisely what the Gospel shows us, that the Word was always there, that man could accept it and did not accept it. And further, we are told that individuals did accept it. There were always individuals who awakened within themselves the living Spirit, the living Christ, the living Word, and those who named themselves after him were not born of blood, not of the will of the flesh, not of human will, but they were always born of God.

This sheds the right light on the Gospel of Matthew. Now we understand why the birth of Christ is called “of God.” This best refutes what David Friedrich Strauss wants. Not the entire human race was able to receive Christ within themselves, even though he was for the entire human race and for all humanity. And now one was to come who once represented within himself the fullness of the infinity of the Spirit. This gave this personality its unique significance for the first Christian teachers, who understood what it was all about. They understood that it was neither an abstract, shadowy concept nor a single human being in his actuality, but truly and really the God-man, an individual personality in the fullness of truth.

Now, we can understand that all those who proclaimed the good news of Christ in the early days held fast not only to the teaching and the actual person, but above all to the view of the God-man, that they formed the conviction that he whom they had seen was a high, a real God-man. It was not the teaching that held the first Christians together, not what Christ taught; that was not what the first Christians felt connected to. That alone speaks against those who wanted to replace Christianity with an abstract ethical moral teaching. But then they are no longer Christians.

It was not irrelevant who brought this teaching into the world; rather, its founder had truly become flesh in the world. Therefore, in the early days of Christianity, less emphasis was placed on evidence than on the living memory of the Lord. This is continually emphasized. It is personality, god-filled personality, that holds the greatest communities together. That is why the early Christian teachers tell us again and again that it is the merit of the historical event from which Christianity originated. We have a reference from Irenaeus that he himself knew people who in turn had known apostles, those who had seen the Lord face to face. And he emphasizes that the fourth pope, Clement Romanus, still knew many apostles who had also seen the Lord face to face. That is true. And why does he emphasize this? The first teachers did not want to speak only of doctrine, not only of logical proofs, but above all they wanted to speak of the fact that they themselves had seen with their eyes and felt with their hands what had come down from above into the earthly world; that they were not there to prove anything, but to bear witness to the living Word. But this was not the personality that could be seen with the eyes or perceived with the senses. It is not the personality that could then be called the simple man from Nazareth that proclaims the first teaching of Christianity. A single word from a certainly authoritative witness must speak for the fact that something higher lies at the foundation. And this word of Paul cannot be emphasized enough: “If Christ has not been raised, then our message is futile and our faith is in vain.” Paul names the risen Christ as the foundation of Christianity, not the Christ who walked in Galilee and Jerusalem. Faith is in vain if Christ has not been raised. The Christian is in vain if he cannot profess the risen Christ.

What did they understand by the risen Christ? We can learn that from Paul, too. He tells us clearly and distinctly what his confession of the resurrection is based on. Everyone knows that Paul is, so to speak, a posthumous apostle, that he owes his conversion to Christianity to the appearance of Christ, who had long since left the earth. Only the theosophist can recognize the truth of this appearance of a high spiritual being. Only he knows what an initiate like Paul means when he speaks of the risen Christ appearing to him alive. And Paul tells us even more, and we must take this to heart. He tells us in 1 Corinthians 15:3-8: "I delivered unto you first of all that which I also received, that Christ died for our sins according to the Scriptures, and that he was buried, and that he rose again the third day according to the Scriptures, and that he was seen of Cephas, then of the twelve: After that, he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once; of whom the greater part remain unto this present, but some are fallen asleep. Last of all, as to one untimely born, was I shown."

He immediately equated his appearance with that on which the higher faith of the other apostles was based. He equated it with the appearance that the apostles had of Christ after he had died. We are therefore dealing with a spiritual apparition; with a spirit apparition that we should not think of in a shadowy way, as a shadowy ideal, but as reality, as the theosophist has in his mental image of the spirit; with an apparition of the spirit that is not physical, but nevertheless more real and true than any external reality perceptible to the senses. If we keep this in mind, then we realize that it cannot be otherwise than that in the first Christian centuries we are dealing with the Word made flesh, that the God-man is not the simple man from Nazareth, but the truly realized higher spirit of God. When we consider this, we are standing completely on the ground of theosophy. And perhaps no one can be called a theosophist in the true sense of the word more than the proclaimer of the miracle of the resurrection: the Apostle Paul. No theosophist can think of the Apostle Paul as anything other than a deeply initiated person, one of those who know what it is all about.

I must emphasize one more thing, and that is that it is not permissible to drag this sublime phenomenon, which stands alone in the world, down into the materialistic worldview; that the path to understanding the founder of Christianity does not lie in the regions where there are only “simple people,” where there are only ideals, but that it must lead up to where the high Christ Spirit itself is. And that is what the first Christians did; they wanted to follow this path in order to understand the living Word.

You may now say that you believe that everything has gradually changed, and that is well founded. It is only through the development of the sense of reality over the centuries, through man's learning above all to train his senses and arm them with instruments, that he has made progress in his knowledge of the outer world. But these tremendous advances in our world travel, the penetration of the starry sky with the Copernican worldview, the penetration of the smallest living creatures with the microscope, have all brought us, as every thing casts its shadow, their dark sides as well. They have brought us very specific habits of thinking; habits of thinking that depend above all on what is actually real, on what can be perceived by the senses. And so it has come to pass that, in the most natural way, this thinking, which turns to the purely sensory, has become a habit, that it has also approached the highest religious truths and attempted to comprehend the spirit and its content in the same way that the natural scientist attempts to comprehend external nature with his senses.

Ideals that contain abstract concepts can at best still be given a mental image by the materialistic natural scientist. He then speaks of truth, beauty, and goodness, which increasingly want to be realized in the world. He imagines shadowy concepts. He can still rise to a ‘simplicity’ in human mental image, but this scientific sense, with its habits of thought cultivated over centuries, cannot bring him to something even higher, to the grasping of a real spirituality. These habits of thought have now reached their highest level. And just as everything that has developed one-sidedly needs to be supplemented, so too does the justified materialistic sense need spiritual deepening on the other side. It needs the knowledge that lifts us up to the heights of spirituality. And this elevation to the spirit and its reality is what theosophy wants. That is why it wants to hold above all to that which is not spoken of in materialistic views, but to that which rises to the highest levels of human knowledge. From this perspective, we can understand what it means when it is said that the Word became flesh; what it means to grasp the spirit of the divine in the human body.

Christ could not always express what he meant openly. You all know the saying: before the people he spoke in parables, but when he was with his disciples, he explained these parables to them. — Where did this intention of the founder of Christianity to speak two languages, so to speak, come from? A simple comparison can tell us where it came from. If you need an object, a table, for example, you don't go to just anyone, but to someone who knows how to make a table. And when they have made it, you don't presume to say that you made the table yourself. You calmly admit that you are a layman when it comes to table-making. But people do not want to admit that one can also be a layman in relation to the highest things that exist, that the simple mind, which is, so to speak, in a natural state, must first climb to the highest heights. From this arose the longing to bring this highest truth down to the level of common sense. But just as we, as laymen in table-making, know when a table is good and how to put it to use, so we know, when we have heard the truth, whether it speaks to our hearts, whether our hearts can use it. But we must not presume to want to produce knowledge ourselves out of the mere heart, out of simple human understanding. From this view arose the distinction that was always made in ancient times between priests and lay people. In ancient times, we are dealing with priestly wisdom and with highest truths that were not proclaimed out on the streets, but inside the mystery temples.

The highest wisdom was only explained to those who were sufficiently prepared for it. The rich in spirit were allowed to hear it because they are the deeper truth about the world, the human soul, and God. One had to become an initiate, a master, to gain an understanding, a direct mental image of the content of the highest wisdom. Over the centuries, wisdom had flowed into the mystery temples. Outside, however, the crowd stood and heard nothing more than what the priests deemed appropriate to impart. The gap between the priesthood and the laity had grown ever wider. Those who knew the wisdom of the living God were called initiates. Many steps had to be climbed before one was led up to the altar, where one was told what the wisest had discovered and revealed about the wisdom of the living God.

This was the custom for centuries. Then came a time, and this is the time of the emergence of Christianity, when what had previously only been available to the rich in spirit, to those who were initiated into the mysteries, took place on the great stage of world history as a historical fact before the eyes of the world, for all people. Only those who saw the secrets of existence in the mystery temples could, in ancient times, according to the view of the priest-wise men, attain true bliss. But the founder of Christianity was moved by a higher compassion to take a different path with all of humanity and to allow those who did not see, that is, those who could not enter the mystery temples, those who could only be led to this bliss through weak feelings, through faith alone, to also attain bliss.

And so, according to the intentions of the founder of Christianity, a new creed, a new gospel had to be proclaimed, one that spoke in different words than those spoken by the ancient priests; a message that sprang from the deepest wisdom and direct spiritual knowledge, but which at the same time could find resonance in the simplest human heart. Therefore, this founder of Christianity wanted to draw disciples and apostles to himself. Wherever there were stones, that is, human hearts, from which sparks could be struck, they were to be initiated into the mystery. Thus, they had to experience the highest, which is the victory of the Word. He spoke to the people in parables, but when he was alone with them, he explained them to them.

Let us cite just a few examples of how Christ tried to ignite the living Word, how he wanted to strike life out of the hearts of individual human beings. We hear that Christ led his disciples Peter, James, and John up the mountain and that he underwent a metamorphosis there before the eyes of his disciples. We hear that Moses and Elijah were on either side of Jesus.

The theosophist knows what the mystical saying means: to lead up the mountain. One must know such expressions, know them expertly, just as one must know the language before one is able to study the spirit of a people. What does it mean to lead up the mountain? It means nothing other than being led into the temple of mystery, where one can gain immediate conviction of the eternity of the human soul and the reality of spiritual existence through contemplation, through mystical contemplation.

These three disciples had even higher knowledge to gain than the others through their Master. Above all, here on the mountain they had to gain the conviction that Christ was truly the living Word made flesh. That is why he shows himself in his spirituality, in that spirituality which is exalted above space and time; in that spirituality for which there is no before and no after, in which everything is present. Even the past is present. The past is essential when Elijah and Moses appear alongside the presence of Jesus. And now the disciples believe in the Spirit of God. But they say: It is written that before the Christ comes, Elijah will come and announce him beforehand. And now read the Gospel. These are truly the words that follow what I have told you. They are extremely significant: “Elijah has come, but they did not recognize him, and they did to him what they wanted to do to him.” — “Elijah has come,” let us remember these words. And then it goes on to say: “Then the disciples realized that he was speaking of John the Baptist.” And Jesus had said beforehand: “Tell no one what you have learned today until the Son of Man is risen.” We are led into a mystery. Christ considered only three disciples worthy of learning this mystery. And what is this mystery? He revealed that John is the reincarnated Elijah.

Reincarnation has been taught throughout the ages within the mystery temples. And it was none other than this occult theosophical teaching that Christ imparted to his trusted disciples. They were to learn about this teaching of reincarnation. But they should also gain the living word that must come from their mouths when it is enlivened and inspired by this conviction, until another has entered. First, they should have the immediate conviction that the Spirit has risen. When they have this behind them, then they should go out into the world and, from simple hearts, strike the sparks that have been kindled in them. This was one of the initiations, one of the parables that Christ gave and explained to his confidants.

Let us hear another. The Last Supper is also nothing other than an initiation, an initiation into the deepest meaning of the entire Christian teaching. Only those who understand the true meaning of the Lord's Supper can understand Christian teaching in its spirituality and truth. It is risky to express this teaching, which I now want to present to you, and I am well aware that it may be attacked from all sides because it contradicts the letter. The letter kills, but the spirit gives life. It is difficult to grasp the true meaning of the Lord's Supper. You will not hear about it in detail today, but let me hint at what this, which belongs to the deepest mysteries of Christianity, actually signifies. Christ gathers his apostles to celebrate with them the institution of the bloodless sacrifice. Let us understand this.

To help us understand this event, let us return to another, little-noticed fact that shows us how we should understand the Lord's Supper. We hear in the Gospel that Christ passed by a man who was born blind. And those around him asked, “Did this man sin, or did his parents, that he was born blind as a punishment?” Christ replied, “Neither this man nor his parents sinned, but he was born blind so that the works of God might be revealed,” or better yet, “so that the divine way of ruling the world might be revealed.” So, the words “the divine way of governing the world” are used to explain why this man was born blind. Since he has not sinned in this life, nor have his parents, the reason must be sought elsewhere. We cannot dwell on the individual personality or on the parents and ancestors, but must think eternally of the inner soul of the man born blind; we must understand that the cause must be sought in the previously existing souls, the souls that have experienced the effects of a previous life. What we call karma is implied here, but not explicitly stated. And we will soon hear why this is not explicitly stated. That the sins of the fathers are avenged on the children and children's children is a teaching of those in whom Christ has been placed. The sins of the fathers are atoned for by their children and their children's children. This is a teaching that does not agree with the view expressed by Christ towards the man born blind. If one adheres to the teaching that it can only be the sin of the fathers, that there is only guilt and atonement within the physical world, then he would have to suffer for what his fathers have done.

This shows us that Christ lifts up his followers to a completely new concept of guilt and atonement, a concept that has nothing to do with what goes on in the physical world, a concept that cannot be valid in the reality revealed by the eyes. Christ wanted to overcome the old concept of sin among his followers, the concept that is attached to physical inheritance and physical reality. And was it not such a concept of guilt, attached to the physical reality, that underlay the old sacrifices? Did not the sinners go to the altar and offer their sacrifices of atonement, did they not perform a purely physical act in order to cast off their sins? The old sacrifices were physical realities. But Christ taught that guilt and atonement cannot be sought in physical reality. Therefore, even the highest, even the spirit of God, the living Word, can fall prey to reality to the point of death, to which Christ fell prey without being guilty. No external sacrifice can be reconciled with the concept of guilt and atonement. The Lamb of God was the most innocent; it can die the sacrificial death.

This was to testify before the whole world on the stage of history that guilt and atonement do not have their embodiment in reality, cannot exist in physical reality, but must be sought in a higher realm, in the realm of spiritual life. If the guilty could only be punished in physical life, if the guilty only had to make sacrifices, then the innocent Lamb would not have had to die on the cross. Christ took upon himself the sacrifice of the cross so that people could be freed from the belief that guilt and atonement are to be found in external reality, that they are a consequence of externally inherited sin. And so he truly died for the faith of all people, to bear witness that the consciousness of guilt and atonement is not to be sought in physical consciousness. Therefore, everyone should remember: even the sacrifice on the cross is not what matters, but when human beings rise above guilt and atonement to seek the cause and effect of their deeds in the spiritual realm, only then have they attained the truth.

Therefore, the final sacrifice, the bloodless sacrifice, is at the same time proof of the impossibility of the external sacrifice, so that the bloodless sacrifice is instituted, so that man must seek guilt and atonement, the consciousness of the connection between his deeds, in the spiritual realm. This should be remembered. Therefore, sacrificial death should not be regarded as the most important thing, but instead of bloody sacrifice, the bloodless, spiritual sacrifice, the Lord's Supper, should take its place as a symbol that guilt and atonement for human deeds live on in the spiritual realm. This is the theosophical teaching of karma, that everything that man has caused in his actions in any way has its effects through purely spiritual laws, that karma has nothing to do with physical heredity. An outward sign of this is the bloodless sacrifice, the Lord's Supper.

But what is not expressed in words in the Christian creed is that the Lord's Supper is the symbol of karma. Christianity had a different task. I have already hinted at it. Karma and reincarnation, the chain of fate in the spiritual realm and the reincarnation of the human soul were profound esoteric truths that were taught within the esoteric temples. Like all great teachers, Christ taught these truths to his disciples within the temples. But then they were to go out into the world, after the power and fire of God had been kindled in them, so that even those who did not see could believe and be saved.

That is why he called his disciples together right at the beginning to tell them that they were not only teachers in the kingdom of the spirit, but that they were to be something else as well. And that is the deeper meaning of the first words of the Sermon on the Mount: “Blessed are those who hunger and thirst for righteousness, for they shall find the kingdom of heaven within themselves.” Only in this way can it be understood, if translated correctly, how it is possible to come to knowledge from living contemplation. But now those who are beggars for spirit are to find the ways to the kingdom in spirit, in heaven, through their simple hearts.

The apostles should not speak outside about the highest knowledge; they should clothe this knowledge in simple words. But they themselves should be perfect. That is why we see those who should be bearers of the Word of God teaching true theosophy, imparting a true theosophical teaching. Take and understand the words of Paul, understand the words of Dionysius the Areopagite and then of Scotus Erigena, who in his book “On the Division of Nature” taught the sevenfold division of man like all theosophists, then you will know that their interpretation of Christianity was the same as that which theosophy gives it today. Theosophy seeks to bring to light nothing other than what the Christian teachers taught in the first centuries. It seeks to serve the Christian message, to interpret it in spirit and in truth. That is the task of theosophy in relation to Christianity. Theosophy is not there to overcome Christianity, but to recognize it in its truth.

And you need nothing more than to understand Christianity in its truth, then you have theosophy in its full extent. You do not need to go to another religion. You can remain Christians and need do nothing more than what true Christian teachers have done: namely, ascend to explore the spiritual depths of Christianity. Then those theologians who believe that Theosophy is a Buddhist teaching will be refuted, but the belief that the deep teachings of Christianity should be recognized not by ascending to the heights but by descending into the depths will also be refuted. Theosophy can only lead to an ever-better understanding of the mystery of the Incarnation, in order to then understand the word that, despite all rationalistic attempts at denial, lies in the Bible. Those who immerse themselves in the Bible cannot profess rationalism, David Friedrich Strauss, or his followers. They can only profess the words spoken by Goethe, who saw deeper into these matters than many others. He says: The Bible remains the book of books, the world book, which, properly understood, must become the Christian means of education for humanity, in the hands not of the presumptuous, but of the wise.

Theosophy is a servant of the word in this regard, and it seeks to bring forth the spirit that is willing to ascend to where the founder of Christianity stood; to generate that spirit which has not only human but cosmic significance, that spirit which had understanding not only for the simple human heart that moves in everyday life, but which had such a deep understanding of the human heart precisely because its gaze penetrated into the depths of the world's mysteries. There is no better word to show this than a word that is not found in our Gospels, but has been handed down in another way. Jesus and his disciples passed by a dead dog that had already begun to decay. The disciples turned away. But Jesus looked at the animal with pleasure and admired its beautiful teeth. The parable may be paradoxical, but it leads us to a deeper understanding of the essence of Christ. It is a testimony that man feels the Word alive within himself when he does not pass by anything in the world without understanding, when he knows how to delve deeply and immerse himself in everything that is there, and cannot pass by even the seemingly disgusting without practicing tolerance and understanding; the understanding that allows us to see into the smallest things and lifts us up to the highest, the understanding for the gaze that hides nothing, that passes over nothing, that allows everything to come to it in perfect tolerance, that carries in its heart the conviction that truly everything that exists is “flesh of our flesh, blood of our blood” in some form: Those who have struggled their way to this understanding are the only ones who know and understand what it means: the living spirit of God was realized in a single person, the living spirit of God from which the whole world is made.

This is the meaning that theosophists want to revive. That meaning, which, incidentally, was by no means completely extinct in centuries past, that meaning which does not seek the standard for the highest from the average mind, from a subordinate point of view, but which seeks above all to elevate itself, to grow within itself, to develop the highest insights, because it is convinced that if it has purified and spiritualized itself, the spirit will descend to it. “If Christ is born a thousand times in Bethlehem and not in you, you will remain lost forever.” This was said by the great mystic Angelus Silesius. He also knew what a teaching means when it becomes the highest knowledge, when it becomes life. Jesus said to Nicodemus: Those who are reborn, those who are born from above, no longer speak what they say solely from human experience; they speak it “from above.” They speak words as Angelus Silesius spoke at the end of “The Cherubic Wanderer”: “If you want to read more, go” and become the scripture and the essence yourself.

This is the requirement made by the one through whom the Spirit speaks. One should not listen to him, not listen only to his words, but let what speaks through him resonate within oneself.

Jesus chose those who said, “What has been from the beginning, the eternal law of the world, what we have seen with our own eyes, felt with our hands, we proclaim to you from the Word of Life,” to receive such words, such joyful tidings. — It was he who was a single human being and who at the same time lived in the words of his disciples.

But he said one more thing, of which theosophists in particular must be aware, that he was not only there in the time in which he taught and lived, but that the meaningful words have been handed down to us: “I will be with you always, even unto the end of the world.” And Theosophy knows that he is with us, that today, as then, he can shape our words, inspire our words, that today, as then, he can also guide us, that our words express what he himself is. But there is one thing Theosophy wants to prevent. It wants to prevent it from being said: He has come, he is here, but they have not recognized him. People have wanted to do with him as they please. No, the theosophist wants to go to his own sources. Theosophy should lift people up spiritually to spirituality, so that they recognize that he is there, so that they know where to find him, and so that they hear the living word of the one who said:

“I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.”