of the Venus, Mercury, and Vulcan
Initiates.

At a certain time the Leader of the Christ Initiates found Himself
isolated with a few associates, to whom He was able to impart, to a very
limited extent only, the mysteries of the cosmos. For those associates
were individuals who were endowed with the natural ability to permit the
least possible degree of separation between the physical and etheric
bodies. They were altogether, at that time, the best possible individuals
for promoting the further progress of humanity. Their experiences in the
realm of sleep had become rarer and rarer. The spiritual world was more
and more closed to them. Therefore they were also lacking in the
comprehension of all that had been revealed to man in ancient times when
he was not in his physical, but only in his etheric body. Those
immediately surrounding the leader of the Christ oracle were the farthest
advanced with regard to the union of the physical body with that part of
the etheric body which had previously been separated from it. This union
came about in the human being little by little, as a result of the
transformation which had taken place in the Atlantean continent and the
earth in general.

The physical and etheric bodies of man fitted more and more into each
other. Hence the memory lost its former unlimited capacity, and the human
life of thought began. That part of the etheric which was united with the
physical body transformed the physical brain into an actual instrument of
thought, and man from this time, first really felt his "ego" within his
physical body. Self-consciousness awoke. This was at first the case with
only a limited number of the human race, pre-eminently with the associates
of the leader of the Christ oracle. The bulk of humanity, scattered over
Europe, Asia, and Africa, retained in varying degrees the remnant of the
old conditions of consciousness. Hence they had direct experience of the
supersensible world.

The associates of the Christ Initiate were people of highly developed
intelligence but of less experience in supersensible spheres than any of
their contemporaries. The Initiate journeyed with them to a country in
central Asia. He wished them to be guarded as much as possible from
contact with those of less developed consciousness. He instructed his
followers along the lines of the mysteries which had been revealed to him
and especially did he do this with their descendants. Thus he gathered
round him a