Donate books to help fund our work. Learn more→

The Rudolf Steiner Archive

a project of Steiner Online Library, a public charity

The Mystery of the Trinity
Part 2: The Mission of the Spirit
GA 214

30 August 1922, Oxford

IV. The Other Side of Human Existence

Since we can come together so seldom and would like to include as much as possible in these lectures, it could easily happen that too much is included. Nevertheless, today, from a certain point of view, I would still like to try to characterize for you what could be called the other side of human existence on earth. I would then like to relate that to the significance of a deeper spiritual knowledge of our time.

How much do we finally know about our existence if we use only our senses and the intellect bound up with those senses as our source of knowledge? Ordinary sense-consciousness only allows us to spend the waking part of our existence in full consciousness. The spiritual powers that lead the world did not add the sleeping state to human existence for nothing. From falling asleep to waking up a very great deal happens to the human being. Indeed, most of what the spirit has to effect through human beings in earthly existence is actually achieved during the sleep state.

During the waking state, all that can occur on earth is what we can undertake with ourselves and the things around us. But what higher, spiritual beings undertake with the human soul in human evolution, in order to bring the soul to complete development within earthly existence—this happens during the sleep state. We should not lose sight of the fact that modern initiation knowledge can look closely at the significance of the events that occur when the human being is asleep. Of course, these events occur not only for initiates but for all people; the development of all human beings depends upon them. The initiate can only draw attention to these sleep state events. However, every human being who gives any thought at all to the meaning of earth existence should increasingly feel and sense the significance of what occurs while he sleeps.

Today I would simply like to describe all that plays into the sleeping state of the human being. As you know, when a person falls asleep we characterize what happens externally by saying that the astral body and the I are loosened from the physical and etheric bodies. The I and the astral body are then in the spiritual world; they no longer permeate the physical and etheric bodies as they did in the state between waking and falling asleep. When we look at what happens with human beings in the sleeping state our attention is drawn to the various ways they are connected to the earth during waking. To begin with, we are connected to the earth through our senses—we perceive and know the appearances of the various kingdoms of nature. However, we are also connected with the earth through what we do unconsciously while awake. For example, we breathe—for the most part, unconsciously—and the entire earth, if I may put it this way, plays into the air we breathe. Innumerable substances dispersed in a very fine state are present in the air we breathe. Precisely because they are in this finely dispersed state they have an extraordinarily significant effect when inhaled into the human organism. What enters the human being when he perceives through his senses enters consciously. But a great deal also enters the human being unconsciously when he is awake. And this unconscious element has more substance than what enters through the abstract, ideal state of perceiving and thinking. The world around enters us in a more substantial form through our breathing.

If you would only take into consideration just how dependent the human organism is upon everything that it takes in with the various substances of earthly nourishment, then you would be able to acknowledge that there is much that affects us in our waking state. But this fact is of less interest to us today. We are much more concerned with what is working on the human being in his sleeping state. The point here is this: Just as we see external earthly substances connected with us during our waking state, so too, when we enter the sleeping state, we enter into a certain connection with the entire cosmos.

That is not to say that we should imagine a human being taking on the magnitude of the cosmos every night with his or her astral body—that would be an exaggeration—but we do grow into the cosmos every night. Just as we are connected here on earth during the day with the plants, the minerals, and the air, so too we are connected during the night with the movements of the planets and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From our falling asleep until our waking the sky full of stars becomes our world just as the earth is our world in the waking state.

Now, to begin with, we can distinguish various spheres through which we pass between falling asleep and waking. The first sphere we pass through is that in which the human I and the human astral body—that is, the human soul when asleep—feels itself connected with the movements of the planets. When waking in the morning and, as it were, having slipped into our physical body we can say that we have in us our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain. Likewise when we enter the sleep state we must say that in the first sphere with which we come into contact after falling asleep—which is also the sphere we are again in contact with just before awakening—in this sphere we have within us the forces of planetary movement.

It is not that we take the entire movements of the planets into ourselves every night. But what we carry within us as an image or copy is a small picture, in which the movements of the planets are actually copied, reflected. And this is different with every human being. We can say that, when falling asleep, every human being experiences the movements of the planets. Everything that goes on as movement “out there” in the space of the universe between the planets is experienced inwardly in a kind of globe of planets in the astral body. That is the human being's first experience after falling asleep.

Do not ask, my dear friends, what this has to do with you. Do not say that you do not perceive this. You may not see it with your eyes nor hear it with your ears. But in the moment you fall asleep, at that moment, that part of your astral body that during waking permeates and is a part of your heart—that part becomes an eye. We see with this organ, which I will call a “heart-eye.” When we enter the sleep state this organ begins to perceive what is happening in the way I have just described. This heart-eye really does perceive what the human being experiences there—even if the perception is, for present-day humanity, very dim and obscure.

What we experience there is perceived by this heart-eye in such a way that, in the time after falling asleep when the physical and etheric bodies are lying there in bed, this heart-eye looks back at us. The I and the astral body look back at the physical and etheric bodies with the heart-eye. What the I and the astral body experience in their body inwardly as a picture of the movements of the planets, radiates back to the heart eye from their own etheric body. The I and the astral body see the mirror image of the planetary movement coming out of their own etheric body.

Upon awakening, because of the way the human being is presently constituted, we immediately forget the dim consciousness provided by our heart-eye during the night. This consciousness is dim and, at the most, can only be found echoing in certain dreams; in their inner flexibility these dreams still have something of the planetary movements. As we approach wakefulness, images from our lives settle into these dreams which, fundamentally speaking, are actually dependent upon the movements of the planets. The images enter at this point because the astral body is being submerged into the etheric body, which preserves our memories of earthly life.

The following is a specific example: You wake up in the morning; you have once again gone through the spheres of planetary movement. Let us say you have experienced there a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus because such an event is connected with your destiny, your karma. This could happen. You could have experienced a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus. If you could lift what was experienced there between Jupiter and Venus into the light of your day consciousness, then much concerning your human abilities would be clear to you. For those abilities have come from the cosmos, not from the earth. How you are related to the cosmos determines how you are gifted, how you are good, or at least how you are inclined to good or to evil. You would be able to see what Jupiter and Venus discussed with one another, and what you perceived with your heart-eye. (I could just as well say heart-ear, for it is hard to distinguish such things.) But this is all forgotten because it has been perceived so very dimly. As this exchange between Jupiter and Venus continues within you it causes corresponding movements in your astral body and something else, from your etheric body, mixes in—for example, what you experienced around noon when you were seventeen, or when you were twenty-five years old, say, in Oxford or Manchester or anywhere. Such earthly images are mixed with the cosmic experiences. The pictures in dreams do have a certain significance; but the pictures arc not what is of primary importance. They are, so to speak, the fabric woven to clothe cosmic events.

Concerning the experience that thus comes into existence for the perception of the heart, we can say that it is bound up with a certain anxiety. For almost everyone there are feelings of a spiritual kind of anxiety mixed in with this experience, especially when what was experienced cosmically shines back and echoes from the human etheric body. For example, this anxiety arises for the perception of the heart if what has been brought about through the special relationship between Jupiter and Venus radiates back with a ray—which would say a lot for your heart perception—radiates back from the human forehead, and if this ray is then mixed with the sound and light from another ray, say, from the region just below the heart. This perception of anxiety leads every soul not entirely hardened to such perceptions to actually say to itself in sleep: The mists of the cosmos have taken me into themselves. It really feels like you have become as thin as the mists of the world and are swimming like a cloud, just a part of cosmic fog, within the larger mists of the cosmos. This is the experience immediately after falling asleep.

Then out of this anxiety, out of this feeling of one's self as just another mist within the cosmic fog, something comes into the human soul that could be called devotion to the divine that is weaving through the world. Those are the two basic feelings that come over the human being in the first sphere after falling asleep: first that I am within the mists of the world, and then that I would like to rest in the bosom of God so as to be safe from dissolution in these mists. These feelings must be carried by the perception of the heart when we again awaken in the morning and enter into our physical and etheric bodies. If this experience were not carried over into life then all the substances we take into our bodies for nourishment the next day, or whatever else our metabolism may process—even if we starve, for then the substances are taken from our bodies—these substances would assume solely their earthly character and would thus bring about disorder in the whole human organism.

It is simply a fact that for the human waking condition the significance of sleep is enormous. In this epoch of earth's development man is still spared the task of having to carry the divine from sleep into waking. Because of the way human beings in the present age are constituted they could hardly muster the strength to carry these things in full consciousness from the other side of existence to this side of existence.

After the experiences connected with the planetary movements, the human being goes into the next sphere. In doing so we do not leave the first; it remains for the perception of the heart. The next sphere is much more complicated and is perceived with that part of the astral body that, during the day, during waking, permeates and is a part of the solar plexus, permeates and is a part of our entire limb system. The solar plexus and limb system of the human being, that part of the astral body that penetrates and permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs—this part of the astral body perceives what happens in the night in the next sphere.

In the next sphere we feel the forces in our astral bodies that originate in the constellations of the zodiac. These forces come in two forms, the first consisting of those forces which come directly from the constellations of the zodiac, the other form arising when these forces from the zodiac pass through the earth. It makes a very big difference whether the zodiacal signs are above or below the earth.

In this sphere the human being perceives with what I would like to call “sun perception” because that part of the astral body connected with the solar plexus and the limb system is involved in the perception. I would like to call this perceiving part of the astral body the “eye of the sun” or the “sun-eye.” Through it we become aware of our entire relationship to the zodiac and the movements of the planets. In this sphere the picture is enlarged, we grow more into the picture of the cosmos.

This experience is again mirrored to us by our own physical and etheric bodies, which we are now looking at. What comes forth from our body every night is brought into connection with the entire cosmos, with the movements of the planets and the constellations of the fixed stars. The experience with the fixed stars may occur for some people half an hour after falling asleep, for some after a longer period and for others very shortly after falling asleep. A person experiences himself in all twelve constellations. The experiences with the fixed stars are extraordinarily complicated.

My dear friends, I believe you could have visited the most important regions of the earth as a world traveler and still you would not have had the sum of experiences that your sun-eye gathers for you from a single constellation of the zodiac. Because the people who lived in ancient times still had powerful dreamlike powers of clairvoyance and perceived, in a dreamlike way, much of what I have been describing, all of this was relatively less confusing to them. Today, a person's sun-eye can hardly come to any kind of clarity—and we must come to clarity even if we forget it in the day. We can hardly come to any kind of clarity concerning what we experience in twelve-fold complexity during the night unless we take into our hearts and minds what Christ wanted to become for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Simply having felt what it means for the life of the earth that Christ went through the mystery of Golgotha, simply thinking about Christ in our ordinary life on earth brings such a tinge, such a hue, into our astral body, by the indirect path through the physical and etheric bodies, that Christ can become our leader through the zodiac from falling asleep to waking.

Once again the human being wonders: Will I be lost in the multitude of stars and their activities? But if we can look back to thoughts, feelings, and will impulses turned toward Christ during our daytime waking state, then Christ becomes a leader who helps us to bring order into the complex and confusing events of this sphere.

Only when we observe the other side of life do we realize the full significance of Christ for the earth life of humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha. In the present, ordinary civilization, there is actually no one else who understands what Christ must still become for the life of earth. All these things, which have not yet been experienced by many people, are wrongly explained. Only when you know what I have just explained can you understand the various ways in which people who have not yet been touched by the Christ event bring their nightly experiences while asleep into waking day consciousness. When we have gone through the misty existence in the sleep state and entered the second sphere we stand before a complicated and confusing world. Only when Christ steps forward as a spiritual sun and becomes our leader is complex confusion resolved into a kind of harmonious understanding.

This point is important because our karma appears, actually appears to our sun-eye, the moment we step into this sphere of whirling confusion, this sphere of planetary movement and of the fixed star constellations of the zodiac. All human beings perceive their karma, but only in the sleeping state. The afterimage or afterglow of this perception slips into our waking state through our feelings.

Much of the condition of soul that we can find in ourselves—if, to some extent, we strive for self-knowledge—is a very dim echo of this zodiacal experience. People can receive strength for their daily lives because Christ appeared as the leader and led them from Aries through Taurus, Gemini, and so forth, and explained the world to them in the night. What we experience in this sphere is nothing less significant than this: Christ becomes our leader through the complex and confusing events in the zodiac; he stands there as the being who leads us, who leads us from constellation to constellation, in order for us to take into ourselves, in an orderly fashion, the spiritual forces that we once again need—and they are, indeed, ordered—for our waking life.

Fundamentally speaking, this is what the human being experiences every night between falling asleep and waking. He experiences this because he is related to the cosmos as a soul and spirit. Just as he is related to the earth through his etheric and physical bodies, he is also related to the cosmos with his soul, with his spirit and his astral body. When the human being has separated from his physical and etheric bodies and so grown out into the cosmic world, he then feels within himself a strong kinship to the world he is entering. He feels this kinship in his experience of the pictures reflected back to him from what has been left lying in bed. He feels a strong tendency to move out beyond the zodiac with his inner life. But this he cannot do between birth and death because another element mixes into all these experiences during the time when the human being is asleep, another element which, compared with what comes from the planets and the fixed stars, is of an entirely different nature. This is the element of the moon.

During the night the element of the moon, even during the new moon, tinges to a certain extent the entire cosmos with a special something that is like a substance. This tingeing is also experienced by us. But we experience it in such a way that these moon forces hold us back within the world of the zodiac and lead us once again to waking. With a dimly conscious awareness we already experience this moon element in the first sphere. But during the second sphere we experience the secrets of birth and death in an especially powerful way. With an organ lying even deeper than the heart-eye and the sun-eye, with an organ that is, so to speak, apportioned to the whole human being, we actually experience every night how our soul-spirit being descends—that is, has descended—from the world of soul and spirit and has entered into physical existence through birth; and we experience how the body gradually goes over into death. The human being is actually always dying. In every moment he only subdues death until death then really occurs as a single event. But in the moment we experience how the soul, so to speak, goes through earthly nature, bodily nature, in this same moment we also experience—and through the very same forces—our connection with the rest of humanity.

You have to remember this: Not even the most insignificant encounter, insignificant relationship—or even the most decisive—is without a connection to our total destiny, to the total karma of the human being. All our involvement with other human beings, all human relationships, which have, of course, an intimate connection with the mystery of birth and death, appear, I would like to say, before our spiritual eye at this point during the second sphere. This comprehension of karma happens whether the souls with whom we have ever had a connection in past lives, or with whom we now, in this earth life, have a relationship, are presently in the spiritual world or are on the earth. We feel ourselves at this point to be in touch with and living within our total life destiny.

This experience is connected with the fact that all the other forces, those of the planets and the fixed stars, want to draw us out into the cosmos while the moon wants to put us again into the world of people, basically tearing us out of the cosmos. The moon has forces that are actually opposed to the forces of the sun as well as the forces of the stars. It constitutes our kinship to the earth. For this reason every night, in a certain sense, it brings us back from the experiences of the zodiac into the planetary experiences and once again into earthly experiences, in that we are brought back into the physical body of a human being. From a certain point of view this is the difference between sleeping and dying: When a human being merely falls asleep he or she maintains a strong connection to these moon forces. Every night, in a certain sense, these moon forces also point out to us again the meaning of our life on earth. But this can only be the case because we receive everything reflected back from the etheric body.

In death we pull the etheric body out of the physical body; the backward view of memories from the last life on earth then appears. For a short while, a few days, the etheric body permeates the cloud of which I have spoken. As I said, every night we experience ourselves as a cloud, as a cloud of mists in a world of fog. But this cloud of mists that we ourselves are, this cloud is without our etheric body during the night. When we die the cloud is, to begin with, in the first days after our death, with our etheric body.

Then the etheric body gradually dissolves into the cosmos and our memory disappears. And now, in contrast to what we had earlier when our experience of the stars was only radiated back from the human being, who remained lying in bed, now, after death, we have an immediate, inner experience of the movements of the planets and the fixed star constellations.

If you read my book Theosophy33Rudolf Steiner, Theosophy: An Introduction to the Supersensible Knowledge of the World and the Destination of Man, (Hudson, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1986). you will find, described from a certain point of view, what these experiences after death consist of. I describe what appears as if surrounding the human being between death and a new birth. But just as the world would have no color if there were no eyes in your body, no sounds if you were without ears, just as you could not breathe without lungs and a heart, so too, after death you would not be able to perceive what I have described as the soul world and spirit land, your environment in the spiritual world, unless you had Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so forth. That is then your organism: with your cosmic organism you experience all of this. The moon can no longer bring you back because it could only bring you back to an etheric body; but your etheric body has been dissolved into the cosmos.

As I described the process in Theosophy, there is still so much left of the power bequeathed to the human being by the moon that after death we must remain a while in the soul world. We keep looking at the earth intently, until we go over into what I described as spirit land. There we experience ourselves as being beyond the zodiac, beyond the realm of the fixed stars. In this way we live through the time between death and a new birth. I could describe the details of this entry into, and life within, the spiritual world—the entry made every night. But the concepts I use for this description must not be pushed too far; these things can hardly be expressed with earthly concepts. Nevertheless, I can describe it to you as follows.

Picture a meadow and picture flowers in this meadow; from every blossom in the meadow and on the trees, a kind of spiral goes forth unwinding upward into cosmic space. The spirals contain the forces through which the cosmos regulates and effects the growth of plants on the earth. For plants grow not only out of their seeds; plants grow out of the cosmic, helical forces that surround the earth. These forces are also present in winter, also in the desert, and also when there are no plants present. In order to enter into the movements of the planets every night we must use these helical forces as a ladder. Using the ladder-like quality of the spiraling forces of the plants we climb up into the movements of the planetary world. With the force that the plant uses to grow upward, a force coming forth from its roots (you see, it has to apply a force in order to grow upwards) with this force the human being is carried into the second sphere that I described. When it comes to those experiences I have described for you—when we are beset by a certain anxiety and say: I am a figure of mists in the universal cosmic fog, I must rest in the bosom of God—when we consider these experiences with respect to conditions on the earth, then, again, the soul can say to itself: I rest in all of that which lays like a cosmic blessing over a field of grain when it blossoms, which lays over a meadow when it blossoms. Everything that sinks down to the plants lives and expresses itself in the spiraling lines of force, is, fundamentally speaking, the bosom of God, the bosom of God enlivened and active within itself. Therein the human being feels embedded in every period of sleep.

The moon leads us back again to our animal nature while the forces of plants constantly strive to carry us further out into the universe. In this way we are connected with the cosmos. In this way the cosmos works between our falling asleep and our waking. And the heart-eye, sun-eye, and human eye go through the night feeling things in a way similar to the way, say, that we experience any kind of relationship to another human being. But we are not told this, neither do we think this out by ourselves, but rather the plants tell us this, the plants, which give us a ladder to climb up into the planetary world where we are then forced out into the world of the zodiac.

One could have an experience like this: I have a relationship to a particular person; the lilies tell me, the roses tell me, because the forces of the roses, the forces of the lilies, the forces of the tulips have driven me precisely to this place. The entire earth becomes a kind of “book of life” that enlightens us about the human world, the world in which we live, the world of human souls.

The people of various ages and epochs have had these experiences in different ways. If you look toward old India you will see that those wanting to discover something through the sleeping state, through a relationship with the world of the stars, wanted information only from those fixed stars and constellations that happened to be above the earth at any given time. They never wanted connections to the constellations below, the constellations whose forces had to go through the earth. Just take a look at the Buddha posture or at the posture of any sage whatsoever from the Orient, who strives for spiritual wisdom through exercises! Look at how he crosses his legs one over the other and sits on them. He assumes this posture because he wants only his upper body and what is connected to the stars above to become active within. He does not want what also works through him through the sun-eye, what works through the limb system, to become active within. He wants the forces of the limb system more or less excluded. Therefore, you can see, in the position of every Oriental striving for wisdom, how he wants to develop a relationship only to what is above the earth. He wants only to develop those connections leading to knowledge in the soul realm.

The world would have remained incomplete if this had remained the only kind of search for knowledge, if, in order to acquire knowledge, humankind had been restricted to the Buddha posture alone. Already, during the age of the Greeks, a human being had to enter into a relationship with the forces encountered when he develops in the direction of those constellations that, at any given time, are below the earth. This tendency is hinted at in a wonderfully intimate way in Greek tales. You are always told of a kind of initiation in Greek tales. When it is said that certain heroes in Greece have descended into the underworld, that they have experienced initiation, this means that they have become acquainted with those forces that work through the earth. They have come to know the chthonic powers.

Every age has its special task. In order to teach other people, the Oriental initiate learned primarily about what was to be found before birth, before conception actually, that is, what lay in the soul-spiritual realms human beings live through before descending into the earthly world. What approaches us in such a magnificent way in Oriental writings and in the Oriental worldview comes to us because people back then could look into the life human beings led before they descended to the earth.

In Greece people began to know the forces that depended upon the earth itself: Uranus and Gaia. Gaia, the earth, stands at the beginning of Greek cosmology. The Greek always sought to find out about, to know, the mysteries of the earth itself, mysteries that were, of course, also cosmic mysteries that worked through the earth. The Greeks wanted to know about the mysteries of the underworld. In this way the Greeks developed a proper cosmology.

Consider how little knowledge of history (as we call it) the Greeks had. Yet the Oriental never had any at all. The Greeks were far more interested in what was going on when the earth was being formed in the cosmos and then later when the inner powers of the earth, the Titanic forces, fought against other powers. The Greeks pointed to these gigantic, powerful spiritual forces that form the foundation for earthly conditions and in which humanity is so entangled. It is incumbent upon us in the new age to understand history and be able to point out that humanity has come out of an old, dreamlike clairvoyant condition, that we have now arrived at an intellectually colored consciousness that is merely tinged with the mythical. We must now work our way out of this consciousness and once again into a seeing into the spiritual world.

This present epoch marks the transition to a conscious experience of the spiritual world that can only be achieved with effort. For this purpose we must, above all, look at history. We have, therefore, in our anthroposophical movement, again and again reviewed the various historical epochs from our time all the way back to the time when human beings still received knowledge from higher, supra-earthly beings. We have followed the historical development of humanity.

The external knowledge of our time views this historical development of man in a completely abstract way. What abstract lines are drawn when people today develop knowledge of history! Ancient peoples followed a history still clothed in mythos, a history that included nature and its events. We can no longer do that. But people have not yet acquired a faculty that would lead them to ask: What was it like when the first human beings received wisdom from higher beings? And what was it like as that wisdom gradually faded away? What was it like when a God himself descended in order to incarnate in a human body through the mystery of Golgotha, in order to fulfill a grand, cosmic mission with the earth, so that the earth could receive its meaning?

The whole of nineteenth and twentieth century theology suffers from the inability to understand the spiritual significance of Christ. You see, modern initiation science must bring this understanding. There must be a modern science of initiation that can penetrate once again into the spiritual world, that can speak once again about birth and death, about life between birth and death and life between death and a new birth, and about the life of the human soul in sleep just as we here today have spoken to one another. Once again it must be possible for man to know about this spiritual, other side of existence. All of humankind's progress in the future will be possible only if human beings also become acquainted with this other side of existence.

Once people turned to the upper worlds alone for their knowledge. This can easily be observed in the posture of the Buddha. Later people came to their cosmology by reading it out of the development of the earth; they were initiated in the Greek chthonic mysteries, as passages in the Greek myths recount again and again. Now that the secrets of heaven and the secrets of earth have been studied in the old science of initiation we need a modern science of initiation that can move back and forth between heaven and earth, that can ask heaven when it wants to know something about earth and that can ask the earth when it wants to know something about heaven.

If I may say so in all modesty, this is how the questions are posed and given preliminary answers in my book An Outline of Occult Science.34Rudolf Steiner, An Outline Of Occult Science, vol. 13 in the Collected Works, repr. (Spring Valley, NY: Anthroposophic Press, 1989). The attempt is made there to describe what the modern human being needs, just as the ancient Orientals needed the mysteries of heaven and the Greeks needed the mysteries of the earth. In our present age we should observe how things stand with this modern initiation and its relationship to modern man.

To characterize briefly the tasks that form the foundation of modern initiation I will say something now that I was already able to say to a few of you in Oxford during these days of my visit to England. Namely, I would like to begin by pointing out that while it was important for the most ancient initiates to look up into the spiritual world from which man descended when he clothed himself with an earthly body, and while for later initiates such things as I characterized by pointing to Greek portrayals of a descent into the underworld were important, it is the obligation of modern initiation, as I have already said, to seek as knowledge the rhythmical relationship of heaven and earth.

This can only be achieved if we consider the following. Certainly, we must know heaven, and certainly we must know the earth. But then we must also look at the human being, in whom, among all the beings around us, heaven and earth work together to create a unity. We must look at—that means with our sun-eye, with our heart-eye, with the entire human eye—we must look at the human being. The human being! For humanity contains infinitely more secrets than the worlds that we can perceive with our external organs of perception, that we can explain with an intellect bound to the senses. The task of present-day initiation knowledge is to come to know the human being spiritually. I would like to say that initiation science wants to come to know everything for this reason: in order to understand the human being through knowledge of the whole world, through knowledge of the whole cosmos.

Now compare the situation of the present-day initiate with the situation of the ancient initiate. Because of all the abilities that existed in the soul of ancient humanity the initiate then could awaken memories of the time before the descent into an earthly body. For this reason initiation for the ancient was an awakening of cosmic memories. Then, for the Greeks, initiation meant looking into nature. Modern initiates are concerned to know the human being directly as a spiritual being. Now we must acquire the ability to set ourselves free from the grasp of earth, from the ties connecting us with the world. I would like to repeat an example that I have just recently mentioned.

Achieving a relationship to the souls who have passed through the gate of death, who have left the earth, either recently or long ago, is one of the most difficult tasks of initiation knowledge. However, it is possible to achieve such a relationship by awakening forces that lie deeper in the soul. Here we must understand clearly, however, that we have to accustom ourselves, through exercises, to the language we must speak with the dead. This language is, I would like to say, in a certain sense, a child of human language. But we would go completely astray if we thought that this human language here could help us to cultivate communication with the dead. The first thing we become aware of is that the dead are only able to understand for a short time what lives as nouns in the language of earth. What is expressed as a thing, a closed off thing, the characterization of a noun, is no longer present in the language of the dead. In the language of the dead everything is related to activity and movement. For this reason we find that some time after the human being has passed through the gate of death, he has a real feeling only for verbs. In order to communicate with the dead we must sometimes direct a question to them by formulating it in such a way that it is understandable to them. Then, if we know how to pay attention, the answer comes after a while. Usually several nights must pass before the deceased person can give us an answer to our questions. But we must first find our way into the language of the deceased; finally the language appears for us, the language the dead actually have, the language the deceased has had to live into after death, distancing himself from the earth with his entire soul life. We find our way into a language that is not at all formed according to earthly conditions, but is rather a language arising from feelings, from the heart. It is a kind of language of the heart. Here, language is formed in the way vowels or feeling sounds are formed in human language. For example, when we are amazed we say “Ah!” or when we want to lead ourselves back to ourselves we speak the “ee” sound. Only in such instances do the sounds and sound combinations receive their due, their real meaning. And beginning with such instances language becomes something that no longer sounds bound up to the speech organ. It is transformed into what I have just described, a language of the heart. When we have learned this transformed language, the forces that rise from the flowers give us information about humankind and we ourselves begin to speak with what comes from the flowers. When we enter into the tulip blossom with our soul forces we express, in the Imagination of the tulip, what is expressed here on the earth in the formation of words. We grow again into the spiritual aspect of everything.

From the example of language, just characterized, you see that the human being grows into entirely different conditions of existence when he has gone through the gate of death. You see, we really know very little about a human being if we only know his or her external side; the modern science of initiation must know the other side. This begins with language. Even the human body, as it is described if you read the relevant literature, becomes something else for us. The body becomes a world in itself when we grow into the science of initiation.

While the initiate in ancient times reawakened an ability in people that had been lost, while he brought to memory what they had experienced before descending to the earth, the initiate of the present age must do something entirely new, something that represents progress in the human being, that will still have significance for us when humanity itself will one day have left the earth, indeed, when the earth is no longer even present in the cosmos. This is the task of modern initiation science. Out of this strength modern initiation science must speak.

As you know, from time to time the science of initiation enters into the spiritual development of the earth. This has happened again and again. The initiation science we need actually sees only a beginning in the assumptions of contemporary science. This initiation science will be increasingly contested. You will need strength to get through all that stands against modern initiation. Before modern initiation, which is a conversation with super-sensible powers, actually first received its proper power in the last third of the nineteenth century, the adversarial powers were already at work to bring about a condition of human culture and civilization, in many ways an unconscious condition, which actually amounts to a complete extermination of modern initiation.

Just consider how popular it has become to respond to everything that appears in the world as knowledge with the words: This is my point of view. People say “This is my point of view” without having gone through any kind of development. Everyone is supposed to make his own point of view count from the location where he just happens to be standing at the moment when he speaks. And people are offended, even angry, when a higher knowledge is mentioned, a knowledge that can only be acquired through the work of self-development.

When the possibility of achieving a modern initiation appeared, primarily in the last third of the nineteenth century, adversary powers were already at work. Above all they wanted to bring about a great leveling of people, also in the spiritual realm. There are many people I could mention through whom these enemies of modern initiation have worked.

My dear friends, you must believe that the words I must speak out of the spirit of this initiation science must also sound the way they do from the point of view of ordinary conditions here on the earth. If I attempt to make clear to you how the sounds of human language become different when language is to be used in the presence of the beings of the spiritual world, then you will not misunderstand me when I say: I myself will never misunderstand the great significance, spoken from the merely earthly point of view, of someone like Rousseau; and if I speak from the merely earthly standpoint I will set out with all élan to praise and speak well of Rousseau, just as others speak of him.35Jean Jacques Rousseau (1712–78), French philosopher. Influential in shaping Romanticism. Contending that people are good by nature and corrupted by civilization, Rousseau advocated a social contract to uphold the sovereignty of the people as a whole. But if I should rise to an attempt to clothe in earthly words what initiation knowledge says concerning Rousseau I would have to say that with his equalization, with his spiritual leveling, Rousseau represents the supreme babbler of modern civilization.

This is something that humanity cannot readily assimilate, that someone like Rousseau can be called a great spirit, a great personality, from the earthly point of view but—if we really want to get to know this person through the modern science of initiation (where we must know heaven and earth and describe the rhythm between them from both sides)—must be called the supreme babbler from the point of view of initiation. Only the harmony of what resounds from the one side and from the other side leads to a true knowledge of the human being. For this true knowledge of the human being must be built upon the same wisdom the old initiates build upon: Ex deo nascimur. All remembering must by built upon what comes to meet us when we look out into the world where, as I have today described the process, we have unconsciously allowed Christ to become our leader. But we must bring him into our consciousness more and more. Then we can recognize what belongs to death in the world as standing under the leadership of Christ. Then we can recognize that we live into the dead world with Christ: In Christo morimur.

Finally, because we are submerged in the grave of the earth and its life we experience with Christ the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

The modern initiate must strive above all for this Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus. If you consider this counsel and compare it with the modern attitude coming from science you will recognize that there will still be immense opposition, perhaps of a kind you cannot even imagine today, which will take the form of external actions and deeds that, above all, will have a tendency to make initiation science entirely impossible. What I would like to leave in your hearts, in your souls, when I speak in such an intimate circle of friends, is this: Through the descriptions given by modern initiation science, I would like to awaken strength so that a few people are actually present in the world who can find the proper place between what wants to come into the earthly world from spiritual worlds and what, from the direction of the earthly world, wants it to be impossible for spirituality to penetrate into the life of earth. This is what I have wanted to draw attention to, in such an intimate circle of friends. An opportunity had already been given to speak in a more external lecture, such as, to my great satisfaction, we were able to have in Oxford. Since the opportunity was given to describe the external side, so the esoteric side must also be handled in this smaller circle, it must also be described. I believe it would be good if you could get beyond the fact that there is much that sounds paradoxical when I speak out of spiritual worlds. It has to sound paradoxical because the language of spiritual worlds is so different from any earthly language. What should actually be expressed differently can only be brought into earthly language with a great exertion of force. Therefore, it should be understandable if some things are shocking when they appear unmediated as a simple description of spiritual worlds.

My dear friends, in addition to characterizing the fundamental intention that was behind today's lecture, I also want to express my deep satisfaction that I have been able to be here and speak to you in London. It is always gratifying. As I have already said, we are seldom together here. May what we can found in our hearts, in our souls, through such rare gatherings bring about a togetherness that should always be present among those who call themselves anthroposophists—a togetherness of hearts and souls extending over the whole world. Today's lecture has been given with this goal in mind, that we use such brief times together as an inspiration for the greater togetherness that unites all our hearts and all our souls. And to document, as it were, this intention I would like to add the following words. Speaking out of this frame of mind I would like to say: Let us remain together, my dear friends, even as we leave now to go in such widely separate directions.

Elfter Vortrag

[ 1 ] Da man, wenn man so selten zusammensein kann, möglichst viel in einer Betrachtung zusammenfassen möchte, so könnte leicht dadurch zuviel zusammengefaßt werden. Allein, ich will dennoch heute versuchen, von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus Ihnen das zu charakterisieren, was man nennen kann die andere Seite des menschlichen Daseins auf Erden. Und ich möchte das dann in Zusammenhang bringen mit der Bedeutung tieferer Erkenntnisse, geistiger Erkenntnisse für unsere Zeit.

[ 2 ] Wieviel kennt denn schließlich der Mensch von demjenigen, was zu seinem Dasein gehört, wenn er sich zur Erkenntnis nur seiner Sinne bedient und des Verstandes, der an seine Sinne gebunden ist? Wir verleben durch das gewöhnliche Sinnesbewußtsein ja eben bewußt nur den wachen Teil des menschlichen Daseins. Allein die geistig führenden Mächte der Welt haben in das menschliche Dasein wahrhaftig nicht umsonst eingefügt den Schlafzustand.

[ 3 ] Vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen geschieht außerordentlich viel mit dem Menschen. Und zwar von demjenigen, was der Geist durch den Menschen zu tun hat im irdischen Dasein, geschieht sogar das allermeiste während des Schlafzustandes.

[ 4 ] Während des Wachzustandes geschieht ja auf Erden nur dasjenige, was der Mensch mit sich selbst und den Dingen vornehmen kann. Während des Schlafzustandes geschieht in der menschlichen Entwickelung alles dasjenige, was geistige höhere Wesen mit der Menschenseele vornehmen, um den Menschen zu seiner Gesamtentwickelung innerhalb des irdischen Daseins zu bringen. Und man darf ja durchaus nicht sich aus dem Auge rücken, daß zwar auch der modernen Initiationserkenntnis es möglich ist, genauer hineinzuschauen in die bedeutungsvollen Tatsachen, die mit dem Menschen sich abspielen zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen, daß aber diese Tatsachen sich doch nicht nur für den Initiierten abspielen, sondern für alle Menschen; daß die Entwickelung aller Menschen von diesen Tatsachen abhängt. Der Initiierte kann nur aufmerksam machen auf diese Tatsachen. Fühlen und empfinden deren Bedeutung sollten aber immer mehr und mehr alle Menschen im Erdendasein, die überhaupt über die Bedeutung dieses Erdendaseins nachdenken.

[ 5 ] Nun möchte ich Ihnen heute schlicht schildern, was alles in den Schlafzustand des Menschen hineinspielt. Wenn der Mensch hinüberschläft — Sie wissen ja, man charakterisiert das äußerlich dadurch, daß man sagt: Sein astralischer Leib und sein Ich lösen sich los vom physischen Leib und dem ÄÄtherleib -, so sind dann dieses Ich und dieser astralische Leib in der geistigen Welt und durchdringen nicht den physischen Leib und den Ätherleib, wie sie das in dem Zustande vom Aufwachen bis zum Einschlafen tun.

[ 6 ] Wenn man aber nun hinschaut auf dasjenige, was mit dem Menschen wirklich geschieht im Schlafzustande, so wird man darauf hingewiesen, wie er während des Wachens mit dieser Erde zusammenhängt. Er hängt mit dieser Erde zusammen zunächst durch seine Sinne, indem er die Erscheinungen der verschiedenen Naturreiche durch seine Sinne wahrnimmt und erkennt. Er hängt aber auch mit ihr zusammen, indem er Unterbewußtes während des Wachseins vollzieht. Er vollzieht zum Beispiel sein Atmen, und in die Atemluft spielt — wenn man so sagen darf - die ganze Erde hinein. In der Atemluft sind ungeheuer viel Substanzen in einem sehr, sehr fein verteilten Zustande. Allein gerade in diesem fein verteilten Zustande wirken sie, wenn sie durch die Atemluft aufgenommen werden in den menschlichen Organismus, außerordentlich bedeutungsvoll. Und ebenso wie bewußt in den Menschen hineinkommt, was er wahrnimmt durch seine Sinne, ebenso kommt unterbewußt schon während des Wachens zahlreiches in den Menschen, ich möchte sagen, mehr substantiell hinein als durch den abstrakt-ideellen Zustand des Wahrnehmens und Denkens; substantieller kommt durch das Atmen die Umwelt in den Menschen hinein.

[ 7 ] Und wenn Sie erst Rücksicht nehmen würden darauf, wie stark doch die menschliche Organisation abhängt von alldem, was sie mit den verschiedenen Substanzen der irdischen Nahrungsmittel aufnimmt, so würden Sie sich eben sagen können: Vieles wirkt auf den Menschen in seinem Wachzustande. — Allein das soll uns heute weniger interessieren. Es soll uns vielmehr interessieren, was auf den Menschen in seinem Schlafzustande wirkt. Und da müssen wir sagen: Geradeso wie wir die äußeren Substanzen, das Irdische, mit dem Menschen in Verbindung sehen während seines Wachzustandes, so kommt er, wenn er in den Schlafzustand übergeht, in eine gewisse Verbindung mit dem gesamten Kosmos.

[ 8 ] Nicht als ob der Mensch so aufzufassen wäre, daß er jede Nacht die Größe des Kosmos mit seinem astralischen Leibe annehmen würde — das wäre ein Übertriebenes, wenn man das behaupten wollte -, allein der Mensch wächst in den Kosmos hinein jede Nacht. Geradeso wie wir hier mit den Pflanzen, mit den Mineralien, mit der Luft zusammenhängen, so hängen wir während der Nacht mit den Bewegungen der Planeten und mit den Konstellationen der Fixsterne zusammen. Der Sternenhimmel wird vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen geradeso unsere Welt, wie die Erde unsere Welt im Wachzustande ist.

[ 9 ] Nun, da ist es denn zunächst so, daß wir verschiedene Sphären unterscheiden können, durch die wir hindurchwandern zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen. Die erste Sphäre, durch die wir hindurchwandern zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen, das ist die Sphäre in der sich das menschliche Ich und der menschliche astralische Leib, also sagen wir, die im Schlafe befindliche Menschenseele, in Verbindung fühlt mit den Bewegungen der Planetenwelt. Geradeso wie, wenn wir am Morgen wiederum aufwachen und in unseren physischen Leib hineinschlüpfen, wir dann sagen können: Wir haben in uns unsere Lunge, unser Herz, unsere Leber, unser Gehirn —, so müssen wir während des Schlafzustandes sagen: Wir haben in der ersten Sphäre, mit der wir sogleich in Berührung kommen nach dem Einschlafen und mit der wir wiederum in Berührung sind unmittelbar vor dem Aufwachen, in uns die Kräfte der Bewegung der Planeten.

[ 10 ] Es ist nicht, als ob wir die ganze Bewegung der Planeten jede Nacht in uns aufnehmen würden, aber das, was wir als Abbild in uns tragen, ist ein kleines Bild, in dem tatsächlich abgebildet sind die Bewegungen der Planeten. Und bei jedem Menschen ist das anders. So daß wir sagen können: Jeder Mensch erlebt die Planetenbewegung zunächst, wenn er eingeschlafen ist, in der Weise, daß er alles das, was draußen im Weltenraume zwischen den Planeten vorgeht, indem sie sich bewegen, innerlich in einer Art von Planetenglobus in seinem astralischen Leibe nacherlebt. Das ist das erste Erlebnis, das der Mensch durchmacht nach dem Einschlafen.

[ 11 ] Und sagen Sie nicht, meine lieben Freunde: Was geht mich das alles an, das nehme ich doch nicht wahr! — Sie sehen das nicht mit Ihren Augen, hören das nicht mit Ihren Ohren. Aber in dem Augenblicke, in dem Sie in den Schlafzustand übergehen, in dem Augenblicke wird tatsächlich derjenige Teil Ihres astralischen Leibes, der während des Wachens ins Herz eingegliedert ist, ein Herzauge; der wird sehend für dasjenige, was in dieser Weise vorgeht. Und dieses Herzauge, das nimmt wirklich wahr — wenn auch die Wahrnehmung bei der gegenwärtigen Menschheit eine sehr dumpfe ist —, das nimmt wahr, was der Mensch da erlebt.

[ 12 ] Und was er da erlebt, das wird von diesem Herzauge so wahrgenommen, daß dieses Herzauge in den nächsten Zeiten nach dem Einschlafen zurücksieht zu dem Menschen, der als physischer Leib und als Ätherleib im Bette liegt. Zu dem schauen das Ich und der astralische Leib zurück mit dem Herzensauge. Und dasjenige, was Sie da innerlich erleben als das Bild der Planetenbewegungen in Ihrem Leibe, das strahlt Ihnen zurück von Ihrem eigenen Ätherleibe, so daß Sie davon das Spiegelbild aus Ihrem eigenen Ätherleibe sehen.

[ 13 ] Es ist nur für die gegenwärtige Konstitution der Menschen so, daß die Menschen sogleich, wenn sie aufwachen, das dumpfe Bewußtsein, das sie durch ihr Herzensauge in der Nacht gehabt haben, vergessen. Es ist ein dumpfes Bewußtsein, schwingt höchstens nach in solchen Träumen, die zwar noch etwas haben in ihrer innerlichen Beweglichkeit von der planetarischen Bewegung, in die sich aber hineinsetzen die Bilder aus dem Leben, die im Grunde genommen eben nur hineinkommen in diese eigentlich von der Planetenbewegung abhängigen Träume. Die Bilder kommen hinein, weil der astralische Leib in den Ätherleib untertaucht und der Ätherleib die Erinnerung an das Leben bewahrt.

[ 14 ] So daß es durchaus so sein kann: Sie wachen am Morgen auf, sind wieder zurückgegangen durch die Sphäre der Planetenbewegungen, sagen wir, Sie haben dadrinnen erlebt — weil das mit Ihrem Schicksal, mit Ihrem Karma besonders zusammenhängt — ein besonderes Verhältnis zwischen Jupiter und Venus. So kann es sein, Sie können erlebt haben ein besonderes Verhältnis zwischen Jupiter und Venus. Würden Sie dasjenige in das Tagesleben heraufbringen, was da erlebt wird zwischen Jupiter und Venus, dann würde Ihnen vieles aufgehen über Ihre menschlichen Fähigkeiten; denn die sind nicht von der Erde, die sind aus dem Kosmos heraus. Wie Sie mit dem Kosmos zusammenhängen, so sind Sie begabt, so sind Sie gut, oder zu Gutem und Bösem wenigstens geneigt. Und Sie würden sehen, was da Jupiter und Venus miteinander gesprochen haben, und was Sie mit Ihrem Herzensauge wahrgenommen haben, oder ich könnte auch sagen Herzensohr, denn das kann man so genau nicht unterscheiden. Allein das wird, weil es ja ohnedies nur sehr dumpf wahrgenommen wird, vergessen. Aber indem dadrinnen noch dieses Wechselverhältnis zwischen Jupiter und Venus stattfindet, die in Ihrem astralischen Leib eine gegenseitige Bewegung ausführen, mischt sich jetzt dasjenige hinein, was Sie einmal, sagen wir, als Sie siebzehn Jahre oder fünfundzwanzig Jahre alt waren, etwa in Oxford oder in Manchester oder irgendwo um zwölf Uhr mittags erlebt haben. Die Bilder mischen sich hinein in kosmische Erlebnisse. Die Bilder sind daher bei den Träumen ja gewiß von einer gewissen Bedeutung; aber sie sind nicht dasjenige, was in erster Linie wichtig ist. Sie sind gewissermaßen das Kleid, das sich über die kosmischen Erlebnisse hinüberwebt.

[ 15 ] Das Erleben nun, das auf diese Weise zustande kommt, das ist für diese Herzenswahrnehmung, von der ich gesprochen habe, etwas, wovon man sagen kann: Es ist mit einer ziemlichen Ängstlichkeit verbunden. Bei fast allen Menschen mischen sich gewisse Empfindungen spiritueller Art von Ängstlichkeit in dieses Erleben hinein, und insbesondere dann, wenn zurückleuchtet und zurücktönt von dem menschlichen Ätherleib dasjenige, was kosmisch erlebt wird. Wenn also zum Beispiel dasjenige zurückstrahlt, was von Jupiter und Venus bewirkt wird durch ihr besonderes Verhältnis, auf das ich jetzt hingewiesen habe, indem Ihnen ein Strahl — der aber sehr vielsagend ist für Ihre Herzenswahrnehmung — zurückkommt von der menschlichen Stirne, und ein anderer Strahl seinen Ton und sein Licht damit vermischt, der aus der Gegend unter dem Herzen kommt, dann entsteht diese Ängstlichkeit für die Herzenswahrnehmung, von der zunächst gesprochen werden muß, und in der jede Seele, die nicht ganz verhärtet ist, eigentlich im Schlafe zu sich sagt: Der Weltennebel hat mich aufgenommen. — Es ist wirklich etwas gleich dem Selbst-so-Dünnwerden wie der Weltennebel, und ein Schwimmen als Weltennebelwolke in dem Weltennebel drinnen. So ist zunächst das unmittelbare Erlebnis nach dem Schlafe.

[ 16 ] Und dann kommt - aus dieser Ängstlichkeit heraus und aus diesem sich selbst als ein Stück vom Weltennebel drinnen im Weltennebel erleben — dasjenige in die menschliche Seele hinein, was man nennen könnte die Hingabe an das die Welt durchschwebende Göttliche. Das sind die beiden Grundempfindungen, die in der ersten Sphäre nach dem Einschlafen an den Menschen herankommen: Ich bin in dem Weltennebel, und ich möchte ruhen im Schoße der Gottheit, um gegen das Aufgelöstwerden im Weltennebel gesichert zu sein.

[ 17 ] Und das ist etwas, was die Herzenswahrnehmung herübertragen muß am Morgen, wenn der Mensch wiederum untertaucht mit seiner Seele in seinen physischen und seinen Ätherleib. Denn würde dieses Erlebnis nicht herübergenommen in das Leben, so würden alle die Substanzen, die am nächsten Tag vom Menschen aufgenommen werden zur Nahrung, oder die sonst in ihm durch den Stoffwechsel verarbeitet werden — auch wenn er hungert, werden ja immerfort dann aus seinem eigenen Leibe die Stoffe genommen -, es würden diese ihren ganz irdischen Charakter annehmen, und sie würden den ganzen menschlichen Organismus in Unordnung bringen.

[ 18 ] Es ist in der Tat die Bedeutung des Schlafes für den menschlichen Wachzustand eine ungeheuer große und bedeutungsvolle. Und wir können nur sagen: Es ist ja in dieser Epoche der Erdenentwickelung dem Menschen noch abgenommen, dafür selber zu sorgen, daß das Göttliche herübergetragen wird. Denn so wie die Menschen im gegenwärtigen Zeitalter veranlagt sind, würden sie kaum die Kraft aufbringen, diese Dinge von der anderen Seite des Daseins mit vollem Bewußtsein herüberzutragen in diese Seite des Daseins.

[ 19 ] Dann kommt der Mensch, wenn er dies erlebt hat, in die nächste Sphäre. Er verläßt die erste dabei nicht, die bleibt ihm für seine Herzenswahrnehmung. Aber die nächste Sphäre, die ist eine viel kompliziertere, und die wird wahrgenommen mit demjenigen Stück des astralischen Leibes, der bei Tag, beim Wachen eingegliedert ist in das menschliche Sonnengeflecht, eingegliedert ist namentlich auch in die gesamte Gliedmaßenorganisation des Menschen. Sonnengeflecht und GliedmaRenorganisation des Menschen, dasjenige vom astralischen Leib, was den Solarplexus durchsetzt und Arme und Beine durchsetzt, nimmt während der Nacht das wahr, was in der nächsten Sphäre ist.

[ 20 ] Und in der nächsten Sphäre ist es so, daß der Mensch nun die Kräfte fühlt in seinem astralischen Leibe, die von den Tierkreisbildern kommen: die eine Form von Kräften kommt direkt von den Tierkreisbildern, die andere, indem die Tierkreiskräfte durch die Erde durchgehen, je nachdem die Tierkreisbilder oberhalb oder unter der Erde sind. Das macht den großen Unterschied.

[ 21 ] Der Mensch nimmt also wahr mit dem, was ich jetzt seine Sonnenwahrnehmung nennen möchte, weil es sich um das Stück des astralischen Leibes als Wahrnehmendes handelt, das mit dem Sonnengeflecht und mit den Gliedmaßen zusammenhängt: sein Sonnenauge möchte ich es nennen. Durch dieses wird er aber sein ganzes Verhältnis zum Tierkreis gewahr und zur Planetenbewegung. Das Bild also erweitert sich, der Mensch wächst mehr hinein in das Bild des Kosmos.

[ 22 ] Und wiederum ist es so, daß der Mensch das jetzt gespiegelt bekommt von seinem eigenen physischen und Ätherleib, auf den er den Blick zurückrichtet. So daß der Mensch jede Nacht dasjenige, was aus seinem Leibe herausgeht, in den Zusammenhang hineinbekommt mit dem gesamten Kosmos, mit Planetenbewegung und Fixsternkonstellation.

[ 23 ] Es ist aber das Erlebnis mit den Fixsternen — das bei dem einen Menschen eine halbe Stunde nach dem Einschlafen, bei dem anderen nach längerer Zeit, bei manchen ganz kurz nach dem Einschlafen auftreten kann - so, daß der Mensch sich in allen zwölf Fixsternen darinnen erlebt. Nun sind die Erlebnisse mit den Fixsternen außerordentlich kompliziert.

[ 24 ] Meine lieben Freunde, ich glaube, Sie könnten die wichtigsten Gegenden der Erde als ein Weltreisender absolviert haben, Sie würden die Summe von Erlebnissen nicht haben, die Sie jede Nacht von einem einzigen Sternbilde des Tierkreises für Ihr Sonnenauge haben! Und es ist zunächst so, daß für die Menschen älterer Zeiten, die noch stark traumhafte Hellseherkräfte in sich gehabt haben und vieles von dem, was ich jetzt erzähle, traumhaft bewußt wahrnahmen, dies verhältnismäßig weniger verwirrend war. Heute kann der Mensch kaum zu irgendeiner Klarheit für sein Sonnenauge kommen - und dazu muß er kommen, wenn er es auch bei Tag vergessen hat —, kaum zu irgendeiner Klarheit über das kommen, was er nun in zwölffach komplizierter Weise während der Nacht erlebt, wenn er nicht in sein Gemüt aufgenommen hat dasjenige, was der Christus hat der Erde werden wollen durch das Mysterium von Golgatha. Einfach gefühlt zu haben, was das für das Erdenleben bedeutet, daß der Christus durch das Mysterium von Golgatha gegangen ist, Gedanken sich gemacht zu haben im gewöhnlichen Erdenleben über den Christus: das bringt auf dem Umwege durch den physischen und durch den Ätherleib in den astralischen Leib eine solche Tingierung, eine solche Tinktur hinein, daß der Christus der Führer wird in dem Tierkreis vom Einschlafen bis zum Aufwachen.

[ 25 ] Da ist es tatsächlich so, daß der Mensch wiederum fühlt: Soll ich denn in der Zahl der Sterne und in ihren Ereignissen untergehen? — Und wenn er dann zurückblicken kann auf dasjenige, was er während des Tagwachens an Gedanken und Empfindungen und Gefühlen und Willensimpulsen zum Christus hingewendet hat, dann ersteht ihm in dem Christus eine Art Führer zum Ordnen der verwirrenden Ereignisse dieser Sphäre.

[ 26 ] So daß wir tatsächlich sagen müssen: Wenn wir die andere Seite des Lebens betrachten, dann geht uns erst die volle Bedeutung des Christus für das Erdenleben der Menschheit seit dem Mysterium von Golgatha auf. Und es versteht sonst eigentlich niemand, was der Christus noch werden muß für das Erdenleben innerhalb der heutigen gewöhnlichen Zivilisation.

[ 27 ] Nun legt man sich alle diese Dinge, die ja heute noch nicht viele durchmachen, in einer falschen Weise aus. Die Art und Weise, wie die heute noch nicht vom Christus-Ereignis berührten Menschen die nächtlichen Erlebnisse ungeordnet ins wache Tagesbewußtsein hereinbringen, die versteht man erst, wenn man das weiß, was ich eben jetzt auseinandergesetzt habe. In der Tat, wenn wir zuerst das nebelhafte Dasein durchgemacht haben im Schlafzustande, stehen wir gewissermaßen vor einer uns verwirrenden Welt, in welcher der Christus als eine geistige Sonne heraustritt und unser Führer wird, so daß die Verwirrung sich in einer Art harmonischen Verständnisses löst.

[ 28 ] Das ist wichtig, weil in dem Augenblicke, wo wir diese Sphäre betreten, in der wir Durcheinanderwirbelndes haben, Fixsternkonstellation des Tierkreises und Planetenbewegung, tatsächlich vor unser Sonnenauge unser Karma tritt. Alle Menschen nehmen ihr Karma wahr, aber nur im Schlafzustande. In den Wachzustand schleicht sich nur die Nachbildung dieser Wahrnehmung gefühlsmäßig herein.

[ 29 ] Manches von jenem Befinden, das ja ein einigermaßen nach Selbsterkenntnis trachtender Mensch in sich antreffen kann, ist der ganz dumpfe Nachklang dieses Erlebens, wo der Christus als Führer auftritt und von Widder durch Stier, Zwillinge und so weiter leitet, und den Menschen in der Nacht die Welt erklärt, so daß sie wieder Kraft bekommen zum Tagesleben. Denn es ist nichts Geringeres, was wir in dieser Sphäre erleben, als daß durch die verwirrenden Ereignisse des Tierkreises hindurch der Christus unser Führer wird, wie die führende Wesenheit dasteht und von Sternbild zu Sternbild den Menschen leitet, damit er in sich geordnet die Kräfte aufnehmen kann, die er geordnet eben wiederum für das Wachleben braucht.

[ 30 ] So erlebt der Mensch im Grunde jede Nacht zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen; er erlebt dieses aus seiner Verwandtschaft mit dem Kosmos als Seele und Geist. So wie er durch den physischen und den Ätherkörper mit der Erde verwandt ist, so ist er mit seiner Seele und seinem Geist und seinem astralischen Leibe dem Kosmos verwandt. Der Mensch würde nun, wenn er sich getrennt hat von seinem physischen und Ätherleibe und so hinausgewachsen ist in die kosmische Welt, in sich eine starke Verwandtschaft gewissermaßen zu ihr fühlen in seinem innerlichen Bild-Erleben, das ihm zurückstrahlt von dem, was im Bette liegengeblieben ist; eine starke Tendenz würde er fühlen, weiter über den Tierkreis hinauszuleben.

[ 31 ] Das kann er zunächst zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode nicht, weil sich in alle diese Erlebnisse, die ich Ihnen bis jetzt geschildert habe, während der Schlafenszeit des Menschen ein anderes Element hineinmischt, ein Element, das ganz anderer Art ist als alles dasjenige, was von den Planeten und von den Fixsternen kommt. Und das ist das Mondenelement.

[ 32 ] Das Mondenelement tingiert gewissermaßen während der Nacht den gesamten Kosmos — auch währenddem Neumond ist — mit einem besonderen Substantiellen, das der Mensch auch erlebt. Aber er erlebt es so, daß ihn diese Mondenkräfte, ich möchte sagen, zurückhalten innerhalb der Tierkreiswelt und wiederum zurückführen zum Aufwachen. Dieses Mondenelement erlebt der Mensch, schon schwach ahnend, während der ersten Sphäre. Aber besonders stark erlebt der Mensch während der zweiten Sphäre, die ich geschildert habe, die Geheimnisse der Geburt und des Todes. Er erlebt da — mit einem noch tieferliegenden Organ, als das Herzensauge und das Sonnenauge sind -, mit einem Organe, das gewissermaßen seinem ganzen Menschen zugeteilt ist, tatsächlich jede Nacht, wie das Geistig-Seelische heruntersteigt, beziehungsweise heruntergestiegen ist aus der geistig-seelischen Welt und durch die Geburt eingezogen ist in ein physisches Dasein und wie nach und nach der Leib in den Tod übergeht. Man stirbt ja eigentlich immer, in jedem Augenblick, überwindet nur den Tod, bis der Tod dann wirklich als ein einziges Ereignis eintritt. Aber in demselben Momente, in dem man so erlebt, wie die Seele gewissermaßen durchgeht durch das Irdisch-Leibliche, in jenem Momente erlebt man durch dieselben Kräfte seine Zusammenhänge mit der übrigen Menschheit.

[ 33 ] Sie müssen nur bedenken: Auch nicht die unbedeutendste Begegnung, das unbedeutendste Verhältnis, ebensowenig wie das allereinschneidendste, sind ohne Zusammenhang mit dem gesamten Schicksal, mit dem gesamten Karma des Menschen. Und ob nun die Seelen, mit denen wir jemals im verflossenen Erdenleben in Beziehung gestanden haben, oder mit denen wir jetzt in diesem Erdenleben in Beziehung stehen, jeweilig in der geistigen Welt sind, oder ob sie hier auf Erden sind, alles dasjenige, was der Mensch mit Menschen zu tun hat, alle menschlichen Verhältnisse, die ja eine innige Beziehung zu dem Geheimnis von Geburt und Tod haben, die treten da, ich möchte sagen, vor das spirituelle Menschenauge. Der Mensch fühlt sich in seinem gesamten Lebensschicksale darinnen.

[ 34 ] Das hängt damit zusammen, daß gewissermaßen alle anderen Kräfte, die der Planeten und die der Fixsterne, uns hinausziehen wollen in den Kosmos. Der Mond will uns wiederum hineinstellen in die Menschenwelt, er reißt uns aus dem Kosmos im Grunde heraus. Er hat Kräfte, die entgegengesetzt sind sowohl den Sonnenkräften wie den Sternenkräften; er macht unsere Verwandtschaft zur Erde aus. Daher bringt er uns in gewissem Sinne jede Nacht von den Tierkreiserlebnissen zurück in die Planetenerlebnisse und wiederum in die Erdenerlebnisse, indem wir in den physischen Menschenleib zurückgebracht werden.

[ 35 ] Das ist von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus der Unterschied zwischen dem Schlafen und zwischen dem Sterben, daß der Mensch, wenn er einschläft, in starker Beziehung stehenbleibt zu diesen Mondenkräften. Diese Mondenkräfte sind es, die gewissermaßen ihn auf die Bedeutung seines Erdenlebens auch jede Nacht erneut hinweisen. Das kann aber nur deshalb der Fall sein, weil der Mensch alles zurückgestrahlt erhält, wie ich geschildert habe, von seinem Ätherleib. Im Tode zieht er den Ätherleib aus seinem physischen Leibe heraus: die Rückerinnerung an das letzte Erdenleben tritt auf, und dieser Ätherleib ist es jetzt, der für die kurze Weile von wenigen Tagen die Wolke durchsetzt, von der ich gesprochen habe. Ich sagte: Jede Nacht leben wir selber als Wolke, als Nebelwolke in eine Nebelwelt uns hinein. Aber diese Nebelwolke, die wir selber sind, ist in der Nacht ohne unseren Ätherleib. Wenn wir sterben, ist sie zunächst in den ersten Tagen nach dem Tode mit unserem Ätherleib. Dann löst sich der Ätherleib nach und nach in das Kosmische auf, die Erinnerung schwindet. Und jetzt haben wir zum Unterschiede von früher, wo wir alles, was wir an Sternenerlebnissen hatten, nur zurückgestrahlt hatten von dem Menschen, der im Bette liegen geblieben war, jetzt nach dem Tode haben wir ein unmittelbar inneres Erlebnis der Planetenbewegung und der Fixsternkonstellation.

[ 36 ] Sie finden von einem gewissen Gesichtspunkte aus geschildert, wie diese Erlebnisse sind, wenn Sie meine «Theosophie» lesen. Da ist dasjenige eben geschildert, was der Mensch zwischen Tod und neuer Geburt so hat, wie wenn es um ihn herum wäre. Aber so wie Sie nicht Farben und Töne hätten, wenn Sie nicht im Inneren des Leibes ein Auge hätten, ein Ohr hätten, wie sie nicht atmen könnten, wenn Sie nicht im Inneren des Menschen eine Lunge und ein Herz hätten, so könnten Sie nach dem Tode das, was ich da beschrieben habe als Seelenwelt und Geisterland, als Ihre Umgebung im Geistigen, nicht wahrnehmen, wenn Sie in sich nicht hätten Merkur, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Widder, Stier, Zwillinge und so weiter. Das ist dann Ihr Organismus: mit Ihrem kosmischen Organismus erleben Sie das. Der Mond kann Sie nicht mehr zurückbringen, weil er nur zum Ätherleib hin zurückbringen kann; der aber hat sich in den Kosmos aufgelöst.

[ 37 ] Aber in dem Menschen ist so viel noch vorhanden von jener Kraft, die der Mond auf ihn vererbt hat, daß er eben in der Seelenwelt eine Zeitlang bleibt, wie ich das geschildert habe in der «Theosophie». Er hält noch seinen Blick zur Erde hin gespannt, dann geht er über in dasjenige, was ich als das Geisterland geschildert habe. Da ist er dann in einem Erleben, das auch außerhalb des Tierkreises, außerhalb des Fixsternhimmels von ihm selber gefühlt wird. Und so durchlebt er dann die Zeit zwischen dem Tod und einer neuen Geburt.

[ 38 ] Es ist in den Einzelheiten dieses Hineinleben in die geistige Welt so, daß wenn ich es Ihnen schildere für die Nacht, so könnte ich es Ihnen etwa in der folgenden Weise schildern — aber Sie müssen natürlich dabei die Begriffe nur ja nicht pressen, weil man mit irdischen Begriffen diese Dinge fast nicht zum Ausdruck bringen kann. Doch ich kann es Ihnen so schildern.

[ 39 ] Denken Sie sich eine Wiese, auf dieser Wiese Pflanzen; es geht von jeder Pflanzenblüte, auch von denjenigen Blüten, die auf Bäumen sind, zunächst eine Art Spirallinie aus, die sich in den Weltenraum hinausschwingt. Diese Spirallinien enthalten die Kräfte, durch welche der Kosmos auf der Erde das Pflanzenwachstum regelt und bewirkt. Denn die Pflanzen wachsen nicht bloß aus ihrem Keim heraus, die Pflanzen wachsen aus den kosmischen, spiralig die Erde umgebenden Kräften. Aber diese Kräfte sind auch im Winter da, auch in der Wüste da, auch wenn die Pflanzen nicht da sind. Um in die Planetenbewegungen hineinzukommen, muß der Mensch diese Pflanzenspiralkräfte jede Nacht benützen wie eine Leiter. Er steigt also durch das Leiterhafte der Pflanzenspiralkräfte in die Bewegungen der Planetenwelt hinauf. Und mit jener Kraft, welche die Pflanze aus ihrer Wurzel heraus nach oben wachsen läßt — sie muß ja eine Kraft anwenden, damit sie nach oben wachsen kann —, mit dieser Kraft wird der Mensch in die zweite Sphäre, die ich geschildert habe, hineingetragen. Und in der Tat, wenn wir diejenigen Erlebnisse, die ich Ihnen geschildert habe, wo der Mensch in eine gewisse Ängstlichkeit kommt und sagt: Ein Nebelgebilde im allgemeinen kosmischen Nebel bin ich, ich muß im Schoße der Gottheit ruhen -, wenn wir das mit Bezug auf die Erdenverhältnisse ins Auge fassen, so sagt sich wiederum die Seele: Ich ruhe in all dem, was als der kosmische Segen über einem Saatfelde liegt, wenn es blüht, was über der Wiese liegt, wenn sie blüht. Alles dasjenige, was sich da zu den Pflanzen heruntersenkt und in spiraligen Kräftelinien sich auslebt, alles das ist im Grunde genommen der Gottheitsschoß, der in sich belebte, regsame Gottheitsschoß, in den sich der Mensch zunächst in jeder Schlafenszeit eingebettet fühlt.

[ 40 ] Und der Mond ist es, der ihn zu seinem Tierischen wieder zurückführt. Denn die Pflanzenkräfte haben stets das Bestreben, den Menschen immer weiter hinauszutragen ins Universelle. Aber da der Mensch sein Animalisches mit dem Animalreich teilt, bringt ihn der Mond wiederum an jedem Morgen in sein Animalisches zurück.

[ 41 ] So hängt der Mensch mit dem Kosmos zusammen. So wirkt der Kosmos gerade zwischen dem Einschlafen und dem Aufwachen. Und Herzensauge, Sonnenauge, Menschenauge, sie machen das in der Nacht so durch, daß sie ähnlich fühlen, wie wenn der eine Mensch, sagen wir, irgendeine Beziehung zu einem anderen fühlte, erlebte. Aber das wird ihm nicht so gesagt, das ist auch von ihm nicht ausgedacht, sondern das sagen ihm die Aussprüche der Pflanzen, durch die er gerade über eine Leiter hinaufsteigt in die Planetenwelt zuerst, und dann hinausgetrieben wird in die Tierkreiswelt.

[ 42 ] Und so kann etwa ein Erlebnis so sein: Ich habe ein Verhältnis zu diesem Menschen, die Lilien sagen es mir, die Rosen sagen es mir, denn die Rosenkraft, die Lilienkraft, die Tulpenkraft hat mich gerade dahin getrieben. — Die ganze Erde wird gewissermaßen zum Lebensbuch, das aufklärt über die Menschenwelt, Seelenmenschenwelt, in die man sich hineinlebt.

[ 43 ] Und sehen Sie, diese Erlebnisse haben ja die Menschen verschiedener Zeitalter, verschiedener Epochen in verschiedener Weise gehabt. Wenn Sie noch hinschauen nach dem alten Indien: Die, welche etwas erfahren wollten durch den Schlafzustand, durch die Beziehung zur Sternenwelt, die wollten nur erfahren von denjenigen Fixsternen, von denjenigen Sternbildern, die jeweilig über der Erde sind, nicht immer, aber jeweilig, das ändert sich ja. Aber sie wollten nie Beziehungen haben zu den Sternbildern, die unterhalb sind, deren Kräfte dann durch die Erde durch gehen.

[ 44 ] Sehen Sie sich daher eine Buddha-Position an oder überhaupt die Position eines orientalischen Weisen, der nach spiritueller Weisheit strebt durch Exerzitien! Sehen Sie sich an, wie er die Beine übereinandergeschlagen hat und auf den übereinandergeschlagenen Beinen sitzt: weil er nur dasjenige, was Oberleib ist und was in Beziehung zu den oberen Sternbildern steht, in sich regsam haben will, und nicht dasjenige, was durch das Sonnenauge auch durch ihn hindurchwirkt, was durch die Gliedmaßen wirkt. Er will die Gliedmaßenkräfte gewissermaßen ausgeschaltet haben. Daher können Sie in der Position eines jeden orientalischen nach Weisheit Strebenden sehen, wie er nur zu dem, was über der Erde ist, eine Beziehung entwickeln will. Er will nur nach dem Seelischen hin Erkenntnisbeziehungen entwickeln.

[ 45 ] Die Welt wäre unvollkommen geblieben, wenn nur diese Art Erkenntnisstreben dagewesen wäre, wenn immer nur die Buddha-Positionen eingehalten worden wären, um zur Erkenntnis zu kommen. Schon innerhalb der Griechenzeit mußte der Mensch auch in Beziehung zu denjenigen Kräften treten, zu denen man in Beziehung kommt, wenn man nach den Sternbildern hin sich entwickelt, die unterhalb der Erde jeweilig sind.

[ 46 ] Das ist in der griechischen Sage wunderbar intim angedeutet. Denn in der griechischen Sage wird Ihnen von einer gewissen Art Initiation immer erzählt: Der Betreffende stieg in die Unterwelt hinab. — Von gewissen Heroen Griechenlands können Sie immer wissen, der erlebt die Initiation, wenn von ihm erzählt wird, er ist in die Unterwelt hinabgestiegen. Das heißt, er hat diejenigen Kräfte des Kosmos kennengelernt, die durch die Erde hindurch wirken, er hat die chthonischen Kräfte kennengelernt.

[ 47 ] So hat jedes Zeitalter seine besondere Aufgabe. Und so lernte der orientalische Initiierte, damit er das den anderen Menschen mitteilen konnte, vorzugsweise dasjenige kennen, was vor der Geburt beziehungsweise der Konzeption, also im seelisch-geistigen Gebiete lag, welches der Mensch durchlebt, bevor er heruntersteigt in die irdische Welt. Und was in einer so großartigen Weise in der orientalischen Weltanschauung, in der orientalischen Dichtung an die Menschen herantritt, das tritt im wesentlichen dadurch heran, daß dazumal die Menschen hineinschauen konnten in das Leben, das die Menschen durchmachen, bevor sie zur Erde heruntersteigen.

[ 48 ] In Griechenland fing man an, dasjenige kennenzulernen, was von der Erde selbst abhängt: Uranus und Gäa. Gäa, die Erde, steht am Ausgangspunkte der griechischen Kosmologie. Und immer trachtete der Grieche, die Mysterien der Erde selbst kennenzulernen, die natürlich auch die kosmischen Mysterien sind, die durch die Erde hindurchwirken. Die Mysterien aber der eigentlichen Unterwelt, auch die wollte der Grieche kennenlernen. Und so entwickelte sich in Griechenland eine richtige Kosmologie.

[ 49 ] Sehen Sie an, wie wenig eigentlich der Grieche noch — der Orientale hatte sie gar nicht — von dem hat, was wir Geschichtserkenntnis nennen. Ihn interessiert ja viel mehr, was damals war, als die Erde gewissermaßen im Kosmos sich bildete, dann, als die inneren Erdenkräfte, die titanischen Kräfte andere Kräfte bekriegten, worauf der Grieche als auf große, gewaltige spirituelle Kräfte hinwies, die den irdischen Verhältnissen zugrunde liegen, in die der Mensch hineinversponnen ist. Wir in der neueren Zeit sind darauf angewiesen, die Geschichte zu verstehen, hinweisen zu können, daß der Mensch ausgegangen ist von einem alten, traumhaften Hellseherzustand, daß er jetzt zu seinem intellektualistisch gefärbten und nur vom Mythischen tingierten Bewußtsein gekommen ist, aus dem er sich wieder herausarbeiten muß zum Hineinschauen in die geistige, in die spirituelle Welt.

[ 50 ] Diese gegenwärtige Zeitepoche ist ja der Übergang zu einem bewußten Erringen eines Erlebens in der geistigen Welt. Dazu müssen wir vor allen Dingen den Blick auf die Geschichte werfen. Daher ist es in unserer anthroposophischen Bewegung immer wieder und wiederum geschehen, daß die verschiedenen Geschichtsepochen betrachtet wurden bis dahin zurück, wo die Menschen noch von höheren, überirdischen Wesenheiten die Erkenntnisse empfingen, und daß dann weiter bis zu unserer Zeit diese geschichtliche Entwickelung des Menschen verfolgt worden ist.

[ 51 ] Und diese geschichtliche Entwickelung des Menschen wird ja von der heutigen äußeren Erkenntnis erst recht ganz abstrakt betrachtet. Welche abstrakten Linien werden gezogen, wenn man heute Geschichtserkenntnis entwickelt! Jene Geschichte verfolgten die alten Menschen noch, die sie in den Mythus kleideten, wo sie die Geschichte mit der ganzen Natur und ihren Ereignissen in Zusammenhang brachten. Das können wir nicht mehr. Aber die Menschen haben noch nicht den Sinn sich angeeignet, zu fragen: Wie war es, als die ersten Menschen von höheren Wesenheiten die Weisheit empfingen, und dann allmählich das herabdämmerte? Wie war es, als ein Gott selber herabstieg, um sich durch das Mysterium von Golgatha in einem menschlichen Leibe zu verkörpern und eine kosmisch grandiose Mission mit der Erde zu vollbringen, so daß dadurch die Erde erst ihren Sinn bekommt?

[ 52 ] Die ganze Theologie des 19. und 20. Jahrhunderts krankt ja daran, daß sie den Christus in seiner geistigen Bedeutung nicht verstehen kann. Das, sehen Sie, das muß die moderne Initiationswissenschaft bringen. Es muß eben eine moderne Initiationswissenschaft geben, die wiederum hineindringen kann in die geistige Welt, die wiederum so sprechen kann über Geburt und Tod, über das Leben zwischen der Geburt und dem Tode und zwischen dem Tode und einer neuen Geburt, und über das Leben der Menschenseele im Schlafe, wie wir heute hier zueinander gesprochen haben. Das muß möglich sein, daß der Mensch wiederum auch diese geistige, andere Seite des Daseins kennenlernt. Aller Fortschritt der Menschheit in die Zukunft wird nur möglich sein, wenn der Mensch diese andere Seite des Daseins auch kennenlernt.

[ 53 ] Geradeso wie einstmals die Menschen ihre Erkenntnis den oberen Welten nur zugewendet haben — was Sie in der Position des Buddha gut beobachten können -—, wie die Menschen nachher, um zu einer Kosmologie zu kommen, diese von der Erdenentwickelung abgelesen haben und in die griechischen, chthonischen Mysterien eingeweiht worden sind, was der griechische Mythus an bedeutender, hervorragender Stelle immer wieder erzählt, so brauchen wir, nachdem die Menschen also die Geheimnisse des Himmels und die Geheimnisse der Erde in der alten Initiationswissenschaft studiert haben, eine moderne Initiationswissenschaft, die gewissermaßen im Rhythmus .sich hin- und herbewegen kann zwischen Himmel und Erde, die den Himmel frägt, wenn sie über die Erde Aufschluß haben will, und die Erde frägt, wenn sie über den Himmel Aufschluß haben will.

[ 54 ] Und so ungefähr sind — ich darf das hier in aller Bescheidenheit sagen — die Fragen gestellt und zu einer vorläufigen Antwort geführt in dem Buche «Geheimwissenschaft im Umriß», das unter dem Titel: «An Outline of Occult Science» ins Englische übersetzt ist. Da ist versucht, dasjenige zu schildern, was eben der moderne Mensch so braucht, wie der alte Orientale die Mysterien des Himmels brauchte, wie die Griechen die Mysterien der Erde brauchten. Und wie es sich nun verhält mit dieser modernen Initiation und ihrem Verhältnis zu den Menschen, das sollte man auch in der Gegenwart beobachten.

[ 55 ] Um mit einigen Strichen zu charakterisieren, welche Aufgaben der modernen Initiation zugrunde liegen, werde ich etwas auch hier zu sagen haben, was ich drüben in Oxford in diesen Tagen einigen wenigen von Ihnen ja schon sagen konnte. Ich möchte nämlich zunächst darauf hinweisen, daß während für den ältesten Initiierten vorzugsweise das Hinaufschauen in die geistigen Welten galt, aus denen der Mensch ja heruntersteigt, wenn er sich mit einem irdischen Leib umkleidet — während für den späteren Initiierten dasjenige galt, was ich Ihnen dadurch zu charakterisieren suchte, daß ich Sie hinwies auf die griechische Darstellung vom Hinuntersteigen in die Unterwelt — es modernen Initüierten obliegt, wie ich eben schon sagte, die rhythmische Beziehung des Himmels zur Erde als Erkenntnis zu suchen.

[ 56 ] Das wird aber nur erlangt, wenn man folgendes ins Auge faßt. Gewiß, man muß den Himmel kennen, muß die Erde kennen, dann aber muß dasjenige ins Auge gefaßt werden, in dem zunächst als unter den Wesen, die um uns herum sind, Himmel und Erde zusammenwirken zu einer Ganzheit — ins Auge gefaßt muß werden, das heißt ins Herzensauge, ins Sonnenauge und ins ganze Menschenauge: der Mensch selbst. Der Mensch selbst! Denn der Mensch enthält unendlich viel mehr Geheimnisse als diejenigen Welten, die wir mit äußerlichen Sinnen wahrnehmen können, die wir mit dem an die Sinne gebundenen Verstand uns erklären können. Den Menschen spirituell kennenzulernen, das ist die Aufgabe der gegenwärtigen Initiationserkenntnis. Man möchte sagen: Alles will diese Initiationserkenntnis kennenlernen aus dem Grunde, um aus der ganzen Welt, aus dem ganzen Kosmos heraus den Menschen zu verstehen.

[ 57 ] Vergleichen Sie nun die Lage des gegenwärtigen Initiierten mit der Lage des alten Initiierten. Durch die ganzen Seelenfähigkeiten der älteren Menschen konnte Erinnerung erweckt werden an die Zeit, bevor wir heruntergestiegen sind in einen irdischen Leib. Daher war es namentlich für die älteren Initiierten ein Auferwecken der kosmischen Erinnerungen. Für die Griechen war es dann ein Hineinschauen in die Natur. Für den modernen Initiierten handelt es sich darum, daß er den Menschen unmittelbar als ein spirituelles Wesen kennenlernt. Da muß er die Fähigkeit bekommen, sich loszulösen von seinem irdischen Erfassen dessen, was den Menschen mit der Welt in Zusammenhang bringt. Davon möchte ich eben das eine Beispiel, das ich schon neulich erwähnt habe, wieder anführen.

[ 58 ] Es gehört ja zu den schwierigsten Aufgaben der Initiationserkenntnis, Beziehung zu gewinnen zu den Seelen, die vor kürzerer oder längerer Zeit die Erde verlassen haben, die durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind. Es ist aber möglich, solche Beziehungen durch Erweckung tieferer Seelenkräfte zu gewinnen. Da muß man zunächst sich aber klar sein darüber, daß man sich eigentlich erst hineinzugewöhnen hat durch Exerzitien in die Sprache, die man mit den Toten zu sprechen hat. Diese Sprache ist, ich möchte sagen, in einer gewissen Weise ein Kind der Menschensprache. Aber man würde ganz fehlgehen, wenn man glaubt, daß einem diese Menschensprache hier etwas helfen würde, um Verkehr mit den Toten zu pflegen. Denn das erste, was man gewahr wird, das ist dieses, daß die Toten nur ganz kurze Zeit noch verstehen dasjenige, was hier in der Erdensprache als Hauptwörter, als Substantive lebt. Dasjenige, was ein Ding ausdrückt, ein abgeschlossenes Ding, das durch ein Substantiv bezeichnet wird, das ist in der Sprache der Toten nicht mehr vorhanden. In der Sprache der Toten bezieht sich alles auf Regsamkeit, auf innere Beweglichkeit. Daher finden wir, daß nach einiger Zeit, nachdem die Menschen durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen sind, sie nur noch für die Verben, für dasjenige, was wir Tätigkeitsworte nennen, eine wirkliche Empfindung haben. Wir müssen ja, um mit den Toten zu verkehren, zuweilen die Fragen an sie richten, indem wir sie so formulieren, daß sie den Toten verständlich sind. Dann kommt nach einiger Zeit, wenn wir darauf acht zu geben verstehen, die Antwort. Gewöhnlich müssen mehrere Nächte vergehen, bis der Tote uns antworten kann auf Fragen, die wir an ihn stellen. Aber wir müssen, wie gesagt, uns in die Sprache der Toten hineinfinden, und zuletzt erst findet sich die Sprache für uns ein, die der Tote eigentlich hat, in die er sich hineinleben muß, weil er ja mit seinem ganzen Seelenleben von der Erde sich entfernen muß. Da finden wir uns hinein in eine Sprache, die überhaupt nicht mehr nach irdischen Verhältnissen geformt ist, in eine Sprache, die aus der Empfindung, aus dem Herzen heraus ist, in eine Art Herzenssprache. Da formen wir so das Sprachliche, wie wir etwa in der Menschensprache nur die Empfindungslaute formen, wo wir ein «Ach» aussprechen, wenn wir verwundert sind, wo wir ein «I» aussprechen, wenn wir auf uns selber zurückleiten wollen. Da bekommen die Laute und die Lautzusammensetzungen erst ihre große, ihre wirkliche Bedeutung. Und von diesem Momente an geht uns auch die Sprache über in etwas, wo sie nicht mehr organhaft klingt, wo die Sprache sich verwandelt in dasjenige, was eben so ist, wie ich es vorhin geschildert habe, wo die Sprache so ist, daß dasjenige, was aus den Blumen aufsteigt, uns über den Menschen Auskünfte gibt, und wir selber anfangen mit dem, was aus den Blumen kommt, zu sprechen. Wir werden selbst zur Blume, und wir blühen gewissermaßen mit den Blumen. Und indem wir in die Tulpenblüte hinein uns mit unseren Seelenkräften begeben, drücken wir in der Imagination der Tulpe aus dasjenige, was hier auf der Erde in der Gestaltung des Wortes ausgedrückt ist. Wir wachsen wiederum hinein in dasjenige, was das Spirituelle von allem ist.

[ 59 ] Aber Sie sehen daran, indem ich Ihnen gerade das Beispiel der Sprache charakterisiere, daß der Mensch ja in ganz andere Verhältnisse hineinwächst, wenn er durch die Pforte des Todes gegangen ist, daß wir wirklich wenig vom Menschen kennen, wenn wir nur seine Außenseite hier kennen, daß die moderne Initiationswissenschaft diese andere Seite des Menschen kennen muß. Das beginnt schon mit der Sprache. Und der Körper des Menschen selbst, wie er ja auch geschildert wird - lesen Sie die Literatur darüber nach -, wird uns etwas ganz anderes, wird uns selber eine Welt, wenn wir in die Initiationswissenschaft hineinwachsen. Während der alte Initiierte mehr eine verlorengegangene Fähigkeit in den Menschen wieder aufwecken, zur Erinnerung bringen mußte, das, was die Menschen gelebt haben, bevor sie heruntergestiegen sind auf die Erde, muß der Initiierte der Gegenwart dasjenige machen, was ganz neu, was Fortschritt ist im Menschen, was noch Bedeutung haben wird für den Menschen, wenn der Mensch selber einmal die Erde verlassen hat, ja, die Erde gar nicht mehr da sein wird im Kosmos. Das ist die Aufgabe der modernen Initiationswissenschaft. Aus dieser Kraft heraus muß sie reden, diese moderne Initiationswissenschaft.

[ 60 ] Sie wissen ja, die Initiationswissenschaft trat von Zeit zu Zeit in die geistige Entwickelung der Erde ein. Sie hat immer wieder stattgefunden. Diejenige Initiationswissenschaft, die wir brauchen, die eigentlich in dem, was die heutige Wissenschaft annimmt, nur einen Anfang für Menschenerkenntnis sehen kann, wird auch immer mehr und mehr bekämpft werden. Sie werden Kraft gebrauchen, um durch dasjenige hindurchzukommen, was der modernen Initiation entgegensteht. Denn bevor die moderne Initiation, die wiederum eine Unterredung ist mit den übersinnlichen Mächten, im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts eigentlich erst die richtige Gewalt bekam, waren schon die gegnerischen Mächte am Werke, die einen Zustand der menschlichen Kultur und Zivilisation herbeiführen, vielfach unbewußt, der eigentlich darauf hinausläuft, die moderne Initiation mit Stumpf und Stiel auszurotten.

[ 61 ] Denken Sie nur einmal, wie populär es heute geworden ist, allem, was als eine Erkenntnis in der Welt auftritt, entgegenzuhalten: Dies ist mein Standpunkt. — Und: Dies ist mein Standpunkt - sagen die Leute, ohne daß sie irgendwie eine Entwickelung durchgemacht haben. Jeder soll seinen Standpunkt von dem Punkte aus eben geltend machen, den er gerade eben in dem Momente, wo er das spricht, in der Welt einnimmt. Und es ist heute für die Leute das Verletzendste, das Aufreizendste, wenn überhaupt von höherer Erkenntnis, von einer Erkenntnis gesprochen wird, zu der man sich erst hinentwickeln soll.

[ 62 ] Wenn im letzten Drittel des 19. Jahrhunderts hauptsächlich die Möglichkeit aufgetaucht ist, die moderne Initiation zu erringen, so waren schon vorher die gegnerischen Mächte am Werke, die vor allen Dingen die große Gleichmachung, das große Nivellement unter den Menschen auch auf geistigem Gebiete herbeiführen wollten. Viele könnte man als Menschen anführen, in denen diese Gegnerschaft gegen die moderne Initiation gewirkt hat.

[ 63 ] Meine lieben Freunde, glauben Sie, daß, wenn aus dem Geiste dieser Initiationswissenschaft zu Ihnen gesprochen werden muß, die Worte ebenso klingen müssen, wie sie auf Erden hier klingen müssen für die gewöhnlichen irdischen Verhältnisse? Wenn ich Ihnen versuche begreiflich zu machen, wie die menschliche Lautsprache anders wird, wenn Sprache entfaltet werden soll gegenüber den Wesen der geistigen Welt, so werden Sie mich auch nicht mißverstehen, wenn ich Ihnen sage: Ich selber werde niemals die große Bedeutung verkennen, die — vom bloßen irdischen Standpunkte aus gesprochen — zum Beispiel Rousseau hat, und ich werde mich anschicken, wenn ich von dem bloßen Erdenstandpunkt aus spreche, mit all jenem Elan und mit all jenen Erhebungen und mit all der guten Kritik von Rousseau zu sprechen, wie eben andere sprechen. Soll ich mich aber zu dem Versuch aufschwingen, in irdische Worte zu kleiden dasjenige, was die Initiationserkenntnis über Rousseau gibt, so muß ich Ihnen sagen: Rousseau stellt sich der Initiationswissenschaft mit seiner Gleichmacherei, mit seinem geistigen Nivellement als der Generalschwätzer der modernen Zivilisation mit vielen anderen Genossen dar!

[ 64 ] Das ist dasjenige, was natürlich die Menschheit nicht so ohne weiteres aufnimmt, daß man vom irdischen Standpunkte aus jemanden einen großen Geist nennen kann, will man aber den Menschen wirklich kennenlernen und das, was ich gesagt habe, daß die moderne Initiationswissenschaft Himmel und Erde kennen muß und den gegenseitigen Rhythmus schildern muß zwischen beiden, dann muß eben auch ausgesprochen werden, daß, was etwa auf der Erde als eine große Persönlichkeit geschildert werden kann, wie Rousseau, gerade vom Initiationsstandpunkte aus der Generalschwätzer des modernen Geisteslebens genannt werden muß. — Erst im Zusammenklingen dessen, was von der einen Seite und von der anderen Seite ertönt, ergibt sich dasjenige, was zu wirklicher Menschenerkenntnis führt. Denn diese wirkliche Menschenerkenntnis muß auferbaut sein auf dem, worauf die alten Initiierten gebaut haben, auf dem: Ex deo nascimur. Alle Erinnerung, sie muß aufgebaut sein auf demjenigen, was uns entgegentreten kann, wenn wir hinausschauen in die Welt, wo Christus unser Führer wird unbewußt, wie ich es heute geschildert habe.

[ 65 ] Aber wir müssen ihn immer mehr und mehr ins Bewußtsein hereinbringen, so daß wir dasjenige, was in der Welt ist, der das Sterben eignet, erkennen als unter der Führung des Christus stehend - erkennen, daß wir mit dem Christus in die tote Welt hineinleben: In Christo morimur.

[ 66 ] Dadurch aber, daß wir mit dem Christus untertauchen in das Grab des Erdenlebens, erfolgt mit ihm die Auferstehung und die Sendung des Geistes: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

[ 67 ] Dieses «Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus» muß vor allen Dingen der moderne Initiierte anstreben. Wenn Sie dieses bedenken und vergleichen mit dem, was heute Gesinnung ist gerade aus der Wissenschaft heraus, so werden Sie sich sagen: Es wird noch ungeheure Gegnerschaft geben, vielleicht eine solche, von der Sie sich heute noch keine Vorstellung machen, die sich auch in Taten ausleben wird, die sich vor allen Dingen ausleben wird in der Tendenz, Initiationswissenschaft ganz unmöglich zu machen. Und was ich, wenn ich in solch einem engeren Kreise zu sprechen habe, gern in die Herzen, in die Seelen hineinlegen möchte, das ist dieses: durch Schilderungen, wie sie sich ergeben aus der modernen Initiationswissenschaft heraus, Kraft zu erwecken, damit wirklich einige Menschen da sind, welche die richtige Stellung finden zwischen dem, was in die Welt will von geistigen Welten aus, und dem, was von der Welt aus die Unmöglichkeit dieses Eindringens der Spiritualität in das Erdenleben will. Das ist dasjenige, worauf ich in solch einem engeren Kreise jetzt hinweisen will, da ja Gelegenheit geboten war zu externeren Vorträgen, wie wir sie zu meiner großen Befriedigung jetzt in Oxford gehabt haben. Da ja die Möglichkeit dadurch da ist, auf die Außenseite hinzuweisen, so muß schon in diesem engeren Kreise auf das Esoterische hingewiesen werden, muß auch dieses behandelt werden.

[ 68 ] Und so glaube ich, daß es richtig wäre, wenn Sie hinauskommen würden darüber, daß manches ja heute noch paradox klingen kann, wenn von den geistigen Welten aus gesprochen wird. Aber es muß paradox klingen, denn die Sprache der geistigen Welten ist eben eine andere, ist so verschieden von der irdischen Sprache, und man muß mit aller Mühe und mit aller Gewalt dasjenige, was eigentlich anders ausgedrückt werden sollte, in die irdische Sprache hereinbringen. So daß es eben schon verstanden werden muß, wenn manches schockieren könnte, weil es als schlichte Erzählung von den geistigen Welten so unmittelbar auftritt.

[ 69 ] Indem ich Ihnen damit die Gesinnung, die auch dem heutigen Vortrag zugrunde lag, charakterisieren wollte, spreche ich Ihnen meine tiefe Befriedigung aus, daß ich wiederum unter Ihnen, meine lieben Freunde, hier in London habe sprechen können. Es ist mir das immer eine Befriedigung. Ich habe schon gesagt, wir sind sehr selten zusammen hier. Möge aber auch dasjenige, was wir in unseren Herzen, in unseren Seelen begründen können bei einem so seltenen Zusammensein, wirken zu einem Zusammensein, das ja bei denen, die sich zur Anthroposophie bekennen, immer da sein soll: dem Zusammensein in den Herzen, in den Seelen über die ganze Welt hin. In dieser Gesinnung, daß wir solch kurzes Zusammensein benützen zur Anregung des großen Beisammenseins, das alle unsere Herzen, alle unsere Seelen verbindet, aus dieser Gesinnung heraus ist der heutige Vortrag gesprochen. Und um diese Gesinnung zu dokumentieren, wollte ich diese Worte noch anfügen, aus dieser Gesinnung heraus möchte ich das Wort gesprochen haben: Bleiben wir so zusammen, meine lieben Freunde, auch wenn wir noch so weit auseinandergehen.

Eleventh lecture

[ 1 ] Since one wants to summarize as much as possible in a reflection when one can be together so rarely, it is easy to summarize too much. Nevertheless, I will try today to characterize from a certain point of view what can be called the other side of human existence on earth. And I would like to relate this to the significance of deeper insights, spiritual insights, for our time.

[ 2 ] How much does a person ultimately know about what belongs to their existence if they only use their senses and their intellect, which is bound to their senses, to gain knowledge? Through our ordinary sense consciousness, we consciously experience only the waking part of human existence. But the spiritual powers that guide the world have not incorporated the state of sleep into human existence for no reason.

[ 3 ] From the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, an extraordinary amount happens to us. In fact, most of what the spirit has to do through us in earthly existence happens during the state of sleep.

[ 4 ] During the waking state, only what humans can do with themselves and with things happens on earth. During the sleeping state, everything that higher spiritual beings do with the human soul in order to bring humans to their overall development within earthly existence happens in human development. And we must not lose sight of the fact that, although modern initiatory knowledge makes it possible to look more closely into the significant facts that occur with human beings between falling asleep and waking up, these facts do not occur only for the initiated, but for all human beings; that the development of all human beings depends on these facts. The initiated can only draw attention to these facts. But all human beings in earthly existence who think about the meaning of this earthly existence should feel and sense its significance more and more.

[ 5 ] Now I would like to describe to you simply what all plays a part in the human state of sleep. When a person falls asleep — you know, this is characterized outwardly by saying: his astral body and his I detach themselves from the physical body and the etheric body — then this I and this astral body are in the spiritual world and do not penetrate the physical body and the etheric body as they do in the state between waking and falling asleep.

[ 6 ] But if we now look at what really happens to human beings in the state of sleep, we are shown how they are connected to this earth during waking life. They are connected to this earth first of all through their senses, in that they perceive and recognize the phenomena of the various natural realms through their senses. But they are also connected to it through their subconscious activity during waking life. For example, they breathe, and, if one may say so, plays with the whole earth in the air they breathe. The air contains an enormous amount of substances in a very, very finely distributed state. But it is precisely in this finely distributed state that they have an extraordinarily significant effect when they are taken up by the human organism through the air we breathe. And just as what a person perceives through their senses enters them consciously, so too does a great deal enter them subconsciously while they are awake, I would say more substantially than through the abstract, ideal state of perception and thought; the environment enters the human being more substantially through breathing.

[ 7 ] And if you were to consider how strongly the human organism depends on everything it takes in with the various substances of earthly food, you would be able to say: Much affects the human being in his waking state. — But that should be of less interest to us today. We should be more interested in what affects people in their sleeping state. And here we must say: just as we see the external substances, the earthly, in connection with the human being during his waking state, so, when he passes into the sleeping state, he enters into a certain connection with the entire cosmos.

[ 8 ] This is not to say that human beings should be understood as taking on the size of the cosmos with their astral bodies every night — that would be an exaggeration — but rather that human beings grow into the cosmos every night. Just as we are connected here with the plants, with the minerals, with the air, so during the night we are connected with the movements of the planets and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From the moment we fall asleep until we wake up, the starry sky becomes our world, just as the earth is our world when we are awake.

[ 9 ] Now, first of all, we can distinguish between different spheres through which we pass between falling asleep and waking up. The first sphere through which we pass between falling asleep and waking up is the sphere in which the human ego and the human astral body, that is, the human soul in sleep, feel connected to the movements of the planetary world. Just as when we wake up again in the morning and slip into our physical body, we can say: We have our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain within us — so during sleep we must say: We have within us the forces of planetary movement in the first sphere, with which we come into contact immediately after falling asleep and with which we are again in contact immediately before waking up.

[ 10 ] It is not as if we take in the entire movement of the planets every night, but what we carry within us as an image is a small picture in which the movements of the planets are actually depicted. And this is different for every human being. So we can say that every human being first experiences the movement of the planets when they fall asleep, in such a way that they relive everything that is happening outside in the world space between the planets as they move, internally in a kind of planetary globe in their astral body. This is the first experience that human beings go through after falling asleep.

[ 11 ] And do not say, my dear friends: What does all this have to do with me, I do not perceive it! — You do not see it with your eyes, you do not hear it with your ears. But at the moment when you pass into the state of sleep, at that moment the part of your astral body that is integrated into the heart during waking life actually becomes a heart eye; it becomes able to see what is happening in this way. And this heart's eye really perceives — even if the perception is very dull in the present human race — it perceives what the human being experiences there.

[ 12 ] And what he experiences there is perceived by this heart's eye in such a way that, in the next few moments after falling asleep, this heart's eye looks back to the person lying in bed as a physical body and etheric body. The ego and the astral body look back with the heart's eye. And what you experience inwardly as the image of the planetary movements in your body is reflected back to you from your own etheric body, so that you see the mirror image of it from your own etheric body.

[ 13 ] It is only due to the present constitution of human beings that they immediately forget the dull consciousness they had through their heart's eye during the night when they wake up. It is a dull consciousness that at most lingers in dreams, which still have something of the inner movement of planetary motion, but into which images from life are inserted, which basically only enter these dreams that are actually dependent on planetary motion. The images enter because the astral body submerges into the etheric body, and the etheric body preserves the memory of life.

[ 14 ] So it may well be that you wake up in the morning, have returned through the sphere of planetary movements, and say that you have experienced there — because it is particularly connected with your destiny, with your karma — a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus. So it may be that you have experienced a special relationship between Jupiter and Venus. If you were to bring what you experienced between Jupiter and Venus into your daily life, then much would become clear to you about your human abilities; for these are not of the earth, they are from the cosmos. In the same way that you are connected to the cosmos, you are gifted, you are good, or at least inclined toward good and evil. And you would see what Jupiter and Venus have communicated with each other, and what you have perceived with the eye of your heart, or I could also say with the ear of your heart, for it is not possible to distinguish between the two so precisely. But this is forgotten because it is perceived only very dimly. But because this interaction between Jupiter and Venus is still taking place within you, performing a mutual movement in your astral body, something that you once experienced, say, when you were seventeen or twenty-five years old, perhaps in Oxford or Manchester or somewhere else at noon, now mixes in. The images mix in with cosmic experiences. The images are therefore certainly of some significance in dreams, but they are not what is primarily important. They are, so to speak, the garment that is woven over the cosmic experiences.

[ 15 ] The experience that comes about in this way is something for which one can say, with regard to the heart perception I have spoken of, that it is connected with a considerable amount of anxiety. In almost all people, certain spiritual feelings of anxiety mix into this experience, especially when what is experienced cosmically shines back and echoes from the human etheric body. So, for example, when what is caused by Jupiter and Venus through their special relationship, which I have just pointed out, shines back, and a ray—which is very meaningful for your heart perception—returns from the human forehead, and another ray mixes its sound and light with it, coming from the region below the heart, then this anxiety arises for the heart perception, which must first be spoken of, and in which every soul that is not completely hardened actually says to itself in sleep: The world mist has taken me in. — It is really something like becoming as thin as the world mist, and floating like a world mist cloud inside the world mist. This is the immediate experience after sleep.

[ 16 ] And then, out of this anxiety and out of this experience of oneself as a piece of the world mist within the world mist, there enters into the human soul what might be called devotion to the divine that floats through the world. These are the two basic feelings that come to people in the first sphere after falling asleep: I am in the world mist, and I want to rest in the bosom of the deity in order to be safe from being dissolved in the world mist.

[ 17 ] And this is something that the heart's perception must carry over in the morning when the human being again submerges with his soul into his physical and etheric bodies. For if this experience were not carried over into life, all the substances that are taken in by the human being the next day as food, or that are otherwise processed in him through metabolism — even if he is starving, substances are constantly being taken from his own body — would take on their entirely earthly character and would throw the entire human organism into disorder.

[ 18 ] The significance of sleep for the human waking state is indeed enormous and meaningful. And we can only say: in this epoch of the Earth's development, it has been taken away from human beings to ensure that the divine is carried over. For, given the disposition of human beings in the present age, they would hardly be able to summon the strength to carry these things over from the other side of existence to this side of existence with full consciousness.

[ 19 ] Then, when the human being has experienced this, he enters the next sphere. He does not leave the first sphere, which remains with him for his heart perception. But the next sphere is much more complicated, and it is perceived with that part of the astral body which during the day, when awake, is integrated into the human solar plexus, and is also integrated into the entire organization of the human limbs. The solar plexus and limb organization of the human being, that part of the astral body which permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs, perceives during the night what is in the next sphere.

[ 20 ] And in the next sphere, the human being now feels the forces in his astral body that come from the zodiac signs: one form of forces comes directly from the zodiac signs, the other, in that the zodiac forces pass through the earth, depending on whether the zodiac signs are above or below the earth. This makes the great difference.

[ 21 ] Human beings therefore perceive with what I would now like to call their solar perception, because it is the part of the astral body that perceives, which is connected with the solar plexus and the limbs: I would like to call it the solar eye. Through this, however, they become aware of their entire relationship to the zodiac and to planetary motion. The image thus expands, and human beings grow more into the image of the cosmos.

[ 22 ] And again, this is mirrored back to human beings by their own physical and etheric bodies, to which they turn their gaze. Thus, every night, human beings bring into connection with the entire cosmos, with planetary movements and fixed star constellations, that which leaves their bodies.

[ 23 ] But the experience with the fixed stars — which may occur half an hour after falling asleep for one person, after a longer period of time for another, and for some very shortly after falling asleep — is such that human beings experience themselves in all twelve fixed stars. Now, the experiences with the fixed stars are extremely complicated.

[ 24 ] My dear friends, I believe that even if you were a world traveler and had visited the most important places on earth, you would not have the sum of experiences that you have every night from a single constellation of the zodiac for your sun eye! And it is initially the case that for people of earlier times, who still had strong dreamlike clairvoyant powers and perceived much of what I am now telling you in a dreamlike state of consciousness, this was relatively less confusing. Today, human beings can hardly attain any clarity for their sun-eye — and they must attain this even if they have forgotten it during the day — hardly any clarity about what they experience in twelvefold complicated ways during the night, unless they have taken into their minds what Christ wanted to become for the earth through the Mystery of Golgotha. Simply to have felt what it means for earthly life that Christ went through the mystery of Golgotha, to have thought about Christ in ordinary earthly life: this brings such a tinge, such a tincture into the astral body via the physical and etheric bodies that Christ becomes the guide in the zodiac from falling asleep to waking up.

[ 25 ] It is indeed the case that human beings feel: Am I to perish in the number of the stars and in their events? — And when he can then look back on what he has directed toward Christ during waking life in thoughts, feelings, and impulses of the will, then a kind of guide arises for him in Christ to bring order to the confusing events of this sphere.

[ 26 ] So we must actually say: When we look at the other side of life, only then does the full meaning of Christ for the earthly life of humanity since the Mystery of Golgotha dawn upon us. And otherwise no one really understands what Christ must still become for earthly life within today's ordinary civilization.

[ 27 ] Now, all these things, which not many people experience today, are interpreted in a wrong way. The way in which people who have not yet been touched by the Christ event bring their nighttime experiences into their waking consciousness in a disorderly way can only be understood when one knows what I have just explained. In fact, when we have first gone through the foggy existence in the state of sleep, we stand, as it were, before a confusing world in which Christ emerges as a spiritual sun and becomes our guide, so that the confusion dissolves into a kind of harmonious understanding.

[ 28 ] This is important because at the moment when we enter this sphere, in which we have a whirlwind of confusion, the fixed constellations of the zodiac and the movement of the planets, our karma actually appears before our solar eye. All people perceive their karma, but only in the state of sleep. In the waking state, only the reproduction of this perception creeps in emotionally.

[ 29 ] Much of the state of mind that a person striving for self-knowledge may encounter within themselves is the very faint echo of this experience, where Christ appears as a guide and leads us from Aries through Taurus, Gemini, and so on, explaining the world to us at night so that we may regain strength for our daily lives. For what we experience in this sphere is nothing less than Christ becoming our guide through the confusing events of the zodiac, standing there as the guiding being and leading human beings from constellation to constellation so that they can take in the forces they need for their waking life in an orderly manner.

[ 30 ] This is what human beings experience every night between falling asleep and waking up; they experience this through their relationship with the cosmos as soul and spirit. Just as they are related to the earth through their physical and etheric bodies, so they are related to the cosmos through their soul, spirit, and astral body. Now, when humans have separated themselves from their physical and etheric bodies and have thus grown out into the cosmic world, they would feel within themselves a strong kinship, as it were, to it in their inner image experience, which shines back to them from what has remained lying in bed; they would feel a strong tendency to continue living beyond the zodiac.

[ 31 ] He cannot do this between birth and death because, during the time when humans are asleep, another element mixes into all the experiences I have described to you so far, an element that is completely different from everything that comes from the planets and the fixed stars. And that is the lunar element.

[ 32 ] During the night, the lunar element tinges the entire cosmos — even during the new moon — with a special substance that humans also experience. But they experience it in such a way that these lunar forces, I would say, hold them back within the zodiacal world and lead them back to awakening. Human beings experience this lunar element, already faintly, during the first sphere. But during the second sphere, which I have described, human beings experience the mysteries of birth and death particularly strongly. There they experience — with an organ even deeper than the heart's eye and the sun's eye — with an organ that is, in a sense, assigned to the whole human being, actually every night, how the spiritual-soul descends, or has descended, from the spiritual-soul world and, through birth, has entered into physical existence, and how, little by little, the body passes into death. One actually dies all the time, every moment, only overcoming death until death then actually occurs as a single event. But at the very moment when one experiences the soul passing through the earthly body, at that moment one experiences through the same forces one's connection with the rest of humanity.

[ 33 ] You only have to consider that not even the most insignificant encounter or relationship, any more than the most momentous, is without connection with the entire destiny, with the entire karma of the human being. And whether the souls with whom we have ever been connected in past earthly lives, or with whom we are now connected in this earthly life, are in the spiritual world or here on earth, everything that human beings have to do with other human beings, all human relationships, which have an intimate connection with the mystery of birth and death, appear there, I would say, before the spiritual human eye. Man feels himself in his entire life destiny within it.

[ 34 ] This is connected with the fact that, in a sense, all other forces, those of the planets and those of the fixed stars, want to pull us out into the cosmos. The moon, on the other hand, wants to pull us back into the human world; it basically pulls us out of the cosmos. It has forces that are opposite to both the forces of the sun and the forces of the stars; it constitutes our relationship to the earth. Therefore, in a certain sense, it brings us back every night from the experiences of the zodiac to the experiences of the planets and again to the experiences of the earth, by returning us to the physical human body.

[ 35 ] From a certain point of view, this is the difference between sleeping and dying: when a person falls asleep, they remain in close connection with these lunar forces. It is these lunar forces that, in a sense, remind him every night of the meaning of his earthly life. But this can only be the case because, as I have described, the human being receives everything back from his etheric body. In death, he withdraws the etheric body from his physical body: the memory of the last earthly life arises, and it is now this etheric body that for a brief period of a few days permeates the cloud of which I have spoken. I said: Every night we ourselves live as a cloud, as a misty cloud in a misty world. But this misty cloud, which is ourselves, is without our etheric body during the night. When we die, it is initially with our etheric body during the first few days after death. Then the etheric body gradually dissolves into the cosmic, and the memory fades away. And now, unlike in the past, when we only reflected back everything we experienced in the stars from the person who remained lying in bed, after death we now have a direct inner experience of planetary movement and the constellations of fixed stars.

[ 36 ] You will find a description of what these experiences are like from a certain point of view if you read my “Theosophy.” There you will find a description of what a person experiences between death and rebirth, as if it were happening around them. But just as you would not have colors and sounds if you did not have eyes and ears inside your body, just as you could not breathe if you did not have lungs and a heart inside you, so after death you would not be able to perceive what I have described as the soul world and the spirit realm, as your surroundings in the spiritual world, if you did not have Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, and so on. That is your organism: you experience this with your cosmic organism. The moon cannot bring you back because it can only bring you back to the etheric body, but that has dissolved into the cosmos.

[ 37 ] But there is still so much of the power that the moon has bequeathed to human beings that they remain in the soul world for a time, as I have described in Theosophy. He still keeps his gaze fixed on the earth, then he passes over into what I have described as the spirit world. There he is in an experience that is also felt by him outside the zodiac, outside the fixed starry sky. And so he lives through the time between death and a new birth.

[ 38 ] The details of this immersion into the spiritual world are such that if I were to describe it to you for the night, I could describe it to you in the following way — but of course you must not try to grasp the concepts, because it is almost impossible to express these things in earthly terms. But I can describe it to you like this.

[ 39 ] Imagine a meadow with plants growing on it; from each flower, including those on trees, a kind of spiral line emanates, swinging out into the world space. These spiral lines contain the forces through which the cosmos regulates and causes plant growth on Earth. For plants do not grow merely from their seeds; plants grow from the cosmic forces that surround the Earth in spirals. But these forces are also present in winter, even in the desert, even when there are no plants. In order to enter into the planetary movements, human beings must use these plant spiral forces every night like a ladder. They thus ascend through the ladder-like nature of the plant spiral forces into the movements of the planetary world. And with the force that enables the plant to grow upward from its roots — it must exert a force in order to grow upward — with this force, human beings are carried into the second sphere I have described. And indeed, when we consider the experiences I have described to you, where the human being becomes somewhat anxious and says: I am a misty formation in the general cosmic mist, I must rest in the bosom of the Deity — when we consider this in relation to earthly conditions, the soul says to itself: I rest in all that lies as cosmic blessing over a field of seed when it blooms, over the meadow when it blooms. Everything that descends to the plants and lives out its life in spiral lines of force is, in essence, the bosom of the Godhead, the living, active bosom of the Godhead, in which human beings initially feel themselves nestled every time they fall asleep.

[ 40 ] And it is the moon that brings him back to his animal nature. For the forces of plants always strive to carry human beings further and further out into the universal. But since human beings share their animal nature with the animal kingdom, the moon brings them back to their animal nature every morning.

[ 41 ] This is how humans are connected to the cosmos. This is how the cosmos works between falling asleep and waking up. And the heart's eye, the sun's eye, and the human eye do this at night in such a way that they feel similar to when one person feels or experiences some kind of relationship with another. But this is not told to him, nor is it something he has thought up himself, but rather it is told to him by the utterances of the plants, through which he first climbs up a ladder into the planetary world and is then driven out into the zodiacal world.

[ 42 ] And so an experience might be something like this: I have a relationship with this person, the lilies tell me so, the roses tell me so, because the power of the roses, the power of the lilies, the power of the tulips has just driven me there. — The whole earth becomes, in a sense, a book of life that enlightens us about the human world, the world of soul beings, into which we live.

[ 43 ] And you see, people of different ages, of different epochs, have had these experiences in different ways.

If you look at ancient India, those who wanted to learn something through sleep, through their relationship with the starry world, only wanted to learn about those fixed stars, those constellations that are above the earth at any given time, not always, but at any given time, because that changes. But they never wanted to have any relationship with the constellations below, whose forces then pass through the earth.

[ 44 ] Therefore, look at the position of a Buddha or, in general, the position of an Eastern sage who strives for spiritual wisdom through spiritual exercises! Look at how he has crossed his legs and sits on them: because he wants only that which is the upper body and which is related to the upper constellations to be active within him, and not that which also works through him through the solar eye, which works through the limbs. He wants to have the powers of his limbs switched off, so to speak. Therefore, in the position of every Oriental striving for wisdom, you can see how he wants to develop a relationship only with what is above the earth. He wants to develop relationships of knowledge only with the soul.

[ 45 ] The world would have remained incomplete if only this kind of striving for knowledge had existed, if only the Buddha positions had been adhered to in order to attain knowledge. Even in Greek times, human beings had to enter into a relationship with those forces that one comes into contact with when one develops according to the constellations that are below the earth.

[ 46 ] This is wonderfully intimated in Greek mythology. For in Greek mythology, you are always told of a certain kind of initiation: the person concerned descended into the underworld. — You can always tell that certain Greek heroes have undergone initiation when it is said that they descended into the underworld. This means that they became acquainted with the forces of the cosmos that work through the earth; they became acquainted with the chthonic forces.

[ 47 ] Thus, every age has its own special task. And so the Oriental initiate learned, in order to be able to communicate this to other people, to know above all what lies before birth or conception, that is, in the soul-spiritual realm which the human being passes through before descending into the earthly world. And what approaches people in such a magnificent way in the Eastern worldview, in Eastern poetry, essentially comes about because people at that time were able to look into the life that human beings go through before they descend to earth.

[ 48 ] In Greece, people began to learn about what depends on the earth itself: Uranus and Gaia. Gaia, the earth, stands at the starting point of Greek cosmology. And the Greeks always sought to learn about the mysteries of the earth itself, which are of course also the cosmic mysteries that work through the earth. But the Greeks also wanted to know the mysteries of the actual underworld. And so a proper cosmology developed in Greece.

[ 49 ] Look how little the Greeks actually had — the Orientals had none at all — of what we call historical knowledge. They were much more interested in what happened back when the Earth was forming in the cosmos, when the inner forces of the Earth, the titanic forces, were fighting other forces, which the Greeks saw as great, powerful spiritual forces underlying the earthly conditions in which humans are entangled. We in modern times are dependent on understanding history, on being able to point out that human beings started out from an ancient, dreamlike state of clairvoyance, that they have now arrived at their intellectual consciousness tinged with myth, from which they must work their way out again in order to look into the spiritual world.

[ 50 ] The present epoch is indeed the transition to a conscious attainment of experience in the spiritual world. To this end, we must above all cast our gaze upon history. That is why, in our anthroposophical movement, we have repeatedly looked back at the various epochs of history, back to the time when human beings still received knowledge from higher, super-earthly beings, and then traced the historical development of human beings up to our own time.

[ 51 ] And this historical development of human beings is viewed in a completely abstract way by today's external knowledge. What abstract lines are drawn when we develop historical knowledge today! The ancient people still followed that history, which they clothed in myth, where they connected history with the whole of nature and its events. We can no longer do that. But people have not yet acquired the sense to ask: What was it like when the first human beings received wisdom from higher beings, and then gradually it dawned upon them? What was it like when a god himself descended to incarnate himself in a human body through the mystery of Golgotha and to accomplish a cosmically grandiose mission with the earth, so that the earth would thereby gain its meaning?

[ 52 ] The whole theology of the 19th and 20th centuries suffers from the fact that it cannot understand Christ in his spiritual meaning. You see, this is what modern initiation science must bring. There must be a modern science of initiation that can penetrate into the spiritual world, that can speak about birth and death, about life between birth and death and between death and a new birth, and about the life of the human soul in sleep, as we have spoken here today. It must be possible for human beings to get to know this spiritual, other side of existence. All progress of humanity into the future will only be possible if human beings also get to know this other side of existence.

[ 53 ] Just as human beings once turned their knowledge only toward the higher worlds — which you can observe well in the position of the Buddha —— just as people later, in order to arrive at a cosmology, read this from the evolution of the Earth and were initiated into the Greek, chthonic mysteries, which Greek mythology recounts again and again in significant, prominent places — so we need, after humans have studied the secrets of heaven and the secrets of earth in the ancient science of initiation, we need a modern science of initiation that can, in a sense, move back and forth between heaven and earth, asking heaven when it wants information about earth, and asking earth when it wants information about heaven.

[ 54 ] And that, in all modesty, is roughly how the questions are posed and provisionally answered in the book “An Outline of Occult Science,” which has been translated into English under the title “An Outline of Occult Science.” It attempts to describe what modern man needs just as much as the ancient Orientals needed the mysteries of the heavens, or the Greeks needed the mysteries of the earth. And how this modern initiation relates to human beings is something that should also be observed in the present day.

[ 55 ] In order to characterize in a few strokes the tasks underlying modern initiation, I will say something here that I have already been able to say to a few of you in Oxford in recent days. I would like to point out first of all that while the oldest initiates were primarily concerned with looking up into the spiritual worlds from which human beings descend when they clothe themselves in an earthly body, later initiates were concerned with what I tried to characterize by pointing you to the Greek representation of the descent into the underworld — it is incumbent upon modern initiates, as I have just said, to seek knowledge of the rhythmic relationship between heaven and earth.

[ 56 ] But this can only be achieved if one considers the following. Certainly, one must know the heavens, one must know the earth, but then one must consider that in which, among the beings that surround us, heaven and earth first interact to form a whole — one must consider, that is, with the eye of the heart, with the eye of the sun, and with the whole human eye: man himself. Human beings themselves! For human beings contain infinitely more secrets than those worlds that we can perceive with our outer senses, that we can explain to ourselves with our intellect bound to the senses. To get to know human beings spiritually is the task of present-day initiatory knowledge. One might say: everything wants to gain this initiatory knowledge for the sake of understanding human beings out of the whole world, out of the whole cosmos.

[ 57 ] Now compare the situation of the present-day initiate with that of the ancient initiate. Through all the soul abilities of the older people, memories could be awakened of the time before we descended into an earthly body. Therefore, for the older initiates in particular, it was an awakening of cosmic memories. For the Greeks, it was then a matter of looking into nature. For the modern initiate, it is a matter of getting to know human beings directly as spiritual beings. To do this, they must acquire the ability to detach themselves from their earthly perception of what connects human beings to the world. I would like to give the example I mentioned recently to illustrate this point.

[ 58 ] One of the most difficult tasks of initiatory knowledge is to establish a relationship with souls who have left the earth, whether recently or long ago, who have passed through the gate of death. However, it is possible to establish such relationships by awakening deeper soul forces. First, however, one must be clear that one must actually accustom oneself through exercises to the language one is to speak with the dead. This language is, I would say, in a certain sense a child of human language. But one would be quite mistaken to believe that human language would be of any help here in maintaining communication with the dead. For the first thing one becomes aware of is that the dead can only understand for a very short time what lives here in the earthly language as nouns. What a thing expresses, a finished thing that is designated by a noun, no longer exists in the language of the dead. In the language of the dead, everything refers to activity, to inner movement. That is why we find that after some time, after people have passed through the gate of death, they only have a real feeling for verbs, for what we call action words. In order to communicate with the dead, we must sometimes ask them questions, formulating them in such a way that they are understandable to the dead. Then, after some time, if we know how to pay attention, the answer comes. Usually several nights must pass before the dead can answer the questions we ask them. But, as I said, we must find our way into the language of the dead, and only then do we find the language that the dead actually have, the language they must live in because they have to remove their entire soul life from the earth. We find ourselves in a language that is no longer shaped by earthly conditions, in a language that comes from feeling, from the heart, in a kind of language of the heart. There we form language in the same way that we form the sounds of feeling in human language, where we utter an “ah” when we are surprised, where we utter an “I” when we want to refer back to ourselves. It is there that the sounds and sound combinations acquire their great, their real meaning. And from this moment on, language also changes into something where it no longer sounds organic, where language is transformed into what I described earlier, where language is such that what rises from the flowers gives us information about human beings, and we ourselves begin to speak with what comes from the flowers. We ourselves become flowers, and we bloom, as it were, with the flowers. And by entering into the tulip blossom with our soul forces, we express in the imagination of the tulip that which is expressed here on earth in the form of words. We grow back into that which is the spiritual in everything.

[ 59 ] But you can see from my example of language that human beings grow into completely different circumstances when they have passed through the gate of death, that we really know very little about human beings if we only know their outer appearance here, and that modern initiatory science must know this other side of human beings. This begins with language. And the human body itself, as it is described—read the literature on this—becomes something completely different to us, becomes a world unto itself when we grow into the science of initiation. While the ancient initiate had to reawaken a lost ability in human beings, to bring back memories of what people lived before they descended to earth, the initiate of the present must do what is completely new, what is progress in human beings, what will still have meaning for human beings once they themselves have left the earth, indeed, the Earth will no longer exist in the cosmos. That is the task of modern initiation science. It must speak from this power, this modern initiation science.

[ 60 ] You know, initiation science has entered the spiritual development of the Earth from time to time. It has taken place again and again. The science of initiation that we need, which can only see what modern science accepts as the beginning of human knowledge, will also be fought against more and more. You will need strength to get through what stands in the way of modern initiation. For before modern initiation, which is in turn a conversation with the supersensible powers, actually gained the right power in the last third of the 19th century, the opposing powers were already at work, bringing about a state of human culture and civilization, often unconsciously, which actually amounts to eradicating modern initiation root and branch.

[ 61 ] Just think how popular it has become today to counter everything that appears in the world as knowledge with: This is my point of view. — And: This is my point of view — people say without having undergone any kind of development. Everyone is supposed to assert their point of view from the position they happen to occupy in the world at the moment they speak. And today, the most offensive and provocative thing for people is when someone speaks of higher knowledge, of knowledge that one must first develop.

[ 62 ] If the possibility of achieving modern initiation arose mainly in the last third of the 19th century, the opposing forces were already at work before that, seeking above all to bring about great equalization, a great leveling among human beings, including in the spiritual realm. Many people could be cited as examples of those in whom this opposition to modern initiation was at work.

[ 63 ] My dear friends, do you believe that when we speak to you from the spirit of this science of initiation, the words must sound the same as they do here on earth under ordinary earthly conditions? When I try to make you understand how human spoken language changes when it is to be developed in relation to the beings of the spiritual world, you will not misunderstand me when I say: I myself will never fail to recognize the great significance that Rousseau, for example, has from a purely earthly point of view, and when I speak from a purely earthly point of view, I will endeavor to speak with all the enthusiasm, exaltation, and sound criticism of Rousseau, just as others do. But if I should attempt to clothe in earthly words what the initiatory knowledge reveals about Rousseau, I must tell you: Rousseau, with his egalitarianism and his spiritual leveling, presents himself to the initiatory science as the general chatterbox of modern civilization, along with many other comrades!

[ 64 ] This is something that humanity does not readily accept, that from an earthly point of view one can call someone a great spirit, but if one really wants to get to know human beings and what I have said, that modern initiation science must know heaven and earth and describe the mutual rhythm between the two, then it must also be said that what can be described on earth as a great personality, such as Rousseau, must be called, from the point of view of initiation, the general chatterbox of modern spiritual life. Only when what sounds from one side and from the other side come together in harmony does that which leads to true knowledge of the human being emerge. For this real knowledge of man must be built upon what the ancient initiates built upon, upon this: Ex deo nascimur. All memory must be built upon that which can confront us when we look out into the world, where Christ becomes our unconscious guide, as I have described today.

[ 65 ] But we must bring him more and more into our consciousness, so that we recognize that what is in the world, which is subject to death, is under the guidance of Christ — recognize that we live with Christ into the dead world: In Christ we die.

[ 66 ] But because we submerge ourselves with Christ in the grave of earthly life, the resurrection and the sending of the Spirit take place with him: Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus.

[ 67 ] This “Per spiritum sanctum reviviscimus” must be the goal of the modern initiate above all else. If you consider this and compare it with the current mindset, especially in science, you will say to yourself: There will still be tremendous opposition, perhaps of a kind you cannot even imagine today, which will also manifest itself in deeds, which will manifest itself above all in the tendency to make the science of initiation completely impossible. And what I would like to place in your hearts and souls when I speak in such a close circle is this: through descriptions arising from modern initiation science, to awaken strength so that there really are some people who find the right position between what wants to come into the world from spiritual worlds and what wants to prevent this penetration of spirituality into earthly life from the world. That is what I now wish to point out in such a narrow circle, since the opportunity has been given for external lectures, such as we have now had in Oxford, to my great satisfaction. Since this provides an opportunity to point to the outside world, it is necessary to point to the esoteric in this narrow circle as well, and to deal with it.

[ 68 ] And so I believe it would be right for you to come to terms with the fact that some things may still sound paradoxical today when speaking of the spiritual worlds. But it must sound paradoxical, because the language of the spiritual worlds is different, so different from earthly language, and we must make every effort and use all our strength to translate into earthly language what should really be expressed differently. So it must be understood that some things may be shocking because they appear so directly as simple narratives about the spiritual worlds.

[ 69 ] In characterizing the attitude that also underlies today's lecture, I would like to express my deep satisfaction at having been able to speak again among you, my dear friends, here in London. It is always a pleasure for me. I have already said that we are very rarely together here. But may what we can establish in our hearts and souls during such rare gatherings also have an effect on the togetherness that should always exist among those who profess anthroposophy: togetherness in our hearts and souls throughout the whole world. It is in this spirit, that we use such brief moments together to inspire the great togetherness that connects all our hearts and souls, that today's lecture has been given. And to document this attitude, I would like to add these words, which I would like to have spoken out of this attitude: Let us remain together, my dear friends, even if we go our separate ways.