The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Eleventh Lecture

[ 1 ] From everything that has been said in recent days, and especially yesterday, you will be able to deduce the approximate time period within our spiritual-scientific description into which we must place the account of Genesis. We have already pointed out that the moment marked by what might be called the first monumental words of the Bible is the very moment we describe in spiritual-scientific terms with the words: The substance still shared by Earth and Sun is preparing to undergo a separation. Then this separation takes place, and during the separation process, what Genesis initially describes to us unfolds. All that is meant by this Genesis account is what occurs up to the Lemurian epoch, up to the separation of the Moon. And what is then described by us in spiritual science after the separation of the Moon has taken place—as the course of the Lemurian epoch, as the dawn of the Atlantean epoch—we must seek in the account that follows the days of creation. We already hinted at this yesterday. We also pointed out the profound meaning behind the statement that human beings had Earth-Moon-dust imprinted into their physical bodies. This occurred at the very same time as that ascent in the cosmos which we have described as a cosmic advancement of the Elohim to the Jahve-Elohim. We had to conceive of this ascent as coinciding, so to speak, with the beginning of the moon’s influence from without. Here we must simply conceive of the moon’s influence—that is, of that entity connected with the process of the moon’s separation—with the moon’s influence from without, precisely within the totality of the Elohim, that which we call Yahweh-Elohim. So that we could say: The moon’s influence on the Earth in its first stage corresponds to all that we can call the imprinting of the Earth-Moon substance into the human body. — The human body, which until then was merely a warm vessel, is endowed with what is usually translated as: Yahweh-Elohim breathed the divine breath into man, and man became a living soul, a living being, or rather,

[ 2 ] In doing so, we must not fail to point out once again the tremendous accuracy, grandeur, and power of the biblical expressions. I have been able to draw your attention to the fact that the actual Incarnation on Earth is based on the fact that man, in his spiritual nature, was permitted to wait within the spiritual state until the appropriate conditions were present in the process of becoming earthly itself, so that through the late assumption of his physicality he could become a mature being. Had he had to descend from his spiritual nature to physicality earlier, for instance during those events referred to as the so-called fifth day of creation, then he could only have become a being physically similar to those entities described to us as living in the air and water spheres. So how is this essential nature of the human being actually presented in Genesis? Indeed, it is wonderfully magnificent, and the expressions are so aptly chosen there that modern man could learn much precisely regarding the correct and apt choice of expressions. We are told there that those beings—that is, the group souls—who plunged into the matter of the Earth on the fifth day of creation became living beings, what we today call living beings. Humanity had not yet descended at that time. Those group souls, who were still up above, as it were, in the great reservoir of the spiritual, descended only later. And even during the sixth day of creation, the animal beings closest to human beings—the actual terrestrial animals—descended first. Thus, even during the early phase of the so-called sixth day of creation, human beings were not permitted to descend into dense matter; for if they had already imprinted upon themselves the forces of becoming earthly there, they would have become physical beings like the terrestrial animals. First to descend were the group souls of the higher terrestrial animals, which now populated the earth’s surface in contrast to the air and water. Only then did conditions gradually arise that allowed the predispositions for the later human being to form.

[ 3 ] How did this come about? This is powerfully implied when it is said that the beings of the Elohim set out to shape the earthly human being according to the image I have described to you, allowing their activities to converge. We must therefore say: First, this human being came into being through the Elohim, with their variously distributed abilities, working together as a group of beings with a common goal. — Thus, human beings were initially the common goal of the group of Elohim.

[ 4 ] Now we must form a clearer picture of how humanity actually came into being on what is known as the sixth day of creation. After all, humanity was not yet as it appears to us today. The physical form in which humanity appears to us today did not come into being until later, when the breath of life—imprinted by Yahweh-Elohim—was breathed into it. Before the dust of the earth was imbued with physicality, the process described as the creation of humankind by the Elohim took place. What, then, was the nature of the human being whom the Elohim brought into existence during the so-called Lemurian era?

[ 5 ] Remember what I have often said about the character and nature of modern human beings. What we call “modern human beings” is, in a certain sense, the same for all people only in regard to the higher aspects. However, we must distinguish between the sexes in such a way that what appears to us today in physical form as a man is feminine in its etheric body, and likewise, what appears to us physically as a woman is masculine in its etheric body. This is how humanity is distributed today. That which appears masculine on the outside is feminine on the inside, and that which appears feminine on the outside is masculine on the inside. How did this come about? It came about because a differentiation in human physicality did not occur until a relatively late time after the actual days of creation. In those human beings who came into being as the common goal of the Elohim on the sixth day of creation, this differentiation—the separation into man and woman—did not yet exist. At that time, human beings still shared a common physicality. We can picture them most clearly—as far as this is at all possible in an image—by saying: The physical body was still more ethereal, while the ethereal body was somewhat denser than today. —So what is today a dense, physical body was not yet as dense as it is today when the Elohim formed it, and the ethereal body was denser than it is today. A differentiation, a becoming denser in the direction of the physical, occurred later under the influence of Yahweh-Elohim. You can already surmise that we must not speak of the Elohim’s human creation in the modern sense as male and female, but that it was male and female at the same time, undifferentiated, indistinguishable. That human being, then, who came into being in the sense that the Bible expresses through the Elohim: “Let us make man!”—was not yet differentiated, but male and female at the same time, and through this creation of the Elohim, the male-female human being came into being. That is the meaning, the original meaning of what is so grotesquely translated in modern Bibles: “And the Elohim created man, a little man and a little woman.” This “little man and little woman” is surely the most inorganic translation in the Bible. We are not dealing here with a little man and a little woman in the modern sense, but with the undifferentiated human being, with the male-female human being.

[ 6 ] I am well aware that numerous biblical exegetes have opposed this interpretation and have attempted, with a certain amount of scholarly grandstanding, to ridicule what monumental earlier exegeses have already asserted—namely, the truth. They try to rebel against this interpretation—that the Elohist human was both male and female at the same time, and that therefore the image of the Elohim, that which was created in the image of the Elohim, is the male-female human. I would like to ask such exegetes who rebel against this: on what exactly do they base their claims? They must not base themselves on clairvoyant research, for that will never say anything other than what I have just told you. And on external research? I would like to ask people whether they can then maintain a different interpretation in the face of what the tradition actually is. One should tell people what the external tradition of the Bible actually is. If one first discovers the true facts through clairvoyant research, then life springs forth, then light springs into this biblical text, and then even small deviations in the tradition are irrelevant, because familiarity with the truth leads one to read the text correctly. It is a different matter, however, when one approaches things philologically. One must realize that, well into the Christian centuries, there was nothing in the first part of the Bible that could have led one to read this text as it is read today. There were no vowels in it at all, and the text was such that even the divisions between individual words first had to be established. Only later were the dots added, which in Hebrew indicate the vowels. Without the preparation provided by spiritual science, I would like to know by what right anyone would presume to offer an interpretation of the original text that one could say, with scientific rigor, is correct.

[ 7 ] Thus, in the work of the Elohim, we are dealing with a preparatory stage for humanity. All the processes that we today describe with terms such as “human reproduction” or the like were, in relation to humanity at that time, even more ethereal, even more spiritual. They still stand, I might say, on a higher level; one could almost say on a higher plane. It was only the work of Yahweh-Elohim that made humanity what it has become today. This had to be preceded by the lawful creation of the other, lower beings. Thus, one might say, through a prior act of creation, the lower animal beings became living creatures. The same term, nephesh, is applied to these animal beings and ultimately to humanity as well. But how does this apply to man? In such a way that, at the moment when Yahweh-Elohim intervenes and makes man into the human being of today, it is explicitly stated: Yahweh-Elohim instills the n’schamah. — And by the fact that man receives a higher element instilled within him, this same man thereby becomes a living being.

[ 8 ] Do you now realize what an infinitely fruitful and meaningful concept is being introduced into the theory of evolution precisely through the Bible! Certainly, it would be quite foolish to fail to recognize, in terms of external form, that man belongs, so to speak, to the highest rung of the animal ladder. Let such trivialities be left to Darwinism. But the essential point is that human beings did not become living beings in the same way as other lower creatures—beings whose nature is described as nephesh—but rather that human beings were first endowed with a higher aspect of their being, a higher aspect that had already been prepared in advance in terms of their spiritual and soul life.

[ 9 ] This brings us to another parallel between the ancient Hebrew teachings and our spiritual science. When we speak of the human soul, we distinguish between the feeling soul, the intellectual soul, and the conscious soul. We know that these first arose in their spiritual-soul nature during those times designated as the first three days of creation. There they took shape according to their inherent nature. But the envelopment, the actual imprinting, so that a physical body became the expression of this inner, essential soul nature of the human being, took place much later. So we must note that, so to speak, the spiritual arises first, that this spiritual then initially clothes itself with the astral, then becomes increasingly denser toward the etheric-physical, and that only then does the spiritual imprint itself—that is, that which was formed earlier is imprinted in the form of the breath of life. So what is placed into the human being like a core by Yahweh-Elohim has already been formed earlier; it exists in the bosom of the Elohim. Now it is imprinted upon the human being, whose physical body has been formed from another source. It is therefore something that enters the human being from another source. And it is only through this imprinting of n’schamah that it has become possible to instill within the human being what we might call the predisposition to the ego-nature. For these ancient Hebrew terms—nephesh, ruach, n’schamah—are nothing other than what we have also characterized in parallel with our spiritual-scientific terms. We may equate nephesh with the soul of sensation in relation to the human being, ruach with the soul of understanding, and n’schamah with the soul of consciousness.

[ 10 ] We must therefore view this further development as an extraordinarily complex process. Everything that relates to the days of creation themselves—that is, the work of the Elohim prior to their ascension to Yahweh-Elohim—we must imagine as taking place, so to speak, in spiritual, higher regions; and what we can physically observe today in the human world comes into being only through the work of Yahweh-Elohim.

[ 11 ] Of all that we find in the Bible—which alone can give us an understanding of the true inner nature of the human being—and of all that the clairvoyant gaze in turn teaches us, the Greek philosophers still retained an awareness of these things through their various places of initiation. Plato above all, but even Aristotle himself. Anyone familiar with Plato and Aristotle knows that Aristotle still held the conviction that human beings became living beings only through a higher spiritual-soul element, whereas the lower beings underwent other stages of evolution. Aristotle envisioned it something like this. The lower animal beings became what they are through other acts of evolution. But back then, when the forces at work in animals could take effect, at that time the human spiritual-soul being—which was still hovering in higher regions—was not yet permitted to become earthly and physical; otherwise, it would have remained at lower animal stages. The human being had to wait. And the lower animal stages had to be dethroned from their sovereignty through the implantation of the human element. There is another term Aristotle used for this: phtheiresthai. Aristotle uses this term in the sense that he would say something like: Certainly, taken externally, the same functions regarding external physicality are present in humans as in animal nature, but just as they are in animal nature, they act sovereignly; in humans, they are dethroned from their sovereignty and must follow a higher principle. That is what phtheiresthai means.

[ 12 ] And this is also the basis of the biblical account of creation. Through the imprinting of the n’schamah, the lower elements were dethroned from their sovereignty. Thus, by receiving the bearer of his individuality, man attained a higher member. As a result, however, the nature he previously possessed—which was more ethereal—was, as it were, differentiated down a level. He received an outer physical member and an inner, more ethereal member. One becomes more subtle, the other more dense. In the human being, what we have come to know as the meaning of the entire process of evolution is repeated. We have seen how heat condensed into air and became more ethereal as light, how air further condensed into water and became more ethereal as sound-ether, and so on. The same process takes place on higher levels for the human being. The male-female principle differentiates further into man and woman, differentiating in such a way that the denser physical body extends outward, while the thinner etheric body extends invisibly inward. Thus, we have simultaneously pointed to what we may call a progression from the work of the Elohim to the ‘work of Yahweh-Elohim.’ Humanity, as it stands before us today, is thus a work of Yahweh-Elohim. What we refer to as the sixth day of creation thus coincides in time with our Lemurian era, in which we speak of the male-female human being.

[ 13 ] Now, the Bible also speaks of a seventh day of creation. We are told that on this seventh day of creation, the work of the Elohim came to a rest. What does that actually mean? How should we interpret this further account? We can only interpret it correctly in the light of spiritual science if we realize that the time is now approaching when the Elohim will ascend, when they will undergo their advancement to become Yahweh-Elohim. But we must not understand Yahweh-Elohim as the totality of the Elohim, but rather in such a way that the Elohim, as it were, surrender only a part of their being to the lunar being, while retaining that which lies outside this surrendered part of their being, so that they undergo their own further evolution, so to speak, within this old aspect of their being. That is to say, their work no longer flows into the process of becoming human with regard to this aspect. They continue to work in the process of becoming human with that aspect of themselves that has become Yahweh-Elohim within them. The other part, however, does not now act directly upon the Earth; it devotes itself to its own evolution. This is indicated by the “rest” from earthly work, by the Sabbath day, by the seventh day of creation.

[ 14 ] And now we must point out something else that is important. If everything I have just said is correct, then we must regard the Yahweh-human, into whom Yahweh has imprinted his own being, as the direct successor to the human being who was formed, as it were, in a more ethereal, softer form on the sixth day of creation. So we have a direct line from the human being who is still male-female, who is still more ethereal, to the physical human being. The physical human being is the descendant, so to speak, a condensed state of the ethereal human being. One would therefore have to say, if one wanted to describe the Yahweh-human who passes over into Atlantis: And the human being who was formed by the Elohim on the so-called sixth day of creation went on to develop into the unisex human being, into the Yahweh human being. What follows after the seven days of creation are the descendants of the Elohim human beings; these are the descendants of that which came into being during the six days of creation. — Here again the Bible is magnificent when, in its second chapter, it tells us how the Yahweh-man is indeed a descendant of, if we may say so, the heavenly man, the man who was formed by the Elohim on the sixth day of creation. Just as the Son is the successor of the Father, so was the Yahweh-man the successor of the Elohim-man. This is what the Bible tells us when it says in the fourth verse of the second chapter: “What follows now are the descendants, the succeeding generations of the heavenly beings.”

[ 15 ] That is what it says. If you take the Bible as it is generally understood today, you will find this curious sentence in it: “The above is the origin of the heavens and the earth, as they were created on the day when the Lord God made the earth and the heavens.” Usually, the collective term for the Elohim is “God,” and Yahweh-Elohim is “God the Lord.” “God the Lord created the earth and the heavens.” I ask you very much to pay close attention to this sentence, and then I ask you to try very conscientiously to make any reasonable sense of it. I would like to know who can do that. Whoever can do so should then certainly not look any further in the Bible, for here the word “tol’dot” appears, which means “the subsequent generations,” and it appears here in the same context as with Noah, when speaking of the subsequent generations. Thus, here the Yahweh-people are spoken of as the descendants, as the subsequent generations of the heavenly beings, just as there they are spoken of as the descendants of Noah. This is roughly how one must read this passage in terms of its meaning: “What follows here, that which will be discussed in what follows, are the descendants of the heavenly and earthly beings who were created by the Elohim and continued by Yahweh-Elohim.”

[ 16 ] Thus, one may also view the Yahweh-man, in the biblical sense, as a descendant of the Elohim-man. To anyone who wishes to accept a new creation account because it states that the Lord God created humankind, I advise them to turn immediately to one of the following chapters—specifically the fifth chapter, which usually begins: “This is the Book of Generations”—for the same word is used there as in the other passage, “tol’dot”—so that, in order to complete the Rainbow Bible, they might now also create a third creation account! They have then pieced everything together from individual scraps of the Bible. They have scraps, but no longer the Bible. — If we could continue, we would also be able to explain what is said in the fifth chapter.

[ 17 ] So, when we truly contemplate these things inwardly, we see that we are dealing entirely with a convergence between Genesis—the biblical account of creation—and what we can uncover through spiritual science or esoteric science. When we consider this, we must ask ourselves: What is actually meant by these more or less figurative expressions that are used here? What are the objects of this description? — But then we must be clear that we are indeed finding what emerges from clairvoyant research! Just as the clairvoyant gaze today looks into the supersensible realm at the origin of our earthly existence, so too did those who originally shaped the biblical account look toward the supersensible. The facts originally given to us are perceived clairvoyantly. So when one constructs what is called prehistory in the sense of purely physical observation, one proceeds according to the outwardly discoverable remains. If one then goes further and further back in physical life and development, the physical forms become, so to speak, increasingly nebulous. Within this nebulousness, however, the spiritual beings reign and weave, and human beings themselves are originally, in terms of their spirituality, within these primordial beings. And if we continue our consideration of the Earth’s becoming back to the times referred to in Genesis, our Earth’s becoming, so to speak, runs into its spiritual primordial states. The days of creation refer to spiritual states of becoming that can only be grasped through clairvoyant research, and what is meant is that the physical gradually emerges from the spiritual.

[ 18 ] To the clairvoyant eye, this process of becoming appears in this way. When the clairvoyant gaze is turned toward the events described to us in Genesis, one first encounters spiritual processes. Everything described there presents itself as spiritual processes. A physical eye would see nothing, absolutely nothing; it would be looking into nothingness. But time moves forward, as we have seen. To the clairvoyant gaze, the solid gradually crystallizes out of the spiritual, as if ice were forming from water and solidifying. Out of the flood-like sea of the astral and the devachanic emerges what can now also be seen physically. Thus, as the contemplation proceeds, the physical emerges within the image that was initially only spiritually perceptible, like a crystallization within the spiritual. And with this we have also pointed out that in earlier times, human beings could not be perceived by a physical eye. Up until the sixth or seventh day of creation—that is, up until our Lemurian era—a physical eye would not have been able to see the human being, for at that time he existed only spiritually. And this is the great difference between a true theory of evolution and a fancied one. The latter believes that only the physical development exists. Human beings do not come into being by the subordinate beings, so to speak, growing up to the human form. It is the most fantastical thing one can imagine—that an animal form transformed itself into the higher form of the human being. While these animal forms are coming into being, while they are forming their physical bodies below, the human being has long since existed; only later does he descend and stand alongside the animal beings who descended earlier. Anyone who cannot view evolution in this way is simply beyond help; they are under the influence of current concepts—not under the influence of scientific facts, but under the influence of current opinions.

[ 19 ] If we wish to characterize the emergence of humanity in relation to the rest of evolution, we must say: Within the evolutionary series, we have the emergence of—let me say—birds and sea creatures as two branches; then we have land animals as a separate branch. One would correspond to the so-called fifth day of creation, the other to the sixth day of creation. And then the human being appears, but not by continuing the line, not as a continuation of the series, but by descending to the earth. — That is the true doctrine of evolution. And this is more accurately contained in the Bible than in any modern book that indulges in materialistic fantasy.

[ 20 ] Well, my dear friends, these are just a few scattered remarks. The final lecture in a series will always have to consist of supplementary remarks. For if one were to explore such a topic thoroughly from every angle, one would have to speak for months on end, because this Genesis contains an immense amount of material. With our lecture cycles, we can only ever offer suggestions. And that is all I intended to do this time as well. I would like to emphasize once again that it has not been particularly easy for me to approach this particular lecture cycle, for it will not be easy for anyone to form a conception of it after hearing these things, just how difficult the path is that leads to these deeper foundations of the biblical creation story, and how hard it is to truly find parallels between the spiritual-scientific facts discovered previously and the corresponding biblical passages. If one proceeds conscientiously, this presents an extraordinarily difficult task. People often imagine that the clairvoyant gaze can easily go anywhere. One need only look, they think, and then everything will fall into place by itself. Yes, those who approach these matters naively often believe they can explain everything easily. But the further one penetrates—this is already the case in external research—the more difficulties arise, and when one moves from physical into clairvoyant research, only then do the real difficulties become apparent, and only then does the sense of great responsibility emerge that one must have if one wishes to speak at all about these things. Nevertheless, I believe in a certain sense that I have not used a single word in this lecture series of which I cannot say: It will stand the test of time; it is, as far as possible, an adequate expression in the German language of what can lead to a correct understanding. — But it was not easy.

[ 21 ] You see, the intention was to have our dear friend, Mr. Seiling, give a presentation at the beginning or end of this cycle in the style you were able to experience again yesterday in his lecture—the intention was to ask him to present the account of the seven days of creation in Genesis. You will easily understand that it was impossible to have the usual texts recited, since in this very cycle we have been searching for adequate expressions for what is actually said in Genesis, and there was a faint hope that perhaps today, at the end, something like a translation derived from spiritual scientific research might have been presented. But given the great rush of visitors in recent days, it could not be risked to even attempt to produce a translation of Genesis that would be suitable for presentation. It could not be attempted with full conscientiousness, and I must ask you to wait for a later time in this regard. For now, let us be content with these insights that can arise from the cycle. For I can assure you: I consider a true translation to be a task that demands perhaps a hundred times as much spiritual energy as had to be expended from the very first moment when the seed of our Rosicrucian Mystery was sown, right up to the final event—the performance. — Anyone who knows the difficulty will find the production of a proper text of Genesis a hundred times more difficult than the task—which is not entirely easy in itself—that we have attempted to accomplish with the Rosicrucian Mystery. Precisely as one progresses in what has been given to us as the great revelations of the world, the difficulties pile up, and it is good that we familiarize ourselves with this fact. For it is precisely by coming to see and recognize these difficulties that we advance further and further in the correct understanding of anthroposophy.

[ 22 ] Anthroposophy must show open-mindedness toward everything that is meant to work together so that anthroposophical work can come to fruition. Therefore, even though we proceed using specific working methods, we must not regard any other working method as somehow alien to us. Today, the development of our times, the spiritual evolution of our age, requires various paths that are meant to lead to the great goal we all have in view. And even though it is by no means within my field to address you while working in a domain other than the esoteric, you will never find that I exclude any other working method. I may mention this in particular at the end of this cycle, which has indeed led us, through the help of esotericism, into such high regions of anthroposophical research, and I would like to point out to you, precisely in view of this, that it is good for you to seek help for the anthroposophical view from all sides, and to become acquainted with what, from other methods, connects with our esotericism. That is why I would like to draw your attention to the benefits of a book written by our dear friend Mr. Ludwig Deinhard, who has beautifully compiled what can be useful to us from other fields of research, so that we may, so to speak, be well-rounded in this area. And since this book seeks and presents a beautiful, harmonious connection specifically with our kind of esotericism, this presentation can certainly be of benefit to us anthroposophists as well. You will find there many things that may be useful to you on the anthroposophical path.

[ 23 ] There are many other points I could mention. Above all, I would like to point out a second one—something that, in these lectures in particular, I would say, has emerged step by step: the necessity that the anthroposophical teaching become in our hearts and minds that which truly lifts us higher and higher with the full power of our inner life, to ever higher forms of feeling, to ever more open-hearted ways of living in relation to our view of the world. Only by becoming better human beings in the intellectual, emotional, and moral spheres do we provide the touchstone for the fruitfulness of what may come to us in the field of spiritual science. Thus we may say that precisely those teachings which show us the parallelism between our spiritual scientific research and the Bible can become particularly fruitful. For it is precisely through these teachings that we come to know how we ourselves were founded and originated, as Jacob Böhme would have said, in that supersensible spiritual womb in which the Elohim themselves were also founded and originated, developing upward to become Yahweh-Elohim, to this higher form of development, in order to bring about as the great goal of their creation what we call human beings. Let us regard this origin of ours with the necessary reverence, but let us also regard it with the necessary sense of responsibility! The Elohim began our evolution with their best powers, and Yahweh-Elohim with His best power. Let us regard this origin of ours as a commitment to our human nature, so that we may increasingly incorporate into ourselves the spiritual powers that entered into earthly existence in the course of later evolution.

[ 24 ] We have spoken of Lucifer’s influence. Through him, something that lay within the bosom of that spirituality—from which humanity itself originated—remained there for a time; and this Luciferic influence caused something to remain within that bosom, which later emerged through the incarnation of the Christ in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Since that time, Christ has been at work as a distinct divine principle in the process of becoming human. And contemplation of the great truths of Genesis should lead us to the obligation to incorporate this spiritual being of Christ more and more into our own being, for only by permeating ourselves with this Christ principle will we fulfill our full task as human beings, and only thereby will we increasingly become on Earth what the potential within us was intended to be in those times referred to in the biblical creation account of Genesis.

[ 25 ] In this way, a lecture series such as this can have the effect not only of imparting knowledge, but also of awakening forces within our souls. May these teachings, which have flowed to us from a closer examination of Genesis, continue to work as forces within our souls, even if we forget some of the details. Perhaps this may be said at the close of these days, during which we once again sought to immerse ourselves for a brief time in the stream of anthroposophical life: Let us try to take with us from these teachings the forces that must arise from them! Let us carry them forth, and let these forces fertilize our lives in the world! — Whatever we may do, in whatever sphere of existence, in whatever worldly profession we may be engaged: these forces can inspire and enrich our work and our activities, but also heighten our joy and our sense of life’s bliss. And no one who has truly understood the great origin of human existence can enter into the wider realm of existence without taking these teachings into themselves as seed forces for the joy of life, for the delight of living. Let the truth about the great, mighty origin, about the mighty destiny of the human being, shine from your eyes when you wish to perform acts of love, and in this way you will best convey what anthroposophical teaching is. In action, this anthroposophical teaching will prove true, bringing happiness to those around us, and bringing bliss, joy, refreshment, and healing to our own spirituality, to our own soul, and to our own physical being. We are to become better, healthier, and stronger human beings by taking the anthroposophical teachings into ourselves.

[ 26 ] It is in this spirit that such a cycle is intended to have an effect above all else. It is meant to be nothing other than a seed that sinks into the souls of the listeners, sprouts, and bears fruit out in the world for those around us. Thus, while we part ways physically, we anthroposophists remain united in spirit and seek to work together by bringing the teachings to life. Let us be imbued with this spirit, let us not grow weaker in this spirit, until that moment when we see the word realized not only in the spiritual realm but also in the physical, a word I would like to utter once again as my final farewell: Goodbye!