The Origin and Goal of the Human Being

GA 53 — 16 March 1905, Berlin

The Great Initiates

The theosophical worldview differs from, one might say, all other worldviews that we encounter today in that it also provides a high degree of satisfaction in terms of knowledge. We have heard so often in the present day that certain things are unknowable to us, that our cognitive abilities have limits and cannot rise above a certain level. When we consider contemporary philosophical investigations, we always hear talk of such limits to knowledge, especially in those philosophical schools that go back to Kantianism. The view of the theosophist and the practical mystic differs from all such debates in that it never sets limits on human cognitive abilities, but rather considers them to be capable of expansion and elevation. Is it not, to a certain extent, a form of immodesty of the highest order when someone considers their particular cognitive abilities, the point of view from which they currently perceive things, to be decisive in a certain sense, and then says that we cannot go beyond a certain limit with these cognitive abilities? The theosophist says: Today I stand at a certain point of human cognition. From this point of view, I can recognize this or that, but not this or that. — But it is possible to develop human cognitive ability itself, to elevate this cognitive ability itself. What are called schools of initiation are essentially intended to raise this human faculty of cognition to a higher level, so that it is certainly correct to say, from a lower level of cognition, that there are limits to cognition, that one cannot recognize this or that. But one can also rise above such a level of cognition; one can advance to higher levels, and then one can recognize what one could not recognize at lower levels. This is the essence of initiation, and this deepening or raising of cognition is the task of the schools of initiation. The aim is to raise people to levels of knowledge that they cannot attain naturally, but which they must acquire through many years of patient practice.

Such initiation schools have existed at all times. In all peoples, higher types of knowledge have emerged from such initiation schools. And the essence of such initiation schools and of the great initiates themselves, who have grown beyond the lower levels of human knowledge and, through their inspirations, have become known for the highest knowledge accessible to us on this globe, is expressed in the fact that these initiates have given the various peoples of the earth their different religions and worldviews.

Today we want to shed some light on the nature of these great initiates or initiates. Just as in every science, in every spiritual method, one must first learn the methods by which one gains knowledge, so it is in the initiation schools. There, too, it is a matter of being led up to the higher levels of knowledge of which we have just spoken by means of certain methods. I will now briefly outline the levels in question. Certain levels of knowledge can only be attained in the innermost schools of initiation, only where there are teachers who have themselves gone through that school, who have themselves undergone those exercises, who can truly consider each individual level, each individual step. And only such teachers should be trusted in these initiation schools.

However, there is nothing of authority in these initiation schools, nothing of the principle of dogmatism, but only the principle of advising, of giving advice. Those who have gone through a certain stage of learning and thereby acquired the experiences of higher, supersensible life for themselves know what the intimate paths are that lead to this higher knowledge. Only such a person is qualified to say what needs to be done. What is necessary in this area between student and teacher is simply trust. Those who do not have this trust cannot learn anything. But those who do have this trust will very soon see that no occult, mystical, or secret teacher recommends anything other than what this teacher himself has gone through. The point is that of the entire being of the human being as he stands before us today, only the outwardly visible part is already complete within human nature. Anyone who wants to pursue secret training must realize that human beings today, as they stand before us, are not complete beings, but are in the process of development and will reach much higher stages in the future.

What has already attained the likeness of God today, what has reached the highest stage in human beings today, is the human sensory body, what we can see with our eyes and perceive with our senses. But that is not the only thing human beings have. Human beings have even higher members of their nature. First of all, they possess another member, which we call the etheric body. Those who have developed their soul organs can see this etheric body. Through this etheric body, human beings are not merely structures in which chemical and physical forces are at work, but living structures, structures that live, endowed with growth, life, and the ability to reproduce. This etheric body, which represents a kind of archetype of the human being, can be seen when one uses the methods of clairvoyance, which will be characterized further on, to remove the ordinary physical body. You know that through the ordinary methods of hypnosis and suggestion, if you tell someone that there is no lamp here, they will actually see no lamp here. So if you develop sufficient willpower within yourself, the kind of willpower that distracts your attention, but thoroughly distracts it from the physical body, even though you are looking into the room, you can completely suggest the physical space away from yourself. Then you do not see the room as empty, but filled with a kind of archetype. This archetype has approximately the same shape as the physical body. However, it is not completely uniform, but thoroughly organized. It is not only permeated with fine veins and currents, but also has organs. This structure, this etheric body, causes the actual life of the human being. Its color can only be compared to the color of young peach blossoms. It is not a color that is contained in the solar spectrum; it is somewhere between violet and reddish. So this is the second body.

The third body is the aura, which I have described many times before, that cloud-like structure which I spoke of last time when I described the origin of the human being, in which the human being is like an egg-shaped cloud. Everything that lives in the human being as desire, passion, and feeling is expressed in it. Joyful, devoted feelings are expressed in bright streams of color in this aura. Feelings of hatred and sensual feelings are expressed in darker shades of color. Sharp, logical thoughts are expressed in sharply defined figures. Illogical, confused thoughts are expressed in figures with unclear outlines. Thus, in this aura we have a reflection of what lives in the human soul in terms of feelings, passions, and drives.

Just as human beings have now been described, they were placed on Earth — by the hand of nature, so to speak — at a time that lies approximately at the beginning of the Atlantean period. Last time, I described what is meant by the Atlantean period. At the point in time when fertilization with the eternal spirit had already taken place, human beings appeared before us with three members: body, soul, and spirit. Today, this threefold nature of the human being has already changed somewhat, because since that time, since nature released human beings, since they became self-conscious beings, they have worked on themselves. This work on oneself means refining one's aura, sending light into this aura out of self-awareness. The human being who stands at a very low level, who has not worked on himself, let us say a savage, has an aura as it was created for him by nature. But all those who live within our civilized, educated world have auras that they themselves have worked on, for insofar as man is a self-conscious being, he works on himself, and this work is first expressed in him by changing his aura. Everything that man has learned through nature, everything he has absorbed since he has been able to speak and think self-consciously, all of this is a new impact on his aura, brought about by himself.

If you think back to the Lemurian period, when humans had already had warm blood flowing in their veins for a long time, when their fertilization with the spirit had taken place in the middle of this Lemurian period, humans were not yet beings capable of bright thought. All this was just at the beginning of development. The spirit had just taken possession of the physical body. At that time, the aura was still entirely a result of natural forces. One could notice — and one can still notice this today in very low-level human beings — how a smaller aura of a bluish color arises at a certain point inside the head, that is, at a point that we must seek inside the head. This smaller aura is the outer auric expression of self-consciousness. And the more a person has developed this self-awareness through their thinking and work, the more this smaller aura spreads over the other, so that both often become completely different in a short time. People who live in external culture, who are educated, cultured individuals, work on their aura in the way that culture drives them. We absorb our ordinary knowledge, as provided by our schools, and our experiences in life, and they continually change our aura. But this change must be continued if a person wants to enter into practical mysticism. There they must work on themselves in a very special way. They must not only incorporate what culture offers them into their aura, but they must also exert a definite, regular influence on their aura. And this is done through what is called meditation. This meditation or inner contemplation is the first stage that the student of an initiate must go through.

What is the purpose of this meditation? Try to hold the thoughts you have from morning to night in your mind and think about how these thoughts are influenced by the place and time in which you live. Try to see if you can prevent your thoughts and ask yourself if you would have them if you did not happen to live in Berlin at the beginning of the 20th century. At the end of the 18th and beginning of the 19th centuries, people did not think in the same way as people do today. If you think about how the world has changed over the last century and what time has brought about in terms of change, you will see that what fills your soul from morning to night depends on space and time. It is different when we indulge in thoughts that have eternal value. Actually, it is only certain abstract, scientific thoughts, the highest thoughts of mathematics and geometry, to which man devotes himself and which have eternal value. Two times two is four: that must be true at all times and in all places. The same is true of the geometric truths we absorb. But if we disregard the certain foundation of such truths, then we can say that the average person thinks very little that is independent of space and time. That which is dependent on them connects us to the world and has only a minor influence on that entity which is itself permanent.

Meditation means nothing other than surrendering to thoughts that have eternal value in order to consciously educate oneself to what lies beyond space and time. Such thoughts are contained in the great religious scriptures: the Vedanta, the Bhagavad Gita, the Gospel of John from the thirteenth chapter to the end, and also The Imitation of Christ by Thomas à Kempis. Those who immerse themselves with patience and perseverance, so that they live in such writings, those who delve deeper every day and perhaps work on a single sentence for weeks, thinking it through and feeling it through, will reap infinite benefits. Just as one gets to know and love a child with all its peculiarities more closely every day, so one allows such a timeless sentence, originating from the great initiates or inspired people, to permeate one's soul every day. This then causes us to be filled with new life. The sayings in “Light on the Path,” written down by Mabel Collins according to higher instructions, are also very meaningful. Even the first four sentences are something that, when applied patiently in the appropriate manner, is capable of intervening in the human aura in such a way that this aura is completely illuminated with a new light. One can see this light shining and glowing in the human aura. The reddish or reddish-brownish shimmering color nuances are replaced by bluish ones, the yellow ones by light reddish ones, and so on. The entire colors of the aura change under the influence of such thoughts of eternity. The student cannot perceive this at first, but gradually begins to feel the profound influence emanating from this greatly changed aura.

If, in addition to these meditations, the human being consciously exercises certain virtues in the most careful manner, performs certain tasks of the soul, then his soul senses develop within this aura. We must have these if we want to see into the soul world, just as we must have physical senses to see into the physical world. Just as the outer senses have been implanted in the body by nature, so must human beings implant higher soul sense organs in their aura in a lawful manner. Meditation causes human beings to mature, to shape and develop these soul senses that are present in their predisposition from within.

But we must direct our attention to very specific spiritual activities if we want to develop these sensory organs. You see, human beings have a number of such sensory organs in their aura. We call these sensory organs the so-called lotus flowers because the astral structure that human beings begin to develop in their aura when they train themselves in the manner described above takes on the shape of lotus flowers. Of course, this is only a comparison, just as we speak of lungs, which only resemble wings. The two-petaled lotus flower is located in the center of the head above the bridge of the nose between the eyes. Near the larynx is the sixteen-petaled lotus flower, near the heart is the twelve-petaled lotus flower, and near the pit of the stomach is the ten-petaled lotus flower. Further down are the six-petaled and four-petaled lotus flowers. Today I would like to talk only about the sixteen-petaled and twelve-petaled lotus flowers.

In the teachings of Buddha, you will find the so-called eightfold path. Now ask yourself, why does Buddha specify this eightfold path as particularly important for reaching the higher stages of human development? This eightfold path is: right intention, right thought, right speech, right action, right livelihood, right effort, right mindfulness, right concentration. Such a great initiate as Buddha does not speak from a vaguely felt ideal; he speaks from his knowledge of human nature. He knows what influence the practice of such spiritual activities has on those bodies that must still develop in the future. When we look at the sixteen-petaled lotus flower in today's average human being, we actually see very little. It is, if I may say so, in the process of blossoming again. In times long past, this lotus flower already existed. It has regressed in its development. Today it is reappearing somewhat through the cultural work of human beings. In the future, however, this sixteen-petaled lotus flower will come to full development again. It will shine brightly in its sixteen spokes or petals, each petal will appear in a different shade of color, and finally it will move from left to right. What every human being will experience and possess in the future is already being consciously developed today by those who seek training in the school of initiation, so that they may become leaders of humanity. Eight of these sixteen petals have already been developed in the distant past. Eight still need to be developed today if the student of occultism wants to be able to use these sense organs. These develop when the human being consciously and clearly follows the eightfold path, when he consciously practices these eight soul activities indicated by Buddha, when he arranges his entire soul life in such a way that he exercises these eight virtues as strongly as he can, so to speak, by taking himself in hand, as strongly as he can, supporting his meditation work and bringing the sixteen-petaled lotus flower not only to maturity but also to movement, to real perception.

I will now speak of the twelve-petaled lotus flower near the heart. Six of its petals were already developed in the distant past, and six must be developed in the future in all people, in initiates and their disciples today. In all theosophical manuals, you can find certain virtues listed which are to be acquired by those who wish to ascend to the level of the actual chela or disciple. These six virtues, which you will find listed in every theosophical handbook that discusses human development, are: control of thoughts, control of actions, tolerance, steadfastness, impartiality, and balance, or what Angelus Silesius calls serenity. These six virtues, which must be practiced consciously and attentively and added to meditation, bring forth the six additional petals of the twelve-petaled lotus flower. This is not blindly gleaned from theosophical textbooks, nor is it coincidental or based on one's own inner feelings, but rather spoken from the deepest knowledge of the great initiates. The initiates know that those who truly want to develop to higher supersensible stages of development must unfold the twelve-petaled lotus flower. To do this, they must develop the six petals that were not developed in the past through these six virtues today. So you see how, out of a deeper knowledge of the human being, the great initiates actually gave their instructions for life. I could extend this consideration to other organs of knowledge and observation, but I only want to give you a sketch of the initiation process, for which these hints should suffice.

When the student has progressed to the point where he begins to develop these astral sense organs, when he has progressed to the point where he is able to see not only the sensory impressions in his environment, but also what is spiritual, that is, what is in the aura of human beings, animals, and plants, then a whole new stage of instruction begins. No one can see anything spiritual in their surroundings before their lotus flowers turn, just as someone who has no eyes cannot see colors or light. When the wall is broken through, when he has progressed so far on the preliminary stage of knowledge that he has insight into this spiritual world, only then does his actual discipleship begin. This leads through four stages of knowledge. What happens at this moment when the human being, having passed through the preliminary stages, has become a chela? We have seen that what we have just described all relates to the astral body. This is thoroughly organized from the human body. A person who has gone through such a development has a completely different aura. When a person has illuminated their astral body from self-consciousness, when they themselves have become the luminous organization of their astral body, then we say that this disciple has illuminated their astral body with manas. Manas is nothing other than an astral body that is controlled by self-consciousness. Manas and the astral body are one and the same, but at different stages of development.

One must understand this if one wants to use what is described in theosophical manuals as the seven principles in a practical way for practical mysticism. Anyone who is familiar with the mystical path of development, anyone who knows something about initiation, will say that they have theoretical value for study, but for the practical mystic only if one knows the relationships that exist between the lower and higher principles. No practical mystic knows more than four members: the physical body, in which the chemical and physical laws operate, then the etheric body, then the astral body, and finally the self-consciousness, which we call Kamamana in the present development, the self-conscious thinking principle. Manas is nothing other than what self-consciousness works into the body. The etheric body, as it is now, is removed from any influence of self-consciousness. We can indirectly influence growth and nutrition, but not in the way we let our desires, thoughts, and mental images emanate from self-consciousness. Thus, we cannot influence our nutrition, digestion, and growth conditions ourselves. In humans, these are completely unrelated to self-consciousness. This etheric body must be brought under the influence of the astral body, the so-called aura. The self-consciousness of the astral body must be able to penetrate the etheric body and work on it of its own accord, just as humans work on their aura, their astral body, in the manner described. Then, when the human being, through meditation, through inner contemplation, and through the practice of the soul activities I have described, has reached the point where the astral body is organized of its own accord, then the work passes on to the etheric body, then the etheric body receives the inner word, then the human being hears not only what lives in the environment, but the inner meaning of things resounds in his etheric body.

I have often said here that what is truly spiritual in things is something that sounds. I have pointed out that the practical mystic, when he speaks in the right sense, speaks of a sound in the spiritual world, just as he speaks of a light in the astral or desire world. It is not for nothing that Goethe says, when he leads his Faust to heaven: “The sun sounds its ancient song in brotherly spheres, and completes its prescribed journey with a thunderous roar.” And it is not for nothing that Ariel says, when Faust is led into the spiritual world by the spirits: “The new day is already being born, sounding to spiritual ears.”

This inner sound, which is of course not perceptible to the outer sensory ear, this inner word of things, through which they express their own nature, is the experience that a person has when they are able to influence their etheric body from their astral body. Then they have become a chela, a true disciple of a great initiate. Then he can be led further along this path. Such a person who has ascended to this level is called a homeless person, because he has found a connection with a new world, because it sounds to him from the spiritual world, and because he no longer has his home in this sensory world, so to speak. This should not be misunderstood. The chela who has reached this stage is just as good a citizen and family man, just as good a friend, as he would have been if he had not become a chela. He does not need to be torn away from anything. What he experiences there is a process of development of the soul. There he finds a new home in a world that lies beyond this sensual world.

What has happened there? The spiritual world resounds within the human being, and as the spiritual world resounds within the human being, he overcomes an illusion, the illusion itself, in which, basically, all human beings are caught before this stage of development. This is the illusion of the personal self. The human being believes that he is a personality, separate from the rest of the world. Mere reflection could teach him that he is not an independent entity, even in the physical sense. Consider that if the temperature in this room were two hundred degrees higher than it is now, none of us would be able to exist here as we do now. As soon as conditions outside change, the conditions for our physical existence are no longer there. We are only the continuation of the outside world and simply unthinkable as separate beings. This is even more the case in the soul and spiritual world. We see that man, understood as a self, is only an illusion, that he is a member of the general divine spirituality. Here, man overcomes the personal self. What Goethe expressed in the Chorus mysticus with the words: “All that is transitory is only a parable.” What we see is only an image of an eternal being. We ourselves are only an image of an eternal being. When we give up our separate being, then we have outer life — and we do indeed live a separate life through the etheric body — then we have overcome outer, separate life, we have become part of all life.

Something now arises in the human being that we have called the Buddhi. In practical terms, the Buddhi is now attained as a stage of development of the etheric body, that etheric body which no longer causes a separate existence but enters into universal life. The human being who has attained this has reached the second stage of chelaship. Then all scruples and doubts fall away from his soul, then he can no longer be a superstitious person, just as he can no longer be a doubting person. Then he no longer needs to obtain the truth by comparing his mental images with the external environment; then he lives in the tone, in the word of things; then what it is sounds and resonates from the essence. There is no more superstition, no more doubt. This is called the handing over of the key of knowledge to the chela. When he has reached this stage, a word from the spiritual world sounds into it. Then his word no longer proclaims the reproduction of what is in this world, but his word is the reproduction of what comes from another world, which has an effect on this one, but which cannot be seen with our outer senses. These words are messengers of the deity.

Once this stage has been passed, a new one begins. What happens is that the human being gains influence over what his physical body does directly. Previously, he only had influence over the etheric body, but now he has influence over the physical body. His actions must set the physical body in motion. What the human being does is incorporated into what we call his karma. But the human being does not work consciously on this; he does not know how his actions bring about an effect. Only now does the human being begin to consciously perform actions in the physical world in such a way that he consciously works on his karma. In this way, he gains influence over karma through physical action. Not only do the things of the environment resound, but he is now able to pronounce the names of all things. As humans live at our stage of culture, they are only able to pronounce a single name. And that is the name they give themselves: I. That is the only name humans can give themselves. Those who delve deeper into this can arrive at profound insights that school psychology cannot even dream of. There is only one thing to which you yourself can give the relevant name. No one else can say “I” to you, only you yourself. You must say ‘you’ to everyone else, and everyone else must say “you” to you. There is something in everyone that only they themselves can call “I.” That is why Jewish esoteric teachings also speak of the unpronounceable name of God. This is something that is directly an announcement of the God within. It was forbidden to pronounce this name unworthily and unholy. Hence the sacred awe, the importance and significance when the Jewish esoteric teacher pronounced this name. I is the only word that tells you something that can never be encountered in the outside world. Just as the average person gives the name to his I alone, so the chela in the third degree gives names to all things in the world that he has from intuition. That means he has merged into the world I. He speaks from this world I itself. He may say the deepest name of any thing to that thing, while the average person today can only say “I” to himself. When the chela has reached this stage, he is called a swan. The chela who can rise to the name of all things is called a swan because he is the proclaimer of all things.

What lies beyond the third degree cannot be expressed in ordinary words. This requires knowledge of a special script that is only taught in secret schools. The following degree is the degree of the veiled. Beyond that lie the degrees attained by the great initiates, those initiates who have given our culture its great impulses throughout the ages. They were chelas first. First they attained the key of knowledge. Then they were led to the regions where the universal and the names of things were revealed to them. Then they rose to the level of the All. Then they were able to have the profound experiences that made them capable of founding the great religions of the world.

But not only the great religions, but every great impulse, everything that is important in the world, has come from the great initiates. Let us cite just two examples of the kind of influence the great initiates who have undergone training have had on the world.

Let us transport ourselves back to the everyday life of that time, when the students of the initiation schools were instructed under the guidance of Hermes. This instruction was initially a normal, so-called esoteric, scientific teaching. I can sketch for you in just a few strokes what such teaching entailed. It showed how the world spirit descends into the physical world, incarnates itself, and how it comes to life in matter, how it then reaches its highest stage in human beings and celebrates its resurrection. Paracelsus expressed this particularly beautifully when he said: What we encounter outside, these individual beings, are the letters, and the word that is formed from them is the human being. We have unloaded all human virtues or weaknesses onto the creatures outside. But human beings are the confluence of all this. How the rest of the macrocosm comes to life in human beings as a microcosm was taught in detail and with tremendous intellectual richness as esoteric teaching in the Egyptian initiation schools.

These teachings were followed by the Hermetic teachings. What I have said can be understood with the senses and the intellect. But what was offered in the Hermetic teachings can only be understood once one has reached the first degree of chelaship. Then one learns about that special script, which is not random and arbitrary, but reflects the great laws of the spiritual world. This script is not like ours, an external image arbitrarily fixed in individual letters and characters, but is born out of the spiritual laws of nature themselves, because the person who is knowledgeable in this script is in possession of these laws of nature. Thus, all his mental images in the soul and astral realms themselves become lawful. What he imagines, he imagines in the sense of these great characters. He can do this when he surrenders his self. He submits to the eternal laws. Now he has completed his hermetic instruction. Now he himself is admitted to the first stage of a deeper initiation. Now, as the next stage, he is to experience something in the astral world, in the actual soul world, which has a significance that extends beyond the world cycles. After he has attained the ability to fully activate the astral senses, so that they work down into the etheric body, he is then introduced for three days into a deep mystery of the astral world. Then, in the astral world, he experiences what I described to you last time as the origin of the earth and of human beings. This emergence of the spirit, this separation of the sun, moon, and earth, and the emergence of human beings—he experiences this whole series of phenomena, which he has before him. And at the same time, he has them before him in such a way that they become an image. And then he steps out. After he has had this great experience in the initiation school, he goes among the people and tells them what he has experienced in this soul and astral world. And this story goes something like this:

Once upon a time, there was a divine couple united with the earth, Osiris and Isis. This divine couple are the rulers of everything that happens on earth. But Osiris was pursued and dismembered by Typhon, and Isis had to search for his body. She did not bring him home, but instead Osiris' tombs were built in various places around the earth. So he descended completely and was buried in the earth. But then a ray from the spiritual world fell upon Isis, fertilizing her with the new Horus through immaculate conception.

This image was nothing other than a grand representation of what we have just learned as the emergence of the sun and moon, the separation of the sun and moon, and the rising of humankind. Isis is the symbol of the moon, Horus represents humanity on Earth, the Earth itself. When humanity was not yet endowed with warm blood, when it was not yet clothed in the physical body, humanity perceived in great images what was happening in the soul world. At the beginning of the Lemurian, Atlantean, and Aryan developments, it was prepared to receive the great truths in such images from the great initiates. Therefore, these truths were not simply presented, but given in the image of Osiris and Isis. All the great religions that we encounter in antiquity were experienced by the great initiates in the soul realm. And these great initiates came forth and spoke to each people in a way that the people could understand, namely in images of what they themselves had experienced in the initiation schools. That was the case in ancient times. Only by being in such an initiation school could one ascend to the higher astral experience.

With the advent of Christianity, this changed. It represents a significant turning point in development. Since the appearance of Christ, it has been possible to be initiated as a nature initiate, as one also speaks of nature poets. There are Christian mystics who have received initiation through grace. The first person called upon to spread Christianity throughout the world under the influence of the saying, “Blessed are those who believe, even though they do not see,” was Paul. The apparition on the road to Damascus was an initiation outside the mysteries. I cannot go into further details here.

In all great movements and cultural foundations, the great initiates provided the impetus. A beautiful myth has been preserved from the Middle Ages, which was intended to show this at a time when materialistic reasons were not yet demanded. The epic originated in Bavaria and therefore took on the guise of Catholicism. Let us clarify what happened at that time in the following way. At that time, the so-called urban culture, the modern bourgeoisie, emerged in Europe. The mystic understood the further development of humanity, the progress of each soul to the next stage, as the advancement of the soul, the feminine in human beings. The mystic sees in the soul something feminine that is fertilized by the lower sensory impressions of nature and by eternal truths. The mystic sees such a fertilization process in every historical process. The great impulses for the progress of humanity are given by the great initiates to those who look more deeply into the course of human development, who see the spiritual forces behind physical phenomena. Thus, the medieval worldview also attributed to the great initiates the ascent of the soul to higher levels during the new cultural period brought about by the cities. This urban development was achieved by the soul making a leap forward in history. It was an initiate who brought about this leap. All great impulses were attributed to the great lodge of initiates surrounding the Holy Grail. From there came the great initiates, who are invisible to the outer human being. And the one who gave the city culture an impulse at that time was called Lohengrin in the Middle Ages. He is the messenger of the Holy Grail, the great lodge. And the soul of the city, the feminine, which is to be fertilized by the great initiates, is symbolized by Elsa of Brabant. The one who is to mediate is the swan. Lohengrin is brought into this physical world by the swan. The initiate must not be asked his name. He belongs to a higher world. The chela, the swan, has mediated this influence.

I have only been able to hint that the great impact was symbolized again for the people in a myth. This is how the great initiates worked and incorporated what they had to proclaim into their teachings. This is also how those who founded the elementary culture of humanity worked: Hermes in Egypt, Krishna in India, Zarathustra in Persia, Moses among the Jewish people. Then Orpheus, Pythagoras, and finally the one who is the initiate of initiates, Jesus, who carried the Christ within himself, worked again.

This refers only to the great initiates. We have attempted to characterize their connection to the world in these remarks. What has been described here will still be foreign to many people. But those who have themselves felt something of the higher worlds in their souls have always looked up, not only to the spiritual worlds, but also to the leaders of humanity. Only from this perspective were they able to speak as enthusiastically as Goethe. But you will also find in others something of a sacred spark that leads to this point, which spiritual science is supposed to bring back to us. You will find it in a German, in a young, intelligent German poet and thinker whose life stands out like a blissful memory of a previous life of a great initiate. Anyone who reads Novalis will sense something of the breath that leads into this higher world. It is not as pronounced as usual, but there is something in him that also has the magic words. That is why he wrote the beautiful words about the relationship of our planet to humanity, which applies to the lower, undeveloped, as well as to the initiated:

Humanity is the meaning of our planet Earth, humanity is the nerve that connects this planet Earth with the higher worlds, humanity is the eye through which this planet Earth looks up into the heavenly realms of the universe.

Question and Answer

Question: Why did Christ leave no writings behind?

Dr. Steiner: That is precisely the fundamental difference between him and the earlier founders of religions. Christ says, “I am the way, the truth, and the life.” The other founders of religions were the way and the truth. They proclaimed what should be done and believed, as Moses did, for example. If we study the ancient religious creeds, we will find no difference in content between Christianity as a doctrine and the other great religions. Anyone who knows the Egyptian religious system in depth will find everything that is contained in Christianity there as well. And so it is with all religions. Nevertheless, Christianity is something completely new, not as a doctrine, but as a fact. That is why I have called my book: “Christianity as a Mystical Fact.” The appearance of Christ signifies something that is described as “blessed,” imbued with soul. Now all who are connected in faith with the founder shall be blessed. Christ descends into the valley and becomes human among humans. He teaches nothing new, but he lives in immediate existence, in his own personality, what the others have taught. What the others taught was the Logos, the divine truth. When you study Buddha, penetrate the sublime teachings of Hermes, or study the teachings of the Vedas, you have external expressions of the divine creative word. The Logos has become teaching.