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The Rudolf Steiner Archive

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The Fifth Gospel III
GA 148

The three volumes of GA 148 contains all the lectures given by Rudolf Steiner under the title “The Fifth Gospel”, with the exception of the lectures in Nuremberg, November 9 and 11, 1913, and Bremen, January 11, 1914, of which no transcripts exist; and the lecture in Hannover, February 7, 1914, of which only inadequate notes are available.

In various lectures in this volume, Rudolf Steiner points out that further research results belong to this Fifth Gospel, which he has presented in other places. A kind of synopsis of the various parts of the Akasha research that come into consideration here is contained in the lecture Paris, May 27, 1914, in 'Preliminary Stages to the Mystery of Golgotha', CW 152.

Regarding the wording of the macrocosmic Lord's Prayer:

In the editions of the Kristiania lectures published before 1975, the prayer was given as beginning with “AUM, Amen...”. This “AUM” is no longer found because an examination of all the available documents has shown that it does not appear in any of the numerous lecture transcriptions, nor in the various handwritten records, nor in Rudolf Steiner's notebook entries. However, according to the transcript available, the prayer began with “AUM” in Rudolf Steiner's address at the laying of the foundation stone of the Dornach building on September 20, 1913, and it is also printed as such in the “Instructions for Esoteric Training”, GA 245. The “AUM” is thus connected with the macrocosmic Lord's Prayer and was also spoken by the speaking choir of the Goetheanum under Marie Steiner and added by her in the first print of the Kristiania lectures in 1948. For the reasons given above, it was not included [by the Rudolf Steiner Verlag] in the present [German] edition.

It should also be mentioned that the following comment can be found in unpublished notes from the lecture on the Lord's Prayer given in Berlin on January 28, 1907: “The word Amen is distorted from an ancient mystery word.” However, the same thing has either not been said or not recorded by the person taking the notes. But it can only be the “AUM”, because: “Aum is the original of Amen... In the dim and distant past, Amen meant almost the same as Aum,” as stated in H. P. Blavatsky's “Secret Doctrine”, volume 3, p. 450 of the German edition. — On a note (no. 3147), Rudolf Steiner explains the “AUM”:

I affirm myself to me: A
I affirm myself to humanity: U
I affirm myself to life: M

I.First Berlin LectureOctober 21, 1913
II.Second Berlin LectureNovember 4, 1913
III.Third Berlin LectureNovember 18, 1913
IV.Hamburg LectureNovember 16, 1913
V.First Stuttgart LectureNovember 22, 1913
VI.Second Stuttgart LectureNovember 23, 1913
VII.First Munich LectureDecember 8, 1913
VIII.Second Munich LectureDecember 10, 1913