- 1920-1926: Booklet Gralsblätter, Grail Message 1926 edition
- 1926-1931: Booklet Der Ruf and Gralsblätter, Grail Message 1931 edition
- 1931-1938: Reverberations of the Grail Message, periodical Die Stimme
- 1938-1941: Revision of the Grail Message, final authorised edition
- Summary
- Annex
Chapter 01
Already from 1920 onwards, Oskar Ernst Bernhardt began to hold and commit to paper lectures addressing questions that inwardly occupied people in his environment.
In the years 1923/24, he published lectures and Questions and Answers, under the name Abd-ru-shin (Abdruschin), in seven individual booklets, the Gralsblätter Series 1, issued by the Publishers of the Grail Folios, Bad Heilbrunn, the place of residence of the Bernhardt family at that time.
As the Author of the lectures of his Grail Message, Oskar Ernst Bernhardt used the name Abd-ru-shin, meaning Servant (Son) of the Light. The first spelling of the name was Abdruschin, but also the form Abd-ru-shin was already being used in the Gralsblätter, even though rarely. From the mid-thirties this was the spelling generally used.
Gralsblätter Series 1
Titles of the lectures, as well as Questions and Answers, that later appeared in the form of lectures:
- BOOKLET 1
- What seek ye?
- Live! (later title: Awake!)
- The Great Secret
(later title: Silence) - Redemption (later title: Ascent)
- BOOKLET 2
- Responsibility
- Fate
- The creation of man
- Man in Creation
- Hereditary sin
- The Son of God and the Son of Man
- God
- The inner voice
Questions and Answers on: the Religion of Love
- BOOKLET 3
- The Redeemer
- The Mystery of Birth
- Is occult training advisable?
- Spiritism
- Earthbound
- Is sexual continence necessary or advisable?
- Questions and Answers on, amongst others: The Immaculate Conception
- BOOKLET 4
- The final judgement
- The conflict
- Thought-forms
- Morality
- Marriage
- Prayer
- BOOKLET 5
- Man and his Free Will
- Modern Psychic Science
- Wrong Courses
Questions and Answers amongst others:
The Virgin Mary in the prophecy
- BOOKLET 6
- Cast all your guilt upon him
- Before Abraham was, I am
- The crime of hypnotism
- Astrology
- Symbolism in the fate of man
- Faith
- Earthly possessions
- Death
- Miracles
- Baptism
- BOOKLET 7
- The Holy Grail
- The Mystery Lucifer
- The regions of Darkness, and Damnation
- The regions of Light, and Paradise
- World events
- Man and animal
- Questions and Answers on, amongst others: Science and Mankind
In 1926 Abd-ru-shin combined the majority of his lectures, until then issued in the Gralsblätter Series 1, into book form published by the Grail Folios Publishing company Oskar Ernst Bernhardt, Tutzing, under the title
In the Light of Truth – The New Grail Message by Abdruschin.
This edition of the Grail Message (with the table of contents appended) was then, and subsequently, known as the small edition or purple (lilac) edition, or also as the Tutzing Edition (the place of residence of the Bernhardt family at that time and the headquarters of the publishing company) of the Grail Message.
Small edition, Purple (Lilac) edition or Tutzing edition
From booklet 1 of the Gralsblätter Series 1, only the lecture What seek Ye? was published in the 1926 edition of the Grail Message. The lectures Live! (later title in the 1931 edition, and the final authorised edition: Awake!), The great secret (later title: Silence) and Redemption (later title Ascent) were not included in this edition, nor did Abd-ru-shin consider the lecture Before Abraham was, I am.
Questions and Answers from the aforementioned booklets now appeared as lectures; for example, The Religion of Love and The separation between mankind and science. The lectures Spirit and The development of Creation concluded the 1926 edition of the Grail Message. They had not previously been released. However, in Booklet 7 of the Grail Folios, the last of Series 1, there was already a pointer to a subsequent lecture on Creation.
In particular, this reworking of Questions and Answers into lectures showed the interplay between the author and his readers and listeners. Their understanding (or lack of understanding), their questions and suggestions often prompted further lectures. From the beginning it was the spiritual, inner constitution of man that was the key for the form of the Message to be mediated. This process continued until the new compilation of the lectures − during the time of the author’s sojourn in Kipsdorf − in the final authorised edition.
Thus in compiling the 1926 edition of the Grail Message, Abd-ru-shin in no way felt bound to the previous sequence of his lectures in the Grail Folios, but instead indeed made use of the possibility to compile his lectures as he saw fit and necessary at that point in time.