Christiania, 11th June, 1912.
My dear Friends,
WE spoke yesterday of how the pupil in occultism meets with Lucifer
and with death, and we pointed out that if the situation is to be
rightly experienced, the pupil must still have left to him from
ordinary life on Earth the memory of the I or of the thought of the I.
We saw also that the man of the present day finds help at this point
if within the Earth world he has been able to receive the Christ
Impulse. And we went on to show how the Being we call the Christ Being
is to be distinguished from other founders of religion in that we
cannot speak of Him as of a person who underwent initiation on Earth,
but that the Christ Being brought with Him all the forces with which
He worked during the three years of His sojourn on Earth. This means
that when the Christ Being became man, He was already in a position to
make that great sacrifice for it was for the Christ Being a
great sacrifice whereby He made use in a human body of
specifically human forces alone. He manifested and expressed His
connection with the divine entirely through human forces.
It is this feature of the life of Christ that marks it as absolutely
without parallel. If you want to understand with the ordinary powers
of the human soul I do not say, to believe in, but to
understand the founder of any other religion, you will find it
necessary first of all to learn about the stages of his initiation,
for you will want to raise yourself to an understanding of the
particular enlightenment that streamed forth from a higher world into
this human personality. This is what you will have to do, for example,
in the case of Buddha. You must study his enlightenment under the
Bodhi tree, and learn to have some understanding of how such a thing
can come about that in a man's 29th year an inspiration enters into
his life, as it did into Buddha under the Bodhi tree. When you
have made the effort to achieve this understanding, then, if you think
it over, you will be able also to recognise something else that
follows from it, strange though it may at first appear. You
will come to see that not only the great founders of religion are to
be understood by becoming acquainted with the methods and stages of
initiation, but also even the Evangelists and St. Paul.
If you want to understand the Evangelists, who wrote their Gospels out
of inspiration, then you must first come to see how the great
individualities hidden behind the names of Matthew, Mark or John were
able to arrive at the things that stand written in the Gospels. With
this end in view we have undertaken, as you know, a thoroughgoing
study of the Gospels, and it has enabled us to perceive what had in
reality long been lost, namely, that the Evangelists spoke
truth.
If, however, we want to understand the Christ, we do not need all
this. The Christ can be understood by every single human being, He can
be understood with the most ordinary human powers of understanding. It
can never be that a man has too little culture or too little education
to understand the Christ. And this is because the Christ brought into
forces that are purely human and into all their working, what He
was; whereas the communications of other founders of religions
rest on what they have seen in the higher worlds. It can, therefore,
be truly said, provided only the statement be not taken in a trivial
spirit, that the Christ founded a religion for the simplest of human
beings, a religion that is accessible to every intellect and every
understanding.
The relationship of Christ to the higher worlds, that can of
course only be learned through initiation. And there is no need to
learn it until one enters upon initiation. I endeavoured yesterday to
make clear to you the immense service done by the Christ to the pupil
in occultism. Christ gives him the means whereby he can remember his I
when he is in the higher worlds. Without the Christ Impulse this
cannot be done. Christ thus becomes a helper in the initiations of
modern time and will be increasingly so for pupils in occultism. As
man advances in wisdom, he will realise how deep is his need of the
Christ. Christ is there for the simplest of men; on the other hand He
is also there for those who need wisdom and again more wisdom, and yet
again still more wisdom. That is the nature of the Christ, and it is
connected with all those things of which we were speaking yesterday.
It follows from this that the further man's evolution goes, the more
understanding will there be for the Christ. The understanding will
grow and spread. There will be an increasing number of people who
recognise that while there is complete justification for saying that
Christ is there for everyone, even the simplest and humblest, and that
everyone can find Him, He is at the same time also there for those who
are under the necessity to seek wisdom, those who feel a deep inward
obligation to follow after wisdom.
We will now leave this thought for a little and return to the meeting
of which we spoke yesterday. First, man meets Lucifer. Lucifer, as we
saw, shows us what we have become as we have gone from incarnation to
incarnation, and we found yesterday that the form or figure that
Lucifer shows us is positively ugly. We learn from Lucifer what we
have become through him during Earth evolution It is important that
the pupil learns this in the right way and does not remain at the
point where Lucifer shows him what he has acquired through the Gods,
saying to him: There is your destructible form! What you have
acquired through me is immortality! and then this
immortal form shows itself as unsightly! The pupil must not stop
there. As one contemplates the path of initiation we have here in
mind, the feeling comes over one that Christ can not only help in the
way we described yesterday but can also help man to change the form.
This requires, however, that man shall resolve to remain true to the
Christ Impulse, never to lose it but strive always to understand it
more and more. Hence it is that nothing can dissuade the followers of
the modern Mysteries from their adherence to the Christ Impulse.
Let us now return to our study of threefold man and remind ourselves
how we had to connect the upper man with the heaven of the stars. We
went on to show that the figure known to the Old Testament under the
name of Jahve or Jehovah gives something to the upper man as a kind of
compensation for what man has lost on the Earth, and this gift of
Jahve's can be reckoned as belonging to the Moon. Summing up our study
of these connections, we may therefore say: The upper man is in a
certain sense co-ordinated to the Moon, while the middle man, the
breast man, that carries the heart in him, is in a sense co-ordinated,
as we saw, to the Sun. We can accordingly form some idea of what
occult Schools and Mysteries have always understood by the
co-ordination of the middle man, the man that bears the heart in him,
to the Sun, and of the man that carries the head, either to the whole
starry heavens or to the Moon.
But now Lucifer has also had his influence on man. Even as we carry in
our middle man the influence of the Sun, and in our head man the
influence of the Moon as I described it for ancient
clairvoyance so do we carry in us the influence of another
star, and we have to think in a corresponding way of the forces that
ray out from this other star.
You will readily imagine that the influence must needs be of a
different kind from the influence of Sun or Moon. The Moon influences
still worked in olden times with such effect that human clairvoyance
took its course in a 28-day period. In the course of 28 days man felt
himself now in a more, and now again in a less, clairvoyant condition.
This was an influence that could be directly perceived. The Sun
influences are of course obvious. We shall not need to waste many
words over the fact that the whole of the middle man depends on the
Sun; what was said in the last lecture should suffice. The influence
of the third which is to be found in the region that appears to
us in initiation as the region of Lucifer works on the other
hand in a spiritual manner. Here we can no longer speak of an
influence that is easily evident. Many an influence even of the Moon
can be disbelieved on this account; nevertheless there are still
people who speak of an influence of the moon on the nature of man. As
for the Sun's influence, no one will deny that. It goes without
saying, however, that influences of other stars are not admitted by
the materialist. He must of necessity repudiate them, for they are
spiritual and he cannot admit the influence of spiritual forces. None
the less it is a fact that just as there is in the upper man the
connection with the Moon, and in the middle man the connection with
the Sun, so are the influences of Venus connected with the form
of man that meets us when we cross the threshold of initiation. Note
that we are speaking now of the star which the astronomers of today
call Venus.
Venus is thus the kingdom of Lucifer. At first we learn through
initiation that the lower man, the man we called the third
seven-membered man, is that part of the whole nature of man which has
been apportioned by the higher Gods to the kingdom of Lucifer. But
Lucifer has, by a method of which we shall speak further, acquired
mastery over the whole human being, even as Jahve or
Jehovah also took possession of the whole human being.
If you want to have a complete picture of the working of Jahve or
Jehovah, then you will have to see it in the following way. Take first
the head man, as you have learned to know it from the earlier
lectures. Into the head man works the power of Jehovah which
corresponds to New Moon, the Moon that is bereft of light, the Moon
that does not ray back sunlight on to the Earth. The physical sunlight
that is reflected from the Moon that, on the other hand, is to
be thought of as the influence of the Jehovah forces which proceeds
from the Moon on to the lower man, the third man. So that, leaving out
the breast man in the middle, we find, working upon the lower man, the
Jehovah forces that correspond to Full Moon. The middle or breast man
receives, as we know, the Sun forces; as we shall see, however, Moon
forces work there, too. Jehovah forces have in this way obtained a
kind of mastery of the entire human being. They work in alternating
periods upon the head man and the lower man, the influence on the head
man corresponding to New Moon, and the influence on the lower man to
Full Moon.
I do not think anyone will doubt what I have just said, if he sets
himself to consider the significance attached in the ancient Hebrew
faith, in the ancient Hebrew ritual, to the festival of New Moon.
Study the festivals of New Moon and investigate the feelings men had
about them in Old Testament times; and you will be ready to meet what
has been said with intelligence and understanding. The corresponding
influences of the intermediate phases of the Moon the waxing
and the waning Moon work upon the breast man. And now you must
consider in addition that just as the Moon that is to say, the
Spirit of the Moon, Jahve or Jehovah works upon the entire man
in all his three members, so too does the Sun, but especially on the
middle man; thence the Sun's influences ray out into the whole human
being. We have accordingly two cosmic forces both working actively in
the human being in an orderly and regular manner.
Of Lucifer we learn that his kingdom is Venus. The forces which find
their physical symbol in the light of Venus shining down upon us as
Morning or Evening Star, the physical rays of Venus that are sent out
into cosmic space, are the symbol of the influence of Lucifer
upon man Lucifer has not confined himself to working upon the lower
man. If he had, he would only have influence when Venus is shining
with her full orb of light, as in Full Moon. For you know that Venus
has phases like the Moon, waxing Venus, full Venus and waning
Venus. The quarters work on the breast man like the
quarters of the Moon. The Venus that works spiritually,
works on the head man. We can, therefore, behold in the working
together in the heavens of Sun, Moon and Venus, an expression for what
in respect of man are spiritual workings. Please note, an expression
for what is in the spirit of man.
As the great Sun Spirit works in relation to the Moon Spirit, in
relation, that is, to Jahve or Jehovah, so also Lucifer, who is always
active in human nature, works in relation to these two. If we wanted
to describe by means of a drawing the law of their co-operation we
could not do better than look up at the constellations in the heavens
of Sun, Moon and Venus. As is the relationship of these three to one
another, whether they are in opposition, or whether they
strengthen or weaken one another, as when one stands in front of
another and eclipses it so is the relation between these three
spiritual powers in man. The influence of the Sun can be more
particularly developed in man when it is not impaired either by the
Moon or by the Venus forces. It may, however, also happen that the Sun
forces the forces that are in the middle man, in the heart
are eclipsed by the Moon, the head forces, and eclipses can
occur also by the action of Lucifer, that is, of Venus. As you know.
there are times when Venus passes in front of the Sun in cosmic space.
Thus the connection of the inner trinity in man the Sun Spirit,
the Moon Spirit and the Venus Spirit or Lucifer is symbolised
in cosmic space and expressed in the constellation of Sun, Moon and
Venus.
Seeing that we were able to divide up the whole human form and connect
its parts and members with certain fixed stars, certain Signs of the
Zodiac, it will not now be difficult for you to understand that a
relationship can exist between these three Stars in man that
is, the three great spiritual Powers in man and the several
members of the human form. We have to recognise, for instance, a
particularly significant phase of this relationship when the heart in
the middle man, or rather when the powers of the heart, the powers of
the Sun Spirit in the middle man, exert their utmost influence. In the
middle man, you will remember, we saw inscribed the Sign of Leo. We
can, therefore, say that when the Sun exerts his forces especially on
that member of the human form to which we give symbolically the Sign
of Leo, then a remarkable constellation is present in man. Another
remarkable constellation is present when the Jehovah forces are
especially strongly developed in their spiritual character, let
us say, in the Sign of Aries, which signifies the upright posture, or
in the Sign of Taurus which denotes, as you know, the forward
direction of the organs for the purpose of producing speech. For these
are the parts of the human form which necessarily have an original and
peculiarly deep relationship to the Moon forces. When these members of
man's form are very highly developed, then it denotes a particularly
favourable constellation for the human being.
You will be able now to discern wherein the fundamental principle, the
real essence of astrology consists. I have certainly not the intention
of going fully into the subject of astrology in these lectures
there would not be time but I want at this point to call your
attention to its true nature. We can put it in a very few words. You
see, man, as he stands before us with his threefold seven-membered
form, is in connection and harmony with the spiritual Powers
corresponding to the cosmic realms. For as the forces of the Sun
Spirit that work in man correspond to the Spirit of the Sun, as the
forces of the Moon correspond to the head man, and as we have
corresponding to the third man the forces that are distributed over
the whole human being, similarly is there a correspondence between the
several members of the human form and the fixed stars, so that their
Signs can be ascribed severally to these various members of man's
form. And we have before us man, complete in his physical form.
But now the influence proceeding from the Powers that work from these
directions was not active only when the human form first came into
being, it has continued so right through time and is active still. And
we see the working of this influence in the fact that man's external
destiny can be brought into connection with the constellations of the
Stars, just as we had to connect with the constellations of the Stars
what man has already become. If it was auspicious for man's
organisation that his Sun forces co-operated with those members of his
form to which we ascribed the Sign of Leo, then it will also be
auspicious today for certain qualities and characteristics in him if
some important moment of his life, notably the moment of birth, falls
when the Sun is in the Sign of Leo, that is to say, when the
Sun covers Leo, so that these two forces mutually strengthen one
another or in some way influence one another. For as what man is today
stands written in the heavenly spaces in the writing of the
constellations of the Stars, so stands written there too what is yet
to happen with him. This is the ground of true astrology. You will see
at once from what we have been considering that you really only need
to know occultism and you have at the same time the root principle of
astrology. This will show itself all the more clearly as we now go on
to describe the second stage of initiation.
We have seen that in order to attain to the first stage of initiation
it is important for the pupil to take his start from the human form,
from man as he presents himself to physical sight. For the next stage
he has to choose something else as his starting-point, namely,
the inner movement of man. Note carefully the distinction:
First stage: Starting from the human form.
Second stage: Starting best from the inner movement of the human
being.
Let us now consider for a little, as before we considered the form or
figure of man, the movements that take place within him. We have first
of all a movement which, although in later life man scarcely performs
it any more has once been carried out by him with all his might,
otherwise he would remain a fourfooted creature, obliged to crawl on
the ground for the rest of his life. Man has to perform the movement
which changes him from a crawling to an upright child. For man is not
merely an upright being in his form, he is a being who during his life
lifts himself upright. So that the first inner movement man
performs for it is an inner movement is the movement of
lifting himself into the upright position.
The second movement of an inner kind is again one that man must
acquire for himself as a child, although this movement he continues to
use throughout life. It is the movement of speaking, the
movement of the inner life that has to be performed for the
word to arise. You must realise that a whole sum of inner
movements is necessary in order that the word may be brought to
expression. There is, however, still another movement, a more hidden
one, that has also to be learned in early childhood. We may say, man
learns both movements together. As a matter of fact, he learns the
speaking movement earlier than the other. (You will find a
more exact and detailed account of all this in my little book The
Education of the Child from the standpoint of Spiritual Science.)
We have, then, these two inner movements that man learns and has to
perform all his life long. Of the speech movement we are quite
conscious. Everyone knows that he makes it. But not everyone knows
that when he thinks, a delicate movement is taking place all
the time in his brain. To discover this requires a rather fine and
subtle power of observation. Do not infer that I am talking
materialism when I talk about a movement. Movement there
is, without a doubt; only, it is effect, not cause. We have therefore
here two inner movements, the movements of thinking and of speaking.
If now we go further, we discover as the next important movement the
movement of the blood. This is one of the movements which must
necessarily take place for man to be man. (The sequence is apparently
rather arbitrary, but that need not disturb you.) The fifth movement,
which must already be there in order for the blood movement to take
place, is the movement of the breath. This is a specific
movement with an independent existence of its own, distinct
from the blood movement. As I said, the sequence is somewhat
arbitrary. We could, for instance, as was hinted, interchange the
second and the third but that is beside the point; here again
we could put the breath before the blood movement, and if we were
considering more especially the lungs we would certainly have to do
so. If, however, we are looking rather to the origin of the movements,
then we must take them in the sequence I have given; because,
especially in the case of the male human being, the real centre and
origin of the breath movement is in the diaphragm, and that is
underneath the heart. When, therefore, our object is to build up a
sequence from the point of view of origin, we have no choice but to
take the movements in the sequence I have given.
The sixth movement we are still speaking of movements inside
the body that are necessary to life is one that certain inner
organs have to perform; we may summarise it in a general term and call
it glandular movement or movement of ducts or canals. The ducts in
man's body must be in perpetual activity, perpetual inner movement,
for man to be maintained in life. For certain reasons which it would
take too long to explain, I prefer to call it simply movement of the
glands.
For the seventh movement to come about, it is no longer a question
merely of particular ducts or glands moving in order to secrete
something the human being requires within himself. The seventh is a
movement performed by the whole body as such, and it is carried out
when Nature has set all in train for a new human being to be born.
What we have here is really a sum-total of all the movements of the
body. Whilst in other duct or gland movements we have the movement of
a part only of the body, in the case of the movement of reproduction
we have a kind of act of secretion performed by the whole human being.
And the same is true whether we are speaking of male or female body.
It is always a secretion performed by the whole human being. This
movement then we call the movement of reproduction.
If the seven movements we have described are correctly understood,
then with them are exhausted the inner movements of man. The others
are outer movements. When man moves his feet or his hands, that is an
external movement. The inner movements man brought with him when he
came to Earth, though Earth has, it is true, changed them very much.
And just as we had to refer the whole complete form of man to the
fixed stars of the Zodiac, and connect the Signs of the Zodiac with
the several members of the human form, so now we find that these
several movements have their source in the entire planetary system.
From our planetary system we have to derive these seven members of
what we may call the man of inner movement. And since the relationship
of these movements to one another corresponds to the relationship of
the planets of our planetary system, we can also designate these
several movements with the Signs that belong to the planets, thus:
Movement into upright posture |
w |
Movement of thinking |
v |
Movement of speaking |
u |
Movement of the blood |
q |
Movement of the breath |
s |
Movement of the glands |
t |
Movement of reproduction |
r |
A word must be said about the movement of the blood. This movement
comes into contact with what we have earlier learned to recognise as
the centre of the organs belonging to the middle man, the plane
of operations as it were for the Sun Spirit. Thus the movement
of the blood, which has its centre in the middle man, is to be brought
into relation with the most important force in the middle man, and we
have to designate this movement of the blood with the Sign of the Sun.
In doing so we are thinking of the power and force of the Sun Spirit
in so far as it is a force in movement. It is, we could say, as
a fixed star that the Sun works upon the middle man as a whole on the
other hand, it exerts its influences on the movements that depend on
the middle man, on the movements of the blood, as one of the planets.
If I make use of the Sign which is also used by the astronomers of
today employing therefore in this case not the old terminology which
was altered by Kepler, but the names that are customary in the
astronomy of today then the movement of the breathing can be
denoted by Mercury, the movement of the glands by Venus and the
movement of reproduction by Moon. For this last movement, localised as
it is in the lower man, is again a movement that comes into contact
with the influence of the Spirit of the Moon. This influence here
meets and combines with the inner moving of the human being.
We have, therefore, in the human being, as well as a threefold
seven-membered man, another seven-membered man in the connections of
the movements that take place within him. The pupil must take pains to
distinguish the various movements within him, before he is able to
take the next step on the path. He will not find it easy.
The human form we have as it were standing before our eyes, not
so the inner movements. A special effort has to be made to feel them.
We must learn to discern each one for itself. We must be able to feel
inwardly, first the movement of raising oneself upright, then the
movement of thought, the movement of speech this is easiest of
all then again the movement of the blood, and which is
also not difficult the movement of the breath. We have to come
to the point of sensing the various movements which as a rule we only
sense in their result, as, for instance, when we experience
ourselves first as lying down and then as standing up. We must learn
to sense also in this way the movements of secretion.
The faculty of discrimination for the several movements that take
place within him is an absolute necessity for the pupil if he would
progress further on his path. And if he is to do with these movements
what I said he had to do with the human form, then instead of looking
at the human form from without, fixing it before him and awaiting the
after-image, he must endeavour to feel himself inwardly, feel the
movement and activity that goes on within him, and then, after he has,
as it were, fixed himself inwardly in the bodily sense, hold fast this
impression, even as yesterday we tried to hold fast, purely in
memory, the impression of the human form. The pupil will then actually
come to the point of recognising seven forms, where yesterday we met
with two. We encountered, as you will remember, the form of death and
the form of Lucifer, and we learned that when we call to remembrance
the thought of Christ, we have then something we can carry across into
the other the super-sensible world. And now, when the
pupil, as it were, steps forth out of his man of inner movement, he
meets with seven forms. He makes the acquaintance of seven spiritual
Beings, and he knows that these seven spiritual Beings correspond to
his own inner movements in the very same way that Sun, Moon and Venus
correspond to what we spoke of yesterday. He comes to understand that
he himself has grown out of our planetary system, and that since the
physical stars of the planets are directed by the Spirits of the
planets, man is only able, for example, to lift himself upright
through the fact that the Spirit of Saturn prevails in him, the Spirit
who has his scene of action on Saturn as Lucifer has his on Venus. He
knows too that his movement of thought has connection with the Regent
or directing Spirit of Jupiter, the movement of speech with the
directing Spirit of Mars, the movement of the blood with the directing
Spirit of the Sun, the whole movement of the breath with the directing
Spirit of Mercury, all the glandular movements with the directing
Spirit of Venus, and finally the whole movement of reproduction with
the directing Spirit of the Moon. He knows furthermore, that all these
Spirits work with and through one another. They have their seat, their
base of operations, in man, and one kind of movement works upon
another. The Spirit of Saturn, for instance, while it works chiefly
through the movement made by man in lifting himself upright, takes
part indirectly in all other movements. A significant situation occurs
when the guiding Spirit of Saturn manifests his forces with peculiar
strength in the Sign of Aries or in the Sign of Taurus. This creates a
very important situation.
Having thus come to the recognition of how the guiding Spirits of the
planets are connected with the several members of the man of inner
movement, you will be able to follow me when I say that in the
allocation of the Signs to the several members we are already touching
the fundamental principle of all genuine astrology. Recall the
connections we have been considering, and you will recognise that
there lies inherent within them the principle of true and genuine
astrology, which has its source in nothing else than in the great and
significant fact that man is born out of the World-AII, that man is in
very truth an epitome, an extract of the whole World-All.
In order to understand the form of man we had, you will remember, to
ascend to the fixed stars; and we found also how the form of man is
influenced by the forces proceeding from Sun, Moon and Venus. How we
have seen how the inner mobility in man is due to the working of the
seven Spirits of the Planets. Seven spiritual Beings are thus brought
to our knowledge. And here we discover something that is of peculiar
importance. Among these seven Spirits is the Spirit of Venus, whom we
have already come to know as Lucifer. And the pupil is now confronted
with a strange and remarkable experience. When he takes the first step
into initiation he encounters Lucifer; for it is Lucifer who shows man
the form of which we spoke yesterday, the form or figure
that man himself wears. The pupil encounters Lucifer as the Being who
has made him look his ugliest; and now, when he meets the Spirit of
Venus, he meets Lucifer again. But this time Lucifer looks entirely
different. It is not the same figure as the pupil met before. He knows
it is the same being, but Lucifer shows himself in two distinct forms.
Thus the pupil acquires the knowledge that Lucifer can manifest in two
forms. The first time he manifests is at the crossing of the Threshold
(we spoke of it yesterday), when he calls man's attention to the fact
that he owes to Lucifer his immortality, saying to him: The Gods
gave you a destructible body, but I have given you immortality.
And when the pupil turns to look, lo, it is the dragon, of
which we spoke yesterday. Therefore is this form also called the first
form of the Guardian of the Threshold. But now at the second stage of
initiation a new revelation comes to us. We are shown how Lucifer can
unfold quite different forces from those we recognised in him before.
If we were not able to develop in us the forces of secretion and
excretion, the forces that proceed from the various canals and ducts
in the body, we could not be human beings at all; it would be out of
the question. The blood and breath movements alone could never
maintain us as human beings. The movements of the juices in the body,
the movements, that is, of the ducts and glands, must also be present.
This can make plain to us the difference between all exoteric
traditions wheresoever they be found and the
understanding that is given here. The exoteric traditions do indeed
speak of Lucifer and of the several Spirits of the Planets, but they
can give no actual and genuine knowledge of the facts. The real
knowledge is in very truth a knowledge that has to be received under a
serious sense of responsibility. It reveals Lucifer to us in the first
place as the one who distorts and makes unsightly the form of man, and
on the other hand is the Spirit who is essential to man's being, who
alone makes him man.
As we proceed further on the path of initiation we come to another
striking and significant experience. If we succeeded in holding fast
to the Christ, in linking ourselves inwardly with Him, so that He
enabled us to carry over the thought of the I the idea of the
I, the self-consciousness of Earth into the super-sensible world
that we are entering, then a feeling took possession of us that this
Christ Power has to do with the power of the Sun. We had as it were a
presentiment of the connection. Now at the second stage something more
is added. The Christ Power reveals itself to us as a form, I
may even, as a form or figure that we can grasp and perceive, that we
can gradually learn to know more intimately, that grows clearer and
clearer to us in the super-sensible world. At this second stage of
initiation we are brought into a nearer knowledge of the super-sensible
Christ. And then this Christ shows us that He calls the directing
Spirit of Venus who, as we have learned, is Lucifer His
brother, calls him His brother, accounting him a Planetary Spirit like
the other Planetary Spirits. So that when Lucifer shows himself in the
second stage of initiation, he at once reveals himself as a planetary
Spirit taking his place among the seven Regents of the planets among
his brothers. We enter thus into a world where we find what we might
call a highly exalted College of seven planetary Spirits, who are in
completely brotherly relation one with another. But here lurks a
danger, and the pupil must needs possess himself of a great deal more
knowledge if he is not to go under at this point. For he must on no
account simply receive easily what here shows itself to him; he must
earnestly endeavour to acquire an exact knowledge of what lies behind
it.
When we come to enter into occult knowledge in detail, we can look in
many directions for help to find our way. Although we have learned to
recognise the seven brothers who are the seven Planetary Spirits, we
are still a long way from any full knowledge of them. Seven brothers
may be quite different one from another, and the difference does not
perhaps show itself at first sight. We have to look a little nearer,
we have to study them in detail, if we would gain a more intimate
knowledge. At this point I want to bring forward something which, if
you examine it carefully and test it by the side of what you know from
exoteric myth, you will find to be well founded and reasonable even
though it appear strange at first. It will prove to be authentic, for
it is a direct outcome of occult research. Compare it with the
religious and historical records from olden times, and the demands of
your intelligence will be completely satisfied. The farther you look
into it with your ordinary understanding, the more will you find
yourself able to say Yes to what I am now going to tell
you; for it is a result of occult investigation that is comparatively
easy of approach to the man of the present day.
We must first of all find something to take as our starting-point; we
must begin from some known fact. For the moment, let it be the fact
that we have come to a kingdoms. We have, however, only learned to
know the ruling Spirits with their kingdoms, the corresponding
Planets. We must go further. We must investigate these kingdoms more
closely, as far as occult research will allow. And the following is
one among many ways that offer themselves to the pupil of our times
who sets to work conscientiously with the means afforded in modern
practical occultism. He can take his start, always under the guidance
and counsel of an experienced occultist, from the study of the life of
Gautama Buddha.
I have frequently emphasised and must here emphasise again that the
life of Buddha is to be understood as the Buddhists understand it and
not as it is interpreted by materialistic historians. We must first
come ourselves to the recognition that Buddha became Buddha by passing
through a great many incarnations; that he became first a Bodhisattva.
And then having been born as the son of King Suddhodana, ascended in
the 29th year of his life to the dignity of a Buddha. We must know
that the ascension of the Bodhisattva to the stage of Buddha means in
actual fact that such an individual has his very last incarnation on
Earth in the life he lives as Buddha. When he has become a Buddha, he
never returns again into an earthly body, but works in other than
earthly worlds. This must be quite clear to us from the beginning. We
must know for an absolute fact that the Buddha by his exaltation from
Bodhisattva to Buddha rose to a cosmic dignity and does not
require in the course of his further evolution ever to descend again
into a physical earthly human being. Those of you who have followed my
lectures will remember that I have alluded to one single occasion when
the Buddha, so to speak, allows us to have a glimpse of his further
evolution. When I was explaining how two Jesus children were born, the
Matthew Jesus Child and the Luke Jesus Child, I said that at the birth
of the Luke Jesus Child the Buddha sent down from the spiritual world
astral forces that were incorporated into the astral body of Jesus.
Mention was thus made of the Buddha sending down forces to Earth. In
Norrköping
[Note 1]
I told further how the initiates were able to meet with
the Buddha in still another way. Nevertheless it is still true to say
that since his life as Buddha he has lived no more on Earth. An
occultist, however, who goes far on the occult path can follow also
further the path of Buddha. It is, of course, now no Earth life that
he follows. In the field of practical occultism the question arises:
What has become of the Buddha, since he incarnates no longer in a
physical human body? We can, as it were, go in search of the Buddha,
we can look for him in the wide world. It may seem strange to you, but
the initiated find the Buddha engaged on a great and mighty task, a
task of deep significance. When the eye of the occultist has been
opened and he looks out into the vast spaces of the world, he beholds
a remarkable sight. He discovers that the Buddha has now for his scene
of action that planet which in physical astronomy we call Mars; and he
can do no other than relate in all seriousness how, since the time
when the Buddha acquired the faculty which made it no longer necessary
for him to appear again in Earth life, he has been given a new
mission. This new mission of the Buddha we can discover by making
occult observation of Mars.
As we enter upon this study, the true and original mission of the
Buddha becomes clear to us. We find by occult investigation that the
beings on Mars who correspond to men on Earth they are of
course of quite a different nature, but for the moment let us call
them Mars men at a certain time in their evolution
were in a similar condition of need as were the Earth men in the
Fourth Post-Atlantean period when the Christ had to come to them. And
as Christ became a Saviour and an Awakener to Life, as that was a
mission for the Christ in regard to Earth humanity, so is it a further
mission for that Bodhisattva after he became the Buddha, to be a
Saviour and Redeemer of Mars men. He has to accomplish on Mars an
event similar to the event that the Christ had to bring to fulfilment
on Earth.
When therefore we study the life of the Buddha, we find it falls into
two parts. There is first the time when Buddha worked for the Earth
men and brought them all that they were due to receive from him,
including what he had already brought them during the time when he was
a Bodhisattva. Then there is the later part of Buddha's life when he
worked outside and beyond the Earth, when he rose to a higher power
and strength for which his course on Earth was but a necessary
preparation. For Buddha grew upwards into the power of one who is a
Saviour and Redeemer. If it were possible for us to compare the
influence of Buddha on Mars with the not same, but similar
influence of Christ Jesus on Earth and with the Mystery of Golgotha,
then we would be bound to find a difference, because of the difference
between Earth men and Mars men. If possible, I will tell you more
another time about the feelings and response called forth in the Mars
men by the working of Buddha.
As you see, tasks are set for the Beings who evolve in the Cosmos. The
moment a Being rises from one state or rank to another, a new task is
placed before him. And man, who has to fulfil his life's course on
Earth, comes into touch during his time on Earth with Beings who, like
the Christ, have from the beginning a cosmic task, and also with
Beings who in their evolution upward leave the Earth and rise then to
a cosmic task, as was the case with Buddha.
- Note 1:
- See Anthroposophical Ethics.