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Planetary Spheres and Their Influence on Man's Life on Earth and in the Spiritual Worlds
GA 214

30 August 1922, London

III. Man's Life in Sleep and After Death

When we can meet so seldom, one has naturally the desire to put as much as possible into a lecture, and it may sometimes happen that one gives perhaps too much. I intend nevertheless making the bold attempt to give you today a description from one point of view of what may be called the other side of man's earthly existence; and I want to make clear to you at the same time the importance and significance for our age of this deeper kind of knowledge,—this spiritual knowledge.

How much, after all, does man know ordinarily of his existence here on Earth? What can his senses and his sense-bound intellect tell him? With ordinary consciousness he is conscious only of his waking life, Yet it is surely not without meaning that the guiding Spiritual Powers of the World have inserted into man's life on Earth the condition of sleep.

Between the time of falling asleep and the time of awaking a very great deal takes place. In fact, of all that the Spirit has to accomplish on Earth through man, by far the greater part is accomplished during sleep. As long as we are awake, what happens on Earth through us is limited to what we do,—either to ourselves or to the things that are around us. When we go to sleep, however, another activity begins. Whilst we are asleep, lofty Spiritual Beings work upon the human soul, with the object of bringing man to his full and complete evolution in Earth existence.

It is possible for one who has acquired modern initiation knowledge to have clear and detailed insight into the significant events that take place during sleep. We must not of course make the mistake of imagining that these events take place for the initiate alone; they are experienced by all human beings alike. Indeed, human evolution is entirely dependent upon these events that happen with us between the moment of falling asleep and the moment of awaking. The difference with the initiate is just this,—that he is able to draw our attention to these events. And it is increasingly important that all who give any thought at all to the meaning of existence on Earth should be alive to the significance of what happens in sleep.

Let me now sketch for you in bold outline the influences that play into the sleep of man. Suppose someone goes to sleep. As you know, we describe the process in the following way. His astral body, we say, and his I loosen themselves from the physical body and the ether-body, and are in the Spiritual World; they no longer permeate the physical and etheric bodies as they do in the waking state. But when we try to go a little further and form a picture of what really takes place with man during the condition of sleep, we find that it is necessary first to come to a clearer perception of the nature of man's connection with the Earth during waking hours. How is man connected with the Earth while he is awake? First of all, through his senses. With the aid of his senses, he perceives and cognizes the phenomena of the various kingdoms of Nature. But this is not all. Man is also connected with the Earth through activities he performs unconsciously,—unconsciously, that is, even while he is awake. Man breathes, for instance, and is thus connected with the whole Earth. The whole Earth plays into the air man takes in with his breath. In the air he breathes, countless substances are present in a highly rarefied condition. And the very fact that they are present in this rarefied state enables them to exercise an influence that is of no small importance when they are received through the breath into the organism of man. What man perceives with his senses enters into him consciously; but subconsciously, even during waking life a vast amount enters into man that is more substantial than what enters him by the more tenuous and ideal paths of perception and thought. By way of the breath man's environment comes into him in a more material and substantial manner. Nor need I remind you of how utterly dependent the human organism is on what it receives in the way of earthly nourishment. So that altogether we have to recognise many influences working from the Earth upon the awake human being.

We are not, however, at present pursuing the study of that any further; what concerns us today is the influences that work upon man in sleep. And here we find that whereas during waking hours man stands in connection with external earthly substances, when he passes over into sleep, he comes into a certain connection with the whole Cosmos. I do not mean to imply that man's astral body assumes every night the vastness of the Cosmos. That would be an exaggeration. It is nevertheless a fact that every night man grows out into the Cosmos. Just as here on Earth we are connected with the plants, with the minerals, with air, so are we connected in the night with the movements of the planets, and with the constellations of the fixed stars. From the moment we fall asleep, the starry heavens become our world, even as the Earth is our world when we are awake.

Coming now to describe rather more in detail how we make our way after falling asleep, we find we can distinguish different spheres through which we pass. First comes the sphere where the I and the astral body—that is to say, the soul of man as it finds itself in sleep—feel united with the movements of the World of the planets. When we wake up in the morning and slip into our physical body, we have in us, as we know, our lungs, our heart, our liver, our brain. In the first sphere with which we come in contact after falling asleep—and it will also be again the last sphere we enter before awaking—we have in us the forces of the movements of the planets. This does not mean of course that we receive into us every night the entire planetary movements; we carry within us a little picture, as it were, wherein the movements of the planets are reproduced. And this picture is different for each single human being. That, then, is the first experience every one of us encounters after falling asleep. We follow, as it were, with our astral body all that happens with the planets, as they move out there in the wide spaces of the Universe; we experience it all in our astral body in a sort of planetary globe.

Perhaps you will say: But how does this concern me, if I cannot perceive it? True, you do not see it with your eyes, nor hear it with your ears. But no sooner have you passed over into the condition of sleep than the part of your astral body which belongs in waking life to your heart, becomes for you an eye,—becomes, in very fact, what we may call a heart-eye; and with this heart-eye you ‘see’ what is now taking place. For present-day mankind, the perception is a very dim one. Nevertheless it is more assuredly there; the heart-eye perceives the experiences of this first sphere of sleep.

Very soon after you have fallen asleep, the heart-eye begins also to look back at what has been left lying in bed. Your ego and astral body look back with the heart-eye upon your physical and etheric bodies. And the picture of planetary movements that you are now experiencing in your astral body, rays back to you from your ether-body; you behold a reflection of it in your ether-body.

Present-day man is so constituted that as soon as ever he wakes up, he immediately forgets the dim consciousness that he had in the night by means of his heart-eye. There are however, dreams in which we can catch, as it were, an echo of it. Such dreams are astir with an inner movement that is reminiscent of the planetary movements. Then into these dreams come pictures from real life; but that is only when the astral body has begun to dive down into the ether-body, which latter carries and preserves for us the memory of our life.

Let me describe for you something that can easily happen. You wake up in the morning, having passed again on your return through the sphere of the planetary movements. Let us suppose that you have experienced a particular relationship between Jupiter and Venus. Such an experience must be intimately connected with your destiny, otherwise you would not have it; and if you could bring the experience back into life—into your ordinary day-time life—it would shed a wonderful light on your faculties and capabilities. For the fact is, these faculties of ours are not of the Earth, they have come hither from the Cosmos. According as is your connection with the Cosmos, so are your gifts and talents, so is your goodness,—or, at any rate, so is your inclination to good or to evil. If you could bring back into day-life the experience of which we were speaking, you would be able to see what Jupiter and Venus were saying to one another, for you would see what you had seen in the night with your heart-eye,—I could equally well say, heard with your heart-ear, for these finer distinctions do not exist for the experiences of sleep. Since, however, all this is only very dimly perceived, it is forgotten. But the result of the experience remains in your astral body; the mutual relationship between Jupiter and Venus produces a corresponding movement within your astral body. And now there mingles with it some experience you had long ago, perhaps when you were 17 or 25 years old,—let us say at noon one day, in Oxford, for example, or in Manchester. The pictures of this long-past experience of yours intrude themselves into the cosmic experience; the two get mixed up together. As you will see, therefore, the pictures that are given us in dreams have a certain significance, yet are not the essential part of the dream; they are like a garment that weaves itself around the cosmic experiences.

Now, through this whole experience that comes to you in the way I have described, runs a vein of anxiety. In almost every case it is accompanied by a more or less intense feeling of anxiety,—anxiety, that is, of a spiritual nature; and particularly at the moment when the cosmic experience sounds back, shines back, to the soul from the ether-body. Suppose the influence due to a certain relationship between Jupiter and Venus is raying back to you from your ether-body, and one ray—I call it quite simply one ray, but it tells ever so much to your heart-eye!—one ray comes back from your forehead, while a second, that comes from the region below the heart, mingles its music and its light with the first. In every human soul that is not completely hardened, this will give rise to the feeling of anxiety and apprehension of which I have spoken. The soul will be constrained to say to itself in sleep: The cosmic mist has enveloped me, it has received me into itself. We feel indeed as though we ourselves are becoming as dim and as nebulous as the cosmic mist, as if we are now nothing but a cloud of mist floating in the Mist of the Worlds. Such is the character of the first experience that meets the soul after falling asleep.

And then another feeling begins to arise in the soul. Out of this first experience, where we are anxious and apprehensive, feeling ourselves to be no more than a little wave of mist within the Mist of the Worlds, another mood develops within us, a mood of devotion to the Divine, devotion and surrender to the Divine that fills the Universe and pervades it.

This then is how it is with us, my dear friends, in the first sphere into which we come after falling asleep. Two fundamental feelings live in our soul; I am in the Mist of the Worlds,—I would fain rest in the bosom of the Godhead, that I be safe and protected and dissolve not away in the Mist of the Worlds. This is moreover an experience which the heart-perception must needs carry over into waking life in the morning, when the soul dives down again into the physical and ether bodies. For if this experience were not brought over, then the substances we take as nourishment during the day would assume within us their own completely earthly character and throw our whole organism into disorder. And this applies not only to what we eat but to all the substances that undergo within us the process of metabolism. For even if we go hungry, substances are nevertheless continually being taken—in this case, from our own body—and worked upon through metabolism.

Sleep has, as you see, my dear friends, immense significance for the waking condition. And we can only record our acknowledgment of the fact that in this epoch of evolution it is not left to man himself to see that the Divine forces are carried over into waking life. For it would go hard with human beings as they are in the present age, did it rest with them to bring these influences in full consciousness from the other side of existence and bear them into the waking life of day.

And now man comes into the next sphere. This does not mean, he leaves the first; no, for the heart-perception it is still there. This next sphere, which is a much more complicated one, is perceived by another part of the astral body,—the part which belongs in waking life to the solar plexus, and to the whole limb organisation of man. The part of the astral body that permeates the solar plexus and the arms and legs is now the organ of perception, and with the aid of this organ man begins to feel the forces in his astral body that come from the Signs of the Zodiac. These are of two kinds—the forces that reach him from the Zodiac direct, and the forces that have first to pass through the Earth. For it makes a great difference whether a particular sign is above or below the Earth.

Man has therefore in this second Sphere what we might call a solar or Sun-perception. He perceives with the part of his astral body that is associated with the solar plexus and the limbs,—an organ of perception that can rightly be called a Sun-eye. And by means of his Sun-eye man becomes aware of his relationship, not now merely, as before, with the planetary movements, but with the entire Zodiac. The picture you see, is widening; or rather, man himself is growing out further into the picture of the Cosmos. And here again, man is able to behold a reflection of the experience when he looks back on his own physical and etheric bodies.

Every night it is thus given to man,—that is to say, to the part of him that goes out of the body—to come into relationship with the whole Cosmos; first, with the planetary movements, and then with the constellations of the fixed stars. In this latter experience—which may come half an hour after falling asleep, or rather later, but with many people comes quite soon—man feels himself within all twelve constellations of the Zodiac. And the experiences he encounters with the constellations are exceedingly complicated.

I verily believe, my dear friends, you might have traveled far and wide and visited the most interesting and important regions of the whole Earth, and yet not have had such an amount and variety of experiences as your Sun-eye affords you every night in connection with one single constellation of the Zodiac. For the men of an older time, who still possessed in full force the powers of clairvoyance and could perceive in a dreamlike consciousness very much of what I have been describing to you, the experiences of sleep were less bewildering. In our time it is exceedingly difficult for man to attain with his Sun-eye to any degree of clarity in regard to this complicated twelvefold experience of the night. He needs to do so, even if by day-time he has forgotten all about it; but he hardly can unless he has received, with the understanding of the heart, knowledge of the Christ and of all that the Christ willed to become for the Earth in that He passed through the Mystery of Golgotha. If we have once felt what it means for the life of the Earth that Christ has gone through the Mystery of Golgotha, if in our ordinary waking life we have thought about the Christ, then our astral body is able to receive via the physical and etheric bodies, a certain tincture or quality which brings it about that Christ becomes our Guide and Leader through the Zodiac during sleep. For, as in the sphere of the planetary movements, so here again a feeling of anxiety comes over man. He feels: What if I lose myself in the multitude of the stars, and in all the manifold happenings that take place among them! But if he is then able to look back upon thoughts and feelings and impulses of will that he has directed in waking life to the Christ, then Christ becomes for him a Guide, bringing order into the bewildering events of this sphere. And so the fact is brought home to us that only when we turn our attention to the other side of life, are we able to appreciate the full significance of the Christ for the life of Earth, as it has been up till now; and as for what the Christ has yet to become for the life of Earth,—no one within the ordinary civilisation of the present day can really understand this.

There are of course few among us who can be said to go through the experiences of sleep aright; and these experiences are often given a false interpretation. Human beings who have not come in touch with the Christ Event bring these experiences of the night into the waking consciousness of day-time in a disordered and confused manner. We can understand how this happens when we know what it is that really takes place with us during sleep. As we have seen, when we have passed through the sphere of existence where we are enveloped in mist or cloud, we find ourselves approaching a world that confuses and amazes us. Here it is that the Christ appears before us as a spiritual Sun and becomes our Guide; and then all the confusion resolves itself into a kind of harmony that we hear and understand. That this should be so, that we should have in the time of sleep the Christ for our Guide, is a matter of the very greatest importance for us. For, the moment we enter this sphere and begin to have all around us the living interplay of constellations of the Zodiac and movements of the planets—at this moment we encounter also our Karma. With our Sun-eye we behold our Karma. Yes, it is indeed so, every human being has sight of his Karma—in sleep. All that is left of the perception in waking life, is a kind of faint echo vibrating in the feelings.

Suppose a man has begun to tread the path of self-knowledge. He will find perhaps that his soul is imbued at times with a mood and attitude to life that are like a distant echo of the experience he has had in sleep, where the Christ came forward as his Guide and led him in the night from Aries through Taurus and Gemini, etc., making plain to him the World of the Stars, so that he has returned with renewed strength to the life of day. For that is the marvellous experience that awaits man in this sphere, None other than the Christ Himself becomes his Guide through the bewildering events of the Zodiac, going before him and pointing the way from constellation to constellation, that he may be able to receive into his soul in their right order and harmony the forces he needs for waking life.


Such then is the experience man undergoes every night between falling asleep and awaking,—an experience he owes to the fact that his soul and spirit have kinship with the Cosmos. For, even as he is related to the Earth with his physical and etheric bodies, so with his soul arid spirit, with his astral body and Ego, is man related to the Cosmos. And when he has come away from his physical and etheric bodies and has grown out into the cosmic world, and the experiences he undergoes there shine back to him, in a kind of inner picture, from the part of him that remains in bed, he feels very deeply connected with the Cosmos and would, in fact, be strongly drawn to go still further out, to go out beyond the Zodiac,—were it not for the presence of another force that draws him back. On account of this other element that enters into all the experiences that befall man during sleep, it, is not possible for him, between birth and death, to go out beyond the Zodiac, We have here to do with an influence of an entirely different kind and quality, the influence, namely, of the Moon.

The effect of the influence of the Moon is to tinge the whole Cosmos during the night—and this happens even at the time of New Moon too—with a certain substantiality. This substantiality man experiences, in addition to all else. He feels how the Moon forces hold him back within the world of the Zodiac and bring him again to the moment of awaking. Even in the very first sphere he enters after falling asleep, man already divines dimly within him the presence of this influence; he begins to be acutely sensible of it in the second sphere, where he has a powerful and vivid experience of the mysteries of birth and death. The organ for this experience lies much deeper within man than the heart-eye or even the Sun-eye; it may be said to extend over and involve the entire man. With this organ, man experiences every night how he came down as soul and spirit from the world of soul and spirit, how he entered through birth into a physical existence, and how his body is gradually passing over into death, For the fact is, we overcome death, until the time when death really occurs as a final event. Something else too is associated with this experience. The very forces that enable us to experience how the soul goes on its journey through the earthly and bodily reveal to us also in the same moment our connections with the rest of mankind.

I would have you mindful of the fact, my dear friends, that even a most insignificant meeting or contact with another human being is not without its place and connection in our whole destiny. And whether the souls, with whom we have been together in some past Earth life or with whom we are connected in this present life, are now in the spiritual world or are with us here on Earth, all that we have had to do with one another as man to man, all human ties, intimately related as these are to the secrets of birth and death, show themselves now to the spiritual eye, if I may call it so, of the entire man. And as all this comes before our view, we feel we are indeed standing within the stream of our whole life-destiny.

This has to do with the fact that whereas all other forces—the forces of the planets and of the fixed stars—tend to draw us out into the distant Cosmos, the Moon wants to place us once more into the world of men. The Moon draws us away from the Cosmos. The Moon has forces that are directly opposed to the forces both of Sun and of Stars; it ensures for us our kinship with the Earth. It is accordingly the Moon that brings us back every night,—drawing us away from the Zodiac experiences into the experiences of the planets, and thence into the experiences of Earth, taking us back once again into our physical body.

Here you have the difference, from one point of view, between sleep and death. When man goes to sleep, he remains still in close connection with the forces of the Moon. The forces of the Moon point out to him every night afresh the significance of his life on Earth. This is made possible by the fact that he can see in his ether body the reflection of all his experiences of the night. At death, however, man withdraws his ether body from the physical body. Then begins, as you know, the memory that looks back over the last Earth life. The ether body expands and fills for a few days the cosmic cloud of which I have spoken. I told you how every night we live our way as cloud, as mist, into the Mist of the Worlds. In the night this cloud of mist which we are, is there without the ether-body; but when we die, our ether-body is present with it for the first few days. Then the ether-body gradually dissolves away into the Cosmos, memory fades and disappears, and we have—instead of a reflection of star experiences thrown back from the part of us we left lying in bed—we have now after death an immediate inner experience of the movements of the planets and of the constellations of the fixed stars.

You can read in my book Theosophy a description of these experiences from another point of view. You have there a description of what man finds, as it were, around him between death and new birth. But just as here on Earth you would not have around you colours and sounds, for instance, unless you had in your body eyes and ears, and unless you could breathe and had within you lungs and a heart, so neither could you after death perceive around you what you find described in my book as “soul world” and “spirit land,” unless you had within you Mercury, Venus, Mars, Jupiter, Aries, Taurus, Gemini, etc. These are within you, they are your organism, your cosmic organism by means of which you experience after death. And the Moon cannot now bring you back, for it could only bring you back to your ether-body, and that has dissolved away into the Cosmos.

Man has however even after death something left in him of the force which he inherits from the Moon, enough to enable him to remain for a season in the soul world, with gaze still fixed upon the Earth. Then he passes on to spirit-land, and here he feels and knows that he is undergoing an experience where he is beyond the Zodiac, beyond the Heaven and the Fixed Stars. Such is the course of man's life in the time between death and new birth.

I could also give you another description of man's nightly journey to the spiritual world, describing it for you in a picture. Only, you must beware of taking the picture too literally, for, as you know, it is well nigh impossible to express these things in earthly concepts. Nevertheless it is a true picture that I am giving you, and it will help you to follow this journey in all its detail.

Imagine before you a meadow. From each single flower on the meadow—from the flowers too that blossom on the trees around—a spiral rises and goes out and out into cosmic space. These circling spirals carry the forces whereby the Cosmos fosters and regulates the growth of plants on Earth. For plants do not grow merely out of their seed; they need also for their growth the cosmic forces that surround the Earth with their spirally directed influences. And the cosmic forces are there in winter too; they are there even in the desert where no plants grow. When night comes for man, he has to use these spiral forces as a kind of ladder whereon he may mount up into the realm of the planetary movements. Man ascends into the movements of the planets on the ladder of the spiral rays that circle upwards from the plants. And then there is another force, the force that makes the plant shoot upwards from its root,—for there must be a force at work, to enable the plant to grow upwards. With the aid of this force man is carried up into the second sphere that I described.

Recall for a moment those experiences I related to you, where man comes into a state of anxiety, and feels: I am no more than a tiny cloud of mist in the great Mist of the Cosmos,—I must rest in the bosom of the Godhead. If we would relate this experience of the soul to the conditions within which we live on Earth, we would have to express it in the following way. It is as if the soul would say: I rest in the blessing of the Cosmos as it hovers over a cornfield that is just opening into flower, I rest in the blessing of the Cosmos as it hovers over a meadow whose blossoms are unfolding to the light. For what is it that sinks down to the plants in spiral lines of force? It is the bosom of the Godhead, quick and instinct with life, the same within which man finds himself sheltered and enclosed every time he falls asleep.

The Moon, on the other hand, leads man back to the animal aspect of his nature. The forces of the plants tend perpetually to carry him out—farther and farther out into the wide universe. But man has also in his make-up something that he shares with the animal kingdom, and because of this the Moon is able to bring him back again every morning,—back into his own animal nature.

Here, then, you have a picture of man's connection with the Cosmos, and of its influence upon him during sleep. We can carry the picture a little further. With the heart-eye, the Sun-eye and the eye that is entire man, we may experience in sleep the kind of feeling to which we are accustomed in waking life when we are drawn into an intimate and near relationship with some other person. It is not said to us in words, nor do we reason it out. The plants it is who tell us of it; we hear of it from the plants that lift us up, as though on a spiral ladder, into the world of the planets, whence we are sent forth again into the world of the Zodiac.

If we wanted to put into words what we experience in this way, we could say: I have a relationship to this person; the lilies tell me so, the roses tell me; the power of the rose, the power of the lily, the power of the tulip has moved me to experience this relationship. Thus does the whole Earth become a book of life which interprets for us the world of the human soul,—that world into which we have to find our way as we go through our life.

Now, these experiences that come to man during sleep have not always been the same, they have varied in different epochs. If we go back to ancient India, we find that in those times men who wanted to learn what sleep could teach them by bringing them into relation with the world of the stars, limited their search to those constellations of the Fixed Stars which were above the Earth—above, that is, at the particular moment of time, for the constellations are, of course, continually changing their places in the Heavens. The ancient Indian had no desire to make connection with the constellations that are below the Earth, whose forces can reach man only through the Earth.

Look at the characteristic posture of a Buddha,—or of any wise man of the East who sets out to perform exercises that shall enable him to achieve spiritual wisdom; He sits with his legs crossed under him. The upper part of his body where he is in relation with the upper constellations,—that he wants to be active, and that alone. Through the Sun-eye, there is also working in him what works through the limbs; but this he does not want to activate. He wants, as it were, to eliminate the forces of the limbs during his spiritual exercises. One can see quite plainly from his posture that the Eastern seeker after wisdom desires to find relation with what is above the Earth, and only that. His whole interest is directed to knowledge that concerns the soul.

The world would however be incomplete if man's quest for knowledge had remained limited in this way, if men had continued to assume always and exclusively the Buddha posture when they set out on the path of knowledge. It was not so. In the age of Greece, men began to feel impelled to make connection also with the forces working from the constellations that are—at the particular moment—below the Earth. Greek mythology contains beautiful intimations of this. Again and again we are told of a kind of initiation where the candidate descends to the underworld. Whenever you read of some Greek hero that he goes down into the underworld, you may be sure the meaning is that he is going through an initiation which yields him knowledge of those forces of the Cosmos that work through the Earth and that were known to the Greeks as the Chthonic forces.

Each epoch of time has, you see, its own task and mission. The oriental initiate had to learn, in order that he might then communicate the knowledge to his fellowmen, about the region of soul and spirit where man was before birth—or I should say, before conception—and about man's experiences there before he descends to the earthly world. All that we feel to be so grand and majestic in the poetry of the East and in its conceptions of the universe, is due to the fact that in those far-off days men were able to look into the life they had lived before they came down to Earth. In Greece, men began to take knowledge of the Earth and of all that belongs to the Earth. The Greek takes Uranus and Gaia—the Earth—as the starting point for his cosmology. He aspires to know also the Mysteries of the Earth itself, which include at the same time the cosmic Mysteries that work through the Earth. The Mysteries of the underworld,—these too the Greeks were wanting to discover, and in this way they developed their true cosmology.

Think how little there is among the Greeks—none whatever among the Orientals—but how little among the Greeks of the study of history in our sense of the word. The Greek is much more interested in the far-off beginnings when the Earth was being formed within the Cosmos, when the interior forces of the Earth, the Titanic forces, waged war on those other forces, those mighty spiritual forces which the Greek conceived as underlying the web of earthly conditions within which man finds himself enwoven. But we men of modern times are called upon to understand history; we must be able to show how man started from an ancient dream-like clairvoyance and has now arrived at a consciousness that is intellectual in character and tinged only with a memory of the mythical, and then go on to show how there is need for man now to work his way out of this intellectual consciousness and learn to look right into the world of the Spirit. For the present epoch of time marks the transition to the attainment of conscious experience in the spiritual world. That is why it is so very important for us that we should turn our attention to history. You will find that in our anthroposophical work we give ourselves again and again to the study of the different epochs of history, going back first of all to the time when men still received their knowledge from higher Beings, and then following the whole development right up to our own age.

The study of history has, of course, become hopelessly abstract in our schools and universities today. Could anything be more abstract then the lines of demarcation that people draw when they are developing some historical theme! For the men of olden time, history was still clothed in the garment of myth and was brought into connection with Nature and with all that goes on in her world. People cannot do this any more. Neither do they show any readiness as yet to enquire more deeply into the times of long ago. They do not feel any need to ask how it was with man in the days when he received wisdom from higher Beings, how it was with him later when less and less of the wisdom came through to him, or how it was with him when a God Himself descended to incarnate through the Mystery of Golgotha in a human body and carry out a sublime cosmic mission with the Earth, so that it was given her at last to have her real meaning.

The whole theology of the 19th and 20th centuries has failed, because it cannot understand the Christ in His spiritual significance. That, my dear friends, is what modern Initiation Science must bring,—understanding of the Christ. We need an Initiation Science that can penetrate again into the spiritual world, that can speak again about birth and death, about the life between birth and death and the life also between death and a new birth, and about the life of the soul in sleep,—can speak of these things in the way we have been speaking of them together today. The possibility must be there for man to come again to a knowledge of the other side—the spiritual side—of existence. Otherwise, he will simply not be able to go forward into the future.

Once, long ago, men directed their search for knowledge to the upper worlds—we see it demonstrated in the posture of the Buddha. Then, in later times, man took the evolution of the Earth as his starting-point and read his cosmology out of the evolution of the Earth; he became initiated in Greece into the Chthonic Mysteries, as we find related in many a Greek myth, where the account of such initiation is often a prominent feature of the story. Our search, has to take a new turn. Having studied in the past the Mysteries of the Earth and the mysteries of the Heavens, we need in our day an Initiation Science that is able to move rhythmically between Heaven and Earth, an Initiation Science that asks of the Heavens when it wants to understand the Earth, and asks of the Earth when it would inform itself of the Heavens.

And this is how you will, find the questions put and answered—insofar as they can be answered today—in my book An Outline of Occult Science. Let me say here in all humility that the attempt has been made in this book to describe the knowledge of which modern man stands in need,—needing it as surely as ever the Oriental needed the Mysteries or the Heavens or the Greek the Mysteries of the Earth, For it is required of us to take note and observe how it stands with initiation in modern times and what is man's relation to it in this present age. Let me endeavour therefore to describe for you quite briefly in the third part of my lecture the tasks that lie before modern initiation.


In order to give you some idea of the tasks of modern initiation, I shall have to repeat here what some of you will have heard me say in Oxford a few days ago,

I was pointing out just now that whereas the initiates of very ancient times laid particular emphasis on the looking upwards into the spiritual worlds whence man descends to clothe himself in an earthly body, while on the other hand for the initiates of a somewhat later time it was what we find described by the Greeks as the descent into the underworld that was of first importance, the initiate of our own time has yet another task. He has to look, in search after knowledge, at the rhythmic relation of the Heavens to the Earth. To this end he has to know the Heavens and the Earth, but he must in his search hold always before him the thought of Man, in whom alone, among all the beings that are around us, Heaven and Earth work together to form a complete whole. Yes, Man himself must be the goal of his study. The heart-eye, the Sun-eye, the spiritual eye (which is formed of the whole human being) must all be turned upon Man. For Man carries within him, my dear friends, infinitely more secrets and mysteries than the worlds we can perceive with our external senses and explain with the sense-bound intellect. To achieve a knowledge of Man as a spirit, to achieve a spiritual knowledge of Man, is the task of modern initiation. On this path of initiation knowledge we have therefore to set out in quest of a universal knowledge, but always with this goal in view,—that, through learning to understand the world, through learning to understand the whole Cosmos, we may attain at last to understand Man.

And now compare the situation of an initiate of out own age with the situation of an initiate of ancient times. The men of those early times had faculties of soul that made it possible for the initiate to awaken within them a memory of the time we pass through before we descend into an earthly body. It was therefore for the initiate of those days a question of awakening cosmic memories. And for the Greeks it was a matter of looking into Nature, of beholding Nature. But the initiate of modern times has to set before him as his goal the knowledge of Man; he is called upon to learn to know Man, directly, as a spiritual being. For this, he must learn to free himself from his present limited and earthly understanding of his connection with the Universe. Let me repeat an example I gave recently to Oxford of how this liberation has to be effected.

One of the tasks undertaken by initiation knowledge, that presents unusual difficulty, is that of making connection with souls who have left the Earth and gone through the gate of death. It is not at all easy to establish such connections, but it can be done by arousing the deeper forces of the soul. It is necessary to realise from the first that one has to accustom oneself, by the careful pursuance of certain exercises, to the only kind of language it is possible to speak with the dead. This language is, in a way, a child of our ordinary human speech. Yet you would fail completely, were you to set out with the idea that ordinary human speech, just as it is, would be of any assistance to you in establishing intercourse with the dead. One of the first things we discover is that the dead can understand only for a very short time what we call nouns. There is in their language no way of expressing a ‘thing,’ an isolated thing, which we denote with a word we call a noun. The words in their language all convey the feeling of movement, they are all full of inner activity. Consequently we find that when a little time has gone by since the soul passed through the gate of death, he is responsive only to words that denote activity,—that is, to verbs. In our intercourse with the dead, we shall, from time to time, want to put questions to them; we must then put our questions to them; we must then put our questions in a form they can understand. If we are able to do this, after a time the answer will come; only, we must know how to be watchful for it, how to give heed to it. As a rule, a few nights will have to elapse before the one who has died can answer the question we put to him. It is, as you see, a matter of finding our way gradually into the language of the dead, and it takes a long time before this language shows itself to us. The dead themselves have had to live their way into it; for they have, as you know, to withdraw their soul-life completely from the Earth. The proper language of the dead bears no relation to earthly conditions, it arises from the heart,—yes, it is verily a language of the heart. It is formed rather in the same manner as exclamations or interjections are formed in earthly languages. You know, for instance, how we say ‘Ah!’ when we are moved to wonder or admiration. The language of the dead takes its origin in the same kind of way. Sounds and combinations of sounds enjoy in this language as in no other their full and real significance. From the moment of death, language begins to change for us altogether. It is no longer something that is uttered forth from the organs of speech. It becomes the kind of language of which I spoke a little while ago, when I told you how what rises up from the flowers, gives tidings to us concerning some fellow human being. We begin ourselves to speak, instead of with speech organs, with that which comes from the flowers. We ourselves become flowers, we blossom with the flowers. We enter, for instance, with the forces of our soul into the flower of the tulip, and express, in the imagination of the tulip, the same that came to expression here on Earth in the formation of the word. We grow again into the spirit, the omnipresent spirit,

You will easily see, from this one example of language, that man has to feel his way into entirely different conditions, when he has gone through the gate of death. In reality, our knowledge of man is small indeed, if we know of him only what we see with our eyes. Modern initiation knowledge has to learn about the other side of man. What I have shown you in the case of language is a beginning. We shall find that the very body of man is something altogether different from the descriptions that are given us in scientific books. As we go farther in initiation knowledge, the human body becomes for us a world in itself. It was the task of the initiate of olden times to re-awaken in man a lost faculty, to bring to remembrance in him what his life was like before he came down to Earth, The initiate of the present day has an altogether different mission. He has to accomplish something new, something that means a new step forward. What he does will continue still to have significance even when man has left the Earth,—yes, even when Earth itself is no longer there in the Cosmos. That is the nature of the task modern initiation knowledge has to fulfil; and in the strength and power of that task, it must stand forth and speak.

It is well-known to you, my dear friends, that initiation science has from time to time taken a part in the spiritual evolution of the Earth. Again and again it has made its appearance among men. The initiation knowledge that has to come into the world today and that cannot but regard all the knowledge of our time as a mere beginning of the whole knowledge man should really possess, will assuredly meet with increasing opposition and resistance. So great are the forces arrayed against it, that you will need all your strength to win through. Even before modern initiation—which opens the way for man to have intercourse again with Supersensible Powers,—even before this modern initiation began to take its true place in the world in the last third of the 19th century, opposing powers were already at work, were at pains to imbue civilisation—quite unconsciously, for the most part, as far as the human beings themselves are concerned—with tendencies that would ultimately destroy modern initiation, would wipe it clean off the face of the Earth.

Have you ever observed how constantly one hears people say, when some new fact of knowledge is brought forward: “This is how I look at it! This is my point of view!” And they say this so easily, without having undergone any special development of mind or soul. It is indeed quite generally accepted that everyone has a right to pronounce his verdict, speaking from the point of view of wherever he stands at the moment. And people are even deeply offended and grow quite angry if one ventures to suggest that there is a kind of knowledge for the attainment of which it is necessary to undergo inner development. I said just now that when in the last third of the 19th century the possibility began to arise for men to seek initiation in the modern way, enemy powers were already in action. As you see, they wanted to carry the principle of equality even into the realm of mind and spirit, so that there too all human beings shall be regarded as on the same level. I could point to many persons in whom this method of resistance to modern initiation has been at work.

My dear friends, do you think that when I have to speak out of the spirit of initiation science, the words will have the same ring as when one is speaking from an ordinary earthly standpoint? I have just been trying to explain to you how language has to change and become something quite different when it is a question of carrying on intercourse with beings of the spiritual world, and I think you will not now misunderstand me if I tell you how initiation science sees, for instance, such a man as Rousseau. Speaking from the earthly standpoint, I shall never fail to recognise the greatness and significance of Rousseau, and I am fully prepared to associate myself with the high praise and favourable criticism to which others have given expression. Should I however make bold to clothe in earthly words how Rousseau appears when one sees him from the standpoint of initiation knowledge, I should have to say: Rousseau, with his spiritual leveling of human beings,—what is he, after all, but one of the many everlasting talkers of our modern civilisation! A prince and a leader, shall we say, among them all! People do not readily understand how it is possible, from an earthly point of view to call a man great, and at the same time, from the point of view of initiation to call him an arch-talker! But if we honestly desire to attain a knowledge of man, and if we recognise that to this end we have, as I said, to take the Heavens and the Earth for our province and then discern the rhythm that beats between them, we shall find that even such a seemingly paradoxical utterance is true and requires to be said. For it is, in fact, as we learn to listen to both,—to what sounds forth from the one side and from the other side of existence, it is as we learn to hear these together, that guidance can come to us in our quest for a true knowledge of Man.

A true knowledge of Man has to build on the same foundation whereon the initiates of olden times built, on the EX DEO NASCIMUR; in recollection it must build on that which meets us when we look out into the universe where—all unconsciously to us—the Christ becomes our Guide, as I have described to you. It is however our task to bring the Christ more and more into our consciousness, so that we may gain knowledge under His guidance of the content of this world, to which death belongs. Then shall we know for a surety that we live our way into this dead and dying world with Christ; IN CHRISTO MORIMUR.

And inasmuch as we go down with Christ into the grave of Earth life, so will there follow for us too, with Him, the Resurrection and the Bestowal of the Spirit: PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS.

This PER SPIRITUM SANCTUM REVIVISCIMUS the modern initiate has to set before him as the goal of all his strivings. Ponder it well, and compare it with the manner and mood of thought that belongs to the science of the present day; and you will see for yourselves that opposition to modern initiation is inevitable. A terrible resistance will, without doubt, be put up to the new initiation,—perhaps a resistance of which we can have today no conception, a resistance that will take the form of deed rather than word and express itself in drastic attempts to make initiation knowledge utterly impossible and inaccessible.

It was accordingly my earnest desire, speaking as I do now in a smaller and more intimate circle, to give you descriptions of what modern initiation science can attain to know, in the hope that these descriptions may strike home to your hearts and souls and awaken strength within them; so that there may be a few at least in this generation who know how to relate themselves rightly,—on the one hand, to that which is seeking entrance to our world from the worlds of the Spirit, and on the other hand, to that which is doing all it can to prevent and make impossible the permeation of Earth life with spirituality. This is what I wanted to lay upon your hearts, my dear friends; gathered as we are here in a smaller circle, after having had, to my great satisfaction, opportunity in Oxford for lectures of a more public character. I was able in those lectures to deal with the more external aspects, and it was important that here in this smaller circle we should be able to touch on the more esoteric side of initiation knowledge.

And it is surely time we got beyond feeling puzzled and embarrassed because statements about the spiritual worlds seem paradoxical. They are bound to do so. The language of the spiritual worlds is quite another language from the languages that belong to Earth; one has actually to take great pains and put forth all one's strength before one can render in the words of earthly speech truths that should really be expressed in some entirely different way. You must therefore be quite prepared to find that it will often give people a shock when you tell them, quite simply and directly, of something that takes place in the spiritual worlds.

I wanted in this way to draw your attention to the feeling and impulse that lay behind today's lecture, and I would like now to unite what I have said with an expression of deep satisfaction at being able once again to speak to you here in London. It is always a source of satisfaction to me to be able to do this. As we said before, it happens very seldom. But on the rare occasions when we are for a short time together, may it indeed be that we use the opportunity to stimulate anew in our hearts and souls that stronger kind of ‘togetherness’ that should subsist, the world over, without interruption, among those who espouse the cause of Anthroposophia. This has been my endeavour today, and it is in this sense that I would express in conclusion the earnest desire, my dear friends, that we may in future remain together, however far we are in space from one another.

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.