82. The Gods, Olympus And Valhalla
It has been essayed for a long time to find the right interpretation of heathen cults and of the gods of olden times and to connect them with beliefs of the present day. Those who have a special call and scholars are busily seeking to solve this question.
But for this solution to be successful, it must comprise a general and unbroken survey of all times from the beginnings of the human race till the present day. Otherwise it would again only be piecework. It is fruitless just to pick out the time when the cults of the Greeks, the Romans or the Germans were at their height. So long as the survey does not include the whole complexity of the subject and elucidate how all naturally came into being, developed and then disappeared, the explanation is insufficient and erroneous. Ingenious attempts have been made and clever hypotheses suggested, but up till now these have always been failures and were never able to convince the inner perception of their truth. The theories set up have been unstable and vague, lacking connection with the preceding and succeeding periods.
More cannot be expected from man, when his present day development is taken into account. But those who have listened to my Message, brought from the Holy Grail, should of themselves be able to perceive the meaning underlying these phenomena which some have relegated to the region of myth, whilst others only accept them as manifestations of religious tenor, based on a study of nature in connection with everyday life.
And yet it should not be so hard for a serious investigator to find more in the old lore than mere myths of heathen gods, and to clearly perceive their meaning. Those who will follow me, I will help to a right understanding.
Here I would call to mind my Lecture Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.* In that Lecture I gave a short exposition of the history of mankind on this earth from the very beginning till now, together with a glimpse of future happenings. It was there shown how the forces or energies of nature arrive at the climax of their powers of developing and perfecting matter at the time Creation comes to the midpoint of its rotation and thus prepare matter for the reception of the spirit. This procedure regularly recurs in the universe at the appointed time. I also explained that, after the animal body had been developed by animism and had reached its highest degree of perfection, the spirit- germ was able to enter it. It was then primeval man. The perfect animal now became possessed of something new: the spirit, which it had not had before. This wonderful procedure occurs afresh every time the great revolution or rotation has reached a certain point, but it must not be thought that it will be repeated a second time in the same part of the universe. It only happens once in each part of Creation, as it in turn develops and comes to that point in its rotation.
The law of attraction of the homogeneous here also puts an immovable obstacle into the way of repetition in the same part of Creation. The law of attraction is here interpreted by acquiescence during a certain period of development. It agrees to or permits the spirit-germs, floating about like meteors on the borders of half-matured matter, to precipitate themselves on to it. They are attracted and absorbed by the highest developed animal bodies to be retained and encased in them. This is analogous to the process of amalgamation in chemistry, where the foreign body can only be amalgamated at the exact moment when the other substance has arrived at a certain temperature. The minutest divergence from the exact conditions makes the amalgamation impossible. Here, homogeneity lies in a certain condition of mutual maturity, which apparently shows great divergencies. The reason is, that the two bodies going to amalgamate are kept in balance by two different degrees of development. The lowest degree or state of maturity in the Kingdom of the Spirit corresponds to the highest degree or state of maturity in natural substance (animism) which ranks next in order below. Only at the exact point of meeting amalgamation is possible. Through the agency of the natural energies, physical matter goes through the stages of budding, blossoming and fruit-bearing; then the fruit becomes over-ripe, falls and decays. The moment a section of physical matter has reached its highest state of maturity in the great revolution and comes in contact with the spirit, it can be fructified. If it passes on, neglecting this opportunity, fertilisation by spirit-germs is no longer possible, for the next section in rotation has taken its place, and it, the first section, has passed into another stage, where maturer spirits have access, and so forth. There is not sufficient space in this Lecture to set all out in detail. But the serious thinker will have an idea as to how things are.
No sooner has the spirit entered matter, even in its first unconscious state, than it begins to exercise its influence in every direction and takes the reins of government into its hand. How it gradually fashioned the body of the animal into the human body my reader will no longer fail to understand.**
Those animals which animism had brought to the highest state of perfection in its power, but who had not been fertilised by the spirit, had not the life-vigour to advance further; they came to a standstill and speedily passed from a state of decadence to disintegration. There had only been two alternatives for them: either to develop into human beings by means of the spirit influx or to disappear altogether. With this, these animals, although belonging to the highest, maturest race, died out.
Let us try to follow the process of the unconscious spirit-germ slowly developing into a conscious human spirit, and notice the steps it takes to free itself from the successive shells and coverings which encase it.
This is not so very difficult, for the stages of development are externally discernible, and can be studied in those races of men which are still on the earth. The spirits of the most primitive men, to which so- called savages, Bushmen and Hottentots belong, have not been incarnated in matter for a shorter time than the others, but it is either that they have not striven diligently enough towards the Light, or that, after having developed to a certain degree of perfection, they have degenerated, either here on earth or in the ethereal world, and thus can only incarnate in the inferior surroundings in which we find them. Hence it is their own fault that they are still, or are again, on the same step of maturity as before, surrounded by an ethereal world of the same undesirable character.
The desire to see more than what is on its own level has always been an innate peculiarity of the spirit-germ, and has energetically manifested itself from the first stages of its development. It is the animating motive principle peculiar to the spirit which distinguishes it from other species in Creation. This gift, however, only allows the spirit to see what is on one step beyond or above the one he is on himself. Hence men of the aforesaid inferior races can only see beings of inferior order not far removed from themselves. There are mediums and those gifted with second sight in all races, no matter on what stage of development they may be.
Here I must mention what I have called attention to before: when I speak of second sight, I mean what the medium himself really sees. Of all that a medium thinks he sees and experiences not more than one quarter is really seen and experienced by him, and that one quarter is only on the next stage above his own in development. This circumstance is a great natural protection for him, as I have often said before. Hence people must not imagine that the medium or clairvoyant is necessarily as far advanced spiritually as one would be led to expect from the scenes he describes. For these purer, lighter spheres, spirits and events are shown to him by spirit guides and higher entities in living pictures. Clairvoyants deceive themselves and erroneously imagine that they have really seen and experienced what they depict. This explains the astonishment so often felt at the moral inferiority of so many mediums whose character in no wise harmonises with the experiences they describe.
Here I am only speaking of the narrow field of horizon-vision of mediums and clairvoyants. The rest is of no importance. The office of clairvoyants and mediums of all times has been to serve man with their gifts and help him upwards, not as guides but as tools. A medium could never be a leader, for he depends too much on vibrations and other influences. Mediums should be doors which open from time to time to help on development; they may be likened to the rungs of the ascending ladder. When, therefore, you consider that races on a lower level of spiritual development can only have an outlook on conditions of similar character to their own surroundings with but little scope in an upward direction, you will easily understand that they fear and worship demons. That is what their seers see and what their imaginations are capable of picturing. So much for a superficial survey — but at the risk of the general outline being less clear, I will go somewhat deeper in to the question.
The undeveloped or degenerate spirits of lower races of mankind are naturally either still or once more, spiritually deaf and blind. Such a man cannot see with his spiritual eye; nor has indeed any man up to the present day been able to see with his spiritual eyesight. The man on the lower stage cannot even see with the eye of his animistic body nor with that of his ethereal body. His faculty of seeing only embraces objects of physical substance.
This last order of vision the savage living in the wilderness has developed to a high state of excellence, being constantly at war with his fellow-man, with wild beasts and with the elements. His eye can distinguish material or physical matter of different degrees of density. Thus he sees phantoms. These are forms shaped and nourished by man's fear. They have no independent life but depend entirely on man's perception and feeling. They are attracted to or repulsed by man in obedience to the law of attraction of the homogeneous. These forms produced by fear are drawn to those who are full of fear; they seem to rush on to them, to attack them. These phantoms are connected with their author by the strands that nourish them and indirectly connect him with all others who fear thus one man's fear is increased by the collective fear of the others, and this can drive him to desperation, even to madness. The fearless, as is well known, always have the advantage. Is it, therefore, surprising that primitive peoples had so-called medicine-men and magicians? They came into existence in virtue of their gift of clairvoyance, for clairvoyants could see how these forms, which they believed to have independent life, were repulsed by concentration, by antics, wild dancing, and by courage generally. If their ideas seem preposterous and ridiculous to our way of thinking, it does not alter the fact that they were doing what was right, considering their horizon and power of comprehension. It is our ignorance which prevents our understanding them.
Among the successors of these medicine-men and magicians, there were naturally many who had no second sight, nor any psychic gifts whatever: they were merely successors, in office, because it had influence and levied contributions, at which men of inferior races grab just as greedily and unscrupulously as men of the cultured white races! These successors imitated the proceedings of their predecessors without understanding the meaning of what they were doing, and even made senseless additions of their own invention, to increase the effect on the bystanders, whose sympathy and admiration they sought to win. Being utterly ignorant and self-seeking, the whole class of these men fell into disrepute, they were considered to be crafty humbugs.
This explains how it is that we find demon worship in races on a lower state of development. They see something, and recognising that it is something of a different nature to themselves, they experience fear.
On the next step higher man's inner sight is again further developed. Either through what seers say, or what his inner perception tells him, further veils or coverings fall and the imprisoned human spirit pushes its way outward and upward. Thus he sees or is aware of more friendly forms and gradually demon-worship ceases. Man's normally developing spirit advanced into lighter and lighter spheres, so that, for example, the inner sight of the Greeks, the Romans and the Germans could see further than into the world of matter and penetrated into the next higher sphere, the realm of nature, where they saw the leaders, the lords ruling the elements. Specially gifted individuals even held intercourse with these conscious natural beings, with whom man has a certain affinity, seeing that beside his spiritual body he also has a part of the components of the animistic world. To see, to feel, and to hear beings belonging to the animistic world was the climax possible for people at that stage of development. It is natural that those people should look upon the mighty Lords of the elements, whose activity and nature were so different from those of man, as the highest possible beings, and should revere them as gods; and the latter really do live in fastnesses called Olympus and Valhalla.
What a man psychically experiences is always tinged with his personal perception and expression; it is thus that the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans each portrayed the same Lords of the elements and all natural phenomena in harmony with their own particular views at that time. But in spite of the different colouring, they were the same gods. If today, for example, four or five really good clairaudients, assembled together, simultaneously hear a particular sentence from the Beyond, they will, in repeating it, only give its meaning, and will not repeat it in the same words. Each will use different terms; each has heard it differently because in hearing, he has put his own individuality into it. It is the same with music: every one hears and feels it differently from all the others, although the general character or tendency of the music is recognised by all to be the same. On all these very important, although secondary accessories in the intercourse between the men of this earth and the Cosmos I will report in detail later; today it would take us too far away from the subject- matter in hand.
Then, in time, other nations having a call came to the front. Nations which were further advanced in spiritual enlightenment, not to mention their intellectual development. With maturing experience they abandoned the limits of the world of nature (animism) and their inner sight and perception penetrated to the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom. With this naturally the old gods were dethroned and higher ideals took their place. Still even then, man did not advance so far as to be able to see spiritual phenomena. Here further progress was hindered by the constant growth of intellectual presumption. Buddha and just a few others succeeded, by renouncing the world, in being exceptions to this general standstill, and in continuing their spiritual development as was normally intended for all; they succeeded in attaining a certain degree of spiritual vision. This renunciation and retirement from the world for the purpose of spiritual development was only made necessary by the ever increasing dominion of one-sided intellect, so antagonistic in its influence to all spiritual progress. It was a measure of self-protection against the levelling-down influences on the spirit, which were becoming more and more prevalent and general. Where normal development is taking place, such renunciation is absolutely unnecessary — quite the contrary, for when a man has attained a certain maturity in spiritual development, he must put his knowledge to practical use or he will become lax and indolent which would quickly put a stop to further advancement. Standstill easily leads to retrogression.
Although the spiritual development of Buddha and the others had only reached a certain point and was not a complete success, still a great distance between them and ordinary men was felt to exist; though only normally developed human beings, they were looked on as envoys from God, whilst quite naturally through their spiritual advance a new conception arose.
Yet, though standing so far above the masses, these prominent spirits were only at the open door of the Spiritual Kingdom. They could perceive some things vaguely, but never anything distinctly. One thing, however, they clearly felt and inwardly perceived, that was that a mighty, conscious and consistent system of government directed all things from above, from a world or region they could not look into.
In conformity with this, their inner perception, they formed in their imagination one invisible God, without knowing any particulars concerning Him.
One can readily understand that they regarded this unknown God as the highest Spiritual Being, for they had attained to within sight of the spiritual region but were only on its threshold.
Thus it came to pass that this new idea of an invisible God hit on the truth as far as the fact was concerned, but the conception they formed of Him was altogether wrong. The human spirit never conceived God as He really is. They thought Him merely to be the highest Spiritual Being. This defect (the missing link) in the further development shows itself today in that many men persistently cling to the idea that they possess in themselves substance similar to the nature of Him they feel to be their God.
The fault lies in the standstill that occurred in spiritual development.
Had this development continued, maturing mankind would not have jumped straight from the old gods belonging to the world of nature to the One invisible God, but would first have come to perceive the Primeval Beings, the spiritual beings that God first created, who stand above the leaders of the elements, whose seat is the Castle of the Holy Grail, the highest fastness of the spiritual world. Men in the beginning would have regarded these as gods, until they had advanced so far that they would not only have inwardly perceived these spiritual beings, the beings created in the image of God, but would have been able to hear them. These would have told them of the One God who exists outside Creation. Had their perception then been directed in this way, they would in a further stage of development have been capable of joyfully welcoming a Divine Message, brought to them by an envoy from God Himself, from Divine spheres, spheres outside Creation, therefore impenetrable to their spiritual vision.
That would have been the normal course that events should have taken. Meantime development remained stationary on the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom from which it even quickly receded on account of man's faults.
Then God in His mercy sent His mighty envoy with a Message from above. His Messenger incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. He came to enlighten the blind, to help, and save from destruction those who were seeking, but it proved that they could not understand what he came to teach, and, therefore, He only required of them to believe and trust in His Word.
It was a desperate task. Christ could not even tell them all He wanted to say. Therefore, He did not speak of many things, for instance, reincarnation, and so forth. Men of that day were too backward spiritually to understand. And He said sorrowfully to His disciples: “I would say many things unto you, but you would not understand.” Thus even His disciples did not understand Him; a great many things they did not understand.
And if Christ knew then on earth that even His disciples did not understand Him and told them so, it is very evident that in the transmission of His Word later on, many errors crept in to which man of the present day pertinaciously clings. Because of mankind's being spiritually so backward, Christ only required them to believe His Word, but their faith was to be fully alive and active and develop into conviction. Where Christ's teaching was listened to and obeyed, spiritual development set in; again this in time would have turned belief into conviction of the truth of what Christ said or taught.
For this reason the Son of Man will exact conviction, not faith, from those also who profess to believe in and to obey Christ's Divine Message, which is one and the same as the Message of the Holy Grail, for he who cannot turn his faith into conviction, has not attained the maturity which is necessary to enable him to enter the Kingdom of the Spirit, God's heavenly Kingdom — Paradise. Such a one will be cast out without mercy.
The keenest intellectual knowledge will not find him a private entrance through which he may slip in. He must remain behind and be lost forever more.
That human beings in this part of Creation should still be on the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom (indeed the greater number far below it) is owing to their neither wishing nor wanting to advance, for in their presumption they believe themselves possessed of higher knowledge — an attitude that is sufficient to put a stop to all natural, normal advance. They will no doubt come to perceive this in time.
The different religious cults of mankind do not originate in man's creative imagination by any means; they simply demonstrate different sections of life in the invisible world. Even the medicine-man of a negro or red Indian tribe is an absolutely justified being on the low stage of development of that people. That humbugs and scoundrels should be among them does not discredit this fact.
Demons, wood-nymphs and sylphs, together with the so- called old gods, still exist today in the same haunts and carry on their work in the same way as they did of yore. Neither were the high fastnesses of the great leaders of the elements, Olympus and Valhalla, ever imaginary: they were really perceived by seers.
What, however, seers were not able to see, mankind having come to a standstill in development, were the pure spirits, the beings God created in His own image. They also have their seat on high, which is called the Gralsburg (the Castle of the Holy Grail), the highest residence in the Kingdom of the Spirit and, therefore, in all Creation.
As man had only got to the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom, he could only get knowledge of this Castle by inspiration, for his spiritual insight was not matured sufficiently for him to see it.
All is living; man alone who considers himself so far advanced, has turned aside and is now again retrogressing. It would be quite wrong to think that possibly on a higher state of development yet another change might be made in the conception of God taught by Christ, and in my Message from the Holy Grail, it will remain, nothing further or higher exists.
Although man cannot yet enter into the Spiritual Kingdom and develop there, yet every man can mature so far that his inner perception will convince him of this new fact. When he has got so far, he will be conscious of being clothed in the power of God, and he will then be able to do the great things that it was his mission to do from the beginning. Such a man would never imagine that he possessed divinity in himself. That mad error is only the stamp of immaturity.
The greatest modesty and humility and willingness to serve show real understanding, and these are the qualities that Christ's pure doctrine always demands.
Not till missionaries, preachers and teachers are thoroughly acquainted with the natural process of development in all Creation, which means a precise and accurate knowledge of the laws of God's Will, will they be able to claim real, living, spiritual success.
Unfortunately every religion is but the rigid, lifeless, outward form of some meaningless and dull doctrine, which it tries hard to retain and foster. After the necessary coming change, this inertia will be animated, the kernel will burst its shell, the cold, lifeless, rigid form, and will break forth jubilant and eager, impetuously overrunning the whole world and all its peoples.
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*) Lecture No. 81: Father, forgive them . . .
**) Lecture No. 7: Creation of Man.
But for this solution to be successful, it must comprise a general and unbroken survey of all times from the beginnings of the human race till the present day. Otherwise it would again only be piecework. It is fruitless just to pick out the time when the cults of the Greeks, the Romans or the Germans were at their height. So long as the survey does not include the whole complexity of the subject and elucidate how all naturally came into being, developed and then disappeared, the explanation is insufficient and erroneous. Ingenious attempts have been made and clever hypotheses suggested, but up till now these have always been failures and were never able to convince the inner perception of their truth. The theories set up have been unstable and vague, lacking connection with the preceding and succeeding periods.
More cannot be expected from man, when his present day development is taken into account. But those who have listened to my Message, brought from the Holy Grail, should of themselves be able to perceive the meaning underlying these phenomena which some have relegated to the region of myth, whilst others only accept them as manifestations of religious tenor, based on a study of nature in connection with everyday life.
And yet it should not be so hard for a serious investigator to find more in the old lore than mere myths of heathen gods, and to clearly perceive their meaning. Those who will follow me, I will help to a right understanding.
Here I would call to mind my Lecture Father, forgive them for they know not what they do.* In that Lecture I gave a short exposition of the history of mankind on this earth from the very beginning till now, together with a glimpse of future happenings. It was there shown how the forces or energies of nature arrive at the climax of their powers of developing and perfecting matter at the time Creation comes to the midpoint of its rotation and thus prepare matter for the reception of the spirit. This procedure regularly recurs in the universe at the appointed time. I also explained that, after the animal body had been developed by animism and had reached its highest degree of perfection, the spirit- germ was able to enter it. It was then primeval man. The perfect animal now became possessed of something new: the spirit, which it had not had before. This wonderful procedure occurs afresh every time the great revolution or rotation has reached a certain point, but it must not be thought that it will be repeated a second time in the same part of the universe. It only happens once in each part of Creation, as it in turn develops and comes to that point in its rotation.
The law of attraction of the homogeneous here also puts an immovable obstacle into the way of repetition in the same part of Creation. The law of attraction is here interpreted by acquiescence during a certain period of development. It agrees to or permits the spirit-germs, floating about like meteors on the borders of half-matured matter, to precipitate themselves on to it. They are attracted and absorbed by the highest developed animal bodies to be retained and encased in them. This is analogous to the process of amalgamation in chemistry, where the foreign body can only be amalgamated at the exact moment when the other substance has arrived at a certain temperature. The minutest divergence from the exact conditions makes the amalgamation impossible. Here, homogeneity lies in a certain condition of mutual maturity, which apparently shows great divergencies. The reason is, that the two bodies going to amalgamate are kept in balance by two different degrees of development. The lowest degree or state of maturity in the Kingdom of the Spirit corresponds to the highest degree or state of maturity in natural substance (animism) which ranks next in order below. Only at the exact point of meeting amalgamation is possible. Through the agency of the natural energies, physical matter goes through the stages of budding, blossoming and fruit-bearing; then the fruit becomes over-ripe, falls and decays. The moment a section of physical matter has reached its highest state of maturity in the great revolution and comes in contact with the spirit, it can be fructified. If it passes on, neglecting this opportunity, fertilisation by spirit-germs is no longer possible, for the next section in rotation has taken its place, and it, the first section, has passed into another stage, where maturer spirits have access, and so forth. There is not sufficient space in this Lecture to set all out in detail. But the serious thinker will have an idea as to how things are.
No sooner has the spirit entered matter, even in its first unconscious state, than it begins to exercise its influence in every direction and takes the reins of government into its hand. How it gradually fashioned the body of the animal into the human body my reader will no longer fail to understand.**
Those animals which animism had brought to the highest state of perfection in its power, but who had not been fertilised by the spirit, had not the life-vigour to advance further; they came to a standstill and speedily passed from a state of decadence to disintegration. There had only been two alternatives for them: either to develop into human beings by means of the spirit influx or to disappear altogether. With this, these animals, although belonging to the highest, maturest race, died out.
Let us try to follow the process of the unconscious spirit-germ slowly developing into a conscious human spirit, and notice the steps it takes to free itself from the successive shells and coverings which encase it.
This is not so very difficult, for the stages of development are externally discernible, and can be studied in those races of men which are still on the earth. The spirits of the most primitive men, to which so- called savages, Bushmen and Hottentots belong, have not been incarnated in matter for a shorter time than the others, but it is either that they have not striven diligently enough towards the Light, or that, after having developed to a certain degree of perfection, they have degenerated, either here on earth or in the ethereal world, and thus can only incarnate in the inferior surroundings in which we find them. Hence it is their own fault that they are still, or are again, on the same step of maturity as before, surrounded by an ethereal world of the same undesirable character.
The desire to see more than what is on its own level has always been an innate peculiarity of the spirit-germ, and has energetically manifested itself from the first stages of its development. It is the animating motive principle peculiar to the spirit which distinguishes it from other species in Creation. This gift, however, only allows the spirit to see what is on one step beyond or above the one he is on himself. Hence men of the aforesaid inferior races can only see beings of inferior order not far removed from themselves. There are mediums and those gifted with second sight in all races, no matter on what stage of development they may be.
Here I must mention what I have called attention to before: when I speak of second sight, I mean what the medium himself really sees. Of all that a medium thinks he sees and experiences not more than one quarter is really seen and experienced by him, and that one quarter is only on the next stage above his own in development. This circumstance is a great natural protection for him, as I have often said before. Hence people must not imagine that the medium or clairvoyant is necessarily as far advanced spiritually as one would be led to expect from the scenes he describes. For these purer, lighter spheres, spirits and events are shown to him by spirit guides and higher entities in living pictures. Clairvoyants deceive themselves and erroneously imagine that they have really seen and experienced what they depict. This explains the astonishment so often felt at the moral inferiority of so many mediums whose character in no wise harmonises with the experiences they describe.
Here I am only speaking of the narrow field of horizon-vision of mediums and clairvoyants. The rest is of no importance. The office of clairvoyants and mediums of all times has been to serve man with their gifts and help him upwards, not as guides but as tools. A medium could never be a leader, for he depends too much on vibrations and other influences. Mediums should be doors which open from time to time to help on development; they may be likened to the rungs of the ascending ladder. When, therefore, you consider that races on a lower level of spiritual development can only have an outlook on conditions of similar character to their own surroundings with but little scope in an upward direction, you will easily understand that they fear and worship demons. That is what their seers see and what their imaginations are capable of picturing. So much for a superficial survey — but at the risk of the general outline being less clear, I will go somewhat deeper in to the question.
The undeveloped or degenerate spirits of lower races of mankind are naturally either still or once more, spiritually deaf and blind. Such a man cannot see with his spiritual eye; nor has indeed any man up to the present day been able to see with his spiritual eyesight. The man on the lower stage cannot even see with the eye of his animistic body nor with that of his ethereal body. His faculty of seeing only embraces objects of physical substance.
This last order of vision the savage living in the wilderness has developed to a high state of excellence, being constantly at war with his fellow-man, with wild beasts and with the elements. His eye can distinguish material or physical matter of different degrees of density. Thus he sees phantoms. These are forms shaped and nourished by man's fear. They have no independent life but depend entirely on man's perception and feeling. They are attracted to or repulsed by man in obedience to the law of attraction of the homogeneous. These forms produced by fear are drawn to those who are full of fear; they seem to rush on to them, to attack them. These phantoms are connected with their author by the strands that nourish them and indirectly connect him with all others who fear thus one man's fear is increased by the collective fear of the others, and this can drive him to desperation, even to madness. The fearless, as is well known, always have the advantage. Is it, therefore, surprising that primitive peoples had so-called medicine-men and magicians? They came into existence in virtue of their gift of clairvoyance, for clairvoyants could see how these forms, which they believed to have independent life, were repulsed by concentration, by antics, wild dancing, and by courage generally. If their ideas seem preposterous and ridiculous to our way of thinking, it does not alter the fact that they were doing what was right, considering their horizon and power of comprehension. It is our ignorance which prevents our understanding them.
Among the successors of these medicine-men and magicians, there were naturally many who had no second sight, nor any psychic gifts whatever: they were merely successors, in office, because it had influence and levied contributions, at which men of inferior races grab just as greedily and unscrupulously as men of the cultured white races! These successors imitated the proceedings of their predecessors without understanding the meaning of what they were doing, and even made senseless additions of their own invention, to increase the effect on the bystanders, whose sympathy and admiration they sought to win. Being utterly ignorant and self-seeking, the whole class of these men fell into disrepute, they were considered to be crafty humbugs.
This explains how it is that we find demon worship in races on a lower state of development. They see something, and recognising that it is something of a different nature to themselves, they experience fear.
On the next step higher man's inner sight is again further developed. Either through what seers say, or what his inner perception tells him, further veils or coverings fall and the imprisoned human spirit pushes its way outward and upward. Thus he sees or is aware of more friendly forms and gradually demon-worship ceases. Man's normally developing spirit advanced into lighter and lighter spheres, so that, for example, the inner sight of the Greeks, the Romans and the Germans could see further than into the world of matter and penetrated into the next higher sphere, the realm of nature, where they saw the leaders, the lords ruling the elements. Specially gifted individuals even held intercourse with these conscious natural beings, with whom man has a certain affinity, seeing that beside his spiritual body he also has a part of the components of the animistic world. To see, to feel, and to hear beings belonging to the animistic world was the climax possible for people at that stage of development. It is natural that those people should look upon the mighty Lords of the elements, whose activity and nature were so different from those of man, as the highest possible beings, and should revere them as gods; and the latter really do live in fastnesses called Olympus and Valhalla.
What a man psychically experiences is always tinged with his personal perception and expression; it is thus that the Greeks, the Romans, and the Germans each portrayed the same Lords of the elements and all natural phenomena in harmony with their own particular views at that time. But in spite of the different colouring, they were the same gods. If today, for example, four or five really good clairaudients, assembled together, simultaneously hear a particular sentence from the Beyond, they will, in repeating it, only give its meaning, and will not repeat it in the same words. Each will use different terms; each has heard it differently because in hearing, he has put his own individuality into it. It is the same with music: every one hears and feels it differently from all the others, although the general character or tendency of the music is recognised by all to be the same. On all these very important, although secondary accessories in the intercourse between the men of this earth and the Cosmos I will report in detail later; today it would take us too far away from the subject- matter in hand.
Then, in time, other nations having a call came to the front. Nations which were further advanced in spiritual enlightenment, not to mention their intellectual development. With maturing experience they abandoned the limits of the world of nature (animism) and their inner sight and perception penetrated to the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom. With this naturally the old gods were dethroned and higher ideals took their place. Still even then, man did not advance so far as to be able to see spiritual phenomena. Here further progress was hindered by the constant growth of intellectual presumption. Buddha and just a few others succeeded, by renouncing the world, in being exceptions to this general standstill, and in continuing their spiritual development as was normally intended for all; they succeeded in attaining a certain degree of spiritual vision. This renunciation and retirement from the world for the purpose of spiritual development was only made necessary by the ever increasing dominion of one-sided intellect, so antagonistic in its influence to all spiritual progress. It was a measure of self-protection against the levelling-down influences on the spirit, which were becoming more and more prevalent and general. Where normal development is taking place, such renunciation is absolutely unnecessary — quite the contrary, for when a man has attained a certain maturity in spiritual development, he must put his knowledge to practical use or he will become lax and indolent which would quickly put a stop to further advancement. Standstill easily leads to retrogression.
Although the spiritual development of Buddha and the others had only reached a certain point and was not a complete success, still a great distance between them and ordinary men was felt to exist; though only normally developed human beings, they were looked on as envoys from God, whilst quite naturally through their spiritual advance a new conception arose.
Yet, though standing so far above the masses, these prominent spirits were only at the open door of the Spiritual Kingdom. They could perceive some things vaguely, but never anything distinctly. One thing, however, they clearly felt and inwardly perceived, that was that a mighty, conscious and consistent system of government directed all things from above, from a world or region they could not look into.
In conformity with this, their inner perception, they formed in their imagination one invisible God, without knowing any particulars concerning Him.
One can readily understand that they regarded this unknown God as the highest Spiritual Being, for they had attained to within sight of the spiritual region but were only on its threshold.
Thus it came to pass that this new idea of an invisible God hit on the truth as far as the fact was concerned, but the conception they formed of Him was altogether wrong. The human spirit never conceived God as He really is. They thought Him merely to be the highest Spiritual Being. This defect (the missing link) in the further development shows itself today in that many men persistently cling to the idea that they possess in themselves substance similar to the nature of Him they feel to be their God.
The fault lies in the standstill that occurred in spiritual development.
Had this development continued, maturing mankind would not have jumped straight from the old gods belonging to the world of nature to the One invisible God, but would first have come to perceive the Primeval Beings, the spiritual beings that God first created, who stand above the leaders of the elements, whose seat is the Castle of the Holy Grail, the highest fastness of the spiritual world. Men in the beginning would have regarded these as gods, until they had advanced so far that they would not only have inwardly perceived these spiritual beings, the beings created in the image of God, but would have been able to hear them. These would have told them of the One God who exists outside Creation. Had their perception then been directed in this way, they would in a further stage of development have been capable of joyfully welcoming a Divine Message, brought to them by an envoy from God Himself, from Divine spheres, spheres outside Creation, therefore impenetrable to their spiritual vision.
That would have been the normal course that events should have taken. Meantime development remained stationary on the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom from which it even quickly receded on account of man's faults.
Then God in His mercy sent His mighty envoy with a Message from above. His Messenger incarnated as Jesus of Nazareth. He came to enlighten the blind, to help, and save from destruction those who were seeking, but it proved that they could not understand what he came to teach, and, therefore, He only required of them to believe and trust in His Word.
It was a desperate task. Christ could not even tell them all He wanted to say. Therefore, He did not speak of many things, for instance, reincarnation, and so forth. Men of that day were too backward spiritually to understand. And He said sorrowfully to His disciples: “I would say many things unto you, but you would not understand.” Thus even His disciples did not understand Him; a great many things they did not understand.
And if Christ knew then on earth that even His disciples did not understand Him and told them so, it is very evident that in the transmission of His Word later on, many errors crept in to which man of the present day pertinaciously clings. Because of mankind's being spiritually so backward, Christ only required them to believe His Word, but their faith was to be fully alive and active and develop into conviction. Where Christ's teaching was listened to and obeyed, spiritual development set in; again this in time would have turned belief into conviction of the truth of what Christ said or taught.
For this reason the Son of Man will exact conviction, not faith, from those also who profess to believe in and to obey Christ's Divine Message, which is one and the same as the Message of the Holy Grail, for he who cannot turn his faith into conviction, has not attained the maturity which is necessary to enable him to enter the Kingdom of the Spirit, God's heavenly Kingdom — Paradise. Such a one will be cast out without mercy.
The keenest intellectual knowledge will not find him a private entrance through which he may slip in. He must remain behind and be lost forever more.
That human beings in this part of Creation should still be on the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom (indeed the greater number far below it) is owing to their neither wishing nor wanting to advance, for in their presumption they believe themselves possessed of higher knowledge — an attitude that is sufficient to put a stop to all natural, normal advance. They will no doubt come to perceive this in time.
The different religious cults of mankind do not originate in man's creative imagination by any means; they simply demonstrate different sections of life in the invisible world. Even the medicine-man of a negro or red Indian tribe is an absolutely justified being on the low stage of development of that people. That humbugs and scoundrels should be among them does not discredit this fact.
Demons, wood-nymphs and sylphs, together with the so- called old gods, still exist today in the same haunts and carry on their work in the same way as they did of yore. Neither were the high fastnesses of the great leaders of the elements, Olympus and Valhalla, ever imaginary: they were really perceived by seers.
What, however, seers were not able to see, mankind having come to a standstill in development, were the pure spirits, the beings God created in His own image. They also have their seat on high, which is called the Gralsburg (the Castle of the Holy Grail), the highest residence in the Kingdom of the Spirit and, therefore, in all Creation.
As man had only got to the threshold of the Spiritual Kingdom, he could only get knowledge of this Castle by inspiration, for his spiritual insight was not matured sufficiently for him to see it.
All is living; man alone who considers himself so far advanced, has turned aside and is now again retrogressing. It would be quite wrong to think that possibly on a higher state of development yet another change might be made in the conception of God taught by Christ, and in my Message from the Holy Grail, it will remain, nothing further or higher exists.
Although man cannot yet enter into the Spiritual Kingdom and develop there, yet every man can mature so far that his inner perception will convince him of this new fact. When he has got so far, he will be conscious of being clothed in the power of God, and he will then be able to do the great things that it was his mission to do from the beginning. Such a man would never imagine that he possessed divinity in himself. That mad error is only the stamp of immaturity.
The greatest modesty and humility and willingness to serve show real understanding, and these are the qualities that Christ's pure doctrine always demands.
Not till missionaries, preachers and teachers are thoroughly acquainted with the natural process of development in all Creation, which means a precise and accurate knowledge of the laws of God's Will, will they be able to claim real, living, spiritual success.
Unfortunately every religion is but the rigid, lifeless, outward form of some meaningless and dull doctrine, which it tries hard to retain and foster. After the necessary coming change, this inertia will be animated, the kernel will burst its shell, the cold, lifeless, rigid form, and will break forth jubilant and eager, impetuously overrunning the whole world and all its peoples.
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*) Lecture No. 81: Father, forgive them . . .
**) Lecture No. 7: Creation of Man.
