The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Today our lecture will again be preceded by the recitation of a poem intended to illustrate various matters that I shall discuss today and tomorrow. This time we are dealing with a poem by one whom we may call a non-poet because, as compared with his other spiritual activity, this poem appears as a by-product, written for an occasion. It is, therefore, a soul manifestation that in a sense did not proceed from the innermost impulses of the soul. Precisely this fact will bring clearly to light a number of points connected with our subject. The poem is by the philosopher, Hegel, and concerns certain phases of mankind's initiation.

Eleusis

To Hölderlin

Peace, all around me and within! The tireless cares
Slumber, of busy men. They give to me
Leisure and liberty. Oh night, I thank thee, thou
That set'st me free! With shimmering haze of white
The uncertain confines of the distant hills
Are shrouded by the moon; and, from between,
With kindly twinkle glitters one bright strip
Of yonder lake.
The tedious clatter of the day recedes,
As memory had laid long years between.
Thy image, now, beloved, rises up
With joys of bygone days. Yet soon these yield
To sweeter hopes of new and speedy meeting:
I paint the scene already—the eager step,
The warm embrace: and that, more intimate,
When each probes each with questions, to espy
What new things time has wrought within his friend
Of feeling, view and utt'rance; the glad certitude
That the old covenant maintains its faith,
Even truer, firmer, riper than before;
That covenant, not sealed by any oath:

To live unto free truth alone;
And never, never to make truce
With that convention which would regulate
The feelings and opinions.
Now must the thought, that bore me once o'er streams and mountain heights
To you on wings, confer with dull reality.
Yet soon a sigh betrays their quarreling, and with it flees
Away the dream of sweet imaginings.

My eyes are lifted to the vault of the eternal heavens,
To ye, ye radiant, starry host of height;
And, every hope and every wish effacing,
Forgetfulness rains down from your eternity.

My mind doth lose itself in gazing:
Gone is what I called mine:
I yield myself to the immeasurable;
I am in him, am All, am nothing else.

Returning thought, in fearsome alienation,
Recoils before the infinite, and fails, astounded,
To fathom such a vision's depths.
But fancy to the mind draws down the eternal,
And marries it to form. All hail to you!
Exalted spirits! Lofty shadows!
From whose clear brows fulfillment radiates.
Be not afraid!
This dazzling brightness that enwraps you round;
I feel I too have here my home.

Ha! Did the gates start of thy sanctuary,
Ceres? Oh, thou who in Eleusis throned'st!
Enthused, intoxicate, I feel
Thy awesome presence near
Would comprehend thy revelations.

Would read the symbols' lofty purport, and o'erhear
The festal choirs of the gods,
The dooms they utter from their council-seats!

But silenced are thy halls today, oh Goddess!
Fled is the conclave of the gods to high Olympus,
Far from their profanated altar-places;
Spurning the grave of desecrate mankind,
Fled is that genius of innocency

Whose spell once lured them: mute the wisdom of thy priests.
No single note of all the sacred rite
Escaped to reach us; and in vain the searchers delve,
Moved more by curiosity than love
For wisdom. Her they possess indeed! Disdaining thee.
In hopes to master her, they burrow after words
To find the imprint of thy lofty mind.
Tis vain! They grasp but a handful of dust and ashes,
To which they nevermore shall conjure back thy life!
Yet in the rotting, soulless mould they take their pleasure,
Aye dead themselves, and with the dead content!

Of thy high banquets there remains no token;
Of all the pictured forms not any fleeting trace.
Too holy for the children of thy mysteries
The depths of that unutterable feeling,
The rich contents of that exalted lore,
To be entrusted to a barren symbol.
Even thought itself can compass not the soul,
Who, beyond time and space, aspectant of infinity,
Rapt, self-oblivious, back to consciousness once more
Awakes. And, would he tell to others what he knows,
Though spoke with angels' tongues, the words were all too poor.
And horror seizes him, that holiest thing,
Even in thought belittled, by his words
To make so little, that the very speech seems sin.
And shuddering, he closes up his lips.
This vow, the initiate laid upon himself, wise law
Laid upon meaner spirits: never to make known
What, on a holy night, they saw and felt and heard.
Lest even the nobler sort should find their barking folly
Trouble his devotion, and their wordy trash
Stir him to wroth even with the holiest,—lest it should be
So trampled in the mire,—so mere a thing of rote
That it became the plaything of the sophists
A ware word-mongers hawk about and chaffer,
Dispensing penny-wise;

A cloak for clever-tongued hypocrisy,—a birch, perchance,
To school the merry child,—and at the end, so void,
So utterly empty, that its sole life's root
Is in its echo upon alien tongues.
Thy sons, oh goddess, did not vainly flaunt
Thy honor in the streets and market-place, but bore it
Locked in their bosom's inmost shrine.
Therefore thou livest not within their mouths:
Thee with their lives they worshipped; in their deeds thou livest still.

This night, too, holy one! I have beheld thee,—
Thee, whom in thy sons' lives I oft times found revealed,
And felt unseen, as soul of all their deeds.
Thou art that lofty purpose, that firm faith
Of Godhead, which—though all the world should fall—nor swerves nor shakes.

In the last two lectures it was stated that in studying the soul life we find it filled out up to its boundaries principally by reasoning and the experiences of love and hate, the latter, as we showed, being connected with desire. Now, it might seem as though this statement ignored the most important factor, the very element through which the soul experiences itself most profoundly in its inner depths, that is, feeling. It might seem as though the soul life had been characterized precisely by what is not peculiar to it, and as though no account had been taken of what surges back and forth, up and down in the soul life, investing it with its character of the moment, the life of feeling.

We shall see, however, that we can best understand the dramatic phases of the soul life if we approach the subject of feeling by starting from the two elements mentioned. Again we must begin with simple facts of the soul life, and these are the sense experiences that enter through the portals of our senses, penetrating the soul life, and there carrying on their existence. On the one hand, the waves of the soul life surge to the portals of the senses and thence take back into it the results of the sense perceptions, which then live on independently in the soul. Compare this fact with the other one: that everything comprised in the experiences of love and hate, deriving from desire, also arise in the inner soul life itself, as it were. Desires seem to arise in the center of the soul life, and even to a superficial observer they appear to lead to love and hate.

Desires themselves, however, are not originally to be found in the soul. They arise at the portals of the senses. Consider that first of all. Think of the everyday life of the soul. In observing yourself thus you will notice how the expressions of desire arise in you through contact with the outer world. So we can say that by far the greatest portion of the soul life is achieved at the boundary of the sense world, at the portals of the senses.

This must be thoroughly understood, and we will best be able to grasp it by representing in a sort of diagram what we recognize as fact. We will be able to characterize the intimacies of the soul life by imagining it as filling out a circle.

Let us imagine, then, that the content of the soul life is represented by what the circle encloses, and further imagine our sense organs as a sort of portals, as openings leading to the outer world, in the manner set forth in the lectures on Anthroposophy. If we now consider what is to be observed only within the soul, we should have to represent it graphically by showing the flood surging from the center in all directions and expressing itself in the phenomena of love and hate. Thus the soul is entirely filled by desires, and we find this flood surging right up to the portals of the senses.

The question now arises as to what it is that we experience when a sense experience occurs. What takes place when we experience a tone through the ear, a smell through the nose? Let us for the moment disregard the content of the outer world. Call to mind once more, on the one hand, the actual moment of sense perception, that is, the intercommunication with the outer world. Relive vividly the moment during which the soul experiences itself within, so to speak, while having a color or tone experience of the outer world through the portals of the senses. On the other hand, remember that the soul lives on in time, retaining as recollected visualizations what it acquired through the sense experience in question. Here we must sharply differentiate between what the soul continues to carry along as permanent experience of the recollected visualizations and the experience of the activity of the sense perception, otherwise we should stray into thought processes like Schopenhauer's.

Now we ask, “What happened in that moment when the soul was exposed to the outer world through the portals of the senses?” When you consider that the soul, as experience directly reveals, is really filled with the flood of desires, and you ask what it actually is that flows to the portals of the senses when the soul lets its own inner being surge there, you find it to be the desires themselves. This desire knocks at the gate; at this moment it actually comes in contact with the outer world, and while doing so it receives a seal imprint, as it were, from the other side. When I press a seal with a crest into wax, what remains of the seal in the wax? Nothing but the crest. You could not maintain that what remains does not tally with what had acted from without. That would not be unprejudiced observation, but Kantianism. Unless you are discussing external matter you cannot say that the seal itself does not enter the wax, but rather, you must consider the point at issue: the crest is in the wax. The important thing is what opposes the crest in the seal and into which the crest has stamped itself. Just as the seal yields nothing out of itself but the crest, so the outer world furnishes nothing but the imprint. But something must oppose the seal if an imprint is to come about. You must therefore think of it so that in what opposes the sense experience an imprint has formed from without, and this we carry with us, this imprint come into being in our own soul life. That is what we take along, not the color or the tone itself, but what we have had in the way of experiences of love and hate, of desires.

Is that altogether correct? Could there be something directly connected with a sense experience, something like a desire that must press outward? Well, if nothing of the sort existed you would not carry the sense experience with you in your subsequent soul life; no memory visualization would form. There is, indeed, a psychic phenomenon that offers direct proof that desire always makes contacts outward from the soul through the portals of the senses, whether the perceptions be those of color, smell, or hearing; that is the phenomenon of attention. A comparison between a sense impression during which we merely stare unseeing and one to which we give our attention shows us that in the former case the impression cannot be carried on in the soul life. You must respond from within through the power of attention, and the greater the attention, the more readily the soul retains the memory visualization in the further course of life.

Thus the soul, through the senses, comes in touch with the outer world by causing its essential substance to penetrate the outermost bounds, and this manifests itself in the phenomenon of attention.

In the case of direct sense experience the other element pertaining to the soul life, reasoning, is eliminated. That is exactly what characterizes a sense impression; the capacity for reasoning as such is eliminated. Desire alone prevails, for the sense impression of red is not the same as the sense perception of red. A tone, a perception of color or a smell to which you are exposed, comprises only a desire, recorded through attention; judgment is suppressed in this case. Only one must have clearly in mind the necessity of drawing a sharp boundary line between sense perception and what follows it in the soul.

If you stop at the impression of a color you are dealing with just that—a color impression without judgment. Sense impressions are characterized by an operation of the attention that rules out a verdict as such, desire alone holding sway. When you are exposed to a color or a tone, nothing remains in this condition of being exposed but desire; judgment is suppressed. The sense impression of red is not the same as the sense perception of red. In a tone, in the impression of a color, in a smell to which you expose yourself, only desire is present, recorded by attention. Attention, then, manifests itself as a special form of desire. But at the moment when you say “red is ...” you have already judged: reasoning has come into play. One must always remember to make that distinction between sense perception and sense sensation. Only when you stop at the impression (say, of a color) are you dealing with a mere correspondence between the desire of the soul and the outer world.

What takes place at this meeting of desire in the soul and the outer world? In distinguishing between sense perceptions and sense sensations we designated the former as experiences encountered at the moment of being exposed to them, the latter, as what remains. Now, what do we find a sense sensation to consist of? A modification of desire. Along with the sense sensation we carry what swirls and surges as a modification of desire, the objects of desire.

We have seen that sense sensation arises at the boundary between the soul life and the outer world, at the portals of the senses. We say of a sense experience that the force of desire penetrates to the surface. But let us suppose that the force of desire did not reach the boundary of the outer world but remained within the soul, that it wore off within the soul life itself, as it were, that it remained an inner condition, not penetrating to a sense portal. What would happen in that case? When the force of desire advances and is then compelled to withdraw into itself, inner sensation,¹ or feeling arises. Sense sensation, or outer sensation, comes about only when the withdrawal is effected from without through a counterthrust at the moment of contact with the sense world. Inner sensation (feeling) arises when desire is not pushed back by a direct contact with the outer world but when it is turned back into itself somewhere within the soul before reaching the boundary. That is the way inner sensation, feeling, arises. Feelings are, in a way, introverted desires, desires pushed back into themselves. Thus inner sensation, feeling, consists of halted desires that have not surged to the soul's boundary but live within the soul life, and in feeling, too, the soul substance consists essentially of desire. So feelings as such are not an additional element of the soul life, but substantial, actual processes of desire taking place in the soul life. Let us keep that in mind.

Now we will describe a certain aspect of the two elements of the soul life, reasoning, and the experiences of love and hate originating in desire. It can be stated that everything in the soul arising from the activity of reasoning ends at a certain moment, but also, all that appears as desire comes to an end at a certain moment as well. When does the activity of reasoning cease? When the decision is reached, when the verdict is concluded in the series of visualizations that we then continue to carry with us as a truth. And the end of desire? Satisfaction. As a matter of fact, every desire seeks satisfaction, every reasoning activity, a decision. Because the soul life consists of these two elements—love and hate, and reasoning, imbued with a longing for satisfaction and decision respectively—we can deduce the most important fact connected with the soul life, that it streams toward decisions and satisfaction.

Could we observe man's soul life in its fullness we should find these two currents striving for decisions and satisfaction. By studying his life of feeling we find the origins of many feelings in a great variety of satisfactions and decisions. Observe, for example, those phenomena within the life of feeling that come under the head of concepts like impatience, hope, longing, doubt, even despair, and you have points of contact between these terms and something spiritually tangible. You perceive that the origins of soul processes like impatience, hope, longing, and so forth, are nothing but different expressions of the constantly flowing current in its striving for satisfaction of the forces of desire and for decisions through the forces of visualization. Try to grasp the essence of the feeling of impatience. You will sense vividly that it contains a striving for satisfaction. Impatience is a desire flowing along with the current of the soul, and it does not cease till it terminates in satisfaction. Reasoning powers hardly come into play there.

Or take hope. In hope you will readily recognize the continuous current of desires, but of desires that, unlike those of impatience, are permeated by the other element of the soul life, that is, a tendency of the reasoning powers toward a decision. Because these two elements precisely balance in this feeling, like equal weights on a scale, the feeling of hope is complete in itself. The desire for satisfaction and the prospect of a favorable decision are present in exactly equal measure.

A different feeling would arise were a desire, striving for satisfaction, to combine with a reasoning activity incapable of bringing about a decision. That would be a feeling of doubt.

Similarly, we could always find a curious interplay of reasoning and desire in the wide realm of the feelings, and if there remain feelings in which you don't find these two elements, seek further till you do find them. Taking reasoning capacity as one side of the soul life, we find that it ends with the visualization, but the value a visualization has for life consists in its being a truth. The soul of itself cannot judge truth; the basis of truth is inherent. Everyone must feel this if he compares the characteristics of the soul life with what is to be acquired through truth.

What we are wont to call reasoning capacity in connection with the soul life could also be designated reflection; yet by reflecting we do not necessarily arrive at the right decision. The verdict becomes correct through our being lifted out of our soul, for truth lies without, and the decision is the union with truth. For this reason decisions are an element foreign to the soul.

Turning to the other element, surging in as from unknown sources toward the center of the soul life and spreading in all directions, we find the origin of desire again to lie primarily outside the soul life. Both desires and judgments enter the soul life from without.

Within the soul life, then, satisfaction and the struggle for truth up to the moment of decision run their course, so it can be said that in relation to reasoning we are fighters within the soul life, in relation to desires, enjoyers. Decisions take us out of our soul life, but regarding our desires we are enjoyers, and the end of desires, satisfaction, lies within. In the matter of judgment we are independent, but the reverse is true of desires. In the latter case the inception does not occur in the soul, but satisfaction does. For this reason feeling, as an end, as satisfaction of desire, can fill the whole soul.

Let us examine more closely what it is that enters the soul as satisfaction. We have explained that sensation is fundamentally a surging of desire right up to the boundary of the soul life, while feeling remains farther within, where desire wears off. What do we find at the end of desire, there where the soul life achieves satisfaction within itself? We find feeling. So when desire achieves its end in satisfaction within the soul life, feeling comes into being. That represents only one category of feelings, however. Another arises in a different manner, namely, through the fact that actually interrelationships exist in the depths of the soul life between the inner soul life and the outer world.

Considered by itself, the character of our desires expresses itself in the fact that these are directed toward external things, but unlike sense perceptions they do not achieve contact with them. Desire, however, can be directed toward its objective in such a way as to act from a distance, as a magnetic needle points to the pole without reaching it. In this sense, then, the outer world enjoys a certain relationship to the soul life and exercises an influence within it, though not actually reaching it. Feelings can therefore also arise when desire for an unattainable object continues. The soul approaches an object that induces desire; the object is not able to satisfy it; desire remains; no satisfaction results.

Let us compare this condition with a desire that achieves satisfaction; there is a great difference. A desire that has ended in satisfaction, that has been neutralized, has a health-giving influence on the soul life, but an unsatisfied desire remains imprisoned in itself and has a deleterious effect on the health of the soul. The consequence of an unsatisfied desire is that the soul lives in this unsatisfied desire, which is carried on because it was not fulfilled and because in the absence of its object a living relationship is maintained between the soul and what we may call a void. Hence, the soul lives in unsatisfied longing, in inner contexts not founded on reality, and this suffices to produce a baneful influence upon the health of the physical and spiritual life with which the soul is bound up. Desires that remain should be sharply distinguished from those that are satisfied. When such phenomena appear in obvious forms they are readily distinguished, but there are cases in which these facts are not at all easy to recognize.

Referring now only to those desires that are wholly encompassed by the soul life, let us suppose a man faces an object; then he goes away and says the object had satisfied him, that he liked it; or else, it had not satisfied him and he disliked it. Connected with the satisfaction is a form of desire, no matter how thoroughly hidden, which was satisfied in a certain way, and in the case of the dislike the desire itself has remained. This leads us into the realm of aesthetic judgment.

There is but one variety of feelings, and this is significantly characteristic of the soul life, that appears different from the others. You will readily understand that feelings, either satisfied or unsatisfied desires, can link not only with external objects but with inner soul experiences. A feeling of the kind we designated “satisfied desire” may connect with something reaching far into the past. Within ourselves as well we find the inceptions of satisfied or unsatisfied desires. Distinguish, for a moment, between desires provoked by external objects and those stimulated by our own soul lives. By means of outer experiences we can have desires that remain with us, and in the soul as well we find causes of satisfied or unsatisfied desires. But there are other tiny inner experiences in which we have an unfulfilled longing. Let us assume that in a case where our desires face an outer object our reasoning powers prove too weak to reach a decision; you might have to renounce a decision. There you have an experience of distress brought about by your feeling of dissatisfaction.

There is one case, however, in which our reasoning does not reach a decision, nor does desire end in satisfaction, and yet no feeling of distress arises. Remember that when we do not reason in facing the objects of daily life through ordinary sense experiences we halt at the sense phenomena, but in reasoning we transcend the sense experience. When we carry both reasoning and desire to the boundary of the soul life, where the sense impression from the outer world surges up to the soul, and we then develop a desire, permeated by the power of reasoning that stops exactly at the boundary, then a most curiously constituted feeling arises.

Let this line represent the eye as the portal of sight. Now we let our desire (horizontal lines) stream to the portal of sense experiences, the eye, in the direction outward from the soul. Now let our reasoning powers (vertical lines) flow there as well. This would give us a symbol of the feeling just mentioned, a feeling of unique composition.

Remember that ordinarily when reasoning power is developed the fulfillment of psychic activity lies not within but outside the soul. Then you will appreciate the difference between the two currents that flow as far as the outer impression. If our reasoning power is to decide something that is to proceed as far as the boundary of the soul, the latter must take into itself something concerning which it can make no decisions of its own initiative, and that is truth. Desire cannot flow out; truth overwhelms desire. Desire must capitulate to truth. It is necessary, then, to take something into our soul that is foreign to the soul as such: truth.

The lines representing reasoning (cf. diagram) normally proceed out of the soul life to meet something external, but desire cannot pass the boundary where either it is hurled back or it remains confined within itself. In the present example, however, we are assuming that both reasoning and desire proceed only to the boundary, and that as far as the sense impression is concerned they coincide completely. In this case our desire surges as far as the outer world and from there brings us back the verdict.

From the point where it turns back, desire brings back the verdict. What sort of a verdict does it bring back? Under these conditions only aesthetic verdicts are possible, that is, judgments in some way linked with art and beauty. Only in connection with artistic considerations can it happen that desire flows to the boundary and is satisfied, that reasoning power stops at the frontier and yet the final verdict is brought back.

When you look at a work of art, can you say that it provokes your desire? Yes, it does, but not through its own agency. When that is the case, which is possible, of course, the arrival at an aesthetic decision does not depend upon a certain development of the soul. It is quite conceivable that certain souls might not respond in any way to a work of art. Naturally, this can happen in connection with other objects as well, but then we find complete indifference, and in that case the same process would take place when looking at a work of art as when confronting any other object. When you are not indifferent, however, when your soul life responds appropriately to the work of art, you will notice a difference. You let reasoning and desire flow to the boundary of the soul life, and then something returns, namely, a desire expressing itself in the verdict. That is beautiful. To the one, nothing returns, to the other, desire returns, but not desire for the work of art, but the desire that has been satisfied by the verdict. The power of desire and the power of reasoning come to terms in the soul, and in such a case where the outer world is the provoker only of your own inner soul activity, the outer world itself can satisfy you. Exactly as much returns to you as had streamed forth from you.

Note that the actual presence of the work of art is indispensable, because the soul substance of desire must certainly flow to the frontier of the senses. Any recollection of the work really yields something different from the aesthetic judgment in its presence.

Truth, then, is something to which desires capitulate as to a sort of exterior of the soul life. Beauty is something in which desire exactly corresponds to reasoning. The verdict is brought about by the voluntary termination of desire at the soul's boundary, the desire returning as the verdict. That is why the experience of beauty is a satisfaction that diffuses so much warmth. The closest balance of the soul forces is achieved when the soul life flows to its boundary as desire and returns as judgment. No other activity so completely fulfills the conditions of a healthy soul life as devotion to beauty.

When a longing of the soul surges in great waves to the frontier of the senses and returns with the verdict, we can see that one condition of ordinary life can better be met through devotion to beauty than in any other way. In seeking the fruits of thought we are working in the soul with a medium to which the power of desire must constantly surrender. Naturally, the power of desire will always surrender to the majesty of truth, but when it is forced to do so, the inevitable consequence is an impairment of the soul life's health. Continual striving in the realm of thought, during which desires must constantly capitulate, would eventually bring about aridity of the human soul, but reasoning that brings satisfied desire and judgment in equal measure provides the soul with something quite different.

Naturally this is not a recommendation that we should incessantly wallow in beauty and maintain that truth is unhealthy. That would be setting up the axiom that the search for truth is unhealthy: let us eschew it; wallowing in beauty is healthy: let us indulge in it. But the implication of what has been said is that in view of our search for truth, which is a duty, a necessity, we are compelled to fight against the life of desires, to turn it back into itself. Indeed, in seeking truth we must do this as a matter of course.

More than anything else, therefore, this search inculcates humility and forces back our egotism in the right way. The search for truth renders us ever more humble. Yet if man were merely to live along in this way, becoming more and more humble, he would eventually arrive at his own dissolution; the sentience of his own inner being, essential to the fulfillment of his soul life, would be lacking. He must not forfeit his individuality through the constant necessity surrendering to truth; this is where the life of aesthetic judgment steps in. The life of aesthetic judgment is so constituted that man brings back again what he has carried to the boundary of the soul life.

In that life it is permissible to do what is demanded in the light of truth. What is demanded by truth is that the decision be reached independently of our arbitrary choice. In seeking truth we must surrender ourselves completely, and in return we are vouchsafed truth. In coming to an aesthetic decision, in seeking the experience of beauty, we also surrender ourselves completely; we let our souls surge to their boundaries, almost as in the case of a sense sensation. But then we ourselves return and this cannot be decided, cannot be determined from without. We surrender ourselves and are given back to ourselves. Truth brings back only a verdict, but an aesthetic judgment, in addition, brings back our self as a gift. That is the peculiarity of the aesthetic life. It comprises truth, that is, selflessness, but at the same time the assertion of self-supremacy in the soul life, returning us to ourselves as a spontaneous gift.

In these lectures, as you see, I must present matters ill adapted to definitions. We are merely endeavoring to describe them as they are by delimiting the soul life and studying it.

In the lectures on Anthroposophy given last year we learned that in the downward direction corporeality borders on the soul life. At this border we endeavored to grasp the human being and thereby the human body, together with all that is connected with its constitution. The ultimate aim of these lectures is to provide rules of life, life wisdom, hence a broad foundation is indispensable.

Today, we gained an insight into the nature of desires as they surge in the depths of the soul life. Now, in the previous lectures we learned that certain experiences allied to feeling, like boredom, depend upon the presence of visualizations out of the past, like bubbles that lead their own lives in the soul. At a given moment of our existence much depends upon the nature of the lives they lead. Our frame of mind, our happiness or distress, depends upon the manner in which our visualizations act as independent beings in the soul, upon the significance of boredom, and so forth. In short, upon these beings that live in our souls depends the happiness of our present lives.

Against certain visualizations that we have allowed to enter our present soul lives, we are powerless; facing others, we are strong according to our ability to recall visualizations at will. Here the question arises as to which visualizations are readily recaptured and which not. That is a matter that can be of immense importance in life. Furthermore, can anything be done at the inception of visualizations to render them more or less readily available? Yes, we can contribute something. Many would find it profitable and could lighten the burden of their lives enormously if they knew how to recapture their conceptions easily. You must give them something to take along, but what? Well, since the soul life is made up of desire and reasoning, we must find it within these two elements.

Of our desire we can give nothing but desire itself. At the moment when we have the conception, the moment when it flows into us, we must give as much of our desire as possible, and that can only be done by permeating the conception with love. To give part of our desire to the conception will provide a safe-conduct for our further soul life. The more lovingly we receive a visualization, the more interest we devote to it, the more we forget ourselves and our attributes in meeting it, the better it is permanently preserved for us. He who cannot forget himself in the face of a conception will quickly forget the conception. It is possible to encompass a conception, as it were, with love.

We still have to learn, however, how our reasoning can act upon conceptions. A conception is more readily recalled by our memory when received through the reasoning force of our soul than when it has simply been added to the soul life. When you reason about a visualization entering the web of your soul, when you surround it with reasoning, you are again providing it with something that facilitates the memory of it. You see, you can invest a conception with something like an atmosphere, and it depends upon ourselves whether a conception reappears in our memory easily or not. It is important for the health of the soul life to surround our visualizations with an atmosphere of reasoning and love.

In this connection we must also give due consideration to the ego conception. Our entire continuous soul life bears a constant relationship to our central visualization, the ego conception. If we follow the path indicated today, we shall in the next lecture discover how to correlate the directions of memory and ego experience.

At bottom, the main tendency of the soul is desire. This being the case, anyone knowing that through esoteric development the soul's aims must be raised may be surprised to learn that in a certain sense desire must be overcome. “Overcoming desire in the soul,” however, is not an accurate way of putting it. Desire arises in the soul from unknown depths, yes, but what surges in with it? Of what is it the expression? If we would fathom these depths, we must temporarily interpret them in an abstract way as something that corresponds on a higher plane to desire, something proceeding from our own being as will. When, for the purpose of higher development, we combat desire, we are not combatting will but merely certain modifications, certain objects of desire. Then pure will holds sway. Will coupled with an object, with the content of desire, is covetousness. Through reasoning, however, we can arrive at the conception of wanting to rid ourselves of desire, so that a will of that sort, disencumbered of objects, is in a certain way one of our highest attributes. Don't confuse this with concepts like “the will to live.” That is a will directed at an object. Will is pure and free only when not modified into a definite desire; in other words, only when it leads in the opposite direction.

When the life of the will surges into our feelings, we have an excellent opportunity to study the relation of will to feeling. Fantastic explanations of will are possible. One could maintain that will must necessarily lead to a certain object. Such definitions are wholly unjustifiable, and people who propound them would often do better to devote themselves to the genius of language. Language, for example, offers an inspired word for that inner experience in which will is directly converted into feeling. If we could observe within ourselves a craving of the will in the process of wearing off, we could perceive, in facing an object or a being, a surging of the will up to a certain point, where it then holds back. That produces a profoundly unsatisfied feeling toward that being. This sort of will certainly does not lead to action, and language offers the inspired term Widerwille.² That is a feeling, however, and therefore the will, when recognizing itself in the feeling, is in fact a desire that leads back to itself, and language actually has a word that directly characterizes the will as a feeling.

This shows us the fallacy of a definition implying that the will is only the point of departure of an act. Within the soul life we find on all sides a surging differentiated will: desire; therein are seen the various expressions of the soul.

• 1. Empfindung, in addition to meaning “sensation” (as here translated) can also be synonymous with Gefühl (“feeling”), as is here the case. In order to avoid confusion, the word “inner” is added; indeed, in all subsequent recurrences it appears in the German text as well (innere Empfindung).
• 2. Literally, anti-will, or counter-will. Widerwille is a commonly used word meaning distaste, antipathy, disgust. The English language, unfortunately, lacks this particular “inspired term.”

A more intimate understanding of what was said yesterday and what still remains to be said will be brought about by endeavoring to compare the youthful Goethe's poem you just heard¹ with that of Hegel, recited yesterday. This comparison will be enlightening as emphasizing the difference in the souls of the two personalities in question. Try to sense the profound difference between the two poems. Lack of time restricts us to a mere mention of certain aspects, but we shall be able to understand each other.

The poem you heard yesterday (Eleusis) was written by a philosopher who reached tremendous heights of pure thought. We saw that thought itself become poetically creative, as it were, in Hegel. We felt mighty thoughts bearing upon the Mysteries, the enigmas of the world. At the same time we sensed a certain awkwardness in the poetical treatment of the material; poetry is not this man's chief mission. He wrestles with the poetic form, and we have the impression that the thought had to struggle to reach that realm where poetic form becomes possible. Clearly, not many such poems could have been written by Hegel.

Let us compare this poem with the other from a definite point of view. In the first lecture an altered version of a youthful poem by Goethe was read to you, showing how two souls lived in his breast. Today, you heard another poem by the young Goethe that needed no alterations. The form in which it was written, with its mighty images, would have been worthy of the mature Goethe as well. In this poem we see working in Goethe a soul force totally different from the one activating Hegel. Unfailingly, a wealth of compelling imagery flowed into the young Goethe. His innate genius was such that an abundance of teeming images streamed into his soul life. We become aware that when the grandeur of the subject overwhelms him, much of what remained in his other poem to mar it has here been overcome by a powerful soul life that seeks to express itself in telling images.

We find three points of interest in the poems recited. In Hegel, the thought is the motive force. It achieves images only with a struggle, and the intensity of this struggle is still discernible even in the pale images. In Goethe, on the other hand, a totally different soul force is at work, thundering along in mighty images. We perceive how this soul force can be impaired in another way, as in The Wandering Jew that has remained a fragment because of the conflict between the two soul forces. This points to the manifold nature of the soul life. In Hegel we find a thought force that penetrates with difficulty into that other soul force that was the stronger one in Goethe. On the other hand, we see how the best force in Goethe's soul bores its way into something opposed to it. Let us keep that in mind.

Now we will resume our psychosophic studies. Remember what we found at work in the soul life: reasoning, and the experiences of love and hate that originate in the capacity for desire, but we could group this differently. By the power of reasoning we mean mental activity, the faculty that desires to understand the truth. We encounter an entirely different soul force when we think of the soul as being interested in the outer world, in one way or another. The soul is interested in the outer world in so far as love and hate take an active part in the latter.

Even so, the phenomena of love and hate have nothing to do with the power of reasoning. Interest and the power of reasoning are two forces acting quite differently in the soul. For example, were you to seek will in the soul, imagining it to be a function by itself, you would discover interest in what is willed. In short, interest awakened by love and hate, and reasoning. Aside from these experiences you would find nothing in the inner region of the soul. They exhaust the content of the soul life.

In the foregoing, however, one of the most important features of the soul life, one that we encounter at once, has been left out of account. It is what we designate with the word consciousness. Consciousness is an integral part of the soul life. When we search the content of the soul life from every aspect, we encounter the power of reasoning, and interest, but in dealing with the inner peculiarities of the two soul forces we may count them among the elements of the soul life only in so far as we can ascribe consciousness to the soul.

Now, what is consciousness? I shall not proceed to define the word but will merely characterize. If you approach the concept “consciousness” in the light of what we have already studied, you will see that in view of the continuous stream of visualizations the condition of consciousness in the soul does not, after all, coincide with the soul life. Why is that? We have seen, you know, that the soul life differs from the condition of consciousness through the fact that a visualization can live on in the soul without entering consciousness. A conception out of the past lives on in our soul life. We can recall it, but if we do so only after a day or so, not immediately, it was not in our consciousness in the interim, it was only in our memory. Memory is not always conscious. The conception, then, existed in the soul but was momentarily not in our consciousness. Consciousness is not the same thing as the continuous stream of the soul life. We must put it this way. Representing the visualizations, which we may possibly remember some time, by an arrow pointing in the direction taken by the stream of visualizations in time, we thereby include all the visualizations flowing out of the past into the future. In order to be conscious of them we must first call them up out of the unconscious life of the soul by an act of will.

When the soul is awake, the condition of consciousness is something that pertains to the soul life, but not in the sense that everything pertaining to it must pertain to the condition of consciousness as well. On the contrary, consciousness illuminates but a part of the soul life. If you ask the reason, someone could answer, “Well, what you designate ‘the continuous stream of visualizations’ is nothing but the established and permanent arrangement of nerves and brain, and all that is needed is that at a certain moment the brain arrangement should be illuminated by consciousness.” That would, indeed, be the case if the perception had not been robbed of something in becoming a visualization. In that case the perception would not have to be transformed into a visualization. The latter, however, is a response, a perception from within, that has robbed the outer perception of something that was not always linked with consciousness, but, rather, that must be illuminated by it.

Next we ask how it is possible to throw light upon this continuous stream that embraces unconscious visualizations, to illuminate it in such a way that its content can become visible in memory. A certain fact of the soul life such as can occur on the physical plane will serve to illustrate. It is a fact totally ignored by physiology, but we are concerned with facts, not prejudices. We have many kinds of feelings, for example, longing, impatience, hope, doubt, and finally such feelings as apprehension, fear, etc. What do they tell us? Examination shows them to have something strangely in common. They all refer to the future, to something that may eventuate and that is hoped for. Our soul life, then, is so constituted that in our feelings we take an interest not only in the present but in the future as well, and a lively one at that. It is even stronger in the case of pronounced desires. Just try watching the upheaval in your soul when you desire something that is to materialize in the future! You can go farther; try to hunt up in your memory what you experienced as joy or sorrow in your youth, and compare it with similar feelings you have had recently. Try it, and you will see how pale such memories remain when you try to freshen them up. In the present, such memories are fresh and strong, but the farther we are removed from them, the paler they become.

I should like to ask how many people bemoan something that happened to them ten years before, provided the cause has ceased to exist? There is a tremendous difference in the way we look at the future and the past. Only one possible explanation of this fact exists. What we call desire simply does not flow in the same direction as the stream of visualizations, but the latter comes to meet it. A powerful light will be thrown upon your soul life if you will take this one fact for granted. Desire, love, hate, wishes, interest, and so forth, form a current flowing from the future into the past, that is, toward you.

It would take days to elaborate that in detail, but the riddles of consciousness will be solved and the whole peculiar nature of the soul life clarified if you start with the premise that the current of desire, love and hate comes to meet you out of the future, and meets the current of visualizations flowing out of the past into the future. At every moment you are actually in the midst of this encounter of the two streams, and considering that the present moment of your soul life consists of such a meeting, you will readily understand that these two currents overlap in your soul. This overlapping is consciousness.

If at any moment of the present you search your conscious soul life, you will find there something that acts out of the past into the future and something that runs from the future into the past. Consciousness can be explained in no other way than by the overlapping of these two streams, and if you will visualize all the damming up that comes about here, you will see that the soul takes part in all that flows out of the past and in what streams to meet that current out of the future. Observing the conscious soul life at any given moment, you will see a certain interpenetration of these two streams. Here are all the conceptions you have brought along, there is everything that flows out of the future into the past, meeting the current of visualizations as interest, wishes, desire, and so forth.

Since these two currents can be distinguished quite clearly, we will designate the soul life by two names, though the names themselves are immaterial. If I were giving a public lecture, I should choose curious names, as is customary. For example, I could call one current A and the other B; then you could get right to work on an equation, where A and B would be useful. The names are not what matters, yet I should here like to select names that will recall to your mind what you must already know from another angle, so that you can contemplate it from two aspects. First, from that of the pure empiricist who can choose any names he likes for the proven results of his researches, that is, where the name is immaterial, and second, from the point of view of one who selects such names because he observes the facts clairvoyantly. Thus, we will designate the current of visualizations, flowing from the past into the future, “the etheric body of the soul,” and the other, the current of desires, running from the future into the past, “the astral body of the soul.”

Consciousness is the meeting of the astral and etheric bodies. You can test this. Try to recall all that you have learned from the research of clairvoyant consciousness about the etheric and astral bodies, and to apply it here. You only need ask yourselves what brings about the damming up, the intersection of the two streams. The answer lies in the fact that the two currents meet in the physical body. Assume for the moment that the physical and etheric bodies were removed. What would happen? The current from the past to the future would be missing, and the other, the astral current, would have an unobstructed course. Now, that is exactly what occurs immediately after death, with the result that during the period of kamaloka consciousness runs backwards. Thus in following our psychosophic paths we rediscover what we learned by way of exact theosophy.

Many of the results of clairvoyant research will at first contradict observations made on the physical plane because the latter must first be properly arranged but, when this is done, the results of clairvoyant research can invariably be verified. The results of the two methods will coincide.

Now we will examine another phenomenon of the soul life, in common parlance called “surprise,” “amazement.” What exactly is this? When can we be surprised by something we encounter? Only when, at the moment of encountering it, we are not at once in a position to reason when our judgment is not immediately equal to coping with the impressions made upon our soul life. The moment our reasoning becomes equal to the task, amazement ceases. Something our reasoning can at once cope with causes us no surprise at all, surprise doesn't enter. In encountering a phenomenon and experiencing surprise, amazement—perhaps even fear—that is, in receiving a conscious impression without our reasoning having time to intervene, feelings arise, but not at first reasoning. In seeking the reason for this we must realize that our state of interest, our capacity for desire, cannot flow in the same direction as the power of reasoning, otherwise the two would coincide; therefore, reasoning must be something different from ordinary interest.

Neither can reasoning be identical and flow together with the soul current from the past to the future. Otherwise, reasoning would continuously coincide with the current of visualizations and the entire soul life would have to take part whenever we reason. Visualizations would have to have ceased at this moment. Reasoning, however, is conscious; yet at the moment of reasoning, how far we are from facing all the visualizations our soul embraces! Reasoning is not able instantaneously to grasp the continuous stream of the soul life, hence these two cannot coincide either. Nor can reasoning coincide with the current from the future to the past, otherwise, fear, anxiety, amazement, surprise would not be possible. Reasoning, therefore, coincides with none of these currents.

Keeping this fact in mind, let us now examine the continuous stream of the etheric body that flows from the past to the future. It discloses, indeed, something highly peculiar, namely, that it not only can flow along in the soul unconsciously, so to speak, but can become conscious. Let us keep clearly in view that unconscious conceptions passing through the soul life can become conscious. They are always present, but not always conscious. Let us try by a simple example to focus our attention upon the moment at which such unconscious visualizations become conscious. You are walking through a picture gallery and stop to look at a picture. At this moment the same picture bobs up in your consciousness; you have seen it before. What was it that called up this memory? Well, it was the impression of the new picture that magically and visibly conjured up before your mind's eye the old visualization of the picture. If you had not encountered the picture, the old visualization would not have been stimulated to come to the surface. You can understand this process by explaining it as follows. What I term my ego has entered anew upon an interrelationship with the picture by confronting it.

The circumstance that your ego receives something new into itself acts upon something that is contained in the continuous stream of the soul life and thereby becomes visible again. Let us try to get a picture of this by means of which we can describe the process. Think of all the objects that are at the moment behind you, but without turning around; you cannot see them. Under what conditions can you see them without turning around? When you hold up a mirror. Something similar must take place between the visualizations that live along unconsciously in the soul and the process produced by a new impression. The latter mixes with your old visualizations in such a way as to render these visible to the mind's eye.

Then, what is it that blots out the view of the old visualization, rendering it invisible? It is your ego that stands in the way and, when a new process provides the impulse for a reflection, the result is the process of memory, of the becoming conscious of the old visualization. The stream of memory runs backward to the old visualization, just as the light rays run backward to the mirror, thence to be reflected forward.

Enquiring next into the cause of such a reflection, let us recall the highly significant fact that man's retrogressive memory stops at a certain point. From that time back to birth he remembers nothing. Where does memory of past events commence? In fact, which processes of human life are the only ones that return to memory at all? Only those in which the ego participated, which the ego had really assimilated because it is at about the same time, according to the demands of a certain law, that the child can start to develop his ego visualization. Only such visualizations are remembered at all in our physical life as were received while the ego took part as an active force, conscious of itself.

What about this ego during the first three years of a child's life? At first it receives all impressions unconsciously, so to speak; it is not itself present. Then it begins to unite with all visualizations received from without. That is the moment at which the human ego begins to stand in front of its visualizations, placing these behind it. Up to that time the whole life of ego visualizations was lived purely in the life of the present; now it emerges, faces the future in freedom, and is equipped to receive whatever comes to meet it out of the future, but past visualizations it places behind itself.

What must take place at the moment when the ego begins to assimilate all visualizations, when it becomes conscious? The ego must join the continuous current we have called the etheric body. At the moment when the child begins to develop an ego consciousness the stream of life has made an impression on the etheric body, and therewith the capacity for ego consciousness comes into being. Ego perception can never come to you from without; the visualizations relating to the physical world are what is given from without. Previous to the moment at which the child begins to sense his own ego, he cannot feel his own etheric body, but from then on the ego reflects back into itself the current of the etheric body. This gives you the mirror as well. To sum up: While all other visualizations—those that relate to physical space—are received by the physical human being, the ego consciousness, the ego visualization, arises when the ego fills out the etheric body and is reflected, as it were, from its inner walls. The essential feature of ego consciousness is that it is the etheric body being reflected inward.

What can bring about this inner reflection? The inner delimitation of the etheric body. Only through this does the ego become conscious as the result of inner reflection. We learned, you remember, that the astral body comes to meet the etheric body. It is the ego that fills out the etheric body and, through inner reflection, becomes conscious of it as such. This ego consciousness is powerfully gripped by all interest, all desires, for these implant themselves firmly in the ego. Nevertheless, even though this takes place to such a degree that we characterize it as egotism, there is something peculiar about this ego perception, something in a certain way independent of desires. There is a certain demand that the human soul makes upon itself, readily attested by the soul; every soul knows that mere desire cannot possibly call forth the ego. However much you want to do it, it cannot be done. Ego consciousness does not consist of the stream of desires any more than it does of the stream of visualizations. It is an element fundamentally different from either, but one that assimilates both streams. We can represent this state of affairs graphically by drawing the ego current at right angles to the stream of time. That gives a correct picture.

That is the only way to account for all the psychic phenomena involved. You will always be able to cope with these if you assume a current running at right angles to the other two, to the one from the past to the future, and to the one from the future to the past. That is the current corresponding to the human ego element itself.

There is something else, something in the nature of a human-psychic experience, that is connected with the ego. It is the power of reasoning. This enters with the ego. If you visualize this picture, you will really be able to understand only the phenomenon of surprise, of interest, not the reasoning activity of the ego. The latter cannot possibly enter the process from the direction of the past, and unless the ego can enter simultaneously with desire, it is impossible for reasoning to meet the future-past current. What is indispensable if reasoning activity is to enter with the ego current? A reflection, and this must come about in such a way that the ego has the unconsciously flowing visualizations positively behind itself.

That would be the case if the ego current entered from the direction indicated by the arrow in the diagram, but were then to change its course within the body to that shown by the other arrow, toward the future. Now the ego has joined the current of the etheric body, has entered the etheric body—has itself, so to speak, become a mirror. This tallies strikingly with the facts. If the ego has the unconsciously onward-flowing visualizations behind itself, what does it encounter in front, toward the future? Imagine you are looking into a mirror. If nothing is behind you, you see nothing but an endless void, and at first that is man's view of the future. When do you see something there? Only when something out of the past appears. You see the past, not the future; the mirror shows you the objects that are behind you. Now, if the ego is reflected inwardly at the moment when the child arrives at self-consciousness, the entire soul life from then on signifies that experiences and impressions of the past are reflected as well. That is why you can remember nothing that occurred before the ego became a means of reflection. If something out of the past is to be seen in the mirror, you naturally see nothing of the future, just as you see nothing behind the quicksilver that lines the mirror.

It should be noted here that the child, when it is reflected in the etheric body at the inception of the ego, remembers nothing that happened previously. Everything is explained by the one essential fact that the human ego, in so far as it enters the etheric body and receives visualizations out of the past, itself becomes a reflecting apparatus impressionable to everything it receives from that time on.

Now let us recall the fact, already mentioned, that there are two kinds of memories, the one resulting from the external repetition of a perception, the other called up out of the soul by the power of the ego, without external repetition. What must occur if the ego is to reflect past events? We can say that, if you receive an outer impression through a picture you have seen before and which you encounter for the second or third time, the raying of the reflection from the other side is thereby held back in such a manner as to make it strike the inner soul mirror. What if no repetition of the outer impression occurs? In that case the ego itself must gather what is to be reflected from within, that is, it must create a substitute for what is otherwise effected by the outer impression.

What is this ego primarily as it appears in physical human life? It is the inner fulfillment of the etheric body. It must therefore itself be transformed into a mirror within the etheric body, and this is accomplished through the delimitation of the etheric body. With regard to your outer sense impressions you are sequestered by reason of being in a physical body, and it is due to this fact that what lives in the etheric body can be reflected. There must be, however, another force to account for what you remember freely. The etheric body must have a foil, like a mirror, and this is provided for the memories, which are called forth by the new impression, by the sense organs, the physical body.

In the absence of anything acting from without, we must seek the foil elsewhere. The only alternative is to employ as an auxiliary force what approaches the ego at right angles, that is, desire, or the current flowing toward us. This we use as a foil for the mirror. Only by appropriately strengthening the astral body can we call in the force of desire and develop out of the ego a force capable of recalling to our memory those visualizations that otherwise refuse to appear. Only by strengthening the ego, as it expresses itself in the physical world, are we able actually to use the current flowing out of the future and to make a mirror-foil of it. Solely by strengthening the ego, by making it master of what comes to us out of the future (astral body), can we do anything about the visualizations that refuse to be mirrored, refuse to surrender to us. If we cannot recall the visualization, it is because our desire lacks the requisite strength. We must take out a loan in order to be able to reflect it.

A strengthening of the ego can be brought about in two ways. In everyday life, for example, you experience things simply by following the continuous stream of experience. When a bell tolls you hear the first tone, the second, third, and so forth, in order; in a play you hear the various parts one after another, then you've finished. With your ego you live along in the continuous stream of etheric life but, if you systematically set about to experience the opposite stream of life, you follow the astral current. For instance, in the evening recall the events of the day in reverse order, or recite the Lord's Prayer backwards. You are then not following the usual ego current, which lives because the ego fills the etheric body, but the opposite one, and the consequence is that you incorporate forces out of the astral current. That is an extraordinarily good exercise for strengthening the memory.

There is another exercise for the same purpose. If someone suffers from a particularly poor memory, he can combat the condition by trying with all his might to take up some occupation of his youth. Supposing he is forty, and he tackles a book that had entranced him at the age of fifteen. If he keeps on trying religiously to become absorbed in it with the feeling of that earlier time, he draws strength from the backward-flowing current. You recall the same facts you did in the past, then the current out of the future comes to your aid. Why, for example, does an old man like to recall the occupations of his youth?

Such considerations can show you that actually your ego must fortify itself from the astral current that flows to meet the etheric current if it would strengthen the memory. If one were to pay careful attention to such matters in teaching, the effect would be highly beneficial. For example, seven school classes could be so arranged as to comprise a middle class, the fourth. In the fifth would be repeated in modified form what was studied in the third, in the sixth the subjects of the second, in the seventh, of the first. That would be an excellent way of strengthening the memory, and if people would put such things into practice they would see that ideas of that sort derive from the laws governing life.

From all this we perceive that in our ego visualization, our ego perception, we have something that must first come into being. . It arises in early childhood through the inward reflection of the etheric body. No wonder there is no ego visualization in the night, for when the ego is out in space during sleep, it naturally cannot be reflected in the etheric body. That is why it must submerge in unconsciousness at night. The etheric body is the current continuously flowing in time, and in the course of time it receives the ego visualization through the circumstance that what flows forward in the etheric body is illuminated from the other side by the astral body.

All that we have in the way of ego visualization is exclusively in the etheric body; it is merely the entire etheric body seen from within, reflecting itself within itself. Only the ego visualization is active in the etheric body, not the ego itself. What is the ego? It is the power of reasoning striking in at an angle. If you would comprehend the ego you must not turn to the ego perception but to reasoning. In relation to all else, reasoning is independent, and we must clearly distinguish between visualizing and reasoning. “Red” is not a verdict; reasoning stops at the sense perception. The moment, however, the verdict “red is” is pronounced—when the “red” is endowed with “being”—the ego stirs, the reasoning that is directed toward the spiritual. When the ego passes judgment based upon outer impressions, the latter are objects of judgment.

Now, if the ego is a being apart from all its visualizations and perceptions, as well as from self-perception (just as a reflected image is not identical with the object reflected), and if, further, it is the impetus of self-perception, a verdict must be possible in relation to which the ego, as in all reasoning, feels itself master, and not dependent upon outer perception. This occurs at the moment, not when you have the ego visualization, but when you pronounce the judgment “I is.” Thereby you have filled out with reasoning capacity what otherwise lives in the “I” without achieving consciousness. What was previously an empty bubble is now filled with the power of reasoning, and when the ego thus fills itself out the spirit is encompassed by reasoning.

Let us recall that reasoning is an activity of the soul, an inner activity; that soul activities arise within, in the inner soul life; that they lead to visualizations. Among the visualizations that appear, the ego visualization is one. True, we found that the ego visualization leads to a conception of the ego, but aside from that we could learn nothing about the ego. What we did learn, however, is that the ego visualization, though having the same character as other visualizations entering from the physical world, cannot originate in the outer world, the physical world. This being the case, and since reasoning, which is one of the elements of the soul life, must be applied to the ego, it follows that the ego must enter the soul life from the other side. This is conclusive evidence that just as the conception “red” enters the soul life from without and is then encompassed by a verdict, so something in the ego appears from the other side and acts in the same way.

When we say “I is,” we receive an impression out of the spiritual world and encompass it with a verdict. “Red” corresponds to physical conditions of existence. The verdict “red is” can, as such, come about only within the soul life through the agency of the physical world. “I is” comes from the other direction; so we say that this impression comes from the spiritual world. “I is” is a fact of the spiritual life, just as “red is” is a fact of the physical life. The usage of speech expresses this coming from the other side by exchanging “is” for “am”: I am. The ego can be admitted to have being² only when it can be encompassed by a judgment; when, just as in the case of “red,” something approaches the soul that can be encompassed by a verdict in the same way as can something coming from the physical world.

When I now draw a line indicating the fourth direction, upward from below, you will not be surprised that this represents a physical force. Graphically represented, the impressions of the physical world proceed upward from below and manifest themselves in the soul as sense impressions. In one plane the ego and its bodily-physical sense organs are opposed, in the other, the currents of the etheric and of the astral bodies. When the ego makes contact with the physical body through the eye, the ear, etc., it receives impressions of the physical world. These are then carried on in the soul by reason of the latter's possessing consciousness, which in turn arises through the impact of the etheric and astral bodies upon each other. The whole picture shows that a comparatively good diagram of the co-operation of the various worlds in the human soul can be had by opposing the ego and the physical body in one plane, and at right angles, the etheric and astral bodies.

Innumerable riddles will be solved for you if you will thoroughly work your way through this diagram. You will see that precisely this cross, intersected by a circle, gives you a good picture of the soul life as it borders below on the physical, above on the spiritual world. Now you must imagine the stream of time, and you must rise to a visualization of it, not as something flowing along smoothly, but as meeting the life of the senses. You must see that the life of the ego can be comprehended only when thought of as striking at right angles into the stream of time. With this in mind you will readily understand that quite different forces meet in our soul. Our soul is the stage, so to speak, where these forces encounter each other from many directions.

As an example, take someone in whom the reasoning ego preponderates. He will find it difficult to endow abstract concepts with sufficient body to make them appeal directly to feeling; that is, a man like Hegel, who is strong in reasoning, will not easily give in full measure of what speaks to the feelings. On the other hand, one whose every tendency tells of a rich astral life, who is full of interests that flow against the continuous current of the physical life, will bring with him into the world the gift for living

concepts, because he is open to the stream coming out of the future. He will not appear on the physical plane as a man of thought, but rather, he will prove how readily he can clothe his inner experiences in words that speak powerfully to men. Such a one was Goethe.

If you think of a man as bringing over from a former incarnation a tendency toward the one current or the other, you must imagine in Goethe's soul a predisposition for the stream out of the future. When he yields himself to it, he quite naturally gathers ideas of the future as vital concepts. Once Goethe permits all this to come into conflict with what has only been acquired in this incarnation, with the visualizations of the recently acquired etheric body, the result is something like what we designated worthless in his Wandering Jew.

On the other hand, when a Hegel brings with him the gift for extracting mighty conceptions from his reasoning, he struggles with the current that streams from the future into the past. The fact is, we incessantly place our ego in such a position as to cover up the continuous stream. The ego covers it and lets the endless current of desire come to meet it, and into this focal point we peer as into a mirror.

I have been able to evoke for you but little out of the infinite realm of psychosophy, but you will find the answers to many riddles of life by taking into account the presence of the unconscious visualizations of the etheric body. The physical body is in constant communication with the etheric body, and just because the visualizations are unconscious they can develop their lively activity in the other direction toward the physical side. Furthermore, precisely those visualizations that our consciousness is unable to call up out of our unconscious soul life are in this way immeasurably destructive; they develop destructive forces that penetrate our corporeality. It is a fact that something a person has experienced at the age of ten or twelve, and totally forgotten—something he is incapable of raising into consciousness because the ego lacks sufficient strength—continues to act in his etheric body and can impair his health. That means that in the etheric body there live visualizations that can cause sickness.

If you know that, you also know that there is a remedy. It consists in robbing these visualizations of their power by deflecting them in another direction. You can help the sufferer, if he is not strong enough to do so himself, by providing him with associations that will bring these visualizations to consciousness. That accomplishes a great deal. It is really possible to bring a person's conceptions to his consciousness and thus call forth health-giving forces.

Some of you will say that that sort of thing is being tried at the present time and, indeed, there are psychiatric cures that consist in calling forth visualizations. I cannot here mention the name of the school I have in mind because its aim is to unearth only visualizations of the sexual life—visualizations to which the matter here under discussion does not apply. In such cases it is of no avail, and for that reason the Freudian School in Vienna is such as to produce results that are the exact opposite of what is aimed at.

You will have gathered that, if one goes to work conscientiously and intelligently in observing life on the physical plane, the knowledge acquired on the psychosophic path verifies what reaches us through clairvoyant research, but the latter does not seek the facts in order to see whether they tally with conditions on the physical plane. On the contrary, the clairvoyant seeker is often surprised himself to find the results of his research so beautifully borne out on the physical plane. If reversed, the process would hardly yield accurate information. Research practised on the physical plane alone tends to group things in a wrong way and to meet facts with a slap in the face. The fundamental impression I hope you have gleaned from these lectures is one of justified confidence in clairvoyant research.

That is why, in addition to all that I tell you from clairvoyant sources, I am at pains to draw your attention from time to time in a matter-of-fact way to the laws of the physical plane because we are placed on this plane in order that we may learn to know it. We have a twofold duty. On the one hand, we must study the physical plane upon which the great world powers have not placed us fortuitously, and we must really identify ourselves with it by renunciative thinking. On the other hand, we have already arrived at the stage of human development at which we are aware that we can no longer cope with the physical plane without the aid of occult research. Science must inevitably err without occult science as a guide to point the lines of approach to all that can be learned through physical research. After the establishment of physical research at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, this necessarily remained the center of interest; now the time is ripe for another sort of research to intervene and indicate the lines of approach. If the occultist will not only learn this but count it among his duties, he will have fulfilled the demands of our time, namely, to spread the conviction that we base firmly on the physical plane. Certainly anyone who has grasped the idea of the astral current flowing in from the future can be depended upon in this matter. That this is true I have already proved to you by a fact.

Only one of the many psychologists of the present has, with no knowledge of occultism whatever, approached the study of the soul with a fine schooling. He is Franz Brentano. He took up psychology in the eighteen-sixties and, although what he did amounted to no more than scholastic speculating, it was like a child's first steps in the doctrine of desire, feeling, and reasoning. What he says is all askew, but the tendency is significant. It could have been right had it not been for his complete ignorance of every occult context. The first volume of his work appeared in the spring of 1874 and the second was due in the fall of the same year, but to this day (1910) it has not appeared. He was bound to become mired, and from these lectures you will understand why. He had already defined and indicated what the second volume was to contain; he had planned to deal with the ego, with immortality. The stream of occult research, however, failed to enter from the other side; the fructifying element was not forthcoming. Franz Brentano lived as a child of our time, that is, he began to arrange facts into groups, so he could not get on. He is now living in Florence, an old man.

Wundt also wrote a psychology, but it is nothing but a tangle of concepts. It contains nothing about the real soul life, nothing but the author's preconceived opinions. Such people thrash empty straw, even when dealing with the psychologies of peoples and of languages. All sciences would come to a similar impasse unless something came to meet them from the spiritual side.

My dear friends, you have identified yourselves with a movement in which your store of knowledge can increase if you think of your present knowledge as a karmic fact. In that way you will have arrived at a crossroads, a vantage point from which vigorous co-operation in this work is clearly discernible as a task enabling you now or in a future incarnation to serve humanity. Do not think of that as an abstract ideal, but keep constantly returning to it in a practical way. This work must be made to bear fruit.

• 1. The title of the poem that was recited at the beginning of this lecture is Poetic Thoughts on Jesus Christ's Descent into Hell. Like The Wandering Jew it is here omitted, but again, a little imagination on the part of the reader will adequately fill the gap.
• 2. Sein, the infinitive “to be,” used here as a noun. Ordinarily it could be translated with “existence,” but here that would be a half-truth. The linguistic connection with “I is,” “I am,” etc., must be retained.

This lecture cycle is to deal with the being of man from a particular point of view. Two years ago the physical nature of man was discussed from the viewpoint of anthroposophy; last year, in the lectures on psychosophy, our subject was the nature of the human soul; this year we shall discuss the spiritual nature of man. Today's lecture will be in the nature of a preparatory introduction.

Contrasting as it does with current usage, our division of the totality of the human being into his physical, soul and spiritual nature might attract notice, but within the realm of spiritual science there is naturally nothing startling about this. In fact, it is our aim to bridge by means of these lectures the gap between spiritual and external science.

Outside the circle of spiritual science, as you know, the total nature of man is thought of as consisting of but two parts, the bodily-physical and the psychic. In the realm of recognized science it is not customary nowadays to mention the spirit. Indeed, following certain premises, the result of reverting to the threefold organization of man (body, soul and spirit), as did the catholicizing Viennese philosopher, Günther, in the nineteenth century, raised scientific misgivings and also the blacklisting, in Rome, of Günther's interesting books. This was done because as early as 869, at the eighth Ecumenical Council at Constantinople, the Catholic Church, in contradiction to both the Old and the New Testaments, had abolished the spirit. It had guided the development of dogmatism in such a way that the organization of man was permitted to comprise body and soul only. Curiously enough, this catholic development has persisted into our present science. If we seek to ascertain from history why scientists admit only body and soul we find but one reason. In the course of time the spirit has been forgotten; the habits of thought prevalent in certain circles have lost the ability to accept the spirit along with the soul of man.

These lectures must draw attention to the links connecting us with what exists as psychology because, by studying what has just been said, we will be able to understand that there exists no authentic doctrine of the spirit—unless in Hegel's philosophy, and even that cannot properly bear the connotation, because it is really a doctrine of the soul.

The strange disappearance of the concept “spirit” from our present-day habits of thought becomes intelligible by considering the work of the most important investigator of the soul. Precisely in the work of this man, whose views come closest to the teachings of pure, scientific theosophy on the subject of the soul, we can see why present thought habits prevent us from arriving at the idea of the spirit. I refer to Franz Brentano, the distinguished psychologist whose standpoint approaches that of theosophy. He wrote a curious book, that is, he set out to write a curious book, a psychology. The first volume of this appeared in 1874, entitled Psychology from the Standpoint of Empiricism. The second volume was promised for the autumn of the same year, and the others were to follow in rapid succession, but this first volume remained the last; no further ones appeared. Now a new edition of a part of this first volume has been published under the title A Classification of the Faculties of the Human Soul, appearing simultaneously in Italian and German, and an appendix has been added.

In view of the promise contained in the first volume of this book, we, especially as anthroposophists, must deeply deplore the fact that its continuation never materialized. There is a definite reason for this, however, which is readily discerned by the spiritual scientist. It is clear to anthroposophical thinking that the thought habits of modern science prevented a continuation of that first volume. Brentano prided himself on proceeding from a purely methodic standpoint, on investigating the soul quite in accordance with modern scientific methods. Out of the spirit of present-day methods of investigating the soul a doctrine of the soul was to be evolved. When we find, among many other matters, a discussion of the problem of immortality, the fact that no sequel was forthcoming must indeed be painfully felt from the anthroposophic standpoint. I consider the book and its fate extraordinarily symptomatic of our present time. Brentano promised to deal with the immortality of the soul, and when we realize that, although he could not prove the fact of the immortality of the soul, he could at least prove that a man is justified in cherishing the hope of immortality, we are faced anew with the pity of his failure to get on. Only the first book was achieved, and it contains no more than a sort of demonstration of methodic psychology and a statement of the author's analysis of the human soul. Later we shall come back to the reasons why this book could not have had a sequel.

In order to show the links with modern science I must allude, in this introductory lecture, to the classification of psychical activity as set forth in the new edition of Brentano's work. In contrast to the current classification—thinking, feeling, and willing—Brentano offers another, the three members, visualization, reasoning and the phenomena of love and hate, or emotion. You will notice that in a certain way this classification suggests what was said in the lectures on Psychosophy, though the latter drew from another source entirely. It is not necessary to mention the meaning of visualization again, nor, in view of what we have to say here in an introductory way about Brentano's psychology, need we go into it in detail, because the concept “visualization” is one that we have established as the becoming conscious within the soul of the content of our thought. Any thought content lacking all emotion and brought about by a conclusion concerning something objective would be a visualization.

Now, reasoning is distinct from visualization. Reasoning is called a concatenation of concepts, for example, the rose is red. But Brentano says this definition does not cover reasoning; that on the contrary, when uttering the sentence, “the rose is red,” either you have really said nothing in particular, or else you have said something else in an obscure way, “the red rose is”—that is, there exists, among other things, the actual presence of a red rose. This interpretation contains much that is correct, as even a superficial examination of your own soul life will show. Whether I call to mind “rose” and “red,” or whether I connect the concepts, makes no material difference but there is an essential difference when I do the same thing in connection with cognition: a rose is. In that case I have done something that is not exhausted in visualization but that determines something in relation to reality. The moment I say, “The red rose is,” I have determined something. “The rose is red” tells nothing more than that in some man's soul the concepts “rose” and “red” have met. Nothing has been said about anything except the content of thought. But “the red rose is” determines something. According to Brentano, this is reasoning. You do not transcend visualization until you have expressed what constitutes a conclusion. It is not possible here to go into the extraordinarily ingenious evidence offered by Brentano.

Next, Brentano distinguishes the emotions, or phenomena of love and hate. Here again we have something more than mere conclusions. To say, “the red rose is,” is not the same as a feeling I may have in connection with a rose. Those are phenomena of the soul that can be grouped under the head of emotions. They are not objects; something is told about the experiences of the subject. On the other hand, Brentano does not discuss the phenomena of will because he does not see enough difference to warrant him in assuming stirrings of the will as distinct from other emotions. What you desire (will)¹ you desire (will) with love, and the willing is represented in connection with the phenomenon of hate by not-willing (not-desiring). You cannot undertake to separate the phenomena of will from the mere phenomena of love and hate and from those of visualization.

It is extremely interesting to note that so keen a thinker, in setting out to describe the soul life, should have classified it in this way. This classification has its origin in the fact that here, for once, is a man who took seriously the customary habit of ignoring the spirit. Others in a certain way mixed into the soul life what properly pertains to the phenomenon of the spirit, resulting in the creation of an ambiguous being, a sort of soul-spirit, or spirit-soul. All sorts of activities could be imputed to this spirit-soul. Brentano, however, made a serious attempt to answer the problem of what comprises the soul when considered wholly by itself. He took seriously this inclination to differentiate soul and spirit clearly. He was sufficiently astute to decide what features of the current concept of the soul would be unaccounted for if one disregarded the spirit. Had Brentano continued the work, it would have been interesting to note the dilemma he would have encountered. Either he would have seen that somewhere he must come to a dead end because somewhere the soul must enter into a relationship with the spirit, or he would have had to admit the necessity for advancing from the soul to the spirit.

Let us consider, as an illustration, the two extreme members of Brentano's classification: visualization, and the phenomena of love and hate. To begin with, visualization, in his doctrine, is what goes on in the soul. It determines nothing because, if something is to be determined, reasoning must enter in. That would imply that in visualization we could not emerge from the soul; that we could do so only in reasoning, not in visualization. On the other hand, it is interesting to note that in Brentano's system the phenomena of will coincide with the emotions. No psychologist such as Brentano can discover anything in the soul but phenomena of love and hate. That is true as long as we limit our observation to the soul: when we like something, we want (will) it. But in passing from the soul to reality in its entirety, we see that the relation of the soul to the outer world is not exhausted with the soul's emotional experiences. It is a different matter when the soul emerges from itself and passes over to willing. Advancing from mere emotions to willing is a step we must take out of the soul, not one that is consummated within the soul. However strongly emotions may grip us, they in no way affect the outer world. Within the soul we find only emotions.

That is the way visualization looks in such systems of psychology as Brentano's, like something confined within the soul, something unable to enter reality; emotions are pictured as something not rooted in will but exhausting themselves in the psychic premises of will. We shall see that the spirit enters in exactly where Brentano's characterization leaves off, and that visualization would indeed be exhausted at that point were it not for the bridge leading from the soul to the spirit. On the other hand, we shall find that wherever the actual transition is made from the emotions to the will, the spirit enters in. You see, then, that a blind alley was encountered during the last decades at exactly the point where spiritual-scientific research must step in if any progress is to be made. That was inevitable.

Passing on to something else, we find exactly what threads lead from modern scientific psychology to spiritual science. The same man whose work we have been discussing, Franz Brentano, occupied himself throughout a long scholarly life with Aristotle. It is a strange coincidence that just recently a book by Brentano on Aristotle has appeared, a presentation by this psychologist of his research in Aristotle, Aristotle and his Philosophy. Now, Brentano's standpoint is not Aristotle's, but in a certain respect he is close to him, and he has admirably presented Aristotle's doctrine of the spirit. A third book by Brentano appeared at the same time, Aristotle's Doctrine of the Origin of the Human Spirit.

It will be worthwhile to devote a little time to that work as well, because Brentano is not only the most interesting psychologist of our time but a man who knows his Aristotle, and in particular, Aristotle's doctrine of the spirit. Aristotle has given us a doctrine of the spirit that contains nothing whatever of what could be termed Christian concepts. It summarizes, however, all that was achieved in its field by Western culture in the last centuries preceding the birth of Christianity—achieved in such a way that in the fourth century B.C. it was possible for Aristotle to think scientifically about the relation of the spirit to the soul.

We can clearly read between the lines that with regard to the main issues Brentano does take the same stand as Aristotle. Therefore, by studying Brentano's relation to the Aristotelian doctrine of the spirit, we can infer to what extent the present-day non-spiritual-scientific doctrine of the spirit is justified in transcending that of Aristotle. It is extraordinarily interesting today to compare the Aristotelian and the spiritual-scientific doctrines of the spirit, in so far as they are strictly scientific.

I will sketch the former for you. Aristotle speaks unequivocally of the spirit in its relation to the soul and the body of man. He speaks of the spirit as of something superadded to the body and the soul out of spiritual worlds. Thus far Brentano does not depart in any way from Aristotle's standpoint because, like the latter, he is constrained to speak of the spirit as of something superadded to the human body and soul. Therefore, when a human being enters physical existence through birth, we are not dealing, in the Aristotelian sense, with something that is exhausted with the line of descent, but with hereditary traits. The soul element appears as something that weaves through the body and holds it together, but it is not thus exhausted in what man inherits from his ancestors in the way of body and soul, for spirit is added to it. When the human being appears upon the physical plane, the body and soul elements combine with the spiritual. According to Aristotle, the spirit as such is wholly absent when the human being enters physical existence. Instead, the spirit is an original creation of the Divinity, directly added out of the spiritual world to what is born of the father and mother. Thus Brentano's most recent book contains the clear definition, “When a human being enters existence he is created by father, mother, and the God. What pertains to soul and body is born of the father and mother, and some time after conception the spiritual element is added by the God.”

In view of this premise, that the spirit is given to man through actual creation (creatio), it is interesting to follow Aristotle's views on immortality. According to Aristotle, spirit-man had previously not existed at all; the God creates him. Neither for Aristotle nor for Brentano does this imply that the spirit ceases to be when soul and body pass through the portal of death. On the contrary, this spirit that has been created remains in existence after death, and although it had been specially created for this individual human being, it passes over into the spiritual world. It is further interesting to note that Aristotle, and really Brentano as well, follows the course of a human life through the portal of death and then has that which was created by God for the individual live on in a purely spiritual world. In Aristotle there is no thought of a return to a physical embodiment, so we are not dealing here with reincarnation.

Consider that what Aristotle sets up as the prerequisite of the birth of a man in one incarnation—an original creation of spirit—must occur at every incarnation because reincarnation would not be a new creation. This alone suffices to show that the doctrine of reincarnation would conflict with his doctrine of creation. Now, it is a curious point, and one that must be considered in studying Brentano's conclusions about Aristotle, that Aristotle arrives at no view of the life of the spirit after death, other than that the spirit finds itself in a rather theoretical situation because all activity that Aristotle is able to discuss presupposes the physical world and physical corporeality. The spirit, even the eternal God-Spirit, really plays only the part of an onlooker, so that in Aristotle's philosophy nothing of the specifically spiritual tie comes into consideration, other than the contemplation of life from birth to death. According to Aristotle, the soul must look to this one life of today and base all future progress on it, so what remains is the spirit looking back after death upon this one life. In one case the spirit may thus see its insufficiencies and its virtues; in another, an excellent life; in a third, possibly a life of lies and crime. Upon this it bases its further development in the spiritual world.

That is the way in which the spirit, in the Aristotelian sense, would carry on after death. We must ask ourselves, however, what unprejudiced thinking will have to say about such a doctrine of the spirit. Aristotle makes it clear that his life on earth is not a mere existence in the vale of tears, but that it is of great significance and importance. True, a good deal of what Aristotle imagines as the future progress of the soul remains vague, but one point is quite definite: that this one earth life has profound meaning later on. Had the God created the spirit-man without having him incarnate, he might have created the spirit in such a way as to enable it to continue its development. But within Aristotle's meaning that would not have been a complete development. Unmistakably, Aristotle considers a physical incarnation important, one of the aims of the Divinity being to introduce man into a physical body. It is inherent in Aristotle's view that it is not the Divinity's intention merely to create the spirit as such, but rather, to create it in such a way that further progress demands the garb of a physical earth body. Born with the spirit-man at the moment of his creation is the aim to attain to an earthly body. A divinely created human spirit that would not demand incarnation in a human body is unthinkable.

Now imagine a spirit looking back upon physical existence and let us say it finds the physical life of man imperfect. What must arise in this disembodied human spirit, according to Aristotle? Naturally, the longing for another physical incarnation. The spirit must feel this longing, otherwise it would have completely missed its purpose for, since the spirit needs incarnation in order to perfect itself, it must feel the longing for it. Therefore, it is quite impossible to speak, in Aristotle's sense, of a single effectual incarnation unless it were a perfect one; that is, a complete step in the development of the spirit.

Now consider this strange arrangement made by the God, as Aristotle sees it. We have the creation of the human spirit that belongs in the physical body and leaves it at death. Yet, if we think consistently along Aristotle's line of reasoning, in passing over, it carries with it the longing for a physical body without being able to obtain one. Since Aristotle does not assume reincarnation, it follows that the soul would have to live on with a longing for a new incarnation. Aristotle's doctrine calls for reincarnation but does not admit it. Nor can it be admitted, as we shall see, from another angle of Aristotle's doctrine.

We are dealing here with the shrewdest doctrine of the spirit, apart from that of spiritual science. It is a doctrine that continues to loom into modern thought, as in Brentano, in which unprejudiced thinking teaches us that the spirit, created by God and delivered into the earthly world, is equipped with a longing for incarnation. Thus we see how the Aristotelian doctrine, gleaming across the millennia and based upon a scientific foundation, is still capable of exerting a deep influence. We also see the need to transcend Aristotle if we would provide scientific substantiation for reincarnation. In dealing with the doctrine of the spirit we are at a turning point. Only spiritual science, by offering scientific evidence of reincarnation, can transcend Aristotle, but this scientific authentication has never before been achieved. That is why, basically, we are at the turning point regarding the doctrine of the spirit. Through spiritual-scientific research we can advance beyond Aristotle in a genuine and fundamental way and offer scientific demonstration of reincarnation.

Brentano arrived at an inherently incomplete doctrine of the soul, Aristotle at an inherently contradictory doctrine of the spirit. It is important to observe that so shrewd a man as Brentano could not get beyond Aristotle in dealing with the spirit, and that his doctrine of the soul came to a halt because he left the spirit out of account. We shall find the common root of these two cases in the fact that, even from the standpoint of modern science, it is impossible to arrive at an unequivocal view of life if spiritual-scientific research be rejected. Spiritual science alone leads to a satisfying, uncontradictory philosophy.

• 1. In addition to “willing,” wollen can also mean “desiring” or “wanting,” even “wishing” at times. Such interesting double meanings can be explained but not translated, so it remains for the reader to keep the explanations in mind whenever the terms recur.

To some of you it may seem superfluous in discussing such weighty subjects at our annual meeting for me to include a consideration of what contemporary science has to say about these matters. I have no intention of constructing an elaborate bridge across the gap separating us from the aforementioned erudition. Nothing of the sort is necessary within our circles, because the great majority of those who join us feel in their souls a certain connection with the spiritual life. They do not come to us to have the spiritual world proved to them in a so-called scientific manner, but to become acquainted with it in a concrete form; hence the calling in of such erudition might seem superfluous.

Another objection could be made that anthroposophists often face the obligation to intercede for anthroposophy, to refute objections, produce evidence and substantiations, but it is only possible to a slight degree to convince our opponents by means of any proofs whatsoever. Philosophies depend not so much on proofs as on habits of thought, and if a person is unable to penetrate—his thought habits being what they are—into the spiritual-scientific way of looking at the world, he will for the time being certainly remain deaf to proofs.

Such matters as were discussed yesterday were brought up in order to meet and alleviate the confusion that might arise in the minds of our members when again and again they must hear people say, “Your philosophy lacks a scientific basis.” Anthroposophists should feel ever more strongly that their world view rests upon a solid foundation and is proof against whatever recognized science has to say.

To propound everything needed for coming to terms with modern science would take a long time, and references to external science are intended only to arouse a feeling for the fact that there are ways and means of meeting that science, and that in championing anthroposophy one stands upon a firm foundation. So the aim is to indicate the manner of approach, when the time is available, rather than the approach itself. A modern science of external corporeality may be fraught with many a disagreement, but one praiseworthy feature of such a science is that its subject, external corporeality, is not disputed. In dealing with the science of the soul, on the other hand, the science of psychology, one enters a region in which there are people who deny the reality of the subject itself, the soul. Not only must we nowadays face the materialistic world conception, but we find ourselves enmeshed in a sort of psychology intended to be a science of the soul without a soul.

Yesterday we made the acquaintance of an Aristotelian scholar of our time who turned his keen wits to an investigation of the subject known as the soul. Of Aristotle it can be said that there was no question of his denying the existence of the spirit, but we found that Brentano shrewdly halted before the spirit, so that we do, indeed, find there a standpoint concerned with pneumatosophy, or the science of the spirit, that denies not only this or that law but the subject itself, as such.

To many people the spirit is a highly debatable fact anyway, hence we must seriously consider the question why this can be so. The body is perceived through the outer senses and with all the force of facts that exist for us automatically. Outer physical facts affect the human soul with such force that it is incapable of denying what they have to tell. We are in a similar position with regard to the soul, for we do, in fact, experience its flowing content. We experience feelings, conceptions, impulses of will; we experience all that results as destiny from the course this soul life takes; we experience suffering and happiness, joy and sorrow. So unless you were to call all that nothing, or at most a sort of surface foam from the waves of physical facts, you cannot but recognize the soul in a certain sense, at least to the extent of admitting its reality. The spirit, however, is primarily something super-sensible, imperceptible, and this alone suffices to explain how plausibly its existence may be denied. It explains why one might marvel at the idea of searching for the spirit, on the ground that it does not enter the world in which we live.

From the standpoint of anthroposophy we have stated often enough that the real facts about the spiritual world are derived through a method of observation that must be created by means of a certain self-cultivation, a certain self-education through meditation, concentration, and so forth. Thus the facts of the spiritual world are not directly given to man. They can be gleaned only if he is able to rise to a cognition differing from that of everyday life. It might seem as though this spiritual world were completely hidden from man, perceptible only after he had entirely transcended his normal way of cognition and risen to another.

Well, if that were the way matters stood, we could ask how man happens to long for a world that really in no way discloses itself to him as he is in ordinary life. Against this objection only the man of faith, not the scientist, can really feel himself adequately armed. True, the former could answer this objection by stating that the spiritual world had indeed manifested itself through revelations received in the course of human development, so that man could have obtained his knowledge of the spiritual world through revelations from the super-sensible. One who is not inclined to recognize such revelations or such faith, however, will object that there may be a spiritual world, but there is no immediately apparent reason why we should take account of it, as it does not manifest itself in any way in the outer world. Against this, an objection has been raised again and again throughout the ages by an idealistic or spiritualistic philosophy, namely, that recognition of the spiritual world by this or that philosopher depends largely upon his having taken seriously the refutation of the first objection by means of the second. Certainly it is possible to transcend the world that is primarily revealed by outer perception; the human being can build up a world of truth in his own inner being, and he could never be satisfied with what the outer world of perception has to give for the simple reason that he is a human being. Thus he builds a world of truth within himself.

If we examine this world of truth seriously, we find that it comprises something that already transcends all that is external-physical as such. One then cites ideas produced by man about the world—grand, comprehensive points of view that never could have originated through the outer senses alone, and that must have come, therefore, from the other side. Thus, the fact of the world of truth is in itself sufficient to convince us that we participate in a spirit world and live in it with our truth. Naturally, a philosopher like Hegel, for instance, would find plenty of justification for a spiritual world, as opposed to the objection set forth—justification for recognizing a spiritual world that embraces thinking as well, in so far as thinking is independent of the senses. Philosophers whose whole disposition equips them to recognize the absolutely independent world of truth will find in this independent activity of the spirit, moving as it does in truth, sufficient reason for assuming the existence of the spirit. It can be said, then, that there will always be people in the world in whose view the concrete actuality of the true world of ideas is sufficient proof of the spirit. In a certain sense it can be said that even in Aristotle something like faith is discernible, faith that in his concepts and ideas, in the nous, as he calls it, man lives in a spiritual world, and because it exists in man, it exists, and is thereby sufficiently substantiated.

Granting this, it is permissible to draw conclusions from what can be learned within one's own spiritual world as such when moving within it, that is, conclusions regarding other beings and facts of the spiritual world. Thus Aristotle draws his conclusions concerning the Divinity, the immortality of the soul, and arrives at inferences such as were described yesterday. Hegel speaks of an independent activity of the spirit, meaning the independent activity of concepts, that has no connection, as regards the laws governing it, with the outer world, but is an activity of the spirit itself. He maintains that the spirit reveals itself in the presence of this independent activity.

More recent attempts such as that of Rudolf Eucken, which spiritual science certainly cannot regard as particularly inspired, talk of a self-grasping of the spirit and of self-proof of the existence of the spiritual being. This path leads to no proof, however, and it furnishes anthroposophists the opportunity of perceiving how difficult it is to prove anthroposophy as such. Truth per se and taken alone does not necessarily prove anything with regard to the spirit. That is a point that is never-taken seriously enough. The existence of the world of truth as such does not necessarily prove anything concerning the spirit.

I will now sketch briefly, somewhat in the manner of a parable, something that really should be thoroughly presented in a whole series of lectures. Let us assume that actually nothing existed but corporeality, the outer physical world. Let us further assume that this physical world with its forces, or “energies,” as it is now the fashion to call them, expressed itself in the mineral world and became complicated. That is, that it did not gather new energies but merely became more and more complicated in the plant and animal worlds, until finally it became so complicated that it built up man out of a combination and co-operation of purely physical energies—built him in such a way as to enable him to produce thoughts from the complicated instrument of the brain. All this we assume to proceed in the manner in which physical processes run their course within corporeality. Imagine for a moment that the materialists' extraordinarily crude assertion were to be taken seriously—the assertion that the brain secretes thoughts in the same way that the liver secretes bile. Suppose the human brain to be built up out of mechanico-physical energies in such a way as to produce what appears to man as his spiritual life. In short, suppose materialism were right, and that there were no spirit as such. Would it then be possible, in the materialists' sense, to speak of a world of truth—for instance as presented in Hegel's philosophy—in the world of concepts? If it were possible to answer this question in the affirmative, it would automatically show that materialism itself could explain—that is, prove—a philosophy like Hegel's. In other words, it could reject all spiritualistic or idealistic philosophies.

One need only imagine, and this is the point, which to explain thoroughly would call for many lectures, that what springs from the complicated human brain as thought, in so far as the world of truth is made up of thoughts, were nothing more than the reflection of the outer physical world. You can place an object before a mirror, the mirror reflects the object's image, image and object are identical. The image is not the object, but purely material objects bring about the image by means of the mirror. You need admit nothing more than that you are dealing with a mere image that has no reality; then you don't have to prove the reality of the image. In the same way, you can take a materialistic standpoint and say, “There is really nothing there but external energies reflected in the brain, and all we have in the way of thoughts are merely such reflections of the outer world.” Then you are not obliged to prove the existence of the spirit, for all thoughts are but reflections.

Nor would we stand much chance of convincing those who might get up and say, “But there are concepts that cannot be taken from outer perceptions, abstract concepts, like a circle or a triangle, that we never encounter in reality.” We can reply, “True, as they are, they do not appear in the outer world as images of the thought world, but there are innumerable approximations.” In short, though it cannot be denied that truth is super-sensible, materialism can undoubtedly cope with the objection that man creates super-sensible truth within himself; hence truth as such would furnish no argument against materialism.

Now we're in a pretty predicament. This truth, being undeniably super-sensible, appears to countless people as sufficient proof of the existence of a spiritual world, or an indication of one, but it is not a proof of the existence of a spiritual world! Truth is super-sensible, yes, but it is not necessarily real. It could be a sum of images, then no one need accept its reality. So we must keep in mind that the possession of truth is not proof of the reality of a spiritual world, and that merely by penetrating to truth and living and functioning in reality, man can never reach the spirit. The objection would always stand that truth might be but an image of the outer physical world.

At this point one might object that in that case it is difficult to see how anywhere in the wide world any argument could be found that might persuade man, such as he is in everyday life, to recognize a spirit. Then, when people like Feuerbach, for example, come along and say that men assume gods or a god, but that what they experience within themselves is nothing but the content of their soul, their thoughts, which they deify and project into the world, it is easy to prove the unreality of the divine world, because it is merely an outward projection of the unreal world of thought. Aristotle does not go about it right when he cites the objectivity of the thought world as proof of the existence of a god. He argues simply that man has a mind and the mind can be applied to objects. This presupposes that all objects are permeated by the divine nous, or mind, but as he describes the latter, it is nothing but the human mind projected outward, a reflected image. Thus the divine nous is merely an image reflected outward, and is incapable of forming the basis of any proof.

Anthroposophists must really be able to face such matters clearly, and to realize that the usual methods of attempting to arrive at recognition of the spiritual world from without prove, upon closer examination, to be inadequate. Are we compelled, then, to admit unconditionally that there is no possibility of achieving conviction concerning the existence of the spirit, other than through clairvoyance? It would almost seem as though only those people were justified in speaking of the spiritual world who either envision it as clairvoyants or believe what clairvoyants have to tell. It would seem so, but it is not the case.

The outer world as such, with its material content, does not of itself point to a spiritual world, unless we know of it already, nor does the inner world of truth, which might be a reflection of the outer world. Hence the question arises as to what else there is. Well, there is something else, and it is error. We must forget nothing in the world when dealing with a complete picture of it, and in addition to truth we have error. Now, error naturally cannot lead to truth, and it would be a strange thing to proceed from error as a starting point. The fact that the soil of truth is sterile is no reason for taking the standpoint of error; that would hardly reduce the number of our opponents. We shall not take error as the starting point in our search for truth; that would be not only foolish but absurd. There is one aspect of error that cannot be denied. It exists, it is present in the world, it is real; above all, it can arise in man's nature and achieve being there.

When the outer world has created for itself a reflecting apparatus in the brain and is reflected, and the sum of truth is the sum of the images, it could naturally still be possible that, instead of truth, error might arise through a condition analogous to a distorting mirror that reflects caricatures of objects. If you were to use a mirror of that sort, you would simply get a false image, and the error would be comparatively easy to explain. It is merely a matter of the organ producing a false reflection, and this, too, can be explained. Truth and error can be explained as reflections. But what cannot be explained? The correction of the error, the transformation of error into truth; this cannot be explained as a reflection. Try as you will, you cannot induce a mirror producing caricatures to convert these into true images; it abides by its error. The difference in the case of man is that he is not compelled to stop at error, but is in a position to conquer it and transform it into truth. Man thereby proves that while there is such a thing in the phenomenon of truth as a reflection of external reality, the transformation of error into truth shows that error as such is more than a mere reflection of the outer world, and hence has no raison d'être in the world that surrounds us. Truth has justification in the external physical world, but the acceptance of the external physical world is not sufficient justification for accepting error. Something must enter in that does not pertain to the outer world, that has no direct connection with it. If the sensible is reflected in truth as a super-sensible image, and if it is reflected as error, the cause of error must lie elsewhere than in the sensible itself.

What meets our eye, then, when we recognize the existence of error? We behold a world that is not made up of outer physical phenomena only. Error can only originate in the super-sensible world, can only proceed thence. That is for the time being a conclusion. Let us now see what super-sensible research has to say about this, not in order to prove anything, but to illuminate the matter. What does it tell us about the peculiar position of error in the world?

Suppose we were so far lacking in self-esteem that out of an inner urge we were to think, voluntarily, a conception that we knew for certain to be an error. Let us think an error. At first sight this might not seem a desirable thing to do, but in a higher sense it can be useful because, if you bring to bear the requisite force and energy and frequent repetition in voluntarily thinking an error, you will notice that this error is something real in the soul, that it has a real effect. The error we think voluntarily, knowing it to be an error, proves nothing, elucidates nothing, but it works in us. The effect is all the more remarkable in that we are not distracted by any prospect of arriving at truth; when we voluntarily think an error we are quite alone with ourselves. By continuing this process long enough we achieve what we have always described in spiritual science as the calling into being of forces hidden in the soul, forces that were not there before.

Continual devotion to outer truth does not get us very far along the path under discussion, but the voluntary encouragement of error within ourselves can lead to the birth of certain hidden soul forces. As I have presented it now, you will not be able to use it as a precept; hence in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment and in my Occult Science I omitted the advice to keep thinking as much error as possible (for the purpose mentioned). That was left out, but a certain other aspect of the matter is similar to something I did set forth there. I said that we should not proceed from some obvious, glaring error, but that two conditions must be fulfilled. We must visualize something that has no counterpart in external reality, like that of the rose cross, for example. Now, red roses don't grow on a black cross; looked at from one angle, that is an erroneous conception. The rose cross represents no external truth, but it is a symbolical visualization, an allegorical conception. It expresses no truth directly, but it is the allegory of a super-sensible truth. In its relation to sense reality it is an erroneous conception, but as an allegory it is spiritually significant. In meditating on the rose cross we yield ourselves to a conception that in its relation to external reality is an error. We are not yielding ourselves to an ordinary error, however, but rather, by meditating on the allegory, on the significant conception, we are fulfilling a definite condition.

This brings us to the second condition. A certain premise must be fulfilled when we devote ourselves to meditation, concentration, and so forth. If you penetrate into the whole spirit of what is set forth in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, or in the second part of Occult Science, you will see that a certain frame of mind is indispensable for proper meditation and concentration. Certain moral attributes of the soul are indicated that must be present if what is to take place is to take place in the right way. Why are these given as a condition? Why are certain moral qualities indispensable? To enable us to yield ourselves to an allegorical conception of this sort, to a conception that in the external sense is false.

This again is something that must be taken into account. As a rule, nothing desirable is attained by meditating and concentrating without first having sought the frame of mind that has been sufficiently described because experience shows that without such a foundation, the world that is opened up through the awakening of hidden soul forces is in reality one that acts destructively upon man, rather than tending to further his development. It has a health-giving, developing effect only when it grows out of a frame of mind such as has been explained. That is what experience shows. Further, it shows what pathological phenomena, as they may be called, are symptomatical in those who seek the higher worlds from motives of passion or curiosity, instead of in the right frame of mind. Such people do receive a reality into themselves, for error is a reality and it acts in the soul. It is a reality not present in the outer world as revealed by the senses; hence such people absorb a super-sensible force, a super-sensible entity into their souls. This error is actually something efficacious, but its roots can only be in the super-sensible world, not in the outer sense world.

This super-sensible world must not be permitted to act upon us unless we have the special foundation this moral frame of mind provides. This can only be because we are aware that error, though a superhuman force, leads us first into a super-sensible world that is not a good one. Though truly a super-sensible force, it is in the first instance quite certainly not a good force. It can only become such when it is implanted in a good moral frame of mind. Now translate that into words for yourselves such as are often used to discuss such things on an anthroposophical basis.

You see, by learning to know error we can get to know a super-sensible world. It is not necessary to approach the super-sensible world by artificial means. The super-sensible world looms into the sensible world through the medium of error, and then in turn through error it leads us out into the super-sensible world. But it is not a good world. We must bring the good world to it from the other side, a frame of mind through which alone error can have the right effect. Paradoxically it could be said that in the sense world we actually become acquainted with the super-sensible world because we have error. So the feature of the super-sensible world you meet first is the devil, for at first you encounter a world in no wise good, a world that reveals itself as anything but good.

For this reason Mephisto's remark could be appropriately applied here, “These fellows would not scent the devil out, e'en though he had them by the throat.” The devil is present. We can also say that our first acquaintance with the super-sensible world is made by way of the Luciferic power. We meet the super-sensible world first in the shape of the Luciferic forces, and these we can only escape by the ostrich method, that is, by burying our head in the sand. This can, of course, be done, but it does not do away with those forces. That is the point that should be elaborated in many lectures if it were not to be merely sketched. The super-sensible world is given with the existence of error, but at the outset all that is revealed is the Luciferic element, the adversary of the nature of man.

Is there any particular point in talking about just these matters? If a man lacks the requisite moral frame of mind when penetrating into the super-sensible world by means of an error voluntarily accepted in his thinking, he falls prey to Lucifer! Yesterday we cited Aristotle's statement that in addition to what man comes by from parents and ancestors in the line of heredity, he receives his super-sensible nature from the God, so that through a relation to the God every human being entering the moral world is endowed with the spirit as a new creation¹ by the Divinity. We could not come to terms, however, with Aristotle's assertion. We found it contained much that contradicted the assertion itself. Now, Dr. Unger has rightly shown and clearly proved the justification for contradiction in the outer world,² but certainly this recognition and justification cannot apply to a contradiction that leads to inferences refuting the assertion itself. Yet that is what we find in Aristotle.

If the God were to create a super-sensible man, then, as we saw, an unsatisfied state would arise in all men after death. It would follow that the God created man for a state of discontent, but that cannot lie within Aristotle's meaning either. We cannot admit a philosophy which maintains that, along with what is given through birth, a super-sensible part is received directly from the God—as more recent world conceptions interpret the concept “God.” Even if this is based on truth, nothing can be proved by it, for truth proves nothing concerning the super-sensible world. A proof of that sort can in no way be applied to the super-sensible world. That is the first point, and the second is that if we assume that man, in his super-sensible component, is created by a God, it would be unthinkable that after death he should pass to an imperfect state. Aristotle's position is therefore untenable.

What Aristotle failed to take into account is that the first element of the super-sensible world accessible to man—active even in our immediate human experience—is a Luciferic one, and that we can only make headway by admitting the Luciferic principle at the inception of super-sensible man, by letting it participate, so to speak, in so far as we look up from the man of the physical world to the super-sensible world. Thus man cannot derive from a God alone, but only from a God in conjunction with the Luciferic principle. I ask you to keep well in mind the facts just referred to. They have unconsciously passed over into the feeling of occidental peoples, whatever their theories about a spiritual world, and right into our own time they have prevented the learned lights of the West from ridding themselves of their prejudices against the idea of reincarnation and repeated earth lives.

In former times, of course, men did not express the matter as we have done today, by saying that at bottom there is greater compulsion to believe in the devil than in anything else that is super-sensible, but they felt exactly what has just been expressed in the form of ideas, felt the presence of the Luciferic along with the Divine. They also felt—the justification of which will become manifest later in these lectures—that side by side with what we have as corporeality, a spiritual element is vouchsafed us, something begotten of God. Try as they would, they never could harmonize the cognition of the external physical human being on the physical plane with the descent of man from a super-sensible origin.

They could not get around this contradiction. It was much more difficult for the occidental than, for example, for the Buddhist, whose whole way of thinking and feeling facilitates his acceptance of the doctrine of reincarnation. One could almost say that with him it is congenital to believe that external corporeality really represents a sort of denial of the Divine, a fall from Grace, and that he is justified in striving to be free of it and to rise into worlds in which it means nothing. Quite different is the standpoint of Aristotle from that of Buddha's disciples. Aristotle says that we pass through the portal of death and take with us our super-sensible part, but then we must look down on what we had been, and our further development depends upon that physical life. The Divinity introduced us into a physical body because we needed it. Aristotle proclaims the importance of outer sensual form, outer sensual life. It is not a question here of concepts, ideas, abstractions, but of the content of the philosophers' minds. The Buddhist's mind held no such content as Aristotle's. The essence of his attitude was a feeling that contact with the physical world constituted a defection. He was aware that in arriving at sensuality, man had encountered precisely that from which he must free himself, that a man became more of a human being after having cast off all that.

It was impossible for Aristotle, as a representative occidental, to feel Buddhistically, as indeed no one rooted in the Occident can genuinely feel. He can acknowledge Buddhism theoretically, but really only by repudiating the content of his inner soul. Aristotle values the sense world not for its own sake, but as a condition of rising into the spiritual world. Western feeling always leads in the end to a certain recognition of a divinely, spiritually permeated sense world. Though materialism denied this for a time, it nevertheless lived on in the soul and must persist as long as the fundamental conditions of the occidental spirit exist.

Aristotle felt this to be a condition of the total evolution of humanity. It lived on even into the nineteenth century, and it is one of the elements that have prevented prominent minds of the West from becoming reconciled to the idea of reincarnation. A sensing of the Luciferic principle on the one hand, and the assumption of a divine principle on the other, led to a feeling such as I should like to point out to you in the works (1889) of the distinguished philosopher, Frohschammer, on the philosophy of Thomas Aquinas. There he onsets his own philosophy against that of Thomas Aquinas. Among other things, he expresses his views on the plausibility of what we call reincarnation. In a certain respect Frohschammer must be regarded entirely as a representative of Western mentality. He says, “Deriving as it does from God, the human soul can only be regarded as the product or work of divine imagination, for while the human soul and the world itself must in this case originate in divine forces and activity (since nothing can derive from mere nothingness), yet this force and activity of God must act as a preparation for creation and as formative forces for its realization and perpetuation; that is, as creative force not merely formal but actual. It must be an imagination immanent in the world, continually active and creative, a sustaining force or potency; a world imagination, as was explained earlier.”

I must add here that Frohschammer also wrote a brilliant book dealing generally with imagination as a world-creative principle, as Hegel dealt with the idea and Schopenhauer with the will. “As concerns the doctrine of the pre-existence of the soul (souls that are regarded either as eternal or as transitory, but in any case created in the beginning and all together), a doctrine that appears to have been resurrected in recent times and is considered capable of solving all sorts of psychological problems, it is connected with the doctrine of the transmigration of souls and their confinement in earthly bodies.”

This was written in 1889, and in the Carlsruhe lectures. From Jesus to Christ (October, 1911), I mentioned that the doctrine had always had adherents, even in the nineteenth century. Naturally, Frohschammer knew that too, hence he continues,

“According to this doctrine, neither the direct, divine creation of souls nor the creative production of new human beings as regards body and soul would take place at procreation, but only a new union of the soul with the body, a sort of becoming flesh or an immersion of the soul in the body, at least partially, so that one part would be encompassed and bound by the body and the other would transcend it, asserting a certain independence as spirit. The soul, however, cannot break away from the body (according to this doctrine) until death severs the union and brings liberation and deliverance, at least from this union. The spirit of man would in that case resemble, in its relation to the body, the poor souls in Purgatory as they are usually represented on votive tablets by daubers; that is, as bodies half engulfed in roaring flames, but with their upper parts, the souls, protruding and gesticulating. Consider the position and significance this conception would imply for the contrast of the sexes, the concept of human species, wedlock, and the relation of parents to their children! The contrast of sexes is but a system of bondage; wedlock, an institution for fulfilling the task it involves; parents, minions of the law for holding and imprisoning the souls of their children, while the children themselves owe this miserable, weary imprisonment to their parents, with whom they have nothing further in common. Everything connected with this relationship would be based on wretched illusion, as would all that humanity associates with the contrast of the sexes. What a formidable rôle this bisexuality plays! How intensely man's planning and longing are determined by it! What yearning it excites, what bliss it yields, what a source of bodily and spiritual transport! What an inexhaustible subject of artistic and particularly poetic creation! Now we are to believe that this subject is but a process for embodying and imprisoning poor souls that are thereby committed to earthly misery, consigned to the toils, passions, temptations and dangers of this earthly existence, rising at best with only a portion of their being into a Beyond; are, as it is called, transcendental—or better, transcendent. The significance of such a sex relationship, then, is not to be found in a continuous renewal, a rejuvenation corresponding to the spring of existence; quite the contrary, and the underlying longing and rapture it engenders would not be based upon the satisfaction of a lofty creative urge, as one would assume should be the case, but would emanate from a pitiful ambition to imprison new souls in bodily forms that obscure and estrange the greater part of their real selves.”³

Here, as you see, is a man who speaks sincerely and honestly out of the spiritual life of his time, and we have every reason to inform ourselves concerning the difficulties encountered by occidental philosophies of the past in recognizing what must be the basic nerve of our world conception. All who approach it honestly will meet with great difficulties. One of the tasks of anthroposophy is to become acquainted with these problems that face those who, steeped in the occidental cultural life, would achieve recognition of the spirit as it is represented by spiritual science in general and pneumatosophy in particular.

• 1. “Aristotle's world picture presents itself as follows. Down below, objects and processes representing matter and ideas have their being, and the higher one looks, the more everything of a material character disappears. What is purely spiritual comes into view, disclosing itself to man as ideas—the world sphere in which the divine holds sway as pure spirituality that animates all. To this world sphere the spiritual human soul belongs. It does not exist as an individual being before combining with the elements of body and soul, but only as part of the world spirit. Through this union it acquires its individual existence, detached from the world spirit; and after the separation from corporeality it lives on as a spiritual being. Thus the individual soul being commences in conjunction with the human earth being, then lives on, immortal. A pre-existence of the soul before the earth life is assumed by Plato, but not by Aristotle.” (Rudolf Steiner, Riddles of Philosophy, Vol. I.)
• 2. Carl Unger, Gedanken zur Philosophic des Widerspruchs. Stuttgart, 1964.
• 3. J. Frohschammer, Die Philosophic des Thomas von Aquino, Leipzig, 1889

Yesterday we found that in a certain way there is, after all, something like proof of the existence of the spirit that will satisfy our personal consciousness, provided the latter is rightly understood. We maintained that error and the possibility of correcting it are evidence of the existence of the spirit, in so far as our personal consciousness is concerned, and in order to understand this we cited an attribute of the spirit that appears self-evident. That is, its supersensibility, as we call it, for we based our statement on the fact that the root of error must be sought in the super-sensible realm. I said that it would naturally be impossible to present all the arguments necessary to prove such a matter in full detail, but that it might be extremely interesting to show how the possibility of error appears only in that realm to which man raises himself by casting off the coercion of the outer physical world through all that he can learn through perception alone.¹

One fact suffices to indicate the method by which it could be shown that at bottom it is only through his own nature and being that man is exposed to the temptation to fall into error through a connection with the outer world. It has been repeatedly pointed out that modern science really gathers from all sides certain proofs of the conclusions arrived at by spiritual science, but the proponents of external science fail to interpret them with sufficient open-mindedness.

We will cite one of these facts, established by the naturalist, Huber, through the observation of caterpillars spinning a cocoon. There is a caterpillar that builds its web in successive phases or stages, so that one can describe the process as spinning in the first stage, second stage, and so forth, up to seven. Now, Huber took a caterpillar working on the third stage and set it on another web of which six stages were finished, and a strange thing happened. At first the caterpillar felt shocked, as one might interpret its behavior, but then it continued to spin, not the seventh stage, but the fourth, fifth, etc. It obeyed a sure inner life, following only its own dictates. When Huber took one of the caterpillars away from its own cocoon and put it in another that had also arrived at the third stage, it continued the work in the regular way. It was not reacting to an outer impression at all. It did not say to itself, “Now I must spin the fourth stage.” It was following an inner urge, and this it did even when the outer impression emanated from another stage.

This is an extremely important fact, because it shows that in animal beings outer impressions can in no way effect what in man we call right or wrong—the category “subject to error.” The human being can be confused by something external, because the nature of his organization is such as to cause him to obey not only his inner life of impulses, but the impulses entering from without as well. In this sense only man confronts an outer world. Fundamentally, this accounts for all possible illusions in respect to the concept of the spirit; at least, there is a connection.

Now, in order to find the right transition from science to our anthroposophical doctrine of the spirit, let us call to mind again what a keen teacher of the present, Brentano, brought forward to characterize the soul and its capacity as such, and to facilitate the right transition to the spirit realm I will indicate by diagrams on the blackboard what is in question.

Brentano classifies our psychic faculties as visualizations, reasoning and what we can call emotions—the phenomena of love and hate. Well, if we imagine the whole extent of our soul life as organized in this way, we should have to observe that visualizations and emotions, if closely studied, bear a different relation to the soul and to whatever else may enter our enquiry than do judgments. That is exactly what the soul-teachers, the psychologists, pride themselves on. They divide visualizations from reasoning because in reasoning they see something more than a mere combination of visualizations. Our psychologist by no means sees in this the essence of reasoning, where something is to be settled; nor can all this ever have any foundation as such, because, as he argues, when we combine visualizations it might also be a case of establishing the possibility of combining visualizations. If, for example, we were to combine the visualizations “tree” and “golden”—not “tree” and “green”—we would be forced to admit axiomatically that no tree is golden. Now, what is really the premise of the judgment in this context? It is that we should be able, so to speak, to form a valid proposition out of every such judgment. From the compound visualization, “a tree is green,” I can form the valid proposition, “a green tree is.” Not until then have I passed judgment. Only when I try to form the proposition do I know whether the combination of visualizations permits of establishing anything. “A golden tree is”—that won't do. So when one asks whether a judgment can proceed from a combination of visualizations, this would involve the second question: Can a valid proposition be formed in the case?

Now let me ask you this. If you were to traverse the entire extent of the soul life, searching everywhere in the soul, could you anywhere discover the possibility of simply forming a valid proposition out of a combination of visualizations? What can impel you to form the proposition, “a green tree is,” out of the compound visualization, “the tree is green?” What is it that induces you to do this? Only something that is primarily not within your soul, because in the whole realm of the soul you can find nothing of the sort. When you want to make the transition from the compound conception to the proposition, to the thesis that settles something, you must emerge from the soul life and seek something which, as your inner feeling tells you, is not of the nature of the soul but with which the soul makes contact. That means that there is no way of accomplishing the transition except through perception. When a combination of conceptions is joined by what we can call perception, then and only then is it possible to speak of forming a judgment within the present meaning.

This shows further that in the first instance we know nothing more of all that we visualize than simply that it lives in the soul, and that something more is needed if we are to pass from conception to reasoning. That emotions exist only in the soul everybody will doubtless believe even more readily than that this is the case with visualizations, for if they had their being anywhere but within the soul they could not bear so individual a character as they do in different people. We need waste no time explaining that emotions live primarily in the soul.

We must enquire next if it is in any way possible to maintain that visualizations and emotions live only in the soul. Although we know that without the aid of outer perception we cannot directly arrive at a verdict, because visualizations and emotions are inner processes of the soul, we must still ask whether anything justifies our speaking of visualizations and emotions as though they existed only within the soul. Well, in respect to visualizations we could first point out that when living in them we by no means feel as though we mastered them completely in our soul, as though they were not coercive or the like. We learned yesterday that error is of a spiritual, super-sensible nature and can enter the realm of our visualizations, but that the latter in turn can overcome error; otherwise, it would never be possible to get beyond error. Bearing this in mind we must recognize the fact that we have in our soul a kind of battlefield of a conflict between error and—well, something else. All error is of a spiritual nature, and we must have something adequate to oppose it, otherwise we could never rise above it. There is, indeed, a means of overcoming error, as everyone knows. Since error is spiritual, we cannot overcome it through mere perception from the sense world. In the lectures on Anthroposophy I pointed out that the senses as such do not err. Goethe once emphasized that. It is not the senses that err but what goes on in the soul; therefore, error can only be corrected within the soul, and primarily through visualization. It is by means of visualizations, then, that we get past error.

We found yesterday that in a certain way error is a sort of abortive species of something else, of something we could designate as precisely the element in us that raises us to higher regions of the soul life. The chief characteristic of error is its non-agreement with the world of perception, and we came to realize that on the path to the higher world we must devote ourselves in meditation, concentration, and so forth, to conceptions that also fail to agree with our perception. The rose cross itself, for example, is a conception that shares with error its lack of agreement with outer perception. We said, however, that when error is employed on the path of spiritual life it would have a destructive effect in us, and experience shows this to be the case.

How, then, can we achieve conceptions that, though at variance with the outer world of perception, nevertheless awaken higher soul forces in a healthy, normal way? How can we proceed from what is merely false to allegorical conceptions such as we have described? We can do this by not letting ourselves be guided by the outer sense world, the world of perception, in compounding such visualizations, nor, on the other hand, by forces that lead us into error. We must avoid both of these and appeal to forces in the soul, which, however, we must first awaken. The day before yesterday we characterized them as inner stirrings growing only out of the soil of morality and beauty. We must break, as it were, with impulses and passions such as are imprinted in us by a world that after all must be termed external; we must work within ourselves in order to be able to call up, quite experimentally, forces in our soul that at the outset we lack entirely. By doing this we learn to form allegorical conceptions that in a sense have a certain objective validity, though one not applicable to the outer world of perception.

We start by forming the conception of man as he presents himself to us in the present time, a being of whom, in a certain sense, he himself can by no means approve, with whom he cannot be satisfied, and of whom he must say that such as he is now, he must be conquered. Then, by the side of this conception we place the other: that he feels he must strive to realize his own higher nature, a nature that would give him complete mastery over all that in his present form he disapproves of. That this second conception cannot be classed as perception is shown by the fact that it does not refer to the present or the past, but to man's future. Then, from such stirrings, we combine conceptions that ordinarily, under the guidance of the world of perceptions, would not coincide. We bring together the black cross, symbol of what must be caused to die, and the red roses, symbol of the life that must arise from it. In inner meditation we visualize the rose cross, a visualization that can only be called unreal, yet did not come into being like an external error but was born of the noblest impulses of our soul.

We have, then, brought forth out of the noblest impulses of our soul a visualization corresponding to no outer perception and if we apply this visualization—that is, if we give ourselves up to it in conscientious inner devotion and let it work upon us—we find that our soul expands in a healthy way and attains to heights not reached before. Thus, experience shows the soul to be capable of development. By means of a visualization that is outwardly an error we have performed something that manifests itself as intrinsically right.

The next question is whether or not we can endow all that crowds into us through outer perception with power over such a visualization that has nothing in common with this outer perception. Can we lend it the power to exercise any force that will make of the visualization something different in our soul from what it makes of error? We must remember that the quality in us that has converted this allegorical visualization into something different from anything that could arise out of error is the opposite of what functions forcefully in error. We said that in error we felt the Luciferic forces; now we can say that in the transformation of an allegorical visualization in the soul, in the wholesome guiding of the allegorical visualization to a higher aspect of the soul, the lofty stirrings we feel are the opposite of Luciferic. They are of the nature of the divine-spiritual.

The deeper you penetrate into this interrelationship, the more directly you will feel the inner influence of the super-sensible through this experience of transforming an allegorical visualization. Then, when we see that the super-sensible effects something in us, achieves something, operates in us, then what had previously been mere visualization in the soul, abiding within the soul element, becomes something quite different, something that we must now term a conclusion such as the soul, as primarily constituted, cannot bring about through outer perception. Nor can a visualization perform in the soul what has been described. Just as visualization, when coming in contact with the ordinary outer world, leads to reasoning, so the inner life of a visualization, not lacking direction but amenable to guidance as set forth, leads out beyond the visualization itself and transforms it. It becomes something that may not be a verdict but is at least a visualization fraught with significance and pointing out beyond the soul. This is what in the true sense of the term we call imagination. Summing up: When visualization comes in contact with the outer world through perception, it points to reasoning, but through the inner process we have described it points to what we call inner imagination in the true sense.

Just as perception is not mere visualization, so imagination is not visualization either. By means of perception, the life of visualization comes in contact with a primarily unfamiliar outer world. By means of the process described, visualization adapts itself to what we may call the imaginative world. Just as there is a real transition from the mere conceptual complex, “a tree is green,” to the verdict, “a green tree is,” so there is an analogous transition from the mere life of conceptions to what is comprised in imagination, in a conception filled with other than the yield of a spatial outer world. There we have the process that in our imaginative life enriches our conceptions.

There is, however, something that intervenes between imagination and visualizations. Imagination has a way of announcing itself quite realistically the moment it appears. When our soul really attains to imagination, it senses in its life of visualizations something akin to what it feels in its life of perceptions. In the latter the soul feels—well, its direct contact with the outer world, with corporeality; in imagination it feels an indirect contact with a world that at first also appears to it as an outer world, but this is the outer world of the spirit. When this spirit begins to live in the visualizations—those that really attain to imagination—it is just as coercive as outer corporeality. Just as little as we can imagine a tree as golden when we are in contact with the outer world—just as the outer world forces us to visualize in a certain way—so we feel the compulsion emanating from the spirit when visualization rises to imagination. In that case, however, we are at the same time aware that this life of visualizations expresses itself independently of all the ways and means by which visualizations are ordinarily given a content. In ordinary life this takes place by reason of our having perceptions through our eyes, ears, etc., and of our nourishing the life of visualizations with these perceptions, so that it is filled from the content of our perceptions. In imagination we suffer our visualizations to be filled by the spirit. Nothing must intervene that might become the content of our soul by way of the bodily organs, nothing that enters us through our eyes or ears. We are directly conscious of being free of all that pertains to outer corporeality. We are as directly free of all that as we are—to use a material comparison—of the processes of the outer body during sleep. For this reason, as far as the total organism is concerned all conditions are the same during imagination as during sleep, except that imaginative consciousness takes the place of the unconsciousness of sleep. What is otherwise wholly empty, what has separated from the body, is filled with what we may call imaginative conceptions. So the only difference between a man in sleep and one in imagination is that the parts that in sleep are outside the physical body are devoid of all conceptions in ordinary sleep, whereas in imagination they are filled with imaginative conceptions.

Now, an intermediate condition can appear. It would be induced if a man in sleep were filled with imaginative conceptions but lacked the power to call them to consciousness. Such a condition is possible, as you can gather from ordinary life. I will merely remind you that in ordinary life you perceive any number of things of which you are not aware. Walking along the street, you perceive a whole world of things that you do not take into your consciousness. This is shown when you dream of curious things, for there are dreams that are indeed strange in this respect. You dream, for example, that a man is standing by a lady and the lady says this or that. Well, the dream remains in your consciousness, you remember it, but after you've thought about it you have to admit that the situation actually occurred, only you would have known nothing of it if you hadn't dreamed of the experience. The whole event passed your consciousness by, and not until you dreamed it did the picture enter your consciousness. That happens often.

Thus, perceptions that have occurred can leave consciousness untouched, and imaginations that indeed live in the soul can also leave consciousness untouched so that they do not appear directly. In that case they appear to consciousness in a manner similar to that of the perceptions we have just described. They appear to us in semi-consciousness, in dreaming. Imaginations of that sort can shine into our waking day-consciousness and there fluctuate and pass. An imagination of that sort does enter the everyday human consciousness, but there it experiences changes. It expresses itself in what is called ‘imagination,’ ‘imagination’ based on world truths, the real basis of all artistic creation, in fact, of all productive work of man.

Because this is so, Goethe, who knew well how art comes into being, often maintained that ‘imagination’ is by no means something that arbitrarily manipulates cosmic laws, but that it is subject to the laws of truth. Now, these laws of truth act absolutely out of the world of imagination, but here they integrate the ordinary world of perceptions in a free manner, so that true ‘imagination’ is something between ordinary conception and imagination. ‘Imagination,’ rightly understood, not conceived of simply as something that isn't true, bears direct witness to the progress of conceptions toward the point where they can flow over into the super-sensible region of the imaginative world. This is one of the points at which we are able to perceive the direct streaming in of what we can call the spiritual world into our ordinary world.

Now let us examine the other aspect, the emotions. It has already been said that the psychologist under discussion keeps within the soul, that he therefore follows up all that concerns impulses of will only as far as these remain within the soul, and that he stops short at the emotions. Everything that men do is motivated by a desire, a passion, an urge, that is, that element within the region of the soul that must be called emotion. Of course, nothing happens through emotions alone, and as long as we remain within the soul nothing need happen. No matter how violently we intensify any emotion, we cannot thereby make something happen that is independent of the soul because nothing that remains in the soul is a true expression of will. If the soul never emerged out of itself, but merely kept wanting to experience desires and emotions—anything from the deepest reverence to disgust—nothing would happen that is independent of the soul. When we recognize will in its true form as a fact, the region of emotions points out beyond the soul as well.

The manner in which this sphere of emotions points out beyond the soul is singular. What does it suggest first of all? Well, if we take the simplest expression of will—if we raise a hand, walk about, strike the table with some instrument or do anything else that involves the will—we see that something takes place in the realm of reality that we can call a passing over of our emotions by way of an inner impulse to the hand movement, to something that is certainly no longer in our soul. Yet in a certain way it is within us because all that happens as a result of a genuine will impulse when we set our body in motion, and as a continuation of this, something external as well, lies by no means outside the circle comprising the being of man. Here, through emotions, we are led on the other side into an externality, but into a quite different kind of externality, into our own corporeality, which is our own externality. We descend from our psychic to our bodily self, to our own corporeality, but for the moment we do not know how we accomplish this in external life. Imagine the effort it would cost if, instead of moving your hand, you had to construct an apparatus, possibly worked from the outside by springs or the like, that would produce the same effect as you do in picking up this chalk! Imagine that you would have to be able to think out all that and realize it by means of a machine. You can't think that out and there is no such machine; yet that apparatus exists. Something occurs in the world that is certainly not in our consciousness, for if it were we could easily build the apparatus. Something takes place, then, that really pertains to us, but of which we have no immediate knowledge.

We must ask what would have to take place to make us aware of a movement of the hand, or of any motion of the body obeying the will? Another reality as well, the one that is outside us, would have to be able to enter our consciousness instead of halting before it. We would need to have before us a process such as takes place in our own body without penetrating consciousness—a process equally external, yet connected with consciousness in such a way that we would be aware of it. We should have to have something that we experienced in the soul, yet it would have to be something like an outer experience in this soul. So something just as ingenious as the picking up of the chalk would have to take place in our consciousness—just as ingenious and just as firmly based on abiding external laws. Some external event would have to enter our consciousness, acting in accord with prevailing laws, that would have the following effect. We would not think, as we would in the case of actions of the will, “I will pick up this chalk,” and consider that as representing one side of our soul life, strictly divided off from something we don't recognize as an external perception but, rather, these two processes would have to coincide, be one and the same. All the details of the hand motions would have to occur within consciousness.

Now, that is the process that takes place in the case of intuition. We can put it this way. When we can grasp with our own consciousness something that comes to full expression within this consciousness—not merely as knowledge but as an event, a world event—we are dealing with intuition, or more precisely, with intuition in the higher sense, such as is meant in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment. Within intuition, then, we are dealing with the governing will. While that shrewd psychologist, Brentano, finds only emotions within the soul, not will, because the will does not exist for ordinary consciousness, it remains for the consciousness that transcends ordinary consciousness to find something that is a higher event. It is the point at which the world enters and plays a part in consciousness. That is, intuition.

Here again we have a sort of transition, only it is a little less readily noticeable than the one leading from imagination to ‘imagination’. This transition sets in when we acquire such power of self-observation as to enable us not merely to will something and follow this by the deed, with thoughts and deeds standing dynamically side by side, so to speak, but to start expanding our emotions themselves over the quality of our deeds. In many cases this is even useful, yet it can happen in life that in performing an action we are gratified or disgusted by it. I don't believe an unprejudiced observer of life can deny the possibility of so expanding the emotions as to include likes and dislikes for one's own actions, but this co-experiencing of them in the emotions can be intensified.

When this has been intensified to the point of its full potentiality in life, this transition reveals what we can call the human conscience. All stirrings of conscience occur at the transition from the emotions to intuition. If we seek the location of conscience, we find it at this transition. The soul is really open laterally on the side of imagination and on that of intuition, but it is closed on the side where we encounter the impact, as it were, of outer corporeality through perception. It achieves a certain fulfillment in the realm of imagination, and another when it enters the realm of intuition—in the latter case through an event.

Now, since imagination and intuition must live in one soul, how can a sort of mediation, a connection of the two, come about in this single soul? In imagination we have primarily a fulfilled image of the spiritual world, in intuition, an event that impinges out of the spiritual world. An event we encounter in the ordinary physical world is something that leaves us no peace, so to speak. We try to understand it, then we seek the essence underlying it. It is the same in the case of an event in the spiritual world that is to penetrate our consciousness. Let us consider this more closely. How does imagination first of all penetrate consciousness? Well, we found it first on the side of the emotions, but there, though it enters consciousness, enters the soul, it does so primarily on the side of the emotions, not on the side of visualization. It is the same in the case of intuition. Intuition can enter the soul life without providing the possibility of being visualized. Imagination, too, can occur without our being aware of it, in which case we have ‘imagination’ directly affecting the world of visualizations. Intuition, however, is to be found on the side of the emotions.

You see, in the whole spiritual life of man intuition is linked with the emotions. I will give you an example, a well-known dream. A couple had a son who suddenly became ill and in spite of all that could be done he died within a day. The parents were profoundly affected. The son continually occupied their thoughts, that is, their memory; they thought of him a great deal. One morning they found that during the night both had had the same dream, which they recounted to each other. (You can find this dream cited by a certain materialistic interpreter of dreams who turns the most grotesque somersaults in attempting to explain it.) They dreamt that the son demanded to be exhumed, as he had been buried alive. The parents made all possible efforts to comply with this demand, but as they lived in a country in which exhumation was not permitted after so long a lapse of time, it could not be done. How can we arrive at a sort of explanation of the phenomenon presented in this dream? Well, one premise is obvious. The parents' continuous recollection of the son, who was present in the spiritual world as a spiritual being, created a bridge to him. Let us suppose you admit that a bridge to the deceased was built through memory. You cannot possibly assume that, when all the intervening veils have been pierced, enabling the deceased to influence the two people, and when both have the same dream in which he tells them, “I am buried alive; go and see!”—you cannot assume that he really said that. Instead, there simply came about a contact in the night between parents and son. He did tell them something, or endeavored to instill something into their souls, but since the parents had no way of bringing to consciousness what it was that the son had instilled into their souls, their accustomed conceptions stood in the way of the real events. What the son manifestly wanted was something quite different because such visualizations could only have been gathered from the visualization substance of their accustomed life.

The other part I will explain to you by means of another dream, the dream a peasant woman had. This peasant woman dreamt she was going to town, to church. She dreamt vividly of the long walk on the road and through the fields, of arriving in the town, entering the church, and listening to the sermon, which moved her deeply, but it was, above all, the end of the sermon that went to her heart. The pastor spoke there with special warmth, and with the concluding words he spread out his arms. Suddenly his voice was transformed. It began to resemble the crowing of a rooster. Finally it sounded actually like a cock crowing, and the outspread arms seemed to her like wings. At the same moment the woman woke up, and out in the barnyard the rooster crowed. This crowing of the rooster had produced the whole dream, but you will admit that it might have produced other dreams just as well. Suppose, for instance, that a thief had been awakened by it. He might have been wondering how to break a lock, and some other astute rascal had been giving him directions that then turned into the cock-crow. That might have been the conception. You see, it need have no connection with what really entered the soul. The peasant woman was floating, so to speak, in a world of devotion and, when this was shattered, she still had the feeling of being elsewhere, but her entire consciousness was filled by the cock-crow. What manifested itself could therefore only express itself in symbols.

When anyone gets practice in passing from such dreams to reality, he finds that before he can arrive at spiritual reality he must penetrate some form of emotion—a sorrow or joy, a tension of this or that feeling. He must form wholly new conceptions if he would arrive at what the spiritual world comprises, and as a rule spiritual events are much closer to the emotions than to conceptions. The conceptual life of dreams is not conclusive in reporting what has happened there. There we have the spiritual event impinging. We are present in the spiritual world throughout our sleeping life, but our visualization is unable to characterize what we visualize. A similar condition prevails between intuition and the emotions. That is why mystics arrive at a vague, hazy soul experience of the higher worlds before attaining to any concretely outlined conceptions of them, and many mystics remain satisfied with that. Those whose souls truly meditate in the higher worlds, however, all describe in the same way the conditions of blissful devotion, their frame of mind in directly experiencing the spiritual world.

If we then endeavored to proceed through intuition, which sways the soul, we would not get very far; instead, we must proceed more from the other side, must try to develop imagination, to focus our attention on the imaginative world, in order not merely to wallow in emotions but to arrive at concrete images. If we do that, a sort of contact enters our life between intuition, which is not yet understood but rather felt, and imagination, which still floats in unreality and consists only of images. This contact finally enables us to ascend to the plane we can describe by saying that we have arrived among the beings who bring about spiritual events. Approaching these beings is what we call inspiration, and in a sense we have here the reverse of the processes confronting us in the outer corporeal world.

In confronting the outer corporeal world we have, so to speak, the thoughts we frame about objects. The objects are given, and we think about them. Here it is the event, the “object,” that appears in intuition primarily as emotion, so that imagination as such would remain in suspension. Not until the two unite, until intuition streams into imagination and visualizations are set free by imagination so that we feel imagination as coming to us from beings, not until then does the essence of the beings stream into us as an event, and what the imaginations have provided flows into intuition. We perceive in the event a content comparable to that of visualizations. These thoughts, for the perception of which imagination has prepared us, we then perceive by means of the event provided by intuition.

I have described to you today how man ascends to the spiritual world on the other side of his soul life, as it were. I have anticipated a little in the matter of what only spiritual science itself can give, but I had to do this in order that tomorrow we might be able to understand each other more readily in the principal subject—a description of the spiritual world itself.

• 1. Dr. Steiner could employ the non-German word Imagination in the sense familiar to students of anthroposophy, without much danger of confusion, because it is practically never used in German to mean ‘imagination’ in the common sense (that is Phantasie). In this lecture the two terms are offset, one against the other, and in translation a difficulty arises in our having but the one word in English: there is no synonym for ‘imagination’. The best solution available seems to be as follows: whenever ‘imagination’ is used in the ordinary sense (Phantasie) it will appear in inverted commas, but without these it has the technical meaning. If the reader will bear this purely arbitrary device in mind he should not be startled when he runs across something like “imagination leads to ‘imagination’.”

You will understand that only a short and in a sense superficial sketch of a pneumatosophy can be given in the four lectures at our disposal. Obviously, much can only be suggested, some of which, in fact, really calls for elaboration to confirm it. In some cases it will even be difficult to understand the context between the subject matter and what is here termed pneumatosophy. Yesterday, for example, we showed how one transcends the realm of merely psychic phenomena and enters regions that, in view of their whole nature, must be counted among the super-sensible worlds. We recognized this from the simple fact that the province of the soul in respect to such matters ends at a definite frontier, and that even shrewd psychologists, when studying and classifying the realm of the soul, are brought up short at that point.

Now, anthroposophists as such are familiar from another angle with concepts we encountered there, such as imagination, inspiration and intuition; so you will have to take for granted that all this, as set forth, for example, in my Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, can be understood and justified when one goes far enough in showing the threads that lead from the ordinary soul life—the life of visualizations, emotions and reasoning—to imagination, inspiration and intuition. It is natural that in making this transition we should focus our attention principally upon the psycho-spiritual elements that are present in our own soul and spirit, that we should, so to speak, first of all seek enlightenment concerning our own souls and spirits.

In the course of these lectures we pointed out that in Western civilization, right up to our own time, people have had difficulty in recognizing a fact that to us appears fundamental: that man's spirit passes through repeated earth lives, and at the end of the second lecture we cited one who was thoroughly representative in the struggle with such difficulties, Frohschammer. Wrestling with problems of the first rank, he laments, “What would be the consequence if man's permanent element, his spirit, were compelled to immerse itself again and again in a corporeality, in a sort of purgatory, a prison, a dungeon?” “Should one,” asks Frohschammer, “look upon everything connected with the relations of love and the contrast of sexes as a provision for imprisoning the human soul for the period between birth and death?” In view of such an honest objection to the doctrine of repeated earth lives, it behooves us to ask ourselves whether Frohschammer possibly established a certain standpoint in the case, and whether there might not perhaps be another as well.

What we must grant in Frohschammer's attitude is his frank enthusiasm for everything beautiful and glorious in the world, in the face of all that he cites to the contrary. The spiritual life of the Occident imbued Frohschammer with this enthusiasm for the beauty and grandeur of the external world. The doctrine of repeated earth lives seems to him to imply that a spiritual-eternal element is assumed by the human individuality, the human spirit—an element that might be well content and blissful in the spiritual world, but which is forced into and embodied in a world in no way commensurate with the lofty sublimity of the human spirit. Were that the meaning of reincarnation, anyone developing a justified enthusiasm for the beauty and grandeur of God's nature, for historical evolution, and for all the latter has brought forth in the way of exalted human passions and impulses, might well resent the imprisonment of the human soul, as did Frohschammer.

Is that really the only point of view available? It must be admitted that among the advocates of the doctrine of repeated earth lives there are to be found even today those who maintain that the spirit descends from exalted heights into earth life. Such people are really not dealing with matters such as spiritual science is capable of bringing to light out of the spiritual worlds, but merely with general, vague ideas about repeated earth lives. We could ask ourselves, “Might not the condition into which we are born be something beautiful and grand? Might we not recognize that man, as he appears in his physical form, is an image of God in the true Biblical sense?” That would suffice to enkindle our enthusiasm, and then we would admit that man had been transferred, not to a dungeon, but to a beautiful field of action, to a beautiful house.

Does our contentment, our feeling at home, really depend upon the house, upon its beauty and grandeur, or upon the concessions we must make? Does it depend upon the house at all? Possibly its very grandeur and beauty might be oppressive and prison-like for an underdeveloped man, chained to it without knowing what to do with it. He might say, “Yes, the house is beautiful, but it annoys me to be locked up in it.” That is what becomes evident through observation based on spiritual science, observation that ascends by way of imagination, inspiration, and intuition to a genuine cognition of what remains continuous in man throughout his various earth lives.

The first thing man has always experienced when arriving in the imaginative world from the world of visualizations—retrogressing, as it were, in the manner often described—is, to be sure, a world of images. All sorts of people have at all times entered this imaginative world. Considered purely in appearance, this imaginative world, which can open up before the soul either through careful concentration and meditation or through special aptitude, still presents at first the rudiments of the external world of the senses. One sees houses, animals, people; various events unroll in pictures; scenes and beings are there in a living world of images. On the other hand, this imaginative world stamps itself as pertaining, in a certain sense, to the super-sensible world through the fact that it is not within one's arbitrary power to decipher the symbolism of the images, that in determining this or that, one is subject to inner laws, that definite experiences express themselves in definite pictures.

Thus a man can be fairly sure that in any case he is developing certain levels of his soul, that in certain stages certain capacities grow, that he attains to living in certain regions of the super-sensible world, when, for example, a cup is offered him, or he is led through a stream, or he is baptized, and so forth. It can also happen that within this imaginative world, and these are less agreeable experiences, he encounters his various passions and impulses that appear to him symbolically either as huge, frightful animals, or as little squirming, wriggling ones. This plane of the spiritual world, attainable by man, can of course be described only approximately. On the whole, even when this world is highly distasteful and appears altogether hideous and the animals symbolizing his passions seem loathsome, this world appears in most cases quite agreeable. As a rule, people disregard the nature of what they experience and are gratified to be able to see at all in the spiritual world.

That is readily understandable because the spiritual world does not weigh heavily, even when it appears ugly. It is fundamentally a world of images, and only when a man lacks the requisite strength, so that it overwhelms him, crushes him, as it were, does it indeed destroy the health of the soul life. What we can call a feeling of moral responsibility, particularly toward the great world events, need not necessarily result from such seeing; the exact opposite can occur. People who have achieved great skill in penetrating this imaginative world may be morally quite casual, for instance, in the matter of a feeling for truth and falsehood. In this world there is strong temptation not to take truth pertaining to the physical world seriously, and that in a way is deplorable. One is prone to lose the ability to distinguish between what is objectively true and false.

To stand firmly in this imaginative world, to be able to learn its true meaning, is a matter of development. As a human being a man can be quite undeveloped and yet see into this imaginative world; he can see many vision-like phenomena of the higher world without rating at all high as a human being. It is all a matter of development. In the course of time development shows that one learns to distinguish certain imaginations exactly as one learns to differentiate in the physical world, only in the physical world this occurs so early in life that we take no account of it. In the physical world we learn to distinguish between an elephant and a tree frog, and as we learn to differentiate, the world begins to take shape. When a man first faces the imaginative world, it is as though he took the tree frog for the same sort of animal as the elephant.

How uniformly important this imaginative world seems! It is only through development that we learn the relative importance of different things, that something outwardly small may be perhaps more important than another thing outwardly bigger. These things of the imaginative world do not seem big or little to us by reason of what they are, but of what we see in them. Let us suppose a person to be haughty and arrogant. His quality of arrogance will appeal to him, and when he passes into the imaginative world this feeling, his delight in arrogance, is transferred to the size of the beings he sees there. Everything in the imaginative world that appears as arrogance, haughtiness, looks gigantic to him, while everything that to a humble man must seem great appears to him small, like the tiny tree frog. The appearance of this world depends entirely upon individual attributes. Perception of the correct relative sizes, the actual intensities and qualities, is a question of development.

The phenomena are entirely objective, but they can be completely distorted and seen in caricature. The essential thing is for man to pass through in a certain way what he himself is, in this higher cognition as well. He must learn to know himself in an imaginative way. That, indeed, is a precarious matter, because a perspective of what the imaginative world offers is wholly determined, rightly or wrongly, by the person's own qualities. What does that mean, that a man must learn to know himself through imaginative cognition? It means that through the agency of the images he meets in the imaginative world, he must see himself as an objective image. Just as in the physical world he has this bell before him as something objective, so he must meet himself in the imaginative world as the reality he is. This he can achieve in a normal way only by actually ascending through meditation from perception of the outer world to life in visualizations, that is, in certain symbolical visualizations that will free him from perception.

A man must live long and often enough in the pure inner life of visualizations to transmute it into something he passes through naturally. Then he will gradually notice something like a split in his personality. Often during the transition stages he will have to make an effort to prevent a certain condition from growing too strong. When this peculiar condition approaches, he faces a visualization in which he lives, in which he is. It seems to him that that is the way he is; that is he. Then occasionally he notices that the remainder of his being, the part of him not freed, becomes like an automaton. He notices a desire to express something automatically, to gesticulate. Unschooled people will sometimes catch themselves making faces, but that sort of thing should really not be allowed to go beyond an initial experiment. Here he must keep himself in hand. Like other objects, his own being must be kept without.

The possibility of attaining to this imagination as one should depends largely upon having previously developed certain psychic attributes, for in connection with this imaginative self-cognition all sorts of illusions arise. Everything in the way of human pride, in fact, every kind of human susceptibility to illusion, lies in ambush. You can see a great variety of things in the imaginative world. For example, you might mistake something that is really purely a matter of the feelings for yourself. It is a common phenomenon that people hold high opinions of themselves, and a person of this sort, in reflecting on the extraordinary creature he has become, is prone to conclude that he must have been something exalted, royal, or the like—Charlemagne, Napoleon, Marie Antoinette, or the reincarnation of some saint. Because such people tend to consider their individuality so important, the individuality they encounter occupying their body in the sense world, they can only assume that in a previous incarnation they were something exalted.

These matters are indeed serious, for they point to the fact that the manner in which a man's own being confronts him imaginatively depends entirely upon his soul. The point is that we alter our own beings if we really get completely away from ourselves, if we work with all our energy to learn to know all our attributes that we can observe in ordinary life, the attributes we believe to be dreadful and possibly objectionable to other people. We must take serious note of these attributes that we carry about with us but really should not possess. We are naturally not concerned here with saying agreeable things but with speaking the truth objectively. We can rest assured that, if we will only go to work objectively, self-criticism will prove to be a full-time task, and only in the last extremity should we engage, as is rather commonly done by humanity, in criticism or judgment of others. He who occupies his mind much with others and criticizes them freely, can be sure that he is far too little concerned with himself to enable him to clear away what must be cleared away if he is to see his own individuality in its true likeness. The reply to the oft-repeated query of why one does not progress, which by rights a man should answer himself, is obvious. He should refrain from all criticism of others except when outer necessity demands it. Above all, he should never forget what this “refrain” implies. It includes, for example, the occasional acceptance of something disagreeable or baneful. Certainly one must accept such things, but anyone who seriously believes in karma knows, naturally, that he brought all that on himself; karma placed the other man where he was in order that he might inflict the injury. A genuine personal reason for taking the world to task never really exists.

A great deal, then, is required to attain to this imagination, this self-cognition. Having achieved it, you will see why Frohschammer's picture of imprisonment is wrong. You come to realize that, while this incarnation in which you find yourself is indeed wonderfully beautiful and glorious, you yourself are not beautiful, you are not so constituted as to be able to take advantage of all that it offers. You say to yourself, “Here I stand in the world, at a certain point of time and space, surrounded by all that is grand and mighty. I have bodily organs to convey all this glorious and mighty magnificence. I have every reason to believe that we live in a paradise, even when ills befall us because it all depends merely upon whether the dome of the sky towers above us, the stars travel their paths, the Sun rises every morning and sets in the glow of evening.” For full satisfaction, however, we are given our outer world and our bodies with their organs, but great indeed is the difference between what we might derive from the world and what we actually do derive. Why do we extract so little from it? Because something is embodied in our corporeality that is diminutive compared with the world, something that allows us to perceive a trifling sector of it. Just compare what your eyes actually see in the world with what you might see!

When we have learned to know ourselves imaginatively, we realize that we are by no means as well adapted to this world as we would be if we could make proper use of our entire organism. We discover that what we are, in the light of imaginative cognition, must be opposed by something else in the world. Here we arrive at an interesting dilemma that must impress our souls if we would really learn to know the world. We find that in view of all that surrounds him in the world, man, as he learns to know himself in the imaginative world, cannot possibly consider himself great and mighty. It is not a case of coming from a higher world and being imprisoned in this earth body, but of being not at all adapted to it, not able to make use of it all. For this reason the imaginative world is opposed by another, a world that corrects what man does badly as a result of his inability to use his body. As opposed to what man is in the imaginative world we have the whole cultural evolution of man, from the beginning of the world to the end.

Why is this the case? We understand now that in the course of the cultural evolution of the earth man must become, through many incarnations, what he will be able to be in some one future incarnation, and for this reason he has the longing to keep returning. In each incarnation he must long for what is impossible of achievement in a single earth life. He must keep returning; then he can eventually become what it is possible to be in one incarnation. Precisely by acquiring the knowledge of and feeling for what he really should be in one life, but what he cannot be for inner—not outer—reasons, he knows what feeling must predominate in the soul when he passes through the portal of death. The predominating feeling must be a longing to return, in order to become, in the next life and in subsequent ones, what he could not become in one incarnation. This longing for ever new earth lives must be the most powerful force. These thoughts can only be touched upon, but they yield the strongest confirmation of reincarnation.

The accuracy of what I have stated is confirmed by something else as well. We can continue our efforts to reach the spiritual world. In a purely technical way we can achieve perception of the higher world by ignoring external perceptions and devoting ourselves to the life of visualizations. There is a still further possibility of giving a definite turn to meditation and concentration, namely, by endeavoring to let our memories unfold with complete inner faithfulness, with absolute inner conscientiousness. This need only be done for a few hours, but seriously. What is one, really, in life? Well, by means of logic and the theory of knowledge we learn that one is an ego, but in ordinary life one is a very doubtful ego. One is exactly what this ego is filled with at the moment. If you are playing cards, you are exactly what the impressions of the card game provide. Your consciousness is actually filled with the impressions of the card game, or whatever it may be. This is the ego to which consciousness can attain. It is attainable, but it is something highly variable, fluctuating.

We really find out what this ego has been by placing our memories before us. Instead of having them behind us, as is usual, we place them before us. That is an important proceeding. In ordinary life we are the result of our memories. Suppose that on a certain day you had experienced nothing but disagreeable things, horrible things. Just think how all that, concentrated, makes you feel in the evening—cross, unresponsive, carping, and so on. Then again, you may have had nothing but gratifying experiences, again concentrated; you are pleasant, smiling, perhaps cordial. So, at one time we are one thing, at another time another. We are exactly what we have behind us as experiences. When we bring all these as memories and place them before ourselves, at the same time going through them once more, we are then behind them. If you do that seriously—not in a routine, mechanical way, if you really relive it all, even for only a few hours, then something enters your soul, if it is sufficiently observing, which one might call a sort of fundamental tone that you yourself seem to be—a bitter, acid-bitter, fundamental tone. If you then go to work on yourself thoroughly, which again really depends on your development, that process will rarely show you to yourself as a sweet being. You will be able to find a bitter fundamental tone in yourself.

That is the truth, whether we like it or not. One who is capable of applying the requisite attention to himself will in this way gradually arrive at what may be called inspirational cognition of himself. The path leads through bitter experiences, but finally one seems like an instrument badly out of tune in the harmony of the spheres, causing a discord there. Through this further self-knowledge we realize still more clearly how little we are able to make of this glorious divine nature, whereas we could make so much of it if we were equal to it. If we repeat such an exercise many times, then, toward the end of our lives, but beginning as early as the thirty-fifth year, the peculiar character of the tone compels us to realize how much there is to improve upon what we were in life, and that we should long for reincarnation in order to be able to correct our shortcomings. That is one of the most important results of inspirational cognition. When a man learns to know his own fundamental tone, he discovers how ill adapted he is to external nature, and how little opportunity he has to find peace and inner harmony. Those who boggle at the idea of reincarnation only show how incapable they are of understanding themselves in their inadequacy, how egotistical they are in having no wish to develop further so beautiful a gift of God.

The second goal, then, that we can reach in our search for self-understanding is inspiration: the understanding of man as the spiritual tone world reveals him. There, when we have learned to know our own tone, so to speak, we discover how ill adapted we are to what lives in the great realm of nature. Another possible approach would start from the lapse into mere morality of what properly pertains to destiny, taking account of how little we are able to arrive at the peace and inner harmony for which we yearn. Those who have achieved the power of self-knowledge will often have occasion to realize how incapable they are of finding the inner calm and confidence that they are bound to crave. Recall this beautiful passage in Goethe's writings. He is seated on a mountain-top that voices the tranquility of earth's lovely nature. Beneath him lies what earth's eldest son, the granite rock, has spread before his eyes, and he senses the greatness of nature's laws—repose in contrast to delirious joy or frantic misery—the swinging pendulum, the inner tone in the nature of man.

When we study the laws of nature, study what still lives in space as natural laws, we come to see that just as the evolution of culture is the counterpart of imaginative man, so the world of natural laws—the true laws of nature out there in space—are the counterpart of inspired man.

Penetrating maya, the world of spiritual activity reveals itself in the laws of nature with that inner quiet consistency that, through our errors, has become restless discordance, and we recognize it as such when we have discovered the inspired man within us. Then this thought can come to us that when we really understand the essence of nature's laws we know, indeed, that the earth passes from one form to another, but that something in the laws of nature gives assurance that in it, man must find the compensation for what he himself ruins. That is because of the inherent verity of the laws of nature, and it applies even when man passes through his various incarnations, that is, when he receives into himself throughout a long cultural evolution what he must so receive because it lies potentially within the scope of one incarnation.

Thus we find a deep connection between all that is spread out in nature as spirit deeds manifested in natural laws, and what we discover within ourselves, through inspiration, to be our deeper self. That is why in all esotericism, in all mysticism, the inner peace and harmony of nature's laws are always held up as the ideal for man's inner law. It was by no means fortuitous that in the ancient Persian initiation one who had attained to the sixth stage was called a Sun hero. His inner law and sureness were such that he could no more deviate from the prescribed path than could the sun from its course through the universe. If the sun could depart from its course for one moment, untold revolutionary destruction would inevitably result in the cosmos. There is a further step that we can take on our way to self-comprehension. We could ascend to the grasp of man in intuitive cognition, but that would lead us into such exalted regions that it would be extraordinarily difficult to clarify the matter, or to designate that world that appears externally as the counterpart of intuitive man.

From all this you will see that the human being is, in fact, able to observe all that he has the possibility of being, that is, what he might be in that glorious exterior structure of the world in which he is “imprisoned,” surely not because this exterior structure is bad, but because he falls so far short of measuring up to it. This shows us that the important thing is a right evaluation of all world contexts, a proper understanding of the basis of that sort of spiritual cognition, including the nature of man, that is presented by anthroposophy. Most of the objections commonly raised arise out of principles that completely misjudge world contexts.

Finally, we must ask, “Why is it necessary for man to be externally embodied at all?” In order to illustrate still further what little remains to be said, I should like to remind you of Dr. Unger's lectures on the position of the ego and the “I am” in the whole inner life of man; also of what you can find on the subject in The Philosophy of Freedom and in Truth and Science. True, a little thought can show us that a significant being hides behind the ego or the “I am,” but what we experience we experience in our consciousness precisely as our ego-consciousness, our self-consciousness. This is interrupted, even when we fall asleep, and if we were able to keep on sleeping, never awaking, we might still have an ego but we could never be aware of it through our own agency. Our awareness of it depends upon the employment of our bodily organization, our corporeality, while awake. We can experience other things outside of our body, but our ego in the first instance only by confronting the outer world. For if man had never descended to earth in order to make use of a body, he would for all eternity have felt himself to be but a component of an angel, as the hand feels itself to be a member of the organism, and he would never have achieved self-consciousness. He might have become aware of any number of grandiose facts in the world, but never could he have arrived at ego-consciousness without being incarnated in a physical body. That is where he had to turn for his ego-consciousness.

You need only study sleep consciousness in order to see that the human being does not work together with his ego in sleep. Ego-consciousness presupposes imprisonment in a body, employment of the instruments of the senses and of the brain. Now, if during a single incarnation man is able only to a slight extent to make use of all that is given him in this incarnation, it should not seem surprising when clairvoyant consciousness tells us that a thorough search in the human ego, in so far as the latter manifests itself in its true form, discloses as its prime impulse, its predominant force, the longing for ever new earth lives, in order to fill and enrich this ego-consciousness more and more, to develop it to an ever higher state.

In so doing we would be echoing something in our theosophy that the theosophists of the eighteenth century so often maintained, something that can be helpful if expanded into pneumatosophy. How did eighteenth century theosophists like Ottinger, Völker, Bengel, and others express from their monotheistic standpoint the activity of spirit and of divine spirits, or of the Divine Spirit, as they called it? They said, “The bodily world, corporeality, is the goal of God's ways.” That is a lovely concept, “the goal of God's ways.” It means that by virtue of its inherent impulses, divinity passed through many spiritual worlds, then descended in order to arrive at a kind of goal from which it turns back to rise again. This goal is the shaping, the crystallizing, of the bodily, corporeal form. Were we to translate this utterance of the eighteenth century theosophists into more emotional phraseology, we could say, “Ardently longing for incarnation in a corporeality is the way the spirit reveals itself to us when we contemplate it in the higher regions, and it ceases to manifest itself in this longing for incarnation only after it has been embodied and has started back. The Divinity manifests itself as ardently desiring embodiment in the flesh, and not until the re-ascent to the spirit has commenced may this ardor abate.”

That wonderful utterance of the eighteenth century theosophists did more to illuminate and clarify the mysteries of man than much that was said in the philosophies of the nineteenth century, and theosophical activity and endeavor fell off completely in the first two thirds of the nineteenth century. In the eighteenth century genuine theosophy of the older kind was to be found in diverse localities but it lacked the knowledge of incarnation because Christian evolution retarded it in the Occident. Concerning divinity, those eighteenth century theosophists knew that “corporeality is the goal of God's ways.” They knew the goal of God's ways, but not that of man. They did not find it in the case of man, otherwise they would have understood from each incarnation, from the entire nature of man, that there must arise the longing for a new embodiment, until such time as everything that fits man to rise to new forms of existence has been extracted from the life on earth.

At the conclusion of these lectures on pneumatosophy I feel more than ever how sketchy and incomplete everything must be left, and what I said in connection with the first two cycles, Anthroposophy and Psychosophy, applies here as well. The intention has been to provide stimulating suggestions. If you will follow up these suggestions, you will find plenty of material for working out what has been offered. You will need to look about in the world and take account of manifold factors. One cannot escape the fact, however, that spiritual science is so comprehensive that, were we to proceed systematically and in the manner commonly aimed at in other sciences, we would not have progressed to the point where our sections actually stand after ten years of work. We would be about as far along as we might be after the first three months.

Let me say at the close of this cycle that spiritual science depends upon souls that are seriously willing to work out independently what has been merely suggested. In such independent work much will crop up out of regions that have not even been mentioned. Everyone proceeding with an independent spirit will find points of contact for this work. Our communion will become ever closer if we keep intensifying the feeling that we receive something in order to be stimulated, so that our innermost self comes more and more to take part in the worlds that are intended to be revealed to mankind through the spiritual current we have come to call anthroposophy.

Today, on the occasion of our General Meeting, I feel it incumbent upon me to speak upon a very sublime subject with which man is concerned. You must allow me to begin by mentioning once again that it is necessary for us to grow accustomed to speak in such a way on these subjects, that we must not rest satisfied with a one-sided rendering of the particulars connected with the higher world, as regards the general idea of the Bodhisattvas and their mission. We must accustom ourselves here to penetrate from the abstract into the concrete and to try, with the help of the ideas and sentiments which we have acquired from our sincere and loving study of life, to press through even to the sublime subjects pertaining to the Bodhisattvas. In doing this we must not merely accept the facts communicated to us, but try to a certain extent to understand them. For this reason I intend in this lecture to-day to begin by giving some description of the idea men had of the Bodhisattvas and of how that idea moved through the world.

We cannot really understand what a Bodhisattva is, without going somewhat deeply into the progressive course of man's evolution, and calling to mind some of the things we have heard in the last few years. Let us consider the nature of this progress. After the great Atlantean catastrophe humanity went through the period of the Old Indian civilisation, during which the great Rishis were the teachers of man. Then followed the period of the Old Persian civilisation; then that of the Egypto-Chaldean civilisation, then the Graeco-Latin period—up to our own, which is the fifth period of civilisation of the Post-Atlantean age. The purpose of these periods is the progressive development of humanity from one form of life to another. Progress is not made only in what is generally described in external history; for if we take great periods of time, we find that all the sentiments and feelings, all the conceptions and ideas of men, alter and are renewed in the course of the development of humanity. What would be the use of advocating the idea of re-embodiment or reincarnation, if we did not know this? What use would it be for our soul to come back over and over again into an earthly body, unless it were to learn something new each time—and not only to have new experiences, but to learn to feel differently? Even the capacities of man, the intimacies of his soul-life, are each time renewed and altered. This makes it possible for the soul to do more than merely ascend stage by stage as though up a series of steps, for each time it meets with new opportunities, through the altered conditions of life, of acquiring something new on earth. The soul is not merely guided from one incarnation to another by its sins and errors; but as our earth alters in every one of its conditions of life, so our souls can each time add something new from without. Therefore the soul progresses from incarnation to incarnation, but also from one period of civilisation to another. It would not, however, be able to progress and develop, were it not that those Beings who had already reached a high development, and were in some way or other above the ordinary humanity, had taken care that something new might always flow into earthly civilisation. In other words, we could not have advanced if there had not been great Teachers at work who, on account of their higher development, were able to receive the experiences from the higher worlds and carry them down to the scene of action of the life of earthly culture. There have always been such Beings in the development of our earth. (I am only speaking to-day of the Post-Atlantean development) and these Beings were in certain respects the Teachers of the rest. We can only understand the nature of these Teachers of humanity if we are clear as to the way humanity itself progresses.

You will have heard the two Lectures just given by Dr. Unger, on the Ego in its relation to the Non-Ego in its comprehension of itself considered according to the theory of Knowledge. Now do you suppose that what you then heard rendered by human lips and human thinking, could have been heard in this form 2,500 years ago? It would have been impossible in any part of the earth to speak about the Ego in this form of pure thought. Suppose some individuality 2,500 years ago had desired to incarnate into our earth-life, having made up its mind beforehand to speak of the Ego in that special way, well, it could not have done so! Anyone who supposes that anything of the kind could have been uttered by human lips, 2,500 years ago, entirely fails to recognise the actual progress and alteration in the development of civilisation since that time. For this to be possible it would not only be necessary for an individuality to resolve to incarnate in a human body, but it would also have been necessary that our earth in her evolution should have produced a human body with a particular sort of brain, so that the truths, which in the higher worlds are quite of a different nature, could in that particular brain take the form which we call ‘pure thought.’ For the way in which Dr. Unger spoke of the Ego we call the form of pure thought. 2,500 years ago there would have been no human brain capable of being an instrument for translating these truths into such thoughts. The Beings who wish to descend to our earth must make use of the bodies which this earth-cycle itself produces. Our earth, however, throughout the different periods of civilisation has always brought forth bodies with ever different organisations; only in our fifth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, has it become possible to speak in the form of pure thought—the human race having produced the necessary bodies. Even in the Graeco-Latin age it would not yet have been possible to speak like that along the lines of the theory of knowledge, for there would have been no instrument there to translate such thoughts into human language. That precisely is the task of our fifth Post-Atlantean period; it must gradually form the physical organisation of man into an instrument through which those truths, which in other ages were grasped in quite other forms, can flow in ever purer and purer thought. We will take another example. When a man considers the question of good and evil at the present day, hesitating as to whether he should or should not do a certain thing, he says that a kind of inner voice speaks, telling him: ‘You ought not to do this. You ought to do that!’ and that this has nothing to do with any outer law. If we listen to this inner voice, we distinguish in it a certain impulse, an incitement to act in a certain way in a given case. We call this inner voice conscience. If a man is of the opinion that the different periods of man's development were all exactly alike, he might easily believe that as long as man has inhabited the earth, conscience has always existed. That would not be correct. We can, so to speak, prove historically that there was a beginning to the time when men began to speak of conscience. When this was, is clearly evident. It lay between the periods of two tragic poets: Æschylos, who was born in the sixth century before our era, and Euripides, who was born in the fifth century. You will find no mention of conscience previous to this. Even in Æschylos you will not as yet find what could be called the inner voice; what he writes of, still took the form of an astral, pictorial apparition; the Furies or Erinyes, vengeful beings, appeared to men. The time came, however, when the astral perception of the Furies was replaced by the inner voice of conscience, Even in the Graeco-Latin period, in which a dim astral perception was still present, a man who had committed a wrong could perceive that every wrong act created astral forms in his environment, whose presence filled him with anxiety and fear as to what he had done. Those forms were man's educators at that time; they gave him his impulses. When he lost the last remains of his astral clairvoyance, this perception was replaced by the invisible voice of conscience; that means, that what was at first outside, then entered into the soul and became one of the forces now within it. The alteration that has taken place in mankind in the course of development comes from the fact that the external instrument of man, in which he seeks embodiment, has changed. Five thousand years ago, when a human soul did something wrong, the Furies were perceived; it could not then have heard the Voice of Conscience. In this way it learnt to establish an inner relation to good and evil. This same soul was born again and again, and at last it was born into a body possessing an organisation in which the quality of conscience could approach it. In a future cycle of human development other forms and other capacities will be experienced in the soul.

I have repeatedly laid stress on the fact that no one who really understands Anthroposophy will take up the dogmatic attitude of asserting that the form in which this is given out to-day will be permanent and will suffice for the humanity of all future time. Such is not the case. In 2,500 years' time the same truths will not be revealed in this form, but in a different form, according to the instruments then existing. If you bear this in mind, it will be clear to you that humanity must be spoken to in a different manner in each successive age and that the attitude of the great Teachers towards the capacities and qualities of man must likewise differ. This signifies that the great Teachers themselves undergo development from one cycle to another, from one age to another. In the ages through which humanity progresses, we find going on above man, as it were, a progressive evolution of the great Teachers of humanity. Just as man passes through certain stages and then reaches a certain turning-point, so likewise do the Great Teachers.

We are now living in the fifth period of our Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation. This is in a certain sense, a recapitulation of the third, of the Egypto-Chaldean period. The sixth will, in like manner, recapitulate the Old Persian, and the seventh will recapitulate the Old Indian. Thus do the various cycles overlap each other. The fourth period will not be recapitulated; it stands in the middle—sufficient unto itself, as we might say. What does this mean? It means that what men experienced in the Graeco-Latin period they only need go through once in an epoch of civilisation; not that they were only once incarnated in it, but that they only experience that period in one form. What was experienced in the Egypto-Chaldean period is being recapitulated now; it will thus be experienced in a two-fold form. There are certain stages of development which betoken a sort of crisis; while other periods are in certain respects like one another, the one recapitulating the other, not in the same way, but in a different form. The manner of man's development in the Post-Atlantean age is this: he went through a certain number of incarnations in the Old Indian period—and will go through a certain number in the seventh period, and these latter will resemble the former. A like resemblance will exist between the second and the sixth—and between the third and the fifth periods. Between these—in the fourth period—there are a number of incarnations, which resemble no other, and which therefore do not signify a transition. Man goes through a descending and an ascending development. The great Teachers of humanity also go through a period of descent and one of ascent, and differ absolutely at the different periods.

Now as man in the first Post-Atlantean period had quite different capacities from those he acquired later, he had to be instructed in quite a different way. To what do we owe the fact that in our time wisdom can be clothed in the concise forms of pure thought? We owe this to the circumstance that in our period of development the chief and average quality that is being developed is the consciousness soul (Since 1923 called by Dr. Steiner “The Spiritual Soul.”). In the Graeco-Latin period the intellectual soul or mind was being developed, in the Egypto-Chaldean the sentient soul, in the Old Persian the sentient body, and in the Old Indian the etheric body;—as the chief factor in their culture, of course. What the consciousness-soul is to us, that the etheric body was to the inhabitants of Old India. They had therefore quite a different mode of grasping and understanding. If you had spoken to the Old Indian in forms of pure thought, he would not have had the faintest idea what you meant. To him such words would have been mere sounds, without meaning. The great Teachers could not have taught the Old Indians by communicating wisdom to them in the form of pure thought, nor could they have explained it by word of mouth. To the Old Indians the Great Teachers said very little; for at the stage which the etheric body had then reached people were not receptive to the word which enclosed the thought. It is very difficult for people of our day to imagine how teaching could have taken place under those conditions. Very little indeed was spoken; rather did the listening soul recognise in the nuances of the sound, in the way a word was uttered, what flowed down from the spiritual world. That, however, was not the chief thing. The word was, so to speak, only the call to attention, the signal, that a relationship must now be established between the teacher and the hearer. In the earliest times of the Old Indian period the word was hardly more than when we ring a bell as a sign that something is about to begin. It was a crystallising point around which were woven the indescribable, spiritual currents which passed from the teacher to his pupil. What was of greatest importance was what the teacher saw, in his inner personality. It did not matter what he said; the qualities of his soul were of the greatest importance; for a sort of inspiration passed over from him to the pupil. The latter, having in particular developed the etheric body, the teacher had to address himself specially to that; and it was much easier to understand what the teacher himself was, than anything spoken. Before they could understand the spoken word, men had to pass through the subsequent periods of civilisation. It was therefore not necessary for any one of the great Teachers of the Old Indians to have a particularly developed intellectual or consciousness soul, for such would have been at that time an instrument of which he could make no use.

One thing, however, was necessary in these great Teachers: their own etheric bodies had to be at a more advanced stage of development than were those of the people. If a great teacher had stood at the same stage of development as they, he could not have had much effect upon them; he could not have communicated messages from a higher world, nor given an impulse for progress. In a certain sense what man was to grow to in the future, had first to be brought to him. The Indian teacher had to anticipate, as it were, what the others would only be able to acquire in the subsequent period of civilisation, that of the Old Persians. What the ordinary man in the Old Persian period would take in through the sentient body, that the Great Teacher of the Indians had to communicate through the etheric body. That means that the etheric body of such a teacher must not work like those of other men, it had to work as the sentient body was to do in the Persian civilisation. If a seer, in the present sense of the word, had come in contact with one of the great Indian teachers, he would have said: “What sort of etheric body is that?” For such an etheric body would have looked like an astral body of the Old Persian period.

It was, however, no such simple matter for such an etheric body to have worked as an astral body of a later period. It could not have been brought about at that time by any advanced stage of development. It could only be made possible by the descent of a Being who had already reached a further stage than the others, and who incarnated in a human body which was really neither suited to nor well adapted to him, but which he was obliged to enter to make himself understood by the others. Outwardly he looked like other men, but inwardly he was quite different. To judge of such an individual by his outer aspect would mean to deceive oneself utterly; for while the outer appearance of ordinary persons harmonises with their inner being, in the case of these Teachers it was in complete contradiction. Here we have an individuality, who, as far as he himself was concerned, had no longer any need to come down to earth at all, but who descended to a certain stage and took his place among the Old Indian people, to teach them. He descended willingly, and incarnated in human form, though he was a different Being altogether. He was an individual of such a nature that the destiny to which a normal man—as man—is subject, did not affect him. A Teacher of this kind would live in a body having an external destiny, yet he would have no part in that destiny; he lived in that body as in a house. When that body died, death for him was a very different experience from what it is for other men. Birth, too, and the experiences between birth and death were quite different for him. Hence also such a Being worked in quite a different way in this human instrument. Let us picture to ourselves in what way such an individuality used the brain, for instance. For even if he was able to perceive through the astral body, yet the brain which indeed was otherwise organised, still had to be used as an instrument to observe the pictures through which perceptions were received. There were, therefore, two human types; the one, who used his brain as an ordinary human being, and the Teacher type, who did not use his brain at all in the ordinary way, but in a certain sense left it unused, A great Teacher did not need to use the brain in all its details; he knew things that other people could only learn through the instrument of the brain. It was not a real, earthly incarnation as such; it was not a real incarnation of a human being in the ordinary sense. It represented a sort of double nature; a spiritual being lived in this organisation. There were such Beings also in the later Persian and in the Egyptian periods. It was always the case that in their individuality they towered far above the stature of their human organisation. They were not wholly contained within it. For that reason they were able to work upon the rest of the people in those olden times. This state of things continued down to the time when, in the Graeco-Latin period, an important crisis occurred in the development of mankind.

Now in the Graeco-Latin age the intellectual soul or mind (Mind in the sense of ‘I have a mind to do’ a thing.) began gradually to form inner faculties. Whereas in the time preceding this the chief things flowed in from outside, so to speak—as we saw in the example of the Furies, when men had avenging beings around them but not within them—in the Graeco-Latin period something began to flow from within, towards the great Teachers. In this way quite new conditions were established. Formerly, Beings from the Higher Worlds descended and found a state of things which enabled them to say: “It is not necessary for us completely to enter the human organisation; for we can do our work by carrying down to men what they cannot otherwise obtain, and causing that to flow into them from the Higher Worlds.” At that time it was not yet necessary for man to contribute anything, there was no need for him to bring anything to meet the great Teachers. But if the great Teachers had gone on with this policy, it might have occurred—from the fourth Period onwards—that one of these great Individualities would have descended into some part of the earth and found there something which did not exist above. As long as the Furies, the avenging spirits, were visible, men could turn their attention away from what was to be found on earth. Now, however, came something quite new—conscience. That was unknown to the spirits above; there was no possibility up there of observing it. It came as something quite new to them. In other words, in the fourth period of Post-Atlantean civilisation the necessity arose for these great Teachers actually to descend to the stage of man, therein to learn what it was that was coming up to meet them out of the human souls. Now began the time when it would not do for them not to share to some extent in the qualities inherent in man. Let us now observe that significant Being, whom in his earthly incarnation we know as Gautama Buddha.

Gautama Buddha was a Being who had always been able to incarnate in the earthly bodies of the various periods of civilisation, without having had to use everything in this human organisation. It had not been necessary for this Being to go through real human incarnations. Now, however, came an important turning-point for the Bodhisattva; it now became necessary for him to make himself acquainted with all the destinies of the human organisation within an earthly body which he was to enter. He was to experience something which could only be experienced in an earthly body; and because he was such a high Individuality, this one incarnation was sufficient for him to see all that a human body can develop. Other people have to evolve the inner capacities gradually, throughout the fourth, fifth, sixth, and seventh periods; but Buddha could experience in this one incarnation all that it was possible to evolve. In his incarnation as Gautama Buddha he saw, in advance, the first germ of what was to arise in man as conscience, which will become greater and greater as time goes on. He was therefore able to re-ascend into the spiritual world directly after that incarnation; there was no need for him to go through another. What man will, in a certain sphere evolve out of himself during future cycles, Buddha was able to give in this one incarnation, as a great directing force. This came about through the event which has been described as the “sitting under the Bodhi-tree.” He then gave forth—in accordance with his special mission—the teaching of compassion and love contained in the eightfold path. This great Ethic of humanity which men will acquire as their own during the civilisations yet to come, was laid down as a basic force in the mind of the Buddha who descended at that time, and from Bodhisattva became Buddha, which means that he really rose a stage higher, for he learnt through his descent.

That, in different words, describes that great event in Eastern civilisation known as “the Bodhisattva becoming Buddha.” When this Bodhisattva, who had never really incarnated, was 29 years of age, his individuality fully entered the son of Suddhodana; not having fully had possession of him. He then experienced the great human teaching of compassion and love. Why did this Bodhisattva, who then became Buddha, incarnate in this people? Why not in the Graeco-Latin people?

If this Bodhisattva was really to become the Buddha of the fourth Post-Atlantean period of civilisation, he had to bring in something new for the future. When the consciousness-or spiritual-soul has been fully developed, man will, by its means, gradually become sufficiently ripe to recognise of himself the great impetus given by Buddha. At a time when man had only developed the intellectual soul, it was necessary that Buddha should already have developed the spiritual soul. He had so to use the physical instrument of the brain that he was complete master of it; and this in quite a different fashion than could have been done by one who might have progressed in advance as far as the Graeco-Latin period of civilisation. The Graeco-Latin brain would have been too hard for him to use. It would only have enabled him to develop the intellectual or mind (Mind in the sense of ‘I have a mind to do a thing.’) soul, whereas he had to develop the spiritual soul. For that he required a brain that had remained softer. He made use of the soul that was only to develop later, in an instrument that had been used by man in earlier times and had been retained by the Indian people. Here again we have a recapitulation: Buddha repeated a human organisation belonging to earlier times, together with a soul-capacity belonging to times yet to come. The events that take place in the evolution of humanity are to this extent, of the nature of a necessity. In the 5th to the 6th century before our era, Buddha had the task of introducing the spiritual-soul into the organisation of man. He, as a single individual, could not, however, take over the whole task of doing all that was necessary in order that the spiritual-soul might prepare itself in the right way from the 5th century onward. His own particular mission only comprised one part of that task: that of bringing to man the doctrine of Compassion and Love. Other teachers of humanity would have other tasks. This part of the Ethics of Humanity, the ethic of Love and Compassion, was first introduced by Buddha, and its vibrations still endure; but humanity must in future develop a number of other qualities besides these, as, for instance, that of thinking in forms of pure thought, in crystal-clear thoughts. It was no part of Buddha's mission to build up thoughts, to add one clear thought to another. His task was to form and establish that which leads man of his own accord to find the eight-fold path.

So there had to be another Teacher of humanity having quite different faculties, one who carried down a different stream of spiritual life from the higher spiritual worlds into this world. To this other individuality was given the task of carrying down what is gradually showing itself, in mankind to-day, as the faculty of logical thought. A Teacher had to be found, able to carry down what makes it possible for man to express himself in forms of pure thought; for logical thought itself only developed as time went on. What Buddha accomplished had to be carried into the intellectual- or mind-soul. This soul, through its position between the sentient soul and the consciousness- or spiritual-soul, possesses the peculiar attribute of not having to recapitulate anything. The Old Indian epoch will be repeated in the seventh, the Old Persian in the sixth, the Egyptian in our own; but just as the fourth epoch stands alone, apart from the others, so does the intellectual- or mind-soul. The forces necessary for our intellectual faculties which only appear in the spiritual-soul, could not be developed in the intellectual soul; although these were only to appear later, they had to be laid down in germ and stimulated at an earlier period.

In other words: the impulse for logical thinking had to be given before the Buddha gave the impulse for Conscience. Conscience was to be organised into man in the fourth epoch; conscious, pure thinking was to develop in the consciousness- or spiritual-soul in the fifth epoch, but had to be laid down in the third epoch of civilisation, as the germ for what we are evolving now. That is why that other Great Teacher had the task of instilling into the sentient soul the forces which now appear as pure thought. It is therefore easy to see that the difference between this Teacher and the normal man was even greater than it was in Buddha. Something had to be aroused in the sentient soul which did not as yet exist in any living man. Ideas or conceptions would not have helped to develop this; therefore although this Individuality had the task of laying the germ of certain faculties, he could not himself make any use of them. That would have been impossible. He had to employ other, quite different, forces.

I explained this morning (in the second lecture on “Anthroposophy”) that certain forces working through the power of vision on the sentient soul, will at a higher stage become conscious forces, and will then appear in the form of thought. If that great Teacher-Individuality was able so to stimulate the sentient-soul that the forces of thought could penetrate it, in somewhat the same way as life subconsciously penetrated it through the act of vision—without the least realising it, that Teacher could then achieve something. This could only be done in one way. To stimulate the sentient soul and instill into it, so to speak, the power of thought, this Individuality had to work in a very special way. He had to give his instruction, not in conceptions—but through music! Music engenders forces which set free in the sentient soul something, which, when it rises into the consciousness and has been worked upon by the spiritual soul, becomes logical thinking. This music came forth from a mighty Being, who taught through music. You will think this strange, and may perhaps not believe it possible, yet such was the case. Before the Graeco-Latin age, in certain parts of Europe, there existed an ancient culture among those peoples who had remained behind as regards the qualities strongly developed in the East. In those parts of Europe the people were not able to think much, for their development had been of quite a different nature; they had but little of the forces of the intellectual soul. Their sentient soul, however, was very receptive to what proceeded from the impulses of a special kind of music, which was not the same as our music to-day. We thus go back to a time in Europe when there was what we might call an ancient “musical culture”—a time when not only the “Bards” were the teachers, as they were later, when these things had already fallen into decadence, but when a music full of enchantment passed through all those parts of Europe. In the third epoch of civilisation (i.e., the Egyptian) there was a profound musical culture in Europe, and the minds of those peoples who were waiting quietly for what they were destined to carry out later, were receptive in a particular way to the effects of music. These effects worked upon the sentient soul in a similar way to that in which the thought-substance works upon it through the eyes. Thus did music work on the physical plane; but the sentient soul had the subconscious feeling: “This comes from the same regions as the Light.” Music—the song from the realms of Light!

Once upon a time there was a primeval Teacher in the civilised parts of Europe—a primeval Teacher who in this sense was a primeval Bard, the pioneer of all the ancient Bards and minstrels. He taught on the physical plane by means of music, and he taught in such a way that something was thereby communicated to the sentient-soul, which was like the rising and shining of a sun. What tradition has retained concerning this great Teacher was later on gathered together by the Greeks—who were still influenced by him from the West as they were influenced in a different way from the East. This was embodied in their conception of Apollo, who was a Sun-God and at the same time the God of music. This figure of Apollo dates back, however, to that great Teacher of primeval times, who put into the human soul the faculty which appears to-day as the power of clear thinking.

The Greeks also tell of a pupil of this Great Teacher of humanity—of one who became a pupil in a very special way. How could anyone become the “pupil” of this Being?

In those bygone times, when this Being was to work in the manner just described, he was not, of course, encompassed in the physical organisation; he transcended that which walks the earth as physical man. A man with an ordinary sentient-soul might have been receptive to the effects of the music, but he could not have aroused them in others. A higher Individuality had come down and was like the radiance of what lived in the cosmos outside. It became necessary, however, that in the fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of civilisation, in the Graeco-Latin period, he should descend again—that he should descend to the human stage and make use of all the faculties that are in man. Yet, although he made use, so to speak, of all the human faculties, he could not quite descend. For, in order to bring about what I have described, he required faculties transcending those possessed by a human organisation in the fourth post-Atlantean period. The effects of this music even then included what was to be found in the spiritual soul; and it could not at that time have lived in an individuality organised only for the intellectual soul. Hence, although incarnated in such a form, he still had to hold something back. His incarnation in the fourth epoch was such, that although he completely filled the whole human form, yet he as man, dwelling within that form, had, as it were, something within him that extended far beyond it; he knew something of a spiritual world, but he could not make use of this knowledge. He had a soul which extended beyond his body. Humanly speaking, there was something tragic in the fact that the Individuality who had acted as a great Teacher in the third epoch of civilisation, should have had to incarnate again in a form in which his soul was to a great extent outside it—and yet that he could not make any use of this superior and unusual faculty of soul. This kind of incarnation was called a “Son of Apollo”, because that, which had dwelt on earth before, was reincarnated in a very complicated and not in a direct way. A Son of Apollo bore within him as soul what Mysticism designates by the symbol of the ‘feminine’ element; he could not bear all of it within him, because it was in another world. His own feminine soul element was itself in another world to which he had no access but for which he longed, because a part of himself was there. This marvellous inner tragedy of the reincarnated Teacher of former times has been wonderfully preserved in Greek Mythology under the name of ‘Orpheus’—the name given to the reincarnated Apollo, or “Son of Apollo.”

This tragedy of the soul is represented in a marvellous way in the figures of ‘Orpheus and Eurydice’. Eurydice was soon torn from Orpheus. She dwelt in another world; but Orpheus still had the power, through his music, of teaching the beings of the nether world. He obtained permission from them to take Eurydice back with him. But he must not look around him; for that would mean inner death;—at all events it would bring about a loss of what he formerly was and which he cannot now take into himself.

Thus in this incarnation of Apollo as Orpheus, we have again a sort of descent of a Bodhisattva—if we may use this Eastern term—to Buddha-hood. We might quote a number of such Beings who stand out from age to age as the great Teachers of humanity and who always had a very special experience at the time of their deepest descent. The Buddha experiences the bliss of inspiring the whole of humanity. That Bodhisattva, whose memory is preserved externally under the name of ‘Apollo,’ had an individual experience: he was to prepare the individuality, the quality of the Ego. He experiences the tragedy of the Ego; he experiences the fact that this ego is, in the present state of man as regards this attribute of his, not entirely with him. Man is struggling up to the higher ego. That was foreshadowed for the Greeks by the Buddha or Bodhisattva in Orpheus.

These particulars furnish us with a characterisation of the great Teachers of humanity and we are then able to form a picture in our minds. If you summarise what I have said, you will find that I have all along been speaking of those Beings who formed the sentient-soul and the spiritual-soul in a particular way as inner faculties—faculties which must draw into man from within. As we are now surveying this one period we can only for the moment consider two of these Beings, those who formed the sentient soul. But there are many such, for the inner nature of man evolved gradually, stage by stage.

Let us now compare yet another Being with that which affects the inner nature of man, so to speak. For indeed we cannot but say to ourselves: If there is a constant succession of Teachers who supply the progressing and developing inner faculties of man with spiritual food from the higher regions, there must be other Individualities who accomplish other work and above all take part in the changes in the earth itself and in what evolves from one age to another. When the Buddha influenced the intellectual soul from within, so to speak, through the consciousness or spiritual soul in the fourth period of civilisation, it must also be influenced from without. Something had to approach the intellectual soul from without. This Being had to approach from another aide and to work in quite a different way. A Teacher such as those we have been describing, had, when he appeared among men, to pour into their inner being what he had to bring down from higher regions. He was a Teacher. What had the other Being to do, who was to bring the earth forward, so that it developed further from one generation to another? He was not only to influence the inner being of man to develop this or that faculty within him, but He Himself, as Being, had to descend to the earth. He who was to descend, was not merely to teach, the intellectual soul, but to form it. One had to appear who was to form that soul and who was Himself to be its direct expression in the fourth period, that eminent period that stands alone in the middle. This Being had to come from quite a different side. He had to draw into human nature itself, to incarnate within it. The Bodhisattvas transformed the inner nature of man; this Being transformed his whole nature. He made it possible for the Teachers to find a suitable soil on which to work in the future. He transformed the whole human being. We must recollect how the different souls in man build themselves into the different bodies: the sentient soul into the sentient body, the intellectual into the etheric body and the spiritual soul into the physical body. The field of action of the Bodhisattva is there where the spiritual soul builds itself into the physical body. That is where they lay hold of man from the one side. There the intellectual- or mind-soul works into the etheric body, another Being, in the fourth period, influenced man from another side. When did he do this? It was accomplished at the time when the etheric body in man could be directly affected,—when that Being whom we have described more closely as Jesus of Nazareth, forsook the physical body at the moment of the Baptism in Jordan. When that whole body was immersed, whereby occurred what we have described as a ‘shock,’ the Christ-Being sank down into that etheric body. That is the Individuality Who comes from quite a different side and is of quite a different nature. Whereas in the case of the other great Leaders of humanity we have, in a sense, to do with more highly evolved human beings, men who have at least once been subject to all the fate of a man,—of Christ that cannot be said. What is the lowest principle of the Christ-Being? Counting from below, it is the etheric body. That means that when some day man, through Spirit-Self, shall have transformed his whole astral body and will set to work on his etheric body, he will then be working in an element in which the Christ once worked in the same way. Christ gives an impulse of the most powerful kind, which will continue to work on into the future, and which man will only reach when he begins to work at the transmutation of his etheric body in a conscious way.

In his journey through life, man starts from birth, or even from conception, and travels on till death; from death to his next birth is another journey. On his way from death to a new birth he first passes through the astral world then through what we call the lower part of the Devachanic world, and after that through the higher Devachanic world. Or, using the European terms, we call the physical world the little world or the world of mental powers, of intelligence; the astral world is called the elemental world; the lower Devachan the heavenly world, and the Higher world is the world of reason, of discernment, of discretion. The European mind is only gradually evolving to the point where the true expressions may be found in its language. Therefore, what lie beyond the Devachanic world has been given a religious colouring and is called the ‘World of Providence’—which is the same as the Buddhi-plane. What is beyond that again could indeed be seen by the old clairvoyant vision, an ancient tradition tells of it; in the European languages no name could be formed for it.—Only in our present day can the seer once more work his way up to that world which is above and beyond the World of Providence. European languages cannot truly give a name to this world. This world does indeed exist; but thought is not yet far enough advanced to be able to describe it. For to that which Eastern Theosophy calls Nirvana and which lies above the ‘World of Providence,’ one cannot just give any name one pleases.

As I was saying, between death and rebirth, man ascends to the higher Devachan or world of Reason. When there he looks into higher worlds, worlds he cannot himself enter, and there he sees the Higher Beings at work. Whereas man spends his life in worlds extending between the physical plane and Devachan, it is normal for the Bodhisattvas to extend to the Buddhi-plane, or what we in Europe call the World of Providence. That is a good name, for it is precisely the task of the Bodhisattvas to guide the world as a good ‘providence’ from age to age. Now what took place when the Bodhisattva went through the embodiment of Gautama Buddha?—When he reaches a certain stage, he can ascend to the next higher plane—to the Nirvana-Plane. That is his next sphere. It is characteristic of the Bodhisattvas that when they become Buddhas they ascend to the Plane of Nirvana. Everything that works on the inner being of man dwells in a sphere extending to that Plane. A Being such as the Christ works into the nature of man from the other side. He also works, from the other side, into those worlds to which the Bodhisattvas ascend when they leave the region of man; in order themselves to learn, in order that they may become Teachers of humanity. There they meet,—coming down to them from above, from the other side—a Being such as the Christ. They then become pupils of Christ. A Being such as He, is surrounded by twelve Bodhisattvas; we cannot indeed speak of more than twelve; for when the twelve Bodhisattvas have accomplished their mission we shall have completed the period of earth-existence.

Christ was once on earth; He has descended to earth, has dwelt on the earth, has ascended from it. He comes from the other side; He is the Being who is in the midst of the twelve Bodhisattvas, and they receive from Him what they have to carry down to earth.—Thus, between two incarnations the Bodhisattva-Beings ascend to the Buddhi-Plane; there they meet the Being of Christ as Teacher, and they are fully conscious of Him. He in this Being, extends to that Plane. The meeting between the Bodhisattvas and the Christ takes place on the Buddhi-Plane. When men progress further and shall have developed the qualities instilled into them by the Bodhisattvas, they will become more and more worthy themselves to penetrate that sphere. In the meantime it is necessary that they should learn that the Christ-Being was incarnated in human form in Jesus of Nazareth, and that in order to reach the true Being of the Individuality of Christ, one must first permeate the human form with understanding.

Thus twelve Bodhisattvas belong to Christ, and they prepare and further develop what He brought as the greatest impulse in the evolution of human civilisation. We see the twelve, and—in their midst—the thirteenth. We have now ascended to the sphere of the Bodhisattvas, and entered a circle of twelve stars; in their midst is the Sun, illuminating, warming them; from this Sun they draw that source of life which they afterwards have to carry down to earth. How is the image of what takes place above, represented on earth? It is projected into the earth in such wise that we may render it in the following words: Christ, Who once lived on the earth, brought to this earth evolution an impulse for which the Bodhisattvas had to prepare humanity and they then had to develop further what He gave to the earth-evolution. Thus the picture on earth, is something like this: Christ in the middle of the earth-evolution; the Bodhisattvas as His advance-messengers and His followers, who have to bring His work closer to the minds and hearts of men.

A number of Bodhisattvas had thus to prepare mankind, to make men ripe to receive the Christ. Now, although men were ripe enough to have Christ among them, it will be a long time before they mature sufficiently to recognise, to feel, and to will, all that Christ is. The same number of Bodhisattvas will be required to develop to maturity in man what was poured into him through Christ, as was necessary to prepare men for His coming. For there is so much in Him, that the forces and faculties of men must go on ever increasing, before they are able to understand Him. With the existing faculties of man, Christ can only be understood to a minute extent. Higher faculties will arise in man, and each new faculty will enable him to see Christ in a new light. Only when the last Bodhisattva belonging to Christ shall have completed his work, will humanity realise what Christ really is; man will then be filled with a will in which the Christ Himself will live. He will draw into man through his Thinking, Feeling, and Willing, and man will then really be the external expression of Christ on the earth.

Our lecture to-day shall be devoted to subjects interesting to Anthroposophists in the widest sense, subjects intended to throw light on certain points which may have puzzled those who have attended our Group-Meetings for a considerable time. It is well, now and then, to recollect that the point of importance in Anthroposophy is not so much the learning of certain things as theory or doctrine, but that we should continually enter in greater detail into the questions and enigmas of life.—Some people may perhaps say: All that is necessary to know of Anthroposophy for use in life could be comfortably contained in a small pamphlet of sixty pages or so; everyone could possess a copy and would then be convinced as to the nature of man, reincarnation and karma, and the evolution of humanity on the earth,—and could go through life needing nothing further. A person who would like to have that carried out might perhaps suggest: ‘Why does not the Anthroposophical Movement distribute as many copies as possible of a booklet containing these principal points of view, so that everyone might acquire a copy and be able to convince himself? Why does the Anthroposophical Society adopt the curious method of holding meetings week after week, assembling all those interested or likely to become interested for the purpose of constantly recapitulating what might comfortably be reduced to a sixty-page pamphlet? What can these Anthroposophists possibly have to say to their followers, week after week?’

There may be certain orders of mind of our day who would like to have a small outline of Anthroposophy which they could keep in their waistcoat pockets, and thus study what it is most important to know. We must, however, over and over again, bring to mind the fact that nothing can be done in this way with Anthroposophy. There can be no ‘tabloid-knowledge!’ Although Anthroposophy does depend both on knowledge and perception, it does not consist of mere ‘phrases,’ but of very definite knowledge. But it is not enough merely to acquire this knowledge as a general conviction according to present-day methods, and then rest satisfied. For the point in question is not merely that one should acquire the conviction and know that man lives many lives and that there are causal conditions which pass over from one life into another, that there is such a thing as reincarnation, as karma. The beneficial effects of Anthroposophy do not lie in the spreading of this knowledge, but are felt in the constant and repeated study of all the details connected with it, and in allowing the teaching to work upon one's soul. It does one no good simply to believe that man lives more than once and that there is such a law as that of reincarnation, karma, and so on. The mere belief in this will not carry one far. As regards the real depths of life there is not much difference between the soul of a man who knows of reincarnation and karma and one who knows nothing of it. In an anthroposophical sense our soul is only changed if we constantly study, not only the generalities, but the deeper things that Spiritual Science can teach us. That is why it is a good thing that we should over and over again consider how the various details of life appear in the light of the Anthroposophical conception. It is by no means sufficient merely to know that there is a great law of destiny establishing a connection between the past deeds, feelings and thoughts of a man and his present and future experiences. Anthroposophy will only become a life-factor when we can apply this general doctrine to the different experiences of life, when we become able to put our whole soul into such a position, that we obtain an entirely new outlook on life. That is why we will to-day give a little time to studying the law of karma, the great law of destiny, with reference to the details of life. Things will be spoken of to-day which are familiar to all; but they will be considered from the standpoint of karma.

Karma says in a general sense that there is a connection in the spiritual world between what takes place to-day and what has taken place in the past. It is not really a good thing to call karma the law of causality, and then to compare it with the law of cause and effect in the external world. If we wish to find a comparison for this great law of destiny, we must take care that the comparison is valid, that it really does represent this law.

Let us take the following as an example. Suppose we have two vessels containing water—and two metal balls of the normal temperature of the living-room. We throw one ball into one of the vessels; and the water remains as it was. We now take the other ball and having heated it, we throw it into the other vessel. The water in that gets warm.—Why has the water in the second vessel grown warm and not in the first? Because the ball itself underwent a change before it was thrown into the vessel; and having itself been made hot it brings about the warming of the water. An event occurred which was the result of another event, the result of the ball having been heated.—The experiences and activities of a former time are connected with the experiences and phenomena of the present or future.

When we grasp the law of the spiritual connections between past, present and future in this way, we shall be able to find it confirmed in ordinary life, in the everyday life around us,—though we ourselves may be very far from having as yet developed any clairvoyant faculties. For we must always establish as a golden rule the fact that while a law of the spiritual world can only be proved by the spiritual investigator through clairvoyant observation, it can always be corroborated by the experiences of the external world.—People will, however, have to accustom themselves to observe external life a little more carefully than usual, if they wish to find confirmation of the law of karma. As a rule they do not see, figuratively speaking, beyond the end of their noses. What lies beyond that, they do not observe. Anyone who observes more profoundly will, however, find plenty of confirmation between birth and death of the existence of a law of karma. We will keep as far as possible to the concrete, and take the following example. A young lad, fifteen years of age, has been torn away by unforeseen circumstances from the life he had been accustomed to lead. Till then the position of his parents had permitted him to study; now at the age of fifteen, in consequence, perhaps, of his father having lost his fortune, he had to go into trade, and was thus pitchforked from one calling to another. Of course the point here is not that the one calling was in any way better than the other, but that his life was altered by the change. Now people who contemplate life in the ordinary materialistic sense would probably not expect anything worthy of note to be brought about by the influence of such an event in a man's life, and they would find nothing. But a closer observer would discover that a young man who goes into trade in that way, will at first feel pleasure in the change, will like his calling,—that his interest in it grows with his own growth, as one might say. After a while, however, something remarkable will become evident, The soul-experiences, the sympathies and antipathies he feels in his work, may, as he reaches the age of eighteen or nineteen, assume a different form. He may cease to take pleasure in it; his attitude towards trade may alter. Those who had never heard of Anthroposophy would feel at a loss to account for what takes place in the young man's soul.

What then has actually occurred?—When the young man was fifteen and was put into the new trade, he took a great interest in it. At first the interest he felt drove out the feelings and sentiments that had formed within him when he was following a different line of activity. Those feelings were pushed into the background. The time, however, comes when these break through again with all the more strength. It is just as though one compressed an elastic object; it can be compressed for a while but it springs back with all the more rapidity, and the result in the case of the lad may be that the interests which have been thrust aside for a time, now burst forth with greater zest. When he is eighteen or nineteen the feelings and sentiments that penetrated his soul, three years before the change of calling, now come forth anew,—that is, those he felt at eleven or twelve.—Life can only be explained in such a case by saying: When this lad was fifteen a turning-point occurred in his life. After that, things happened whose external effects are felt the same number of years after the turning-point as the cause of them originated before that time.

Just think how one would be able to help a person as regards his soul-moods and the difficulties of life, if we were able to ask ourselves:—When did such a turning-point occur?—It may have been connected with something quite private and intimate; but, if one can place it, we can then reckon back; and it will be found that the spiritual effects reveal themselves just as long after the turning-point, as the cause of them was before that time. This gives one an insight into karma. Such knowledge is a help in life, and we may say:—Causes and effects of this nature are connected with definite periods of time and they are determined by a definite period in life, so that if we count backwards and forwards from that point of time, we can find the connection between cause and effect.

Now this might, of course, be concealed by the intervention of other events. Someone might say: ‘The example you have just given us is no use; I have just met a young man to whom it does not apply:’—Well,—I have known a case of two men having a game of billiards, when a passing waiter bumped into the one who was just about to play, thus driving his ball in quite a different direction from what was intended! The law of cause and effect was not at fault, but other circumstances intervened. We must reflect that we shall never learn to know that law if we do not make an exception of the things that upset it. After the age of fifteen other circumstances may arise which interfere with the law. We do not become acquainted with laws simply by observing life, but by acquiring the right method of summing up its phenomena. For in life things are being constantly disturbed and the laws cannot so easily be seen; we can only regulate our life by knowing how these laws are to be found. When we know the particulars, we can say in the case of the young man whose life has been so smashed up, that it is the task of those who have his education in hand to look out for the result. In this way karma becomes a law of life; and if we have knowledge of the law, we can make use of our knowledge when such a case occurs. If we find that we can no longer give the lad what he had before, we can at any rate become his adviser. But we can only give the right advice if we know of the existence of such connections as those I have spoken of,—if we know what is the matter with him and intervene with help just where and when his particular lack is making itself felt. If we are ignorant of this law we cannot help him with advice.—When we regard the law of karma as a law of life it may become an influence in life, we can learn to become counselors.

The above-mentioned case does not of course exhaust all the combinations that are possible; there is another way in which the law of karma is experienced between birth and death. There is a remarkable connection between the experiences a man has in the first half of his life and the second,—but this is not as a rule observed. One often makes acquaintance with a man in his youth and loses sight of him before he reaches maturity, or else one only meets a man when he is already old and one knows nothing of his youth; or even if one did know him in youth, one may have forgotten what has happened to him since. Were we to study and compare the beginning and end of people's lives when it is possible so to do, we should find the finest confirmation of the law of karma even in the life between birth and death.

Perhaps you may remember in this connection what I have said in public lectures about the ‘noble’ anger which appears in youth. I have explained that a young person is not able fully to judge of an injustice that may be going on in his vicinity; he is not yet mature enough. Yet the wise rulership of the world has so ordained things that our feelings will help us to judge truly before our reason is mature enough to do so. A noble nature will, even in childhood, be moved to a righteous anger by anything like injustice, although it may be only in his feeling that his soul can sense the injustice. He may perhaps not yet be ripe to judge of it through his intellect. When this noble sense of indignation is to be found in the character of a child we ought to take particular note of it, for the feeling aroused by the injustice remains in the soul. This noble anger in early youth permeates the soul and, as life goes on, it becomes transformed. In the second half of life it reappears in a different form; it appears as the quality of loving kindness and goodness. We shall not often find that loving, bounteous goodness in the latter part of a man's life—if other things are equal and nothing has occurred to distort the sequence—without finding that it was expressed in his early years by a noble anger aroused at the stupidity or the ugly things of life. In ordinary life we find a karmic connection which we may clothe in the form of a picture and say: The hand that never clenched its fist in noble anger in the first half of life, will not easily be stretched forth in blessing in the latter half.—Such things will of course only be observed by one who can see a little further than ‘the end of his nose,’ which is just what most people do not do. I might give a simple example to show how little people are inclined to notice such things in life.

I have often mentioned how helpful it is to one who wishes to become intimately acquainted with life in order to study more deeply the occult conditions of the soul, to have been a teacher at some time. One learns more of the soul in that way than can be learnt from the ordinary text-books on Psychology, which, as a rule, are quite valueless. A knowledge of the soul is acquired when we do not merely observe and study but have to take the responsibility of guiding and directing the life of others. One learns a closer observation. During the long years of my tutorship I not only observed the children of whom I had charge, but I had many opportunities when other families came to visit them, of studying other children of all ages, even from the time they came into the world.

That is now some twenty-five to thirty years ago. You may have noticed how every five years or thereabouts the doctors have a different opinion as to what is ‘good’ for people. Well,—at that time they were strongly of opinion that it was very strengthening for delicate children three, four or five years old, to drink a glass of red wine every day.—I knew certain children who had their glass of wine and others who did not, and was able to make my own observations. For of course at that time, the doctor's opinion was considered infallible. It would have been of no use to attempt to go against it. I was thus able to await results. The children who were then from two to five years old and who were given the glass of wine to strengthen them, are now young men and women of twenty-five to twenty-eight years of age. I particularly noticed that only then the results of this treatment show themselves. All the children who had the wine have become ‘Fidgety Phils’; their astral bodies are fidgety, they have not much control of them; they do not know how to control the involuntary movements of their soul-life. On the other hand, those children who,—unfortunately, as was then said,—could not have their glass of red wine, have now become stable natures, less ‘wobbly’ in their astral bodies, or, as materialists would say, in their nervous systems.

This is an example of the connections that exist in life. It is rather a trivial one and not particularly illustrative of karma; but it serves to show that we should not only look as far as the end of our noses but should survey longer periods of time, and that it is not sufficient merely to affirm that a remedy will have such and such an effect, for what is actually brought about can only be observed by the true observer many years after. Nothing but the great connections and all that leads us to find them can in reality give us the true explanations of the relation between cause and effect in the life of man. Thus we must try to connect the qualities of the soul with those phenomena of life which lie apparently very far apart; and we shall then be able to trace the law of karma even between birth and death, and shall frequently find that the events of later life are connected with the experiences of the earlier.

You may remember what I said of the mission of Devotion, of the importance of looking up in feeling to some being or some phenomenon which we do not yet understand, but which we revere for the very reason that we have not yet grown up to the level of being able to understand it. I always like to remind you of how fortunate it is when a man can say: ‘As a child I heard of a member of our family who was very greatly respected and honoured. I had not yet seen him but I had a profound reverence for him. Then one day the opportunity came, and I was taken to see him. A feeling of profound and holy awe came over me as I laid my hand on the handle of the door of the room where this wonderful person was to be seen.’

In later life a man will have good reason to be grateful for that feeling of reverent devotion; we owe much gratitude to anyone who aroused a feeling of reverence in us in our early life. That feeling is of great and special value in any life. I have known men who exclaim, when such a feeling of reverent devotion to the Spiritual and Divine is alluded to: ‘I am an Atheist! I cannot revere anything spiritual!’—We can reply: ‘Look at the starry heavens! Could you create those? Look at that wisdom-filled structure and reflect: there it is surely possible to have a feeling of real, true reverence.’ There are many things in the world which our understanding has not yet grown up to, but to which we can look up in reverence. Especially is this the case in youth, when there is so much we can look up to and venerate, without being able to understand it.

A feeling of devotion in early youth is transformed into a very special quality in the second half of life. We have all heard of persons who just by being themselves, are, as it were, a blessing to those around them. There is no need for them to say anything particular, their presence is enough. It seems as though by the very nature of their being, something invisible flows forth from them to the souls around them. Through their very nature they radiate a healing and beneficent influence on their environment. To what do these people owe their power of blessing? They owe it to the circumstance that in their youth they lived a life in which reverence played a part. Reverence in the early part of their life was transformed in later years into a force which works invisibly, pouring forth blessing and help. Here again is a karmic connection which, if we look for it, is clearly and distinctly to be observed. It was really a true feeling for karma which led Goethe to choose as the motto for one of his works, these beautiful words: ‘What we desire in our youth is fulfilled in old age!’ If one only observes the connections to be found within short periods of time, it may certainly seem as though one could speak of unfulfilled wishes,—but taking longer spans of time, this cannot well be said. All these things can pass over into and become part of life's daily round; and as a matter of fact, only one who studies in this anthroposophical way is qualified to educate children, for he will be able to provide them in their early years with that which, as he knows, they will be able to use in the latter part of their life. The responsibility that a man assumes when he instills one thing or another into a child is not realised to-day. It has become the custom to look down on these things to-day—to speak of them from the high horse of materialistic thinking. I should like to illustrate this by an experience we ourselves once had here in Berlin.

A theosophical visitor once came here,—one of those who think if at some time in their lives they have attended one or two meetings, they are well able to form an opinion on the whole subject. Such persons desire to learn about a spiritual Movement like Anthroposophy so as to be able to write objectively about it. Those who wish to provide the world with newspaper articles, believe that they can judge of a movement by going to one or two lectures!—This visitor also went away and wrote. It was curious to read later on in an American paper what was said of one of our anthroposophical meetings. Of course the description given was remarkably correct!—As I have said, if anyone really wishes to grasp Anthroposophy it cannot be done in that way; it is only possible to penetrate into the life of Anthroposophy if one has the distinct will really to enter into it in detail and experience. I am only saying all this to characterise the opinion formed by this visitor, which he did not hide under a bushel! He said he did not like the way in which Anthroposophy splits up everything,—dividing the world into physical world, astral world, devachanic world, and so on. Why should everything be so split up?—This was after one or two visits. What a terrible effect it would have had on him if he had heard of the other divisions! He was of the opinion that it was unnecessary to consider things in this way, but that one should speak of the spiritual world in general terms.—Why should it be divided into classes?

That is the way people talk to-day about Education and all other departments of life; Science itself talks in the same way. The world talks from an arbitrary observation of life, not from an objective investigation of the separate phenomena. That is why the impressions which all such reforms and programmes must make on one who is able really to observe the world is so dreadful; they arouse a feeling that may be compared to physical pain. Take any ordinary book on Science to-day; no matter how conscientiously the conclusions are drawn, it is terrible to see how they are put forward, for there is no conception of the way the phenomena ought to be observed. In the same way many a man is admired to-day, who blazons forth his opinion, based simply on his own predilections or antipathies.

It is of immense importance that Anthroposophy should become aware of the fact that life must be observed, down to its very smallest details, according to the methods which the knowledge of karma and other laws put into our hands. That is why we can only hope for a blessing on the future evolution of humanity—even as regards the question of Education—if the anthroposophical views penetrate to the fundamental principles of Education. Karma provides a firm support for all questions connected with that.

For instance, it is extremely important that we should know the karmic connections of a certain phenomenon in Education expressed in the view: ‘If a child is properly brought up, he must be this or that—that is what I admire!’ It seems as though the child were supposed to be a sack, into which one can stuff whatever is thought to be right! People wish to stamp their own nature, with its personal sympathies or antipathies, upon the child. If they knew the karmic consequences of this, they would take a different view. They would see that what is stuffed in that way into a child, as into a sack, will work out karmically by making the grown man or woman a hard, dry nature, prematurely old, for the very core of their being is killed. If we wish to educate a child, and to imbue it with any particular quality, we must set to work in a roundabout way. We must not try to force it upon the child, rather ought we to arouse a longing for that particular quality, so that the child itself will desire to acquire it. We must even go a step further. If we know that a particular food is good for a child we must not force him to eat it, but should try so to cultivate his taste, that he will ask for it of his own accord. That is a very different method to that of forcing everything into him as into a sack, saying:—‘in with you!’—If we begin to regulate the child's requirements, we reach the very life-germ of his being and we shall see the effects of this working out karmically in the second half of his life, in his joy in life, in his life-force. In his later years, instead of being arid and dry, he will remain alive in the centre of his being.

If we consider the law of karma in this way we shall say: ‘It does not suffice merely to write a little book entitled ‘There is a law of karma, a connection between the earlier and the later,’ but we must study life itself in the light of that law.’ Anthroposophy is only present in its true form when we enter into all the details of life; but we must also determine to do this work without cessation. We must find time to study all the phenomena of life from the standpoint of Anthroposophy.

The above are a few of the things that indicate the connections to be found in life between birth and death. Now we can follow out the law of karma beyond this limit and connect one life with other lives or with one other. We must connect what we experience to-day, in the present life between birth and death, with things we experienced formerly, or that we shall experience later, in subsequent lives. I will to-day confine myself to throwing light on one important question, from the standpoint of karma in so far as it extends from one life into another. That is, the question of health and sickness, more especially the latter.

Many people when they are stricken with some malady believe that according to karma they would be right in supposing they have brought it upon themselves, that it is their fate; but that alone does not always characterise karma aright. Where there is a malady we must first of all be quite clear as to the nature of the trouble in a spiritual sense. It will be well to begin with the nature of pain, and then pass on to the spiritual understanding of the nature of illness.

What is the nature of pain? We will now consider external pain, such, for instance, as we feel when we cut our finger. Why does that hurt?—We shall never be able to explain the nature of pain from the spiritual standpoint if we do not realise that the physical finger is permeated by an etheric and an astral finger. The outward appearance of the physical finger, its shape, the way in which the blood circulates in it and the position of the nerves within it,—all these things are determined by the etheric finger. It is the builder; and still takes care that the nerves are in their proper place and that the blood flows in the right way. The way in which the etheric body carries out these functions is regulated by the astral body, which permeates the whole. We will now explain by an external example why it hurts when we cut a finger.

Perhaps it may be a favourite occupation of yours to water the flowers in your garden once a day; that gives you a feeling of satisfaction. One morning, however, you find that your watering-pot is spoilt or perhaps stolen, and you are not able to water your garden. You are distressed; what you feel is not physical pain, yet the fact that you are prevented from carrying out your favourite occupation may somewhat resemble that; you cannot carry out an activity because you lack the necessary instrument. The external lack felt in this instance, which can only call forth a moral pain, may become a physical pain in the way that will now be described.

The etheric and astral bodies are organised for the purpose of maintaining the finger as it now is. I can never cut the etheric finger nor the astral finger. If I cut my finger in two, the etheric finger can no longer carry out its proper duty. It is accustomed to have the fingers in their right connection. Now this connection is interrupted:—just as your activity was interrupted, when you wanted to water your garden. Thus the astral and etheric bodies are not able to intervene, and the prevention from exercising the usual activity is felt in the astral body as pain. But the moment these bodies are interrupted, they make an extra effort,—just as you, wishing to water your garden, would make extra efforts to find the watering-pot or the like. In the same way our astral and etheric bodies must now call forth greater activity in order to repair the injury. It is the extra activity thus called forth which is the actual healing force. Whatever calls forth great activity in the spiritual bodies of man, produces healing. Now the cause of all illness is, that through some disorder in the physical or even in the etheric body of man, the spiritual principles are prevented from intervening in the proper way, they are hindered, as it were; and the healing consists in the calling forth of a stronger resistance to the disorder.—An illness may either be healed, or we may die of it.—Let us consider both these possibilities from the karmic standpoint.

If the illness takes such a course that we recover from it, it means that in those members that we have brought with us from former incarnation, we had stored up such strong life-force that it is able to intervene and heal us. When we look back at those incarnations we can say:—Not only were we able at the time to provide for what we normally have in life, but we brought with us a reserve fund, which we may call up from the spiritual members of our life.

Now, suppose we die. How does the case stand then?—We must then say: When the effort to heal was made, we called upon the strongest forces within us—but they did not suffice. Yet whenever we call up these forces, demanding extra strength from them, it is not without avail, for in so doing we have had to make stronger efforts. Although we may not be able in this life to restore order to any one part of our organism, yet it has, none the less, grown stronger. We desired to resist the malady, but our powers did not suffice. Yet although they did not succeed, the forces we called up in making the effort, are not lost. They pass over into the next incarnation and the injured organ will then be stronger than if we had not had the disturbance. We are then able to build up the particular organ that brought us a premature death and to impart to it special strength and regularity. This will be all the more successfully accomplished if we treat the illness in the right way and yet are not able to cure it. In such a case we must look upon the illness, karmically, as something which will in a future life prove to have been fortunate. We shall then have gained a special strength through having fought the malady though we were unable to cure it.—One ought not, however, on that account, to say: ‘Perhaps it might be as well to let an illness take its course, for then if we do not interfere and try to curb it, the forces within us will be stronger and our karma will have a better fulfilment.’—That would be nonsense. The point is this: the healing must be carried out in such a way that the equalising forces are able to intervene in as favourable a manner as possible; in other words, we must do all in our power to bring about a cure, regardless of whether it be successful or not. Karma is always a friend, never an enemy to life!

By this example it is proved that the law of karma, which extends from one life to another, works for the strengthening of life. We can, therefore, say that if any one organ is particularly strong, this points to a preceding life in which that organ was once ailing and we were not able to heal it. The forces for so doing were called up and they have caused it to grow particularly strong now. Thus we see the events and facts stretching across from one life into another. If we become conscious in the right way of how it can be strengthened, our life-kernel will become stronger and stronger. In this way we can attain a more and more living comprehension of our spiritual life-kernel through the law of karma.

We now come to an answer to the question: ‘Why do we meet together so often?’ We do so, because not only do we enrich our knowledge when we take in anthroposophical teaching, but also because, if it be given in the right way, it is able to make our life-kernel more and more strong and forceful. We pour a spiritual life-sap into all we do, by meeting together and occupying ourselves with Anthroposophy. Thus Anthroposophy is not a theory, it is a life-giving draught, an elixir of life which ever anew pours itself into our souls and of which we know that it will make them grow stronger and stronger. When Anthroposophy emerges from the position which now, through lack of comprehension, it occupies in the outer world, when it really intervenes in our whole spiritual life, people will then see how the salvation, even of the physical life, of the purely external life, will depend on the strengthening which can be acquired through the study of Anthroposophy. The time will come when anthroposophical gatherings will be the most important sources of strength to man, from which they will go forth, saying: we are most grateful to these meetings, for we owe to them our health and strength and the fact that we are constantly able to strengthen anew our own life-kernel, the core of our being. People will only realise what the mission of Anthroposophy is, when they feel that it furnishes us with the means of working forcefully on the physical body and making it sound and healthy. Those who are occupying themselves with Anthroposophy to-day, should regard themselves as pioneers for Anthroposophy as a means of strengthening life. Then only will it become what it ought to be, the right point of attack against something which in many cases is weakening life to-day.

In conclusion I will draw your attention to one thing more. There is no phrase more frequently mentioned than ‘inherited tendency.’ No man is considered an educated man to-day who does not mention it at least two or three times a week! An educated man must at least make himself acquainted with what the learned. medical profession has ascertained as to ‘inherited tendencies.’ When a person does not know what to make of himself, most people say at once: ‘he is suffering from an inherited tendency.’ Anyone not saying that is regarded as badly educated, perhaps among other things an Anthroposophist!—Here Science begins not only to go astray in theory, but also to be injurious to life. This is the boundary where theory encroaches on morality—where it is immoral to hold a wrong theory. Here life's strength and security really depend on correct knowledge. What will a man be able to do who, through the right spiritual conception in his soul, strengthens, fortifies himself by taking in the elixir of life? No matter what he may have inherited, these inheritances are only in the physical body or at most in the etheric body. Through his right conception of the world he will be able to make his own vital centre stronger and stronger, and will be able to conquer his inherited tendencies; for the spiritual, if present in the right way, is able to equalise the body. If, however, a man does not strengthen the spiritual core of his being, merely asserting that the spiritual is the fruit of the physical, he will have a weak inner nature, he will be the victim of his inherited tendencies; they will work harmfully in him. No wonder then, that so-called inherited tendencies have such dreadful results; for people are first of all talked into belief of the powers of such tendencies and are deprived of what counteracts them. The belief in inherited tendencies is cultivated, and the spiritual conception of the world—the best weapon with which to fight them,—is taken away. First the power of the inherited tendencies is discovered, and by this means they become active. Not only is this a wrong insight, which arouses a life-destroying activity and takes the weapons of defence out of the hands of the sufferer, but it is the beginning of a theory based absolutely on a materialistic conception. Here a materialistic conception of the world begins to play a part which is in effect not only theoretically incorrect but immoral.—This cannot be got over, simply by saying that those who assert such things are mistaken. We need not be too severe in judging those who put forth these theories. We are not attacking individual scientists here; it is quite comprehensible that they are involved in a line of thought which must lead to such errors—we must admit this in all fairness. The one, perhaps, may not be able to free himself from scientific tradition; another perhaps considers it excusable, for, having a wife and children he would be in an awkward position if he were to break away from the ruling opinions. But the whole thing must be considered as a phenomenon of the times, for Science is beginning not only to spread abroad false theories, but to take away the life-promoting remedies, the spiritual conception of life, which is able to fortify and which is alone able to stand up against the physical,—the power which must otherwise overwhelm man. The physical can only possess overwhelming power as long as a man does not build up strength in his spiritual nature. If he does this, a warrior will grow up within him, a warrior who will defend him against the physical.

We cannot hope that this should come about from one day to the next. But those who have the right understanding of things will gradually learn the anthroposophical view of phenomena in face of which man at first seems powerless. What is not equalised in one life is made good in the long run. If we contemplate a single life, as well as life from incarnation to incarnation, we shall see that rightly understood, karma is a law that no longer depresses us, but rather one which brings us comfort and force whereby to make ourselves stronger. The law of karma is a law of life, and we must understand it as such. The point is, not that we should know a few single abstract thoughts, but that we should study the life-truths of Anthroposophy in the details of life, and never weary of anthroposophical work, while we permeate ourselves with its different truths.

If you hold this as an ideal before you, you will be living an anthroposophical life in the true sense of the words. You will then know why it is that we do not satisfy ourselves with merely reading one or two books, but regard Anthroposophy as something in which our heart is concerned and which never ceases to occupy us; something to which we gladly return again and again, and of which we know that the oftener we return the more it will enrich our lives.

In each of the Gospels light is thrown on the great Mystery of Golgotha from one particular aspect. I have drawn your attention to the fact that the secret of Golgotha, the secret of Christ Jesus, is presented by the Gospel of St. Mark from the aspect of the great Cosmological connections, while that of St. Matthew shows how this secret was developed out of one special people, the ancient Hebrews. We have seen how that people had to develop little by little, from generation to generation, from the time of Abraham, so as to bring forth later, as their flower, the Human Being in whom could be contained the individuality of Zarathustra or Zoroaster. We have seen how all the qualities peculiar to the Hebrew people—qualities which had to become more and more intensified in the course of their descent from one generation to the next—were based entirely on the principle of physical inheritance. We were thus able to describe how the character of the mission of the old Hebrew people differed from that of others in that it had to inherit certain qualities, which could only be attained by physical inheritance, and which had gained in intensity from the oldest generations of the time of Abraham down to Jesus. The Gospel of St. Matthew contains many other secrets, as indeed do all the Gospels. Although in the course of this Winter we shall open up a few aspects and perspective glimpses into the Gospels, these can at the most only stimulate the understanding. For in order to understand the Gospels completely a never-ending spiritual work is necessary. Light shall be thrown to-day from one particular side on the Gospel of St. Matthew and it will be shown how the lessons to be drawn there from can be usefully applied by those who now form part of the anthroposophical spiritual stream.

If we look back at much of what we have learnt as the years went by, we shall see that the development of humanity, as described by Spiritual Science, passes through various crises; it reaches an important point, then continues for a while along a more level road, then comes another important point, and so on. We have often emphasised that one such important point in the development of humanity on earth was reached when the Christ-Impulse was given at the beginning of our era, according to the modern reckoning of time. When we look back beyond the Atlantean into the Lemurian age, we come to that point in time when the first rudiment of the human ego was implanted in the human being. To understand such an event, the words must be taken very accurately. For instance, we must make a clear distinction between the statement that in the Lemurian epoch ‘the first rudiments of the ego were implanted in the human being,’ and that other, that at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha began the period, the age, in which humanity became conscious of this ego. ‘There is a great difference between having the ego only in rudiment, as something working in man, and the knowledge that one possesses it. A sharp distinction must be made between these things, for otherwise it is impossible to understand the true laws of evolution.

We know that the implanting of the ego in man is part of the collective development of the earth. The earth passed through the Saturn, Sun and Moon ages, and then only did it become the structure it is to-day. On Saturn the germ of the physical body was laid, on the Sun that of the etheric body, on the Moon that of the astral body, and the germ of the ego was added on the earth; this germ was placed in the development of the earth in the Lemurian epoch. Now something else also took place in the Lemurian epoch, something that we have always called the ‘luciferic influence’. During that epoch man was endowed with the germ of the ego, which in the course of the subsequent earth-periods was destined to attain greater and greater perfection, and at the same time his astral body was ‘inoculated’ with the luciferic influence. The whole nature of man was altered by this influence, even to the forces and elements in his etheric and physical bodies. Thus in the Lemurian epoch man became an entirely different being from what he would have been if there had been no luciferic influence. We see him altering in two respects: we see him becoming an ego-being—and we see him becoming a being in whom the luciferic principle is hidden. Even if the luciferic principle had not set in, the ego-influence would still have entered man.

Now what took place in the human being as a result of the luciferic influence having made itself felt in the Lemurian epoch?

When such a circumstance is described from one aspect or another, I beg you not to consider that as all that can be said on the subject; for this may well be only one point of view, selected for the moment. In the course of years a great deal has been said as to what the luciferic influence brought about in the evolution of man; it is all part of the same, but we cannot repeat it all now. To-day we will select one point of view only, that describes one aspect; that is, that as a result of the luciferic influence man reached a certain point in evolution earlier than was intended, earlier than the wise guidance of the world had predestined for him. The luciferic influence caused him to descend more deeply into the three principles which came over from the former embodiments of the earth, (the astral body, etheric body and physical body) and he has become more entangled in them than would have been the case if no such influence had prevailed. Man, with his ego, would have remained nearer to the spiritual worlds, he would have continued for a longer time to feel himself, through his ego, a member of the spiritual world, if the luciferic influence had not caused that ego to descend more deeply into the three principles. We may say that as a result of the luciferic influence, man descended more deeply on to the earth in the Lemurian epoch. We can indicate the time when he would have descended thus far to the earth or into physical matter had there been no luciferic influence; it would have been in the middle of the Atlantean epoch. If no luciferic influence had come about man would have been obliged to wait till then for his descent to earth; but that influence caused him to descend earlier. It enabled him to become a free being, able to act in accordance with his own impulses. He would otherwise have remained entirely dependent upon the spiritual world until the middle of the Atlantis epoch; neither would he have been able before then to distinguish between good and evil, nor act from his own impulses. He could only have acted from psychic influences, that is to say, from forces implanted in his soul by Divine Spiritual Beings. The luciferic beings made it possible for him to begin at an earlier stage to decide between good and evil; not simply to allow himself to be guided by the laws of the divine-spiritual world Order, but to decide for himself, creating a kind of law and order for himself. This fact is expressed in a very profound way in the description of ‘the Fall’ which represents in a wonderful imaginative picture, what I have just stated. The Old Testament describes this by saying that Divine Spiritual Beings implanted into man a living soul. ‘Now if this living soul had merely remained as it was, man would have had to wait until later on, until the Divine Spiritual Beings had brought the living soul, or, in other words, the yet undeveloped ego, to the degree of maturity able to make distinctions. But now there came the luciferic influences, represented in the Bible as ‘the Serpent.’ Through these, man himself became able to distinguish between good and evil, instead of merely instinctively following the inpourings of Jehovah or the Elohim. From a being who till that time had been guided and led by Divine Spiritual Beings, man thus became a being able to decide for himself. The Bible clearly shows that self-decision was brought to man by the Serpent, or in other words, by the luciferic beings. We then hear the words ring forth, words spoken from the side of the gods: ‘Man has become as one of us!’ Or, if we wish to put this into plainer words:—‘Man has acquired something through the luciferic influence which has till now been reserved only for the gods. It was given to the gods to decide between good and evil, the beings dependent upon them had no such decisions to make.’

As a result of the luciferic influence man now became a being capable of making distinctions; that is, he became a being who developed divine qualities within him prematurely. In this way and through this influence, something entered human nature which would otherwise have been withheld from his evolution till the middle of the Atlantean epoch. As you can well imagine, man would have been quite different if this descent into matter had not taken place till then; his soul would have been more mature for the descent. He would have descended into matter as a better, a riper, man. He would have brought quite different qualities into his physical, etheric and astral bodies and would have possessed a very different power of distinguishing between good and evil. Because man was already a being able to distinguish between good and evil from the Lemurian epoch to the middle of the Atlantean epoch, he made himself worse than he would otherwise have been; he entered a state of lesser perfection. He would otherwise have spent all the intervening time in a much more spiritual way; but as it was, he passed through it more materially. The effect of this was that if he had received in the middle of the Atlantean epoch what the gods had intended him to have, he would have fallen utterly and completely.

What was it that would have been given to man at the middle of the Atlantean epoch, if he had continued to be guided and directed till that time, instinctively, as it were, by Divine Spiritual Beings?

He would have then received that which, the luciferic influence having in the meanwhile intervened, was afterwards given to him through the Mystery of Golgotha. The Christ-Impulse would have been given to man at the middle of the Atlantean epoch. Now, however, on account of the luciferic influence, man had to wait as long a time for the Christ-Impulse as had elapsed between the intervention of the luciferic influence and the middle of the Atlantean epoch. There was the same span of time between the entrance of Lucifer and the middle of the Atlantean epoch, as between that time and. the arrival of the Christ-Impulse. Thus, through man's having acquired a likeness to the gods before he was meant to do so, we have to describe a delay of the Christ-Impulse. For before that could come man had to go through the Earth-Karma due to him on account of the evil that had entered the earth through the luciferic impulse. He had to wait, not only till that influence had rendered him able to distinguish between good and evil, but until, in the course of the earth's development, all the consequences of the luciferic influence had come. He had to wait for these, for then only could the Christ-Impulse descend to the earth. In accordance with the wise guidance of the earth, man was not intended to escape for ever from what was to come to him through the luciferic influence, but it would not have come upon him till the middle of the Atlantean epoch. It must have come in any case; but it would certainly not have come in the same form. Not only did man acquire from Lucifer the power of free decision in everything connected with spiritual things, but also the capacity of enthusiasm for what is good and noble, wise and great. As human beings, we are not only able coldly to distinguish between good and evil, but also to feel a warm glow for the noble, good and wise. That is because something was carried into our astral body, which, if it had only reached man in the middle of the Atlantean epoch, would have been taken into the ego, that ego which is capable of judgment. All the feeling, the idealism and enthusiasm for what is good, for high ideals, we owe to the circumstance that something entered our astral body before we had acquired the likeness to God in our ego, before the acceptance of the Christ had taken place therein. The essential point is that this likeness to God, the possibility of finding the good within ourselves, had to come to man. If the luciferic influence had not come, this impulse would have come in the middle of the Atlantean period, but as things are it came in the age in which Christ Jesus Himself worked.

Thus through the Christ-Impulse the consciousness came to man that in his ego he had something of Divine substance and of Divine nature. The thought that man can take in the Divine in his Ego-being and that this Divine part can be active therein and distinguish between good and evil, underlies all the deeper sayings of the New Testament. We may therefore say that with the reception into the inner nature of man of the Christ-Impulse, it was made possible for man to say: ‘I must be my own guide for the knowledge of my existence and the distinction between good and evil.’

Now if we look back to the pre-Christian time, we must say that when the impulse enabling man to distinguish between good and evil was not yet present, such distinction, and the judgment of man as to the good, the beautiful and the true, was necessarily meagre; it did not actually proceed from his inner being. He could not, before the Christ-Impulse, have distinguished in his inner being between good and evil. In the pre-Christian time the decision as to the really Good, Beautiful and True could only be accomplished through certain beings—such as the Bodhisattvas—reaching up as time went on with a part of their being into the divine-spiritual worlds; the distinction between good and evil was therefore not made from out of man's inner being, but in the divine worlds. Through their companionship with divine spiritual beings these Guides acquired it and it flowed from them into the souls of men, as though by suggestion. Had it not been for those guides, men could only have made feeble distinctions between good and evil in those days. If these guides had depended on their own hearts alone, they could not have done this either; but because they descended into those depths of the soul which were not yet accessible to man and entered in their ego-being into the kingdoms of heaven, they received the impulse needed by man to help him to decide between good and evil at the time of his need, that the good might nevertheless be implanted in the earth by way of preparation. Thus, before the time of Christ, man was a being still insufficiently prepared to acquire the likeness to God. On this account, since the Lemurian epoch, everything done by man was done less well than would otherwise have been the case. This applies above all to what regards himself. His astral, etheric and physical bodies, which but for the luciferic influence would have remained more spiritual, were, through that influence, less well formed, made more material. That was the reason of all the evil which developed in the life of man as time went on. In the course of a very long time have these evils developed.

From the Lemurian epoch to the Mystery of Golgotha they developed in the physical, etheric and astral bodies. In the astral body a high degree of egotism was developed; in the etheric body the possibility of mistaken judgment and the possibility of lying. If man had remained under the influence of divine-spiritual beings, acting instinctively in accordance with their impulses, he would not to-day, when he desires knowledge of the world around him, be able to fall into error, nor could he be led into untruth. Thus did the tendency to lying and the danger of error find place in the development of man; and since the spiritual is always the origin of the physical, and because the luciferic influence and its consequences ate their way more and more deeply into the etheric body during incarnation after incarnation, the possibility of disease entered the physical body. Illness is the evil that entered the physical body through that development; but something of still greater significance has come. If man had not been subject to these influences, if he had not allowed them to work upon him, he would never have supposed that anything more than a change of life takes place when the physical body falls away from us; consciousness of death would not have come to him. If man had descended less deeply into matter and had kept hold of the threads uniting him with the divine-spiritual, he would have been aware that when the physical sheath is laid aside, a new form of existence begins; but he would never have looked upon that as a loss, as the end of an existence he had grown fond of. Everything in evolution would have taken on a different aspect.

Man descended more deeply into matter, he thus made himself more free and independent, but he also thereby made his own development more limited than it would have been.

Everything lacking in man will be made good by the Christ-Impulse; but one must not expect that to be done in a short time nor even in a comparatively short time. A very long time elapsed between the Lemurian epoch and the Mystery of Golgotha. Slowly and gradually, during incarnation after incarnation, came egotism, error and lying, disease and the realisation of death. Man is being led back into the spiritual world, so to speak, with the qualities he has acquired “from below.” The re-ascent will be a quicker progress than the descent; but it cannot be expected that in one or two incarnations man will be enabled, through what he can take in of the Christ-Impulse, to overcome selfishness and to heal his etheric body to such an extent that all danger of lying and error is at an end, still less can he be expected to be able to work healingly on his physical body. All this must go on slowly and gradually; but it is going on. Just as man has been led down into all those qualities by the luciferic impulse, so will he be led up out of them by the Christ-Impulse. Selfishness will be transmuted into selflessness, lying into truthfulness, the danger of error into absolute certainty and true judgment. Illness will become the foundation for more complete health; the illness we have overcome will be the germs of greater good-health; and when we have gradually learnt to understand death in such a way that the Death at Golgotha works as a prototype of death in our own soul, death will then have lost its sting. Man will then know why from time to time he must lay aside his physical covering, in order to rise higher and higher in the course of his embodiments. In particular, the Christ-Impulse brought with it the impulse to make good something connected with man's knowledge and observation, with his knowledge of the world.

We have said that man has become more entangled in matter, less perfect in his three bodies than he would have been if there had been no luciferic influence; this caused him to be possessed by an urge to sink more deeply into material existence, to soak himself more completely in mere matter. This refers more especially to his knowledge, but even that only came about slowly and gradually. Man did not, as soon as the luciferic influence made itself felt, immediately sink down so deeply as to close all the doors into the spiritual world behind him. He still remained, for a long time, in connection with the spiritual world from which he grew forth and with which he would have remained in connection with his whole being, if the luciferic influence had not come. He long remained a participator in it; for a long time he continued to feel that his finer, more spiritual instincts were guided by the threads from the divine-spiritual world. For a long time he still continued to feel that his impulse was not a merely human one, it was as though the Gods had been at work behind it. That was more particularly the case in more ancient times. Man was driven slowly into matter and he thus gradually lost the consciousness of the divine.

Those spiritual movements and world-conceptions of humanity which had knowledge of these things, have also hinted at this. They said: There was once upon a time an age in which man was driven some way into material existence by the luciferic influence—though not so far as to prevent the divine influence from still having a powerful effect upon him. In the early ages of man's development this was known as the ‘Golden Age.’ This is no fanciful conception: ‘Golden Age’ is simply the expression used by those men of olden times who still had an inkling that there had been something like a primeval age of humanity, such as has just been described. This Golden Age, known to Eastern philosophy as Krita-Yuga, lasted, comparatively speaking, much longer than the Ages we still have to describe. After the Golden Age came the so-called ‘Silver Age.’ Man was pushed further down into the physical world; but the process went on slowly and gradually. Even then the doors of the spiritual world were not yet completely closed. Man still had intense moments in which, in a dreamy sort of clairvoyance, he saw the Gods at work behind his instincts. Man could no longer be called a companion of the Gods in this Silver Age, but he could still perceive them standing behind him. Eastern philosophy calls this age, Treta-Yuga. Then came an Age which extends into our own Post-Atlantean period; its last stragglers extended into historical times when there still were people gifted with the old dream-like, twilight consciousness. The consciousness of a spiritual world from which man had come forth, still existed; though only as a kind of memory remaining over from former incarnations. It was just as when we now remember our own childhood, our youth, and our present age. In childhood we had direct experience of our childish happenings; in like manner man still experienced in Treta Yuga in a direct way, the impulse of a divine-spiritual world. In the Age following on that, known as the ‘Bronze Age,’ what man had was more like a memory. It might be compared with the way a grown man contemplates his childhood; for we say: ‘I experienced my childhood; it was not a dream!’ That was like the state of things in the Third Age. Men then knew: ‘In earlier ages we had experience of communion with the Gods; that is now nothing but a memory!’ I have explained at some length how in the Old-Indian period of civilisation the memory of the Atlantean epoch worked retrospectively, thus enabling the holy Rishis to reveal their great divine teachings. This Bronze Age is known in Eastern philosophy as Dvapara-Yuga. That is followed by an Age in which all memory of the divine-spiritual world is lost, when man, with his knowledge and perception, is entirely given up to the physical world. That age began about the year 3101 B.C. In Eastern philosophy it is known as Kali-Yuga, ‘the dark age’; because man had then lost all connection with the spiritual world and become completely one with the physical world. I wish expressly to note that I am now using these expressions for smaller divisions of time, but they can also be applied to larger spans. We are now speaking of the divisions of time corresponding to the smaller ages, and we make Kali-Yuga begin, as does Indian philosophy, with the year 3101 before our era. The Age was then being prepared in which men were taught only to see that which conceals the divine-spiritual world as by a veil, by a covering; when they only perceived the external physical. At the beginning of Kali-Yuga there were still many who could either see or recollect the divine-spiritual world, but for normal humanity the time set in when they could only see the physical world of nature.

That was the descent of man to Kali-Yuga. It was the time of deepest descent. Into that had to come the impulse for re-ascent. That is why this impulse, the Christ-Impulse, had to come during the Kali-Yuga, in the “dark” age.

This Christ-Impulse was prepared for by the religion of Jahve or Jehovah; for this religion taught man how little reliance could be placed on his former decisions. During the time which extended from the old Lemurian epoch to the Revelation on Mount Sinai, we have that age in which man was given the power to choose good or evil, while at the same time he became liable to err in judging between them, and became more and more likely to bring on earth that which is known as ‘Sin.’ Sin then ate its way into the life of the earth. Man became ‘like to the Gods,’ but in return for this he acquired qualities which were in nowise ripe for the likeness to God. What had to happen then? First of all man had to be shown what the Godhead expected from him if he was to become a self-conscious ego. This was shown to him by the announcement made on Mount Sinai in the ‘Ten Commandments.’ The people then heard proclaimed through Moses: ‘The good and evil thou hast already developed are not sufficient. I will show thee how these Commandments should sound if thou hadst not descended, and in return for thy defective qualities, received the power of judging between good and evil.’ The Decalogue, the law, given to man on Sinai, was given to man as he had then become; so that out of the spiritual worlds man heard sounding forth that which was right, in contrast to what he had insufficiently developed. The Ten Commandments stand forth as a law of iron, as a torch, showing man what he had not become. He had to submit himself to that law, with all he had become. Man could not at first have submitted to the Ten Commandments, because he had become lacking in decision, lacking in self-guidance. Therefore, they had to be given to him by one who was inspired,—by Moses—that is to say, they were given him from above by Divine administration. They were, however, given in such a way that they were intended for the ego. They told man how an ego must act, if it is to attain the goal of humanity.

In the lecture on The Ten Commandments of Moses (16th November, 1908) this is traced out in detail. Therein is first shown the right attitude of the ego to the spiritual worlds; this is contained in the first three Commandments. The next ones refer to man's conduct towards his fellow-men in act and deed, and the last Commandments refer to the control of his feelings and sensations. The Ten Commandments give instructions for the education of the ego. This was the preparation by means of which the ego was to learn in its most inward being how to give itself the impulse after having descended into Kali-Yuga, into the age of darkness. At first man was to be given the Law from above. The Law of one's own ego could however, only become what it was to be, when that ego takes into itself the great Prototype of Golgotha, saying: ‘If I take into my soul such thinking as was thought by the Being Who offered Himself in sacrifice on Golgotha,—if I take into myself such feelings as were felt by the Being Who offered Himself as sacrifice on Golgotha,—if I take into myself such willing as was willed by the Being Who offered Himself in sacrifice on Golgotha, then will my being come to a decision within itself to develop increasingly a likeness to God, it will then no longer have to follow the Outer Law, the Ten Commandments, but an inner impulse, its own Law.’

Thus Moses first put before mankind the Law, but Christ gave them the Prototype and the strength which the soul ought to take in, whereby to develop itself. Hence all the spiritual impulses were to be taken into the innermost of the soul, even into the ego itself; they were all to be deepened into inwardness through Christ Jesus. That could only take place if men thought as follows, and Christ Jesus radiated it forth as an impulse:—

Man has descended into the dark age, into Kali-Yuga. Before that dark age men saw into the spiritual world with a dim twilight consciousness. They were then able, not merely to make use of the instruments of the physical body, but when they observed the physical world through their eyes, ears and so on, they perceived the spiritual surrounding all things, flowers, plants, stones, etc. As regards this observation of the spiritual, men were rich in those days. In the older times the spirit was bestowed on them; whereas, in the dark age, as regards the spirit they were reduced to beggary; for the spirit was no longer bestowed upon them. They had become poor in spirit. Kali-Yuga came upon them more and more, that time when men had to say to themselves: In the old days things were different, the spirit was then bestowed on men; they were able to look up into a spiritual world, they were then rich in spirit; the kingdoms of heaven were then accessible to them. Now men are pressed down into the physical world. The gates of the spiritual world are closed to human senses, and no view of the kingdoms of heaven is open to the physical body. But Christ was able to say: ‘Lay hold of the ego, where it must now be apprehended! Then will the Kingdoms of Heaven draw near to you. They will arise within your own ego. Though the spiritual light may be concealed from your eyes behind the external light which is perceptible to the senses, though spiritual sound may be concealed from your ears behind physical sound; yet, when Christ Himself shall raise you, ye shall find the Kingdoms of Heaven within you! ‘Unhappy were those who had become poor in the dark age, who had become beggars as regard the spirit. They can now become blessed, the impulse having been given through which Christ is able, from the spiritual world, from the Kingdoms of Heaven, to penetrate into the very ego or ‘ I ’ of man. Therefore, with respect to man's poverty of spirit, the highest Christian proclamation is this: ‘From henceforward, blessed are they who are beggars in spirit, who no longer receive the spirit bestowed upon them according to the old conception. Henceforth, they can be blessed if they take in the Christ-Impulse; for, through the developing of their ego, the Kingdoms of Heaven will be within them.’

Let us pass on to the etheric body, which is the builder of the physical body. What has entered that? Illness only expresses itself in the physical body. The trouble itself is first in the etheric body; that then expresses itself in a subsequent incarnation as illness in the physical body. ‘Now, however, something has entered the world,’ so Christ Jesus had to say, ‘whereby an impulse may arise within gradually to clear away the auction from the etheric body. Blessed may those now be who have an affliction attached to their etheric bodies if they take up the Christ-Impulse; for they have something within them which lifts them above the suffering and teaches them to find inner comfort, the inner paraclete, the inner comforter!’

Now what had the astral body become through the luciferic influence? It had become less perfect than before. It had been given the possibility which we have described as a good quality: of being able to be aglow for what is great and good, to feel enthusiasm for the sublime treasures of the true, the beautiful and the good. On the other hand it has to purchase this at the price of feeling sympathy or antipathy for the treasures of the earth. But a man who takes up the Christ-Impulse learns to control the astral body, which stirs his physical body to opposition to the treasures of the earth, he learns to bring it under the power of the spirit; and in so doing he becomes happy or blessed. ‘Blessed will he be who makes his astral body indifferent to the things of earth; which will thereby fall to his share. For when he is all afire for the things of earth, feeling both emotion and sympathy or antipathy for them, he casts away that which they might become to him; but when the astral body is brought under the power of the spiritual and he grows indifferent to the things of earth, the Kingdom of Earth is added as a reward.’

Let us now ascend to that which works as sentient soul within the astral body. Herein we still possess in a dim sort of way, a ruling ego, an ego which has not yet wholly emerged and hence is still developing the most egotistical passions. As long as the ego is still really within the sentient soul, it develops the most selfish egoism. The wish that others should have the same as we have is lacking. Egoism dims the sense of justice, for the ego wants everything for itself. But if the ego transmutes itself in imitation of the Christ-Impulse, it will hunger and thirst after justice for all the beings around us. ‘Blessed will be those who hunger and thirst after the feeling of justice in their sentient-soul; for they shall be satisfied. ‘They will be able to bring about conditions all over the world corresponding to the proper new spirit of justice in the depths of the soul.

Let us further ascend to the intellectual or mind soul. This principle brings about to a still greater extent the consideration of one man for another, not merely as a feeling of justice such as is produced by the sentient soul, but as compassion, a true compassion for the sorrows of others and a sharing in their joy. One who takes in the Christ-Impulse grows to feel what others feel, not only what he feels himself; he immerses himself in the ego of others and in so doing feels bliss in his intellectual or mind soul. Blessed is he who develops fellow-feeling; for only by feeling himself within the soul of others, does he stimulate them to feel themselves in him. He will receive the sympathy of others when he himself radiates fellow-feeling for them. ‘Blessed are those who feel with others, for others shall feel with them.’

You will now see how, having gone a little further in our study of these connections, we are able to understand in a different way from the very depths of the nature and being of man, those words in St. Matthew's Gospel, generally known as the Sermon on the Mount. Each sentence of the Sermon on the Mount relates to one of the nine principles of man. In the next lectures we will go further into this. The Sermon on the Mount must become transparent to our spiritual eyes as that deed of Christ Jesus by means of which he turned what was contained in the Old Law of Moses into something quite inward, an inner impulse enabling man's ego to become active, as it must become in all the nine principles of man for if the ego takes up the Christ-Impulse, it affects all these.

Thus we see the profound truth of what I have already indicated here once before: that in Kali-Yuga Christ made the ego of man capable of discovering something in the physical world which can lead man up into the spiritual world, into the Kingdoms of Heaven. Christ has made the ego of man a participator in the spiritual world. On ancient Saturn the physical body was taken straight out of the spiritual world. It was still within that world, because the physical body was at that time much more spiritual and was not aware that it could separate from the spiritual worlds. The etheric body was added on the Sun and the astral body on the Moon, but only on the earth was it made possible—through the development of the ego—to set oneself free from the divine-spiritual. In consequence of this, as the ego must be led back again, God had to descend to the physical plane, and on that plane show man how to find the way back to the Kingdoms of Heaven.

A most important event was brought about through the Christ-Impulse. Now just ask yourselves this question: Did all those living at the time when Christ Jesus worked on earth know that such an important event was taking place? Just reflect that Tacitus—the great historian, mentions the Christians as an almost unknown sect. A hundred years after Christ he only mentions the Christians as a sect living in a side-street in Rome, whose teacher was a certain Jesus; they are simply mentioned as living there. For a long time after the Christ-Event many people in Rome believed Jesus was a contemporary of theirs, as though he had only just appeared. In short, important events can take place in the evolution of man, without contemporaries noticing that anything has happened. The most important things may come about and pass unobserved if people do not cultivate the understanding for them. They would then miss the experience, and as far as that was concerned they would be barren and dried up. ‘Change your hearts! The Kingdoms of Heaven have approached!’ That was the proclamation of John the Baptist and of Christ Jesus Himself. They hinted to those who had ears to hear that something most important was occurring. That nothing is known in the world of an important happening is no proof that it is not taking place. Those whose business it is to-day to point out the signs of the times, are aware of what is taking place to-day. They must point to an occurrence which, though not one of the most cogent, is yet important. True it is that just in our own time something of infinite significance is developing. Just as John pointed to Christ, and Christ Himself pointed to the approach of the Kingdoms of Heaven, to the ego; so must we to-day point to another important event.

Christ descended once to the earth in a body of flesh; He spent the first years of our era on earth, in the flesh. In accordance with the wise guidance of our world-evolution it is not ordained that men should again see Christ in the flesh, as a physically incarnated man; nor is it necessary that they should. For Christ will not return in the flesh. Why? Because what we call the dark age—the Kali-Yuga—was completed at the end of the nineteenth century, and because with the twentieth century began a new age, in which men must prepare to develop new capacities, those faculties which were lost in the dark age. Slowly and gradually these are being prepared. These faculties will develop so far that single individuals will be here who will possess them as natural tendencies. These faculties will be seen in a certain number of persons, particularly between the years of 1930 and 1940, and by means of these a number of people will enter into new relation with the Christ.

This indicates an important point in human development. Spiritual Science is here to open the understanding of men to these new faculties which will be developed in the world of men. Anthroposophy has not come into the world because a few people are in sympathy with it and would like to make it further known; it has come because it is wanted if people wish to understand what will take place in the first half of this century. For it is only by means of that which Spiritual Science can give mankind that it will become capable of understanding this. When people become capable of perceiving in the spirit that which will then occur, they will also be incapable of confusing that event with their mistaken representations. For as materialism spreads further, it will extend even to the spiritual conception of the world where it will have a particularly evil influence. In that realm it might tend to prevent men from understanding what should be spiritually comprehended. What should really be grasped in the spirit they will seek in the world of matter. Because we are to enter into a new relation to Christ in the course of the first half of our century, it must over and over again be emphasised during the next decades and until the event occurs, that false Messiahs, false Christs will arise who will knock at the doors of those who are only able to be materialists in the realms of Spiritual Science, and can only imagine a new relation to Christ if they see Him before them in the flesh. A number of false Messiahs will turn this to their own use, saying: ‘Christ has reappeared in the flesh!’

Anthroposophical wisdom has the duty of preparing the relation which can be attained during the first half of our century by purely human capacities. The responsibility of the Anthroposophical effort becomes ever greater and greater, for it has to prepare for a coming event which will only be understood if Anthroposophy makes its way into the souls of men and thus becomes fruitful for the further development of humanity. The alternative is that men will neglect to accept and make use of the instrument of Spiritual Science, through which this Event can be understood; in that case it will pass humanity by uncomprehended. For if men so entirely reject Spiritual Science that nothing of it should remain, they would not know that this event is there or would interpret it wrongly. The fruit of this event would then be lost to the future of humanity, and man would thus be thrust down into dreadful misery.

I have thus hinted at a new relation to the Christ which is germinating in the souls of men and which they will be able to evolve in a comparatively near future.

To-day we must again refer to the old and important teaching contained in the Beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount, and, starting from that we shall carry forward our vision to our own times and the near future.

The Sermon on the Mount as reported in St. Matthew's Gospel can only be understood if we grasp the whole spirit of it, in the sense of the development of all humanity. Let us briefly recapitulate what was put before us in the last lecture: that the old dim clairvoyance of man had gradually receded and that the capacities and knowledge of man had to be more and more limited to the physical plane, and that for this reason the connection of man with the Spiritual worlds had to be based on an event on the physical plane. If we recollect all this we shall understand that the Divine-Spiritual Being whom we have characterised as the Christ, had to embody Himself in a physical body at the very time when the perception of man had become limited to the physical plane. This was done so that the most essential part of the life of this Divine-Spiritual Being could be described in words and expressions used on the physical plane. The important point is not so much that few persons (in comparison to the whole of humanity) were able to have a bodily perception and observation of Christ Jesus, as that what is related of Him is a presentation of events on the physical plane. For it cannot be said that the earlier records of other Divinities related in words belonging to the physical plane refer to actual physical events. In everything that we are told of these, words can only be useful as indications;—for what occurred with respect to these Divinities can only be understood by one able to apply the words to the events of higher planes. The life of Christ Jesus can however, be understood by anyone who can apply what is told to the events of the physical plane. In reference to this we can say: The Christ-Being descended into a physical embodiment, into complete life in a physical body. That had to be because human capacities at that time were of this nature, and because the human ego as such had to become conscious of its being if evolution was to go forward in the right way.

We have seen that the most important of the older intermediaries for the event of Golgotha was Zarathustra or Zoroaster. In order that he might become what he was to be, at that time a body had to be prepared, containing an extract, as it were, of what had been given to a whole people, a people who had to give to humanity the qualities which can only be communicated through physical inheritance. We have seen that the most essential thing in the old Hebrew people was the duty of developing in successive generations, from father to son, from son to grandson, and so on, those qualities which had to be inherited in a continually increased form, till they finally appear in their highest and best form in the body which was derived by inheritance from Abraham and Solomon and which was finally occupied by Zarathustra. We have a great deal more to learn through our studies before we shall be able to understand the full mission of the old Hebrew people, in all its details. This necessitates that we should gradually learn how the qualities needed for the body of Jesus were more and more ennobled in the course of the descent from generation to generation. It had to be made as perfect as possible for the fulfilment of its world-historical mission, for that mission could only be carried out if all that pertained to the body of the Solomonian Jesus Being was as perfect as possible in itself as regards those qualities. Now we know that the four principles of man's nature, the physical body, etheric body, astral body and ego, are active in every human body; and that in time to come Spirit-self, Life-Spirit and Spirit-man, will also be active therein. This must not be taken to mean that the activity of the astral body will suddenly cease, or that the later is not being prepared in the earlier. In a certain respect everything that follows later must be prepared in what went before. Of course man cannot of his own strength so work upon himself to-day that the Life-Spirit, for instance, could come to particular expression within him; but in him work other Divine Spiritual Beings, with an activity which may be called an activity of the Life Spirit. This applies also to Spirit-man. Therefore, all the seven principles of the body, or rather of the human organism of Jesus of Nazareth had to be ennobled, as regards the qualities which had to be dealt with. This required very special preparation. This preparation may to-day give us an inkling of the secrets concealed in the development of humanity and of the earth.

The germs of the perfection in the body of Jesus of Nazareth had to be prepared long before. We have seen how during the first period (extending from Abraham to Solomon or David), the generations were worked upon just as a man's physical body is worked upon during the time between his birth and the change of teeth. This work was so performed by the forces active behind evolution, that at a certain time there was actually an ancestor of Jesus who already contained within him, capacities as nearly perfect as possible, and these re-appeared in the body which became the vehicle of Zarathustra. Thus in an ancestor of Jesus the foundations of a right development of all the seven principles of man's nature were present. In other words: If we trace back the ancestry of Jesus, we must find one ancestor who possessed the germ of the seven-principled-nature—although not so perfectly developed as in the body of Jesus of Nazareth—yet present in rudimentary form. Although not expressed in their external tradition, the secret doctrine of the ancient Hebrews was cognisant of this fact. It was aware that once upon a time a man lived of whom it must be said that the seven principles worked in him in such a way that they had to be described as quite peculiarly worthy of note! The Initiates of the old Hebrew secret doctrine actually pointed to an ancestor of Jesus of Nazareth, knowing that be possessed these seven human principles in a quite remarkable degree!

They called the ego of this ancestor, ‘Itiel,’ to indicate that in him the ego must have possessed that force (for Itiel signifies something like ‘possessor of force’). He must have possessed that dauntlessness, which would, when carried down through the generations, become the proper ego-vehicle for the high being who was to reappear in Jesus of Nazareth. In the same way they called the astral body of this ancestor ‘Lemuel’; that would more or less describe an astral body so far developed that it does not merely feel the law, the conformity to law, outside itself, but feels that it bears the law within it. They called the etheric body of this ancestor ‘Ben Jage’; that would signify an etheric body as far as possible transmuted within, which having attained a certain perfection, is able to take habits into itself. The physical body of this ancestor they called ‘Agur’, because the physical activity, the capacity of this ancestor on the physical plane, consisted in his having assimilated everything brought over from old tradition; for ‘Agur’ signified a collector. ‘All the ancient conceptions of the world, all the old traditions, were gathered together in Jesus; and the rudiments of this were already developed in this ancestor. What worked as Spirit-Man in this ancestor, was called, (because the Divine-Spiritual Beings gave loving attention to their work on the rudiments of Spirit-Man,) ‘Jedidjah’, a word signifying something like ‘the darling of the Gods’. What worked in this ancestor as Buddhi or Life-Spirit, was called ‘Kohelet’; for it was said: ‘In this ancestor there must have worked a Life-Spirit which was able to act as a teacher to the whole nation, so that its content could be poured out to them all’. And finally, Manas or Spirit-self in this ancestor was known by the word, ‘Salomo’, which signifies inner balance, for they said: Such a Spirit-self must have had within it the rudiments of being inwardly whole, of being in a state of balance within. Thus this ancestor, who is usually known only by the name of Schelomo, Schleimo, or Solomon, has three principal names: Jedidjah, Kohelet, Salomo; and four additional names: Agur, Ben Jage, Lemuel and Itiel, for these names signify the four coverings, whereas the three first names signify the divine inner part. The secret doctrine of the old Hebrews had seven names for this person. If later, people were dissatisfied with Solomon, as was the case even among certain sects of the Jews themselves (whether rightly or wrongly cannot be gone into here), this can easily be accounted for. In Solomon there were great, important rudiments, which were to be further propagated for a distinct purpose. Now an individual human being, at a definite stage of his evolution, does not always display in his outer life the germs of the qualities he is to bequeath to his descendants; perhaps for the very reason that such great forces are within him he may even be more subject to failure in this direction. The lack of morality to be observed in Solomon is not in contradiction to what the old Hebrew secret doctrine saw in him; on the contrary it would explain his failings.

Thus the old Jewish secret doctrine looks back to an ancestor of Jesus, fully conscious of his significance for the whole mission of their people. All that was but rudimentary in this personality, was propagated by descent through the generations, and appeared in its essence when it was required and made use of in the course of the world's history. This may give us an inkling of the secrets, regulated by laws, which lie behind the evolution of mankind.

Now if the mission of the old Hebrew people pre-eminently consisted in the fact that through the physical inheritance certain capacities are, as it were, instilled into their blood, capacities to be given to all mankind from the Spiritual world through this people, then, at the time of the appearance of John the Baptist and Jesus of Nazareth, humanity ought to have been sufficiently advanced to be able, through these ennobled capacities, to reascend into the Spiritual world; in other words it ought to have been able to take up the Christ-Impulse. I have told you all this to show what preparations were necessary in order, in the development of physical humanity, to create a sheath capable of enclosing the Christ-Being.

We can now perhaps feel and realise the intrinsic nature of the progress in the mission of humanity brought about by the descent of the Divine mission into physical matter, in the Jewish people. We can feel how the Divine was carried down into the depths of physical matter, in order that from this turning-point man might reascend so much the higher, from the now finer physical into the Spiritual. The ascent into the Spiritual had to begin from that time. For this however, an impulse had to be given to mankind which should to some degree place all that man can desire or expect from evolution into that deepest centre in man's being which can be designated as the ego. Through Christ, the impulse was to penetrate to the depths of man's inner being, out of the body of Christ there spoke such an impulse as called to the deepest part of man's nature. What was to be made different by this impulse?

Before this impulse came, all that brought happiness to men, that gave them bliss and made them feel ‘filled with the Divine,’ came to them in a sense from without; they expected it to come thence. If we do not merely study the history of the world from external documents but according to what the Spiritual records can give us, we must say that we look back to ancient times, when man ascended to the realm of Spiritual beings through arousing in himself,—whether by normal means or not,—the gift of clairvoyance. But this vision awoke in a dreamy way; Divine-Spiritual forces worked in it and the ego was suppressed. Man was more or less outside his ego. Although in his normal state he was not so conscious of his ego as he became later, yet he was then in the age when the spirit worked within him and carried him outside himself, without his ego into the Spiritual world. He yielded himself completely, either to the external Divine-Spiritual or to the Divine-Spiritual within his soul. But during that time of ecstasy, of enchantment, he was not in any sense conscious of his condition. The time was still to come when man would realise the relation to the spirit in his own ego, and thence permeate the deepest core of his being with the consciousness: I belong to a Divine-Spiritual kingdom. That could only come about through Christ pouring His own Being into the earth-being, so that the ego could permeate itself with what was the pattern of Christ. That enabled man to say: ‘I am now in a Spiritual realm, in the Kingdoms of Heaven with my ego, ‘whereas man formerly entered the Kingdoms of Heaven while outside it. ‘The Kingdom of Heaven has drawn near, was the teaching given. For this the minds of men had to be changed, they were no longer to believe that they could only enter the Spiritual world in a state of ecstasy, for they would be able to find their relation to the Kingdoms of Heaven in full ego-consciousness.

We can see that this had to take place, for the old clairvoyant condition had, in the course of thousands of years, grown worse and worse. Whereas in olden times man, when in ecstasy ascended to the good Divine-Spiritual powers, that which still remained of the old ecstatic condition at the time of the founding of Christianity, had become such that when man was now outside himself he did not ascend to the good but to the evil spiritual powers. That is the great difference between the two states of development. In ancient times when man dreamily rose into the Spiritual worlds by the suppression of his ego—‘mediumistically’ as we should say to-day—he was then in the company of the good Spiritual beings. This had become different at the time when man was to find the way into the Kingdom of Heaven with his ego; when he now sought or brought about the states of ecstasy, they are described as being states of ‘obsession,’ which brought him into connection with evil hostile spiritual powers. So at the time of the appearance of Christ Jesus the following had to be proclaimed as a healing doctrine: ‘It is not right for you to try without your ego to get into a condition in which you can become aware of the Spiritual worlds; the right way now is to seek contact with the Divine-Spiritual worlds in the deepest core of your being!’

This is essentially the teaching contained in the Sermon on the Mount of St. Matthew's Gospel. We might re-write it thus: In olden times there was a dream-like clairvoyance. In this man was, in ecstasy, transported into the Spiritual worlds. At that time he was rich in Spiritual life; he was no beggar in the spirit as he became when Christianity was founded. When in olden times he was filled with the spirit, with what the Greeks called ‘Pneuma’, he was transported into the Spiritual worlds. Christ could not now say: ‘Blessed or God-filled are those who in their ecstatic states become rich in the spirit, for these are the very ones who will certainly be healed’! He now had to proclaim: ‘The time has come when blessed or God-filled are those who have become beggars in the spirit!’ That means, those who can no longer rise into ecstatic dreamy clairvoyant conditions, but who are obliged to seek the Kingdom of Heaven within, from out of their ego.

Formerly, when man was placed amidst the sorrows and sufferings of earth, he only had to call forth within him the state in which he could be transported into the Divine-Spiritual worlds. He was not obliged to endure suffering, for when it came to him, he could at once seek the state in which he was filled with the spirit, God-filled, and in that state—severed from his ego—he could find balm for the sorrows and sufferings of earth. Christ Jesus had to proclaim that this time too was now past and over. Those would now be blessed, or God-filled, who, while they could no longer look outside for help for their sufferings, might through the strengthening of their own ego seek within themselves the power to find the Paraclete in their inner being. ‘Blessed (God-filled) are they who do not banish sorrow by ecstatically raising themselves to the Divinity, but who endure it, developing the power of the ego whereby they can find within themselves the Paraclete, known later as the Holy Ghost who reveals himself through the Ego. ‘Even Buddha in his time did not recommend that sorrow should be endured, but that it should be thrown off, with all the thirst of earth. Even six hundred years before Christ Jesus, Buddha described sorrow and suffering on earth as the worst consequences of the longing for existence. Six hundred years later, in the Sermon on the Mount, Christ in the second Beatitude proclaimed that sorrow must not be done away with in that way, but must be endured, that it was a trial through which the Ego might develop the strength it can find within itself: the inner support of the Paraclete. This is literally contained in the second sentence of the Sermon on the Mount, even to the expression; Paraclete. It is only necessary to read these things in the right way. That is precisely the task of our age; we must learn, through what is given to us in Spiritual Science, to read the great scriptures of old aright, through the teachings of Spiritual Science.

A third point is this. In olden times, when men could permeate themselves with what came to them in ecstasy and which the Greeks called ‘Pneuma’ or Spirit, they were then guided instinctively in their course. All their impulses, actions, emotions and desires—in fact, all that dwells in the astral body of man—was instinctively guided, when man was able to raise himself to the good Spiritual beings. He had not yet tried from his own ego to control and purify his inner passions and desires and to bring them into balance. Now, however, the time had come—and Christ was to proclaim this—when men having tamed, purified and balanced the passions, desires and impulses of this astral body—would of themselves reach the goal for the humanity of to-day, to which we give expression by pointing to the great progress of evolution. This has often been presented to us in the following way. Man began his existence on ancient Saturn; he continued it through the Sun and Moon-existence, until on the earth the ego was added to him. Only when he becomes conscious of this ego, when he tames and balances what was added to him by the astral body on the Moon, can he really attain to the goal of the earth-mission. Those who are able to control and balance the desires in their astral body can be blessed (God-filled), for by this means they will, through themselves, discover the Earth. Thus the third sentence of the Sermon on the Mount, which as usually translated contains a meaningless word, tells us the following: Those who ‘balance’ their passions desires and emotions (not make them ‘meek’) to them shall be given—or they shall ‘inherit’—the earth.

Thus the three first sentences of the Sermon on the Mount in their worldwide significance, place before us the following summary.

The first sentence of the Sermon on the Mount refers to the physical body, and informs us that it was formerly possible, in the olden times of humanity through a particular training of the physical body to perceive the Spiritual in clairvoyant dreamy conditions, but the physical body has now become poor as regards the inner possession of the spirit.

As regards the etheric body, through which man becomes conscious of suffering—although he is first aware of it in the astral body—the indication is given that men must learn to develop in themselves a force which will enable them to find help for the suffering which is given them as a trial.

Thirdly, we come on to the astral body, concerning which we are told, that through the taming and purifying of his impulses and passions man will find in his inner being the strength which will enable him to become a real ego, one to whom the earth mission is then allotted as his portion.

When we now ascend to the Ego, we know that this works in the sentient soul, intellectual soul and spiritual soul. The ego works in the sentient soul, that is: it spiritualised it. This enables man to feel the outpouring of human brotherly love—which becomes universal through the spreading of Christianity—as righteousness: ‘hunger and thirst after the all-ruling righteousness’. The sentient soul otherwise feels only in the physical body; it must now, through Christianity, learn to feel for spiritual things: to hunger and thirst after righteousness. Those who are able to find their human centre in the ego, will, as a result of their work on themselves, satisfy the longing in their sentient soul for an all-ruling earthly righteousness. ‘Blessed are they who, through the Christ-Impulse, learn to hunger and thirst after righteousness; for they will find a strong force in their inner being whereby, because they are working for the righteousness of the world, they shall find within themselves the satisfaction of this quality.’

We now come to the intellectual soul. We have often emphasised the fact that whereas in the sentient soul the ego is as yet but dimly brooding, in the intellectual soul it begins to shine forth, later to attain full consciousness in the spiritual soul where it first becomes a pure ego. In the intellectual soul something very singular happens: the human ego—i.e., that wherein we each resemble all other men, for each of us bears the ego within him—shines forth. No matter in what part of the world we meet with our fellow-man, through the fact that an ego shines out of his intellectual soul he is a human being like ourselves. Something shines forth from our intellectual soul, and if we receive it as well as we can and carry it out into the world, we can enter into the right relation with our fellow-men. In our intellectual soul we are to develop something which we must pour forth into our surroundings and which must flow back to us again. That is why this is the only occasion in the Sermon on the Mount when the subject of the Beatitude is like the predicate, ‘Blessed (or God-filled) are they who develop love; for as they radiate forth love, it will return to them again. ‘This shows the infinite depths of such a spiritual document, for it can be understood by the very way in which the sentences are constructed, it can be understood even down to the smallest details, if gradually, year after year, one collects all that Spiritual Science can give for the understanding of man. The difference between the fifth Beatitude and the others, in all of which the subject and the predicate are different, cannot in the least be understood without knowing that the fifth Beatitude points directly to the intellectual soul, or Mind-soul. We will now ascend to the work of the ego on the Spiritual or Consciousness soul. Here at last the ego is pure and unalloyed; only here can it become conscious of itself. This is beautifully expressed in the Sermon on the Mount, in the verse which expresses that only in the ego can the divine substance in man come to life. ‘Blessed are they, who are pure in blood or in heart (which is the expression of the ego), who allow nothing to enter there but the pure ego-nature; for they will recognise God therein, they will perceive God!’

The Sermon on the Mount now rises to that which refers to the Spirit-Self, Life-Spirit, and Spirit-Man. Here man can no longer work through himself alone; at this stage of his evolution be must appeal to the divine Spiritual worlds, which, through Christ, have been brought into connection with the earth; he must look up to the renewed divine spiritual worlds. Whereas in former times strife and disharmony entered humanity through the ego-nature—as indeed it still does to-day—peace will be poured out over the earth through the Christ-Impulse. And those who take up the Christ-Impulse will become the founders of peace in that part of human nature which in the future will gradually develop as Spirit-Self; they will thus in a new sense become the sons of God, in that they will bring down the spirit from the Spiritual Realms—‘Blessed are they who bring peace—or harmony into the world; for they shall thereby be the sons of God!’ Thus must they be called, who are really filled inwardly with a spirit self which is to bring peace and harmony on the earth.

Now, we must clearly understand, that of all that develops on the earth, some part survives into later ages. This, in a certain respect, is hostile to what implants itself as a germ in later ages. What the Christ-Impulse brings, enters into the whole evolution of humanity—it does not, however, enter all at once, but rather in such a way that something still remains from the earlier stages of evolution. It is therefore necessary that those who first understand this Christ-Impulse should stand firm on the basis thereof, quite permeated inwardly with its force. If they are inwardly permeated by the force that proceeds from the seed that has come from the Christ and stand firm on that foundation, they will then be blessed in a new sense; in this they develop the force of firmness. ‘Blessed are they who stand under the new order, who stand under Christ and who suffer persecution from that which remains over from the old order!’ And the last of the beatitudes of the Sermon on the Mount points straight to the Christ-Impulse itself, for He says to the Apostles: ‘Blessed are ye, who are especially called to carry the Name of Christ out into the world!’

Thus we see how the Sermon on the Mount directs Christianity from out of the great teachings of cosmology and humanity, while everywhere directing attention to the force within, the centre point of which must be found in the Ego itself. The time has now come when this must be understood, and understood in such a way that people must not believe themselves to be true Christians because they try to find Christianity in some dogmatic collateral signification or side issue, but rather those are true Christians who understand the meaning of the text: ‘Change the disposition of your souls, for the kingdoms of heaven have descended even into the ego!’ Those persons can be called ‘Christians’ in the true sense who realise that this is the essential point, and who further understand that this had to be put at the beginning of our era in a different way from that in which it must be given out now! It would be a mistaken idea of Christianity to believe that what was considered Christian in the words spoken two thousand years ago has not since then undergone further development. Christianity would stand for nothing but a dead stream of culture. But it is a living one! It is developing, and will continue to develop! Just as it is true that Christianity had to start from the time when man had descended right down to the physical plane, when a Divine Being became man in a physical human body, so it is also true that at our present time man must learn to rouse himself to the understanding of Christianity and of the Christ Being Itself, from a Higher Spiritual Standpoint!—What does this mean?

Just as it is true that the old dreamy clairvoyant forces had been lost, so that at the time of Christ those persons who were filled ‘with God’ in the old sense could no longer be described as ‘blessed,’ but only such as formed the kingdoms of Heaven within them, it is also true that the ego of man will reascend into the Spiritual world in full consciousness and will develop ever new forces and capacities. Just as it is true that the time of the Baptist was the time when those capacities which led down to the physical plane had reached a crisis in humanity, it is also true that we have now again reached an important time. What is called the ‘Dark Age,’ which began in the year 3101 B.C. and reached its height at the time of the Incarnation, came to an end at the close of the 19th Century. The Kali-Yuga was concluded in 1899! We are now approaching a time when new forces and capacities will be developed by man and these will be distinctly apparent in the last half of our present century. These new forces and capacities must be understood. Particularly those persons who have studied and understood Anthroposophy must realise that such an uplifting of humanity towards the Spiritual has again become possible. For during the important times that will follow after 1930, single individuals will find it possible to develop higher forces in their nature, whereby what we know as the etheric body will become visible. A certain number of people will develop etheric clairvoyant powers.

One of two things will then be possible, either the materialism of our age will continue, in which case when these forces are manifested men will fail to understand that they lead into the Spiritual worlds; they will then be wrongly understood and so be crushed. Should that occur, would not people, speaking in a materialistic sense at the end of the year 1940, be justified in saying: ‘Now see what fantastic prophets those were who spoke at the beginning of the 20th century! Nothing of what they foretold has been fulfilled.’ But if the new capacities have not appeared, that would not contradict what may be said now, and must indeed be said; it would only prove that people without the right understanding have choked them in the bud and that they have missed something which humanity must possess if its further evolution is not to collapse into dissolution and decay. That is the great responsibility of Anthroposophy. Anthroposophy has sprung from a knowledge of the necessity for an advanced preparation for something which will come, but which might be overlooked and suppressed. Anthroposophy has the task of bringing about an understanding of the Spiritual forces developing in man. If these forces are suppressed humanity will sink deeper into the mire of materialism.

On the other hand, Anthroposophy may be successful in spreading through its teachings an understanding of the fact that man must rise into the Spiritual worlds; it may succeed in lifting mankind out of the materialistic frame of mind. For this, however, something must now come forth from the anthroposophical movement, something that was prepared centuries ago, but which must now, in our own age, evolve to a particular and important turning-point.

The centuries that lie behind us were fitted for cultivating to an increasing extent the materialistic ideas of man. Under this materialistic influence it was easy to believe that the Christ-Impulse and the Christ-Being would come into touch with the world by incarnating once again—or perhaps oftener—in a physical, material body. Instead of acquiring clear notions of the fact that men must grow up as regards their capacities so that a great number, and finally all, might experience the Event of Damascus—that is: might experience the Christ in the atmosphere around the earth, and see Him in His etheric body—it was believed that Christ would descend again in a physical body, for the materialistic satisfaction of those who refuse to believe in the spirit, and who will not believe what St. Paul saw in the Event of Damascus: that Christ is in the Earth-atmosphere and that He is always there! ‘I am with you always, even unto the end of the world!’ Those who develop the methods of clairvoyant vision into the Spiritual world will find what, could not be found there in the pre-Christian time: the Christ in His etheric body. That is the important progress in the evolution of humanity; before the first half of our century has elapsed, those faculties by means of which the event of Damascus becomes a personal experience, will develop naturally as it were, and men will see the Christ in His etheric body. He will not descend into flesh, but man will ascend when he has acquired understanding of the spirit.

That is the manner of Christ's return in our own age, for in this 20th century men must work their way up out of the Kali-Yuga into a century of clairvoyance. They must ascend to Christ by means of the capacities which they will develop; they must ascend to the Christ where He is and where He can be seen, at first sight, by those in the vanguard, those who through the teachings of Anthroposophy can be guided to what in the course of the next 2,500 years will be experienced to a greater or less degree by every human soul.

The great event which awaits mankind in the near future is, that those who raise themselves—with full Ego-consciousness—to the etheric vision of Christ in His etheric body, will be ‘God-filled’ or blessed. For this, however, the materialistic mind must be thoroughly overcome, and men must acquire understanding of Spiritual doctrine and Spiritual life.

In bygone centuries it was, comparatively speaking, not harmful for men continually to return to the materialistic conception of the so-called return of Christ. Particularly at the small times of transition, when that which has now reached its climax in a materialistic sense was being prepared for, as, for instance, in France in 1137, when a Messiah was expected, and was awaited by many in wide circles. A Messiah did actually appear then, but he led the people astray, because the belief in him had arisen through their materialistic ideas, for it was believed the Messiah would come in the flesh. Thirty years before, another Messiah appeared in Spain; there, too, it had been foretold that a Messiah would come in the flesh. At about the same time another new Messiah appeared in North Africa; there, too, it had been prophesied that one would come from the East, and appear in the flesh. Throughout the whole time during which the materialistic mind was being prepared, in that the highest things were being grasped by it, there appeared such prophets whose coming was foretold. Such phenomena are well known to those who understand the times, and they continued into the 17th century, when the approaching appearance of a sort of Christ, a Messiah, was proclaimed far and wide. This again found acceptance by the materialistically religious minds of men. Based on these prophecies, a false Messiah was thus able to arise in Smyrna, in 1667, bearing the name of Shabbathoi Zewi. He wrote letters and epistles at that time from Smyrna, which, although they contained nothing but false matter, being written in a materialistic sense, shook the world as greatly as had once the Epistles of St. Paul. In the 17th century there went forth from Smyrna the proclamation that in that city there dwelt a Messiah in the flesh! And Shabbathoi Zewi, the ‘just man of God’ was so considered, that it was said the whole world-reckoning would now take on another form. ‘He will pass through the world with his faithful disciples and all must believe in him who are willing to see the truth, who wish to see Christ in the flesh!’ It was preached to the people that his birthday must be held as the greatest Festival on Earth! Whole hosts of people undertook pilgrimages there—not only from Asia and Africa, but also from Poland, Russia, Spain, France, and so on; great numbers of persons traveled as pilgrims to Smyrna to see Shabbathoi Zewi, who was supposed to be Christ in the flesh, until the thing grew beyond all limits and he was arrested by order of the Sultan! This, said the people, was but the fulfilment of the prophesy, for it was foretold he would be in prison for nine months! The Sultan could think of no other method than to have him brought forth and stripped, saying: ‘We will see whether thou be a Messiah, a Christ; I shall have thee shot!’ And so it was finally proved that Shabbathoi Zewi was only an ordinary Ba Rabbi after all!

Such impersonations are the result of the materialistic thinking of our times, and there will be more of the kind, for the materialistic mind will make use of men.

What I am now saying will often and often be said during the next few decades: that the capacities of man will develop up to seeing the Etheric vision of Christ, in the reality of which they can then believe, just as firmly as did St. Paul himself! This is the immediate future of man, and this it is for which Spiritual Science must prepare him. But on account of the materialistic thoughts of men the time will also come when strong temptations will arise; false Messiahs will appear in the flesh. It will then be proved whether Anthroposophists have rightly understood Anthroposophy. Those who have not will be so adversely affected by the materialistic mind that they will succumb to the temptation. Although they believe in Christ they will believe in an incarnated Christ. But those who have gained understanding of true Spiritual life will realise that the ‘second Coming of Christ’ in our century, that greatest of Events, signifies that He comes to man in the Spirit, because mankind in the course of its development will have developed up to the Spiritual, will have evolved up towards Christ! Therefore in our century, the Sermon on the Mount undergoes a complete modification. It must be entirely re-modeled, so to speak. Those persons will be God-filled (or blessed) who, through having been beggars for the spirit in their past incarnations, have now advanced so far as to be able to ascend to that part of the kingdom of Heaven where Christ will appear before their spiritual sight!

Every single sentence of the Sermon on the Mount in its present form might be reconstructed in this sense. Christianity will only re-conquer its ancient documents when they are grasped in a living sense, when it is realised that they are living, not dead writings. When the time comes—and that time is here now—when materialistical research extends to the Gospel and takes away the tradition of Christ, then, as we have often stated, Spiritual research will give back the Gospels to mankind! This coincidence will not be accidental, it will come of necessity. It may be that in our own time—during which the materialistic mind having gone as far as it can, will reach a crisis—certain unfortunate persons having, through their mistaken philosophy been led into curious ideas, may conclude that effects may be produced without causes, and that there never was an historical Jesus-Christ. This should be comprehensible to Anthroposophists. They ought, indeed, to feel a certain pity for those poor men who, notwithstanding their philosophy, are so entangled in materialistic thought that they have altogether lost the faculty of imagining the existence of spirit, and who, consequently, keep flying in the face of the saying, that there is no effect without a cause. Christianity as an effect could not have existed without a cause! Anthroposophy, speaking from spiritual investigation, will tell men of Christ in the form in which He now lives, if they will but listen with an understanding mind. The understanding must be sufficiently matured to recognise definitely that the Christ will reappear, but as a reality higher than a physical one, a reality to which one can only look up, after first having acquired a sense and an understanding for spiritual life.

Inscribe in your hearts that Anthroposophy must be a preparation for the great epoch of humanity which is immediately ahead of us. Do not in this look upon it as matter of the first importance whether the souls now incarnated are still incarnated in physical bodies when Christ appears in the manner described, or whether they will then have already passed through the Portal and stand in the life between death and rebirth. For that which takes place in the 20th century is not of importance to the physical world alone, but to all the worlds with which man is connected. Just as those persons who will be in incarnation between 1930 and 1950 will experience the vision of the Etheric Christ, so a mighty revolution will also take place in the world in which man lives between death and rebirth. Just as Christ after the Mystery of Golgotha descended into the underworld, so will the effects of the Event which will occur for the inhabitants of the physical plane, rise into the spiritual plane. Those people who have not been prepared for this by Spiritual Science will miss the great and mighty Event, which will also take place in the Spiritual worlds in which man then lives. Those persons will have to wait for a new incarnation to experience on earth what makes them capable of receiving the new Christ-Impulse. For it is on earth that we must acquire the capacity of grasping all the Christ-Impulses, no matter how high they may lead us! Not in vain has man been placed in the physical world; for it is here we must acquire that which leads us to an understanding of the Christ-Impulse! For all the souls now living, Anthroposophy is the preparation for the Christ-Event that awaits us in the near future. This preparation is necessary. Other events will follow this Christ Event in the course of the development of mankind. It will therefore be a great omission, if those who have the opportunity of raising themselves during this century to the Christ-Event, do not take advantage of it.

Only if we look upon Anthroposophy in this way and inscribe it in our souls, can we realise what it means to each human soul and what it ought to become to all humanity.