1. Inner aspect of Saturn-Embodiment of Earth.

Man of to-day has two possibilities. The first is that he may have understood the Gospels, or the Mystery of Golgotha. Anyone who has really understood these in their full depths—naturally not as modern theologians speak of them, but in such a way that he has drawn from them the deepest that can be expressed in them—will take something with him into that emptiness, which seems to expand from a given point and fills emptiness with something similar to courage. It is a feeling of courage, of protection through being united with that Being Who accomplished the sacrifice on Golgotha. The other way is to penetrate into the spiritual worlds without the Gospels through a real true Theosophy. This is also possible. (You know that we emphasise the fact that we do not start from the Gospels when we consider the Mystery of Golgotha, but that we should arrive at it even if there were no Gospel at all). It would not have been possible before the Mystery of Golgotha took place; but it is the case to-day, because something entered the world through the Mystery of Golgotha which enables a man to understand the impressions of the spiritual world directly through his own impressions. This is what we call the ruling of the Holy Spirit in the world, the ruling of cosmic thought in the world. Whether we take one or the other of these two ways, we cannot lose ourselves and we cannot, so to say, fall into the bottomless abyss when we stand before the dreadful emptiness. If we now approach this dreadful emptiness with the other preparations given us by the various methods, for instance, those in my book, The Knowledge of Higher Worlds etc. and other methods dependent on these—and enter a world born from that which has so shaken our minds, which can now be grasped by our conceptions when we live into that world, when we place ourselves, so to say, in the Saturn existence, then we learn to know Beings—not in the least similar to those we perceive in the animal, plant or mineral kingdoms but Beings. This is a world where there are no clouds, no light, it is quite devoid of sound, but we become acquainted with Beings—indeed those Beings, called in our terminology, Spirits of Will or Thrones. We learn so to know them that the surging sea of courage becomes a true objective reality for us.