The Rudolf Steiner Archive

As an introduction, I should like to tell you two short stories. The first (I shall omit certain details) is as follows:—

Once upon a time there lived two boys who from earliest childhood had been close friends. One of them was outstandingly gifted, learned with extraordinary facility and as he grew older gave every promise of attaining high academic honours. The other boy was much less talented. His friend who was deeply attached to him, taught and helped him in every way, but he was incapable of learning very much. This, however, did not greatly affect his circumstances as a small inheritance provided for his living. The more gifted boy grew to adolescence but when he was on the point of getting a University Degree, he died. As in the country where these young men lived, it was customary to marry and start a family very early in life, it devolved upon the other, less gifted youth to provide for the family of the friend who had died. This he did, but before long his own means were exhausted. He said to himself: “As my friend's talents have proved so transient, my mundane possessions too, will probably soon have disappeared; I must set about making a livelihood.” This he did by becoming a travelling merchant. Once when he was sitting in front of a house in a strange neighbourhood, a gigantic man came and sat down beside him. He gave the impression of not having eaten anything for days and seemed to be famished with hunger. The other took compassion on him and ordered a meal to be brought. It was very quickly consumed, to the astonishment of the merchant, but as the one meal was not enough to appease the other's hunger, he ordered a second. The big man ate this just as ravenously and then said that to satisfy his hunger he must have a whole ham and a number of cakes. He devoured all these and, after his enormous meal, seemed satisfied. This incident led to friendship between the big man and the little man, and they set out together on their travels. Very soon, however, the little man found the big man something of a burden and told him that he could well dispense with his company. The big man, however, assured the little man of his friendship, saying that man now felt a wish to question the big man about his life, and the latter replied: “I have no house on the earth, no boat on the sea; by day I live in the village, by night in the town” To begin with, the little man had no notion of what this meant. Then it happened that they must cross a wide river. Their boat capsised and sank, and both fell into the water. The big man extricated himself very quickly, carried the little man to a safe spot, brought up the boat and put the little man into it then he dived again into the water and brought up all the goods, even the tiniest articles, which the little man was intending to trade. This naturally aroused in the little man the greatest respect for the other, and as friends they had many talks together, sometimes on profound subjects. Thus on one occasion the little man said to the big man: “Oh! if only one could rise consciously to heaven; if only it were possible to know what is going on up there!” Thereupon the big man answered him: “Maybe you would like to soar into the air” ... and when the little man had assented he very soon became aware of fatigue and fell asleep. When he woke up the stars were above him, like pollen in the cup of a lotus-flower in heaven; he was even able to pluck one of these flowers, hiding it in his sleeve. Then he saw a great ship approaching, drawn and steered by dragons In it was a great vessel of water, and the big man who was with the little man in the clouds, showed him how the water could be poured out and allowed to trickle down to the earth. Then the little man realised that he was able to act as do the Spirits of the Air, when they let the rain pour down upon the earth. He begged the big man to pour the water in the vessel on his native soil and to let him go down again to the earth by a rope. The big man said to him: “Now you have rescued me; I am a son of the Thunder-God, and my duty has been to bestow rain and other blessings upon the earth. Because for a time I did not perform my duty properly, I was obliged to lead on earth the life of which you know.” Then he let the little man go down again to the earth. The latter was now in his home once more, having with him the star he had gathered in the meadow of heaven This he placed upon the table and it filled the whole room with miraculous light, strong enough even to read by. During the day it looked like a simple meteor-stone, but at night it was radiant and luminous. This continued until one night the little man's wife, rather a vain woman, was combing her hair by its light. This displeased the star-stone and it shrank to a tiny size. One day the wife had a strange impulse to swallow the stone! Thereupon there came to the little man a vision of the big man whom he knew so intimately, and the latter said to him: ”Owing to what has happened now, I can reach a particular stage of development Now I shall be able to come to the earth for a time as a son of the Thunder-God. Your wife will bear me as your son.” And he was actually born as the son of the little man. A peculiarity of this child was that in the dark he shone like a star, so that people called him the “Star Child.” He lived on, and although as he grew older his radiance waned, it still revealed itself in the form of his great talents Very soon he became a man of high importance in life....

This is the one story. You will wonder why I am telling you these tales, but before answering I will tell you a second, very similar one.

Once upon a time there lived a man who, in our country, might rank as a “Councillor” or “Governor.” He and his family lived in a spacious, very beautiful house. But after a time, strange things began to happen there. By day, and especially by night, nobody in it could get any rest; they were always being knocked, pinched and dragged about in all directions; objects were hurled at them and the house swarmed with ghosts. Because of this the family left the house and went to another, leaving a servant behind as caretaker; but after a few days he died. They sent a second and then a third, both of whom also died They then decided to leave the house without any servant at all. A young sceptic now turned up, a youth who was preparing for an examination, and he wanted to take the house for his studies. The Councillor warned him that he would probably never come out alive, and that at any rate terrible things happened to everyone in the house. But the young man replied: “I have written a treatise on the very subject of the “Unreality of Spirits,” proving that they do not exist. I could write a great many more and nobody who has written about such matters is in the least afraid of what may happen in such a house!” So the Councillor was prevailed upon to let him have the house. The young man took with him masses of books to study and sat down to begin his work. It was not long, however, before one of his ears was pinched, then the other; then he was attacked somewhere else and molested in all sorts of ways. When he went to bed the trouble began in real earnest! He could get no rest the whole night long and, sceptic though he was, he began to be dreadfully frightened. Nevertheless, he refused to give way to terror and held out valiantly. On account of his power of endurance, the spectral figures who were wont to bend over his books and play pranks by closing his eyes when he wanted to read, and so on, revealed themselves to him. This heartened the brave young man considerably, but it was a really ghastly state of affairs. Things went on like this until his good-heartedness enabled him to set up a kind of friendship with two spirit-beings who were always annoying and molesting him. After a time he discovered that the spirit-beings could not read but would like to be able to do so. And so it came about that he established a kind of school for the spirits, teaching them how to copy out all sorts of things from his books. Not only were the spirits extremely grateful for this, but they had actually learnt something. Spirit-intercourse was now quite a pastime to the young man and the spirits who lived in the house had, moreover, profited greatly through him. The time came for his examination; as well as having had a great deal of amusement, he had imbibed so much knowledge that he was hopeful of passing, but the intrigues of an enemy caused the rumour that he had cheated in his written papers. As in that country the rules about such matters were extremely strict and because to begin with the rumor was believed, he was sent to prison and retained there for some time with nothing to eat. Finally, however, one of his spirit-friends brought food to him. She then began to bring the other spirits with her and they provided for all his needs. Thus there grew up between the young man and one of his spirit-friends a friendship much greater even than it had been before. And after his innocence had been established and he had been set free, although he had formerly “proved the unreality of spirits,” his spirit-friend was now such a reality to him that he resolved to marry her! She answered, however, that situated as she was, she could not marry, for she belonged to the spiritual worlds, but that if he would go to a certain priest-magician and ask his advice, there would be a way out of the dilemma. So he went to the priest-magician who gave him a charm, saying that if, when a funeral was passing, his spirit-friend would go to the coffin and swallow this charm, she could then become a human being and marry him. Not long afterwards a funeral was actually taking place. The spirit-friend approached the procession, swallowed the charm and then and there disappeared into the coffin. People were astounded in the highest degree when the figure they had seen disappeared into the coffin (for when she had swallowed the charm she became visible). They therefore put the coffin on the ground, opened it, and found that it contained no body at all! The burial could not, therefore, take place. But after a few days the spirit-friend came to the young man, told him that she had now become a human being—the one who had been in the coffin—and that they could now enter into wedlock. And so the two whose acquaintance had begun in the haunted house, now lived on in the companionship of marriage.

If you give some thought to these two stories, you will have to admit that however close a search you may make in the literature accessible to Europeans, right back to the time when there was universal belief in ghosts, no such stories will be found. You will find indications of how the spirit-world plays into the world of men—but stories of this kind, giving the feeling that there could be no more natural and spontaneous way of depicting the interplay between the spirit-world and the human world, simply do not exist in European literature. They are quite unique. A curious feature strikes us when we study their composition. In the first story we are told, for instance, that a star is born as the son of a human being and goes on living as a man upon the earth. To the kind of consciousness underlying the first story, it is a natural matter of course that beings exist in the stars, beings who are the primordial kith and kin of men, and that those who walk the earth as men may, in reality, be embodied Star-beings. This underlies the first story as a natural and accepted fact. In the second, a human being who enters into actual wedlock with another, first came to know her in the spiritual world; she then descends into the physical world and her life continues there. The trend of the two stories is identical. This sense of “togetherness” with the spiritual world—not in the form in which it is expressed in European sagas and legends, but on the totally different ground of which we shall presently speak—will nowhere be found, in the same peculiar form, in the literature of Europe—except it were to be imitated by some modern writer.

And now remind yourselves of something I said in one of the last public lectures.¹ In the way that is possible in such a lecture, I spoke about the beginnings of Earth-evolution and of the genesis of man in connection with Earth-evolution. I said that the process of the evolution of humanity began at a comparatively late stage. We ourselves speak of the evolution of man and of mankind in the following way. When a human being is to enter physical existence on the earth, the innermost kernel or core of his being works within a certain field of activity, moulding the finer organs, the brain, and the more delicate bodily tissues. Thus there is in man a kernel of spirit-and-soul which passes over from earlier incarnations, envelops itself in what comes from the forefathers and is carried through the generations by the process of physical heredity. In a human being who appears on the Earth, a union takes place between what comes from earlier incarnations and what is carried through the generations, enveloping the kernel of spirit-and-soul which passes from incarnation to incarnation. I said that this form of the evolutionary process began only during the Atlantean epoch, when conditions rendering such a development possible arose for the first time on the Earth. I indicated that this particular process of evolution had been preceded by another, in which the human being did not pass into earthly existence by way of union between man and woman and then the descent of the soul which passes through the several incarnations. In very early periods of Earth-evolution, the human being originated in an altogether different way. The reason for this is that not until the Post-Atlantean period did the Earth actually resemble its present configuration. In the latest Atlantean period the Earth did not really differ, in essentials, from what it is at present; but the early Atlantean epoch was fundamentally different from the later, and anyone who ignores the fact that at that time entirely other conditions prevailed, has a totally false conception of the configuration of the Earth. After having passed through the periods of Old Saturn, Old Sun and Old Moon, the Earth was not only a living organism, but also a spiritual being, a great organism permeated by spirit-and-soul. We do not get back to an inanimate ball of gas as intimated by the Kant-Laplace theory, but to the Earth as a huge, living being. In that ancient time the evolutionary process of humanity was such that fecundation did not take place between man and woman, but between the “above” and the “below”—in this sense, that the Earth with its forces of life, provided the element of substance, the more material element—whereas the spiritual principle came from above like rain which fertilises the soil of meadows, and united with the more material principle. It was by this method of fecundation that the first human beings came into existence. This was indicated in the public lecture and can be established on logical grounds, in accordance with the principles of natural existence. Then the Earth separated out from itself a solid mass, like a kind of bony system, and it was impossible thereafter for it to provide, as before, the substance for fertilisation. The process had now to take place within the human organism. Instead of the fertilisation “from above,” fertilisation now came about by way of the two sexes, and the process which had formerly been set in train by interaction between the “above” and the “below,” now passed over into the operations of heredity and into those of reincarnation which are bound up with heredity. Thus what had taken place on the surface of the Earth in earlier times, had now passed into the being of man. Human beings came into existence and were able to inherit or carry over from one incarnation to the next, those qualities which had formerly been received directly from the spiritual world but were now transmitted by heredity. As was said in the public lecture, the very first human beings were bi-sexual, then there was differentiation into the male and the female, and then a gradual development into the conditions prevailing at present; what in earlier times had operated more from above—the female element—passed into the woman, and what had operated more in the earthly element, passed over in the stream of heredity into the male.

From intimations given through the course of years concerning the evolution of humanity, you will have realised that these conditions prevailed right on into the Atlantean epoch; it was not until the second half of the Atlantean epoch that the evolutionary process assumed, more or less, its present form. The Atlantean peoples on the Earth were really living in the aftermath of still earlier conditions, when the substantiality of the Earth was fertilised by the spirituality of the Heavens. The Atlantean peoples saw the birth of a human being as a direct embodiment of the Spiritual, a descent of the Spiritual into the Material. As we today see the rain falling from heaven and moistening the Earth, so did the people of Atlantis see human beings coming down from heavenly heights, uniting with substance provided by the Earth and then wandering over its surface. Conditions changed only by slow degrees; in certain regions the preparatory stages of conditions as they are at present, had long since been in existence, whereas in other regions where the old conditions had persisted, the Atlantean peoples knew that the human being exists, to begin with, in the spiritual world and then seeks bodily substance in order to become part of Earth-humanity. Thus when a man in Atlantean times saw his fellow-men moving about the Earth, he said to himself: “The form I see there derives from the Earth, but what is within it derives from the same world to which the stars belong: the human being has descended from the worlds of the Stars!” ... It sounds like a fairy-tale echoing from olden time ... Man comes down from heavenly heights, surrounds and clothes himself with earthly substance. The Atlantean peoples knew of the interaction between the Heavens and the Earth. They knew: To begin with, man is a Spirit; then he descends, clothes himself in matter and moves about the Earth. Man was seen as a heavenly being, a being from the spiritual world. For it was known that as he moved about, he differed from the Spirits only in that he was clothed in matter. The transition from the spiritual world to the physical world was a much gentler, more delicate process. Not that the Atlantean would in any sense have denied the existence of the spiritual world ... on the contrary, he saw clearly that there was no very essential difference between physical men and the spirit beings who belong to that other world. He knew: One can communicate with a human being through signs, by employing the early rudiments of human speech ... and with the Spirits, too, for the way in which man communicates with the Spirits does not differ from the way he communicates with other men.

Naturally, only very little of this direct knowledge of man's connection with the spiritual world survived the Atlantean catastrophe. The mission of the Post-Atlantean epoch was to develop in man an understanding of Earth-existence proper, of all that can be acquired by the development of the body as a physical instrument. And so the perfectly natural communion with the spiritual world very soon ceased in the course of the Post-Atlantean epoch. But what disappeared from the normal consciousness was preserved in those periods or moments of atavistic clairvoyance when the soul withdrew more into itself. What in earlier times had been actual experience when the soul turned its gaze into the spiritual world around, was born again later on ... in the form of Imagination, Phantasy. Let us assume that in some particular people belonging to the Post-Atlantean age, the characteristics and faculties of the Atlantean epoch still survived, more strongly than in all the others. It would not, of course, be possible for such a people, in the Post-Atlantean epoch, to have experiences in the form they had taken in Atlantis. But there would certainly be something in their phantasy distinguishing it from that of new races—races which cannot really be said to be survivals of Atlantean peoples. In the leading races of the Post-Atlantean epoch there will, obviously, be less evidence of this natural communion with the spiritual world.

In a people characterised by having carried over into the Post-Atlantean epoch a constitution of soul reminiscent of the Atlantean period, the after-effects of this communion will be quite different from those working in the typical Post-Atlantean races. In the case of a people who would be regarded from the point of view of occultism as belonging, not to the progressive races, but to the “laggard” races of ancient Atlantis, it is to be expected that their phantasy, when it speaks of the connection between the world of men and the world of spirits, will express itself in a form differing altogether from the phantasy of other peoples. We can understand that the imagination of such a people might well take the form of narrating how a Star-being suddenly resolves to incarnate as the son of a human being who had rendered service to the Star. Think of the first story, where a Star-being—a son of the Thunder-God—was born as the son of the friend with whom he had for a time wandered about the Earth. The second story suggests the gentler transition . . . a human being falls in love with a spirit-being from above; such a being does not descend to human existence in the ordinary way but chooses a dead body. It is as though an Atlantean soul, accustomed to seeing human beings descend and take on earthly substance, had gone astray by choosing a body which was suitable, not for the Post-Atlantean epoch, but for that of Atlantis, when human beings were not born as they now are, but merely assumed a mantle of earthly substance. In the light of this interpretation we can perceive in such stories the aftermath of earlier conditions. As the products of a race surviving from ancient Atlantis, their trend and content do not surprise us. It is interesting that a number of similar stories has been collected by Martin Huber and published by Rütten and Loening in Frankfurt-am-Main under the title of Chinese Ghost and Love Stories.

All this indicates that what may be surmised from a study of occult science, is actual fact—although, of course, these things are now no more than tradition.

Light can be shed upon a great deal that comes our way in life, if only we have patience to study the more intimate connections of world-evolution. Men of the present day will often stand amazed at such things and will only begin to understand them when they realise that anyone who is cognisant of the more intimate connections of human evolution, accepts them as self-evident. Understanding of Spiritual Science is not furthered by pedantic demands for “logical proof”; proof, after all, is useful only to those who are willing to believe what is asserted; it is useful only to those who can believe that it is proof. Nobody need believe in it at all—and then they are spared from believing anything! Spiritual Science will be received into the souls of men because of increasing evidence that those laws of which knowledge can be acquired only along the occult path, can be applied even in the most hidden recesses of spiritual and material culture. The treasures of wisdom will come into their own when more and more people have patience enough to observe the harmony between all the facts of existence to which a spiritual conception of the world is applied, and to realise that only in this way can there be a true explanation of things which must otherwise remain incomprehensible.

Thinking of all these matters, we shall be able to say: Post-Atlantean civilisation has its particular mission. Human beings who rightly understand their times will unfold the knowledge, will-activity and qualities of heart to be acquired through the instrumentality of the body. In these domains there will be greater and greater progress—progress which, fundamentally, is connected with the phase of evolution stretching from the time of the Holy Rishis of India to the descent of the Christ-Impulse into humanity. But side by side with this there has existed much that is like “imprisoned” spiritual treasure. The people of Europe were astonished in the highest degree at the vistas of spiritual life opened up by the discoveries concerning the wisdom of India, of ancient Persia, concerning the Krishna- or Brahman-culture, or the ancient Zoroastrian culture. In the older civilisations there was, naturally, a deeper spirituality than in the products of later forms of knowledge. People in the West were dumbfounded by what German scholarship in the first half of the nineteenth century disclosed concerning these ancient civilisations, were astonished at the light shed upon the wisdom of India by Friedrich Schlegel, and, later on, upon the wisdom of Persia. These disclosures were so dumb-founding that the deep influence exercised by Oriental Philosophy upon the minds of thinkers like Schopenhauer or Eduard von Hartmann is readily understandable. There we have the first expressions of the wonder and astonishment of the West at what is contained in these ancient civilisations as a kind of “imprisoned” spirituality.

We are now confronting another epoch, in which imprisoned spirituality in a different form will be capable of throwing the West into amazement, namely, the spirituality that does not belong to the mission of Post-Atlantean humanity, but has remained as an heirloom from earlier times, concealed until our own time in the Chinese wisdom of which the West hitherto has known practically nothing. Very little will be sufficient to enable what will happen over there, to overwhelm the spiritual culture of the West—to such an extent indeed, that it might well forget its own mission, its own specific significance and task. As men live on into the future they will have to realise that from the Atlantean epoch there has survived upon our Earth, an imprisoned spiritual wisdom and knowledge greater than anything revealed by the disclosures concerning the old Brahman and Zoroastrian civilisations; this wisdom will be unleashed when the spiritual life of China emerges from its concealment. Two things will have to be realised by those who turn their eyes towards the future. From over yonder there will flow a mighty stream of spiritual life, containing, even in external details, most wonderful teachings ... although such teachings would in any case be available to those willing to penetrate into the spiritual life along the path revealed by Spiritual Science. If, however (to quote words used in a different connection by our friend M.B... . at our General Meeting) the great majority of human beings pull nightcaps over their eyes in regard to what Spiritual Science has to offer, then one day, in a form unsuited to Western mentality, spiritual treasures will pour from Chinese culture, and this portion of humanity, in their amazement, will realise that the products of such culture cannot be grasped by the pedantic thought common in the West, but only by deeper insight into the ancient Taoist culture which arose on the soil of the ancient Chinese civilisation. Spiritual Science often goes against the grain because, by its very nature, study of it will induce belief. Those who deliberately pull nightcaps over their eyes will be amazed, but on the other hand also rather relieved when, in Spiritual Science, they come across many things that have passed over into Chinese culture from Atlantean times. They will comfort themselves by saying: “There is no need to believe in that, for what history has preserved is studied simply because it is of interest!” This is the attitude of the philologists and archaeologists ... there is no need to believe in it; one can get hold of it by study and be exempt from having to “believe.” But when the wisdom casts off its fetters over yonder, it will have another effect as well: its obvious and intrinsic greatness will shock and amaze. It will pour over what mankind has acquired in Christian culture in such a way that it will have to be seen in its true perspective, studied from the right point of view. The proper approach will be to say: This spirituality existed; in bygone ages it constituted the spiritual culture of our Earth. But every epoch has its own mission, and that of Western culture is to drink at the well-springs of the spiritual reality behind world-existence, so that this spiritual reality is perceived behind the material world, behind what eyes can see and hands can grasp—as a revelation from the spiritual world. Men will have to understand that their mission now belongs to a different age and that they must stand firm on the ground prepared by Christianity!

That is the other picture. Men will joyfully receive what derives from olden times but will illumine it, vivify it with what the more recent, Post-Atlantean, Christian culture has imparted to the soul. Weaklings, however, will say: “We will accept spirituality from whatever source it may come, for all that interests us is a sensational vista of the spiritual worlds.” There may actually be neo-theosophists who will say: “The truth is not to be found through deep comprehension of the Christ-Principle; it lies in what has been preserved by the Chinese, coming to light again when they bring forth the Atlantean wisdom hidden in the deepest strata of their souls.” Europe might well be offered a new “Secret Doctrine” compiled from the truths of Chinese wisdom. This would imply that, after all, the proper model for modern theosophists is a much more ancient Theosophy which did not feel called upon to derive the founts of spiritual life from Christian Mysticism and Christian Love—nor, for the matter of that, to plagiarise—and even that very imperfectly—the wisdom of ancient India somewhat embellished by the wisdom of ancient Egypt! As for the weaklings, they will be just as eager for Chinese wisdom as for the spirituality which they think is opened up for them by the ancient or also by the “newly revealed” Indian wisdom. After all, to Europeans, India is almost as remote as China; and if people are told of revelations made possible in China owing to certain forces having been set free, this may well seem more credible to them than that anything of the kind should have transpired in Berlin.

If we ponder over these things, we shall find the true balance between joyful acceptance of what has been preserved from ancient epochs of culture and a firm footing on the soil resulting from evolution through the ages. That heed shall be paid to the importance of maintaining this balance, is and will remain the constant care of the Movement with which we identify ourselves. It is simply an untruth when here or there it is said that we are out to reject or ignore what is offered in the way of Indian spirituality, for example. It is an untruth, as every one who has taken part in our work well knows; and it would be grievous if such untruths were to take root in the world in connection with our Movement. Opinions that are at variance are easy to deal with; they soon balance themselves out. But inaccurate statements give rise to one misunderstanding after another ... for it is the peculiarity of misunderstanding that it constantly gives birth to fresh misunderstandings! With this in mind it must be our primary task to realise how far our own standpoint on the soil of Western spiritual life is justified in face of the other phases of human evolution. On the other hand, we must take care that everything we say about those other phases of evolution, about other forms of spirituality, is presented honestly and truthfully. Again and again it must be repeated and realised by Theosophists that even if much of the spiritual insight we have been able to gain, goes under, its influence will remain! No matter what transpires, our work must be full of sincerity, integrity and truthfulness. And if, in future times, all that people will be able to say of our particular work is that many a thing was improved, many another has not survived—nevertheless it was an example of the fact that occultism and earnest spiritual research can be entirely free from charlatanism or humbug, that the striving for occult knowledge can be true, genuine and sincere ... if that can be said of us, we shall really have done something to further the development of the occult life! And the fact that we would not admit anything of which in the future these things could not be said, may be accounted among our finest achievements.

• 1. 4th Jan. 1912. The Origin of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science. Not yet published in English.

We will begin the lecture today by thinking of what is implied by the word “chance.” We say that certain happenings in the world are comprehensible to us because they take their course “in accordance with law” in them we recognise certain laws, “natural laws.” Of other happenings it is said that they seem to be governed by no law; the time at which they occur, the sequence of circumstances connected with them ... all must be attributed to “chance.” Modern science, recognising only those abstract laws which it calls the “laws of Nature,” will certainly be prone, where these laws prove inapplicable, to speak of “mere chance,” of something, that is to say, in regard to which conformity to law cannot be admitted. When modern science speaks of “chance” in cases to which its laws do not apply, it really puts a ban upon any suggestion of conformity to law. Both generally and in particulars, there is hardly anything more intolerant in human life than the “scientific attitude.” I do not, of course, refer to scientific facts, for they are presented in a way which does science the very highest credit, and intolerance does not come into question here. I am speaking of the “scientific attitude” which arises on the foundation of these facts. The attitude of materialistic thought today is an example of almost the greatest intolerance to be found in history.

If in the light of Spiritual Science, we consider “chance” in relation to the life of feeling, our first question will be: How does chance befall the human being? How does it present itself to him? ... When something happens “by chance,” “fortuitously,” it seems as though a man could not possibly, out of his own thoughts—whatever they may be—ascribe any meaning, any inner conformity to law, to this “chance” event. It looks as though reason must simply let it go at that, without bothering to ascertain whether any conformity to law could possibly be attributed to it. People are usually unwilling to bring reason or intelligence to bear upon unforeseen occurrences which, as such, are apparently quite inexplicable. Where feeling is concerned, however, the attitude is very different, although this is not generally realised. Feeling does not always allow itself to be dominated by intellectual preconceptions or by the reasoning mind, but rises out of hidden depths of the soul where man is wiser than he is in his intellect and reason. Thus it may well happen that in his life of feeling a man is attracted or repelled, pleased or displeased by what his reason and intellect call “pure chance.” We will take a definite example. A schoolboy is wrestling with a sum he has to solve; he pores over it and struggles hard but still cannot get it right. After persistent efforts he solves it, to his great delight. But he says to himself: “To be quite certain that I have got it right and shall not be kept in and be given a bad mark, I must go through it all again.” So he makes up his mind that after supper he will work it all out again. Then, quite by chance, and owing to entirely unrelated circumstances, a classmate turns up at his home and asks him what solution he has reached. They compare results and find that they agree. In this way the boy is spared from an additional strain; not needing to pore over the sum any longer, he is free and can go to bed at once. Now if the father is what is called an “enlightened” man, he will say: “The other boy did not call in unexpectedly just to save my boy an hour's study which might have injured his health, but was sent by his mother to bring something I had left behind.” The father calls it “chance.” But the boy has a feeling of happiness, although he will probably not go to the length of believing that an Angel brought this school friend to him; the reaction of his feelings, at any rate will be quite different from that of his reason and intellect. The father will certainly not be inclined to accept the idea that an Angel from Heaven sent the friend to his son, yet he too will feel glad about what happened.

That is what I mean when I say that when feeling rises out of hidden depths in the life of soul, it may well be cleverer than the intellect and the reasoning mind which have to develop independence in the course of the Earth's mission, to develop in such a way that they are thrown back entirely on themselves; reason and intellect are, so to speak, “God-forsaken,” and can therefore easily fall into the error of believing that in what presents itself to them as chance, there is no Divine-Spiritual conformity to law, nor anything like it. Therefore we may say that what rises out of the depths of the soul makes us—as in this case—cleverer in our feelings than we are in our life of intellect and reason. This indicates quite clearly that Spiritual Science is right when it asserts that what lies in the depths of the soul and rises in the feelings from these depths, originates from an epoch when the human being was not thrown back entirely upon himself; that the element of sympathy or antipathy in the life of soul is something that came over from the Old Moon period. Therefore, during the course of Earth-revolution, the human being has to become as clever in his life of intellect and reason as he became in his life of feeling during the Old Moon period of evolution. Someone may say at this point: “But I have observed that feelings are by no means always clever; they can also be the very reverse!” The reason for this is that our feelings as men of Earth are influenced by the intellect which works down into the feelings. If our feelings are stupid, they have become so only because they have been influenced by the intellect. If the life of feeling had remained immune from this influence, despite the circumstances connected with incarnation and the general evolution of mankind, then the feelings would, in fact, be cleverer than the intellect and the reason.

Considered from this point of view, something of peculiar interest concerning “chance” presents itself, something that is extremely instructive. The question might indeed be raised: “Is there not also significance in the very fact that certain things can be regarded as fortuitous, accidental? Is not that in itself significant?” The question is a natural one, for it is precisely during Earth-evolution that the human being must develop intellect and reason—in other words, what is called the “normal” consciousness. At the end of Earth-evolution man should have reached the stage of perceiving law in those happenings and facts which today he considers fortuitous; they seem to him to be examples of pure “chance”; he can see in them no immediate evidence of the law manifested by happenings in Nature; their conformity to law is wholly concealed. But precisely in those things which during the Earth-evolution conceal all evidence of law, seeming to be pure chance, man will learn to perceive a deeper conformity to law; when Earth-evolution has run its course—but not until then—this law will present itself with the same inexorable “necessity” now associated with the laws of nature. If what are now called “chance” happenings appeared to be subject to the necessity of natural law, man would learn nothing from them. He would not be able to bring himself to say of some event: “I can either regard it as full of significance—or as chance!” And so because it is given into the hands of man and is a matter of his own free will whether he will apply intelligence and reason to what looks like “chance,” he learns to find his way through earthly incarnations, to permeate with reason and intelligence what seems to be subject to no rule and to be brought merely by chance: so that what cannot, by its very nature, appear to him as an evidence of rigid conformity to law, appears, finally, as evidence of spiritual law.

We are able, here, to glimpse a very wise provision in world-evolution, one which, if we grasp its significance, shows us that with extraordinary wisdom, certain things were ordained to appear as “chance.” We have therefore, ourselves to unravel the threads of the law which has, first of all, to be discovered within them. In order that for the sake of our own development, we might be taught self-knowledge and learn to weigh ourselves in the balance, it was left to our own will either to be wise or foolish, either to recognise conformity to law in so-called matters of chance, or to acknowledge only the inflexible laws of Nature. As time goes on it will be found that certain branches of science will refuse to apply anything except the abstract, laws of outer Nature and will insist upon labelling everything else as “chance.” These branches of science too, of course, represent activity in the life of soul, but if, as Goethe indicates at the end of Faust, man has turned his gaze to a higher world and has drawn nearer to what is spoken of by all true mysticism as the “Eternal Feminine,” the realm in which the “Feminine” is the symbol for the eternal laws of Nature and the sciences ... if that has come to pass, these particular branches of science will, at the end of Earth-existence, be regarded as the “Foolish Virgins.” On the other hand, Spiritual Science and what develops from it will be able to act in accordance with wisdom and law in those domains where the external sciences—the “Foolish Virgins”—are incapable of doing so. This will enable certain branches of science to be the “Wise Virgins” at the end of Earth-evolution. And the beautiful parable in the Gospel indicates what will happen to the Wise and Foolish Virgins in due time. (Matthew 25:1-13)

These things can lead us more deeply into the secrets of world-evolution; and if we connect direct observation of the outer world with what we learn from Spiritual Science, a very remarkable factor comes to light. I will ask you now to accompany me in your thoughts.

You know that during the Earth period, more and more of the content, the data of knowledge, the achievements, the experiences of the normal consciousness, will become an integral part of man's being. But all evolution proceeds slowly and by degrees, and it will occasionally happen—indeed it sometimes happens now—that something which only in the future will be normal for man, projects itself into the life of abstract reason and intellect, into the domain of the various branches of natural science; something not derived from the normal consciousness but connected with higher forms of consciousness projects itself into life. It is naturally veiled from the normal consciousness, but it points, nevertheless, to the deeper backgrounds of existence. Hence it is to be expected that whenever there is a projection of something which transcends the normal consciousness, it will also, strangely enough, be too striking to be lightly put down to “chance.” In other words: As long as a man lives among his fellows with his normal consciousness only, he can speak lightly of “chance.” As long as in mutual dealings among human beings there is no question of any element other than reason and intellect playing into their words and actions, so long will it be possible to speak glibly of “chance.” For then, everything in their intercourse with one another and in external life which does not appear to be subject to law, will look so much like chance that it will be difficult to realise that even in what is, apparently, quite fortuitous, there is a connection regulated by law. But suppose something comes into our earthly life which cuts across the ordinary form of intercourse between human beings, based as it is, merely upon intellect and reason—something which indicates a great deal more! So that you may see what I mean, I want to quote a special case which is to be regarded merely as an example but from which a great deal may be learnt if it is viewed in the light of Spiritual Science. It is an unpleasant, disagreeable case, but one from which we can learn, as in an experiment, what is actually in operation.

In a certain place it happened that a clergyman had alienated a woman's affection from her husband. He had had a kind of love-affair with this woman, causing the husband deep grief. In the same place there lived two men, friends of each other, who were devoted to the clergyman, not merely in their intellectual life, but in their hearts and feelings. They were in his power, in the sense that his influence worked not only through the life of intellect and reason but also through the religious services and rites, through the element of spiritual life in religion. That the rites in this case had not produced any very good effect, is not the point here; the point is the method adopted by the two men and the fact that the clergyman was their spiritual pastor ... The two friends finally decided to do the clergyman a good turn and they consulted together as to how to get rid of the husband. The case has ugly features about it because the spiritual element is mingled with egoistic, human interests, bringing the whole thing near to the region of black magic. The two friends agreed to murder the husband, and actually did so. Thus they both incurred guilt, not merely by their intellectual decision but also because they had come under the sway of a psychological influence which affected the whole parish. We have therefore a curious case of human connections in which not only reason and intellect are operating but also something lying behind reason and intellect—because the clergyman, being what he was, was able to work with means connected with the spiritual life. What is to be expected, in the light of the principles of Spiritual Science known to us? Because events are causes and, as such, bring consequences, we can expect to find something else happening as a result of what then took place. In most occurrences connected merely with the operations of the reason and intellect, you will find many “chance” happenings, and you will speak of them light-heartedly as such, if you know nothing of Spiritual Science. But it will not be possible to speak of “chance” when there is definite evidence of a psychic influence having been involved in the causes of certain happenings. Here were two friends who had co-operated in the murder. In such a case, karma may be expected to work in a very definite way and all the circumstances oblige us to think of something more than “chance.” Something very special must have been at work, for in this case there is evidence of an influence which might be termed “grey” or “black” magic. And what did, in fact, happen? The two murderers fell ill unaccountably, each with a different illness, and both died within the same hour. Those who insist upon speaking of “chance” will naturally want to do so here too; but those less determined to attribute everything to chance will try to reflect a little more deeply. What has been said in connection with this striking example will be confirmed in many ways if you are willing to probe thoroughly into incidents suggesting the interplay of something more than belongs specifically to the Earth-mission and Earth-consciousness; in this case, something rooted behind the sphere of external existence is in operation, indicating by the peculiar course of events, “abnormal” conditions—as common parlance would express it. But those who observe events from the standpoint of Spiritual Science will say: Here is a direct indication that because there is something different in the actual causes, the karmic course taken by the consequences of those causes will be strikingly significant.

Thus when we know of the power of the Supersensible behind the world of sense, the very way in which the external facts present themselves is an indication that such happenings differ from those in which there is no suggestion of any interplay of the Supersensible. Ordinary science would do well to investigate matters other than the pointless subjects which are dragged to light nowadays and which Friedrich Theodor Vischer—in some respects a very shrewd writer—ridiculed in the following way. He said: There was once a learned scholar who went to Goethe's house and burrowed in all the dust that had been accumulating for years, examining every scrap of paper still lying in the wastepaper baskets; then he searched in all the corners, turned over the dirty rubbish heaps, and finally produced a treatise on “The Connection between Frau Geheimrat von Goethe's Chilblains and the symbolical characters in the Second Part of Faust!” That is a rather radical example but in the catalogues of the most learned publications, similar things are to be found. It would be well if external science, instead of occupying itself with such matters as Vischer had in his mind, were to turn to happenings like the one quoted, which provide striking evidence that occurrences attributed to “chance” but indicating the existence of psychical elements, clearly hint at meaning. The same thing applies, of course, to cases where no psychical factor is in evidence and which may therefore lightly be put down to “chance,” only then it is not so easy to perceive the meaning, and spiritual observation is required to discern the presence of law. And so if we study life, in what confronts us as “chance,” as an antithesis to law, we can see the clash of two worlds, literally the clash of two worlds.

What do I mean by this?

Man has his Earth-mission to fulfil, that is to say, he has to develop and elaborate what is now called the “normal” consciousness. A wise World-Order has made it possible for many happenings to appear to him as chance; it therefore rests with his free will, whether or not he will recognise in them the presence of law. But several currents, not only one, are always in operation. Everywhere there is an inflow of the Spiritual, the Spiritual of which man, too, is part. The Spiritual would have been operating in an occurrence of the kind described above, even if the central figure had not been a clergyman; but in that case his own life of soul would not have been implicated to anything like the same extent.

This episode provides a clear illustration of the operation of another element, side by side with reason and intellect. Both elements play continually into life. Do not imagine for a moment that people who claim to be “Monists,” in other words, materialists, have emancipated themselves altogether from the Spiritual, or that they “believe” in nothing at all, as they pretend. Monism is nothing but belief—belief, moreover, which obscures the Spiritual. What is all important is to see through the illusion, the maya. Human prejudices being what they are, it is, of course, difficult always to see through maya; when people are deeply imbedded in maya it is by no means easy to see through it. Those who look at history today from the standpoint of materialism, may say: “The course of evolution is such that on account of certain purely materialistic contrasts in the social life of man, some kind of collapse is inevitable, and out of this collapse a new order of society will grow.” This is now being taken for granted in the domain of “historical materialism.” It has been prophesied that the clash between classes and ranks will result in a collapse of the social order, and that a new order of society will arise from the ruins. A materialist who speaks in this sense will certainly be ready to admit that he believes in nothing, but bases his judgment upon historical facts; and he will refer with a kind of inner satisfaction, even with glee, to “queer fellows” who spoke of an “Apocalypse,” a “kingdom of a thousand years,” a “millenium,” of a different shaping of the future brought about by the spiritual worlds! He will look down upon them as eccentrics. But it never once enters his head that he is merely accepting another belief, substituting materialistic belief for belief in the Spiritual. Those who are seekers after truth, however, must see through such things and emancipate themselves from maya.

Within us there is a clash of two worlds: one is connected merely with the operations of intellect and reason, resulting from the mission of the Earth as such; the other is connected with spiritual happenings which even in their apparent fortuitousness, speak an eloquent language (as in the instance given and in innumerable other cases).

What is it, then, that can help us, while adhering to the purpose and mission of Earth-existence, to seek for the working of law in “chance,” recognising the wisdom with which world-evolution has made it possible for certain things to appear as “chance,” in order that when we ourselves become a little wiser, we shall wish to discover the operation of law in them? Without exonerating the weaknesses of the times, let us face the facts clearly.

With dauntless scientific daring, men of the present age place their reliance upon the laws of Nature and are not afraid to bring the facts and happenings of Nature into the framework of these laws. In this respect men are truly courageous And why? It may sound harsh but in a certain sense it is true to say that they are courageous because after that there is nothing more to do! No special courage is needed to recognise natural laws or to anticipate laws where external phenomena themselves speak so forcibly. In these days, as a matter of fact, there would be an inclination to pay greater respect to those who are bold enough to deny natural laws than to those who recognise them If someone were to say: “People maintain that natural law exists, but after all, it, too, may well be only “chance ” ... this might evoke greater respect because it would be a radical and audacious step to admit the possibility of chance in the sphere of natural law. Nietzsche was one who came very near to the point of regarding everything as chance. Again, someone might say: “Even if hitherto the sun has risen every morning, that might likewise be a matter of chance; the daily sunrise may be regarded as chance as justifiably as other happenings.” Such a statement might be forcible and audacious—but it would be false! In their recognition of natural laws operating in chemical and physical processes men are undoubtedly courageous—the courage is certainly there ... but it is cheap! The facts of Nature do not readily lend themselves to being regarded as chance. Courage evaporates in the face of things generally designated as “chance,” Just where it is most needed and when man ought to say to himself: “Although the happenings confronting me here seem to group themselves together quite haphazardly, I shall try to find a deeper meaning and purpose in them!” To see meaning and purpose in external chance means that the outer facts are being confronted with a strength of soul which also endures in the face of seemingly quite fortuitous happenings. The modern weavings of phantasy in regard to chance are the outcome of inner weakness, because men do not trust themselves to recognise law in the things which seem to be fortuitous. It is really cowardice on the part of science to accept the factor of chance and to be chary of introducing law into what presents itself as disordered chaos simply because law does not make itself immediately apparent. Hence the science of today which really lacks courage and is willing only to concern itself with natural laws, must be counteracted by the forcible and courageous science of the Spirit which makes the soul strong enough to perceive law and order in apparently fortuitous happenings. This is the side of Spiritual Science which must make the human being strong enough not merely to recognise law where the external circumstances themselves compel him to be courageous, but where he must call upon all his inner forces and let them speak with the same compelling power with which Nature happenings speak to him. Nature confronts the human being as a finished work. Within Nature and by the side of Nature, “chance” presents itself. Man himself is involved in this “chance” and much of what he calls his destiny is rooted in the laws underlying it. What is it, then, that is needed? We will now try to answer this question.

Something must take place of which the exoteric world has absolutely no idea. What is needed is an invigoration of the impulse which has led to the scientific method and attitude of today—an invigoration which cannot possibly be drawn from the domain of science alone. External science must receive an impulse deriving from spiritual research. For since external science allows itself to be coerced into accepting natural laws, it will be incapable of unfolding the courage that is necessary for the perception of spiritual law in the realm of the seemingly fortuitous. Spiritual Science must constitute a new impulse which calls for the steeling of courage in the souls of men, an impulse which leads to something absolutely new in the world, even though this amounts merely to a new understanding of what has already been imparted to mankind but remains more or less unconscious; from our time onwards men must become conscious of it. The need for a new impulse is everywhere apparent—even to those who resist it. They themselves realise the need quite clearly but they often proceed in a very strange way. They do not directly admit it, but lacking the courage to adopt the attitude of which we have spoken, they are willing, strangely enough, to be reconciled to all sorts of philosophical opinions concerning the spiritual world which make some slight compromise with the prevailing scientific mentality. Here and there you will find that commendable “tolerance” is extended to teachings concerning a spiritual world although it is not difficult to attribute this tolerance to likes and predilections which have a habit of persisting in sincere and scientifically-minded people ... but you may be quite sure that somewhere or other there will be exceptions. Those who think they have an unconditional right to judge, may say: “Yes, it is possible to come to terms with advocates of idealistic philosophy when they base their acceptance of a spiritual world upon reason.” But when they hear about Spiritual Science or Theosophy, these people adopt a curious attitude and act very strangely, for it makes them uneasy! They cannot altogether account for it, but one thing they know, namely, that they do not want to have anything to do with this kind of thing! On that point they are unyielding and then they are not quite so tolerant; they abuse Spiritual Science, say that it is fantastic and has no reasoned foundations. Even those who from superior heights occasionally extend tolerance to other forms of idealistic thought, adopt an attitude to Spiritual Science which almost confounds the saying of Goethe: “The little fellows never notice the devil, even when he has them by the collar!” ... for Theosophy seems to them to be the very embodiment of the devil. They do not usually say as much, but that is how things are.

There has lately been a striking example of this among our own ranks; attention may be drawn to it for it is mentioned in the current German periodicals. For his Doctorate at a northern University, one of our members submitted a thesis on “The Relation of the Ego to Thinking.” If the man in question had been in the position in which I was lucky enough to be when I wrote my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity—which was before I was presenting, under the name of “Theosophy,” the world-conception I now hold—nobody would have any idea, any “false” idea, that this thesis on the relation of the Ego to Thinking has any connection with Theosophy; for there is absolutely nothing about Theosophy in it, any more than there is in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity, or in my Truth and Science. People had no inkling of what was behind these two works and from time to time remarkably favourable opinions were expressed. I can give another example too. One day, because of my publications on Goethe, I was commissioned to write a chapter on Goethe's relation to natural science. The manuscript lay in the hands of the editor for a long time and the work did not appear. In those days it was practically a foregone conclusion that this particular section would have been trusted to me and not one of the persons concerned had any doubt about it. But you see, I had begun to use the word “Theosophy” and at the time I actually held an official position in the Theosophical Movement. The treatise was returned to me as “unusable”! You can see what was going on behind the scenes then, and also in the present case. If our friend had not been a theosophist, nobody would have failed to recognise that here was a logical, dialectical thesis on The Relation of the Ego to Thinking ... but the university town where this episode took place is not very big. The writer was known to be a theosophist and so the professors had no use for his work. As the professors themselves happened also to be engaged in experimental psychology, their attitude was: We recognise law only where external compulsion holds sway. If any body recognises law where there is no external compulsion, as is the case in the relation of the Ego to Thinking, his thesis is rejected as a matter of course! And so the thesis was turned down. But something else transpired. The thesis is written in a northern language with which very few people are conversant, and it was sent to an old German professor who “by chance”—I say this advisedly—understands this language. He gave his verdict quite objectively and it was an extremely favourable one.

I mention these incidents—there are many others as well so that you may know how things are, and form your own judgments. Among theosophists too there are people who are ready to admit: Here or there spiritual teaching is to be found ... although they ought to realise that it is not a question of looking for a really new impulse “here or there,” but in Spiritual Science itself. The impulses leading to progress in the world can only flourish when they are grasped in their full force. The human being, too, must lay hold of all the forces within him if he is to realise that apparent fortuity in the world is permeated with meaning and divine purpose. This is the impulse that must be given by Spiritual Science. Men must recognise that in the course of human evolution a point was once reached which must now be understood in a new sense, and in full consciousness. Significant allusion is made to it in the First Chapter of the Gospel of St. Mark, in the words: “The time is fulfilled and the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand; know yourselves, pay heed to the new message.” And then, a few verses further on, a remarkable statement occurs concerning Christ Jesus.¹

In our Movement it is not a question of advocating orthodoxy or dogma but of indicating, in the evolutionary process of mankind, the coming of the impulse which leads to the strengthening of those inner forces whereby the human “ I ” attains self-knowledge, learning also to behold itself in the world and to draw into its own realm of law, what otherwise appears as “blind chance.” Why is it that the phenomena of Nature give no suggestion of chance? Why does man speak of law in the phenomena of Nature? It is for this reason. After the expiration of the Saturn-, Sun- and Moon-periods of evolution, the Exusiai, the “Spirits of Form,” the “Spirits of Revelation,” began their operations; and the manifested laws of Nature are not abstract laws but, in a spiritual sense, the Deeds of the Exusiai, of the Spirits of Form! When man observes the course of Nature-happenings he beholds, in the laws of Nature, the Deeds of the Exusiai. But his courage has failed. And where the Exusiai are not articulate, where they do not palpably indicate what they have laid into the facts and happenings of Nature, man has no longer any inkling that there, too, the Spiritual is in operation, in the shape of Law. But he must strive to reach the stage where he speaks of those happenings which today he still ascribes to “chance,” as the Exusiai speak in the facts of Nature. Human courage has broken down. How does man speak of destiny, of destiny in humanity? He speaks just like the grammarians who have eyes only for the words and are not interested in the connections between the words, thinking, often enough, that there is no active, living power within them. Man must learn not only to see connective purpose in the facts of Nature, in the Deeds of the Exusiai, but out of an inner impulse he must learn to speak of events in the life of humanity as though the Exusiai were being made manifest in what today seems to he pure chance. In order that this might be, there came One Who spoke very differently from those who are ignorant of what lies behind apparently fortuitous happenings. The One Who came, spoke not as the grammarians but as the Exusiai speak out of the facts of Nature. Thus did Christ speak out of the mouth of Jesus! The Gospel indicates this in a wonderful way in that to the abstract words: “And they were amazed at His teaching” ... it immediately adds: “For He taught as the Exusiai teach!” Where do the Exusiai teach? In the facts of Nature! And with this same Nature-necessity, Christ spoke out of the mouth of Jesus concerning those realms of existence over which the laws of Nature seem to exercise no sway.

Such is the impulse that must enter into men. Then, in the “chance” happenings of today they will find the courage to recognise the kingdom of spiritual law and gradually to learn to speak of it as the Exusiai, the Spirits of Form, speak in the facts of Nature.

The great Easter-Impulse given to humanity consisted in this: There dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth the Power of a Being Who spoke with the same inner necessity with which the laws of Nature speak in the facts of Nature, from the mineral kingdom of Earth, up and beyond the realm of the clouds, to the very Realm of the stars. Thus did Christ speak in Jesus of Nazareth! And when man is able to fire his courage with this impulse he will recognise conformity to law in all the facts of world-existence, in the realm of Nature and also in the realm of the Spirit, where “chance” is thought to operate. There must come to men—free from all preconceived thoughts—a new understanding of where the might of the Christ-Impulse lies, and of the heights to which the Christ-Impulse can raise them.

With such thoughts we pass towards the Festival held as a memorial that this Impulse was vouchsafed to mankind. Much of what has been said in this lecture may well serve as a kind of Easter Meditation, and you will then find that such thoughts can help to promote the true mood of soul in which to celebrate the Festival.

• 1. See: The Gospel of St. Mark, by Rudolf Steiner.

During the last few weeks, a number of friends from Germany have been with me on a visit to a field of theosophical work abroad—to Helsingfors, in Finland. A visit of this kind to a far-off field of work always brings a realisation of the unity of theosophical life all over the globe and also of its deep roots in the culture of the present day. It meant a great deal to me when our friends in Finland expressed the wish that I should speak to them about the venerable Finnish epic, “Kalewala.”¹ As this wish was conveyed to me some time ago, I was able to occupy myself from the vantage-point of occultism, with this remarkable poem of the Finns—who are themselves, in many respects, a unique people. And this brought to the fore once again, things of which I have spoken on other occasions, here and also elsewhere. A very definite experience comes to us when, independently of everything men have hitherto known concerning the spiritual worlds and have, in their own way, expressed in words, we ourselves strive for deeper insight into those worlds and man's relationship to them, and ask: How are we to understand what is contained in the many folk-traditions that have been preserved through the centuries? How are we to apply to these recorded traditions the knowledge we have acquired concerning the super-sensible world? Although their language differs from that in which they have to be presented today, biblical and other records clearly based upon occult foundations, are expressions, issuing from ancient times and from manifold periods of human evolution, of wisdom and knowledge which it is possible for us to rediscover today. These ancient records present a new aspect and seem to be imbued with a new power when we realise that in and from those same worlds to which we aspire along the path to spiritual knowledge and to Initiation, great revelations have been given to the world in different epochs and in multifarious ways.

We may well feel that the venerable Finnish epic, “Kalewala,” has a special and unique occult significance. My own experience was very vivid and definite. This Finnish epic has been translated into every European language but it differs fundamentally and significantly from all other epic poems; no comparison with any of them is possible.

When my book Theosophy first appeared many years ago, independent observation of the spiritual world had led me to “member” the human soul into three: Sentient Soul, Mind or Intellectual Soul, Consciousness or Spiritual Soul. Knowledge of the threefold soul was acquired purely through occult research and occult observation directed to the spiritual world quite independently of any tradition. Occult research was the only source consulted. And now, because our friends in the Finnish Section desired me to speak of the occult meaning of the Kalewala, it was necessary to make the poem the subject of spiritual investigation.

It has been emphasised repeatedly that human consciousness and the life of soul were not always as they are today. In primeval times of the evolution of mankind our present mode of perception and thinking, our present relationship to the external world, simply did not exist; in those ancient times the human being was endowed with a natural, innate clairvoyance. Turning our gaze to past epochs in the evolutionary process, we come to a period starting about the year 600 B.C. when man's life of soul began to assume the form and character which were subsequently to lead to the much more abstract, scientific mode of thinking; before that time, vestiges and remains of the old clairvoyance, or memories of it at least, persisted among certain peoples for a very long time, among others for not so long. When we look back into the development of the peoples, we find in every case that consciousness as it is at present, developed only by very gradual stages. In very ancient times, normal human consciousness was imbued with a certain form of clairvoyance: and it was during the period of twilight denoting the disappearance of the old clairvoyance and the first beginnings of “modern” consciousness that the National Epics, the Folk-Epics came to birth.

It would, of course, have been absolutely impossible for men of primeval times to know anything about the threefoldness represented by Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul. But they possessed genuine clairvoyance, although it was dim and dream-like, lacking the light of intellect and reason in their present form. Before the dawning of the consciousness we know today, there were conditions, midway as it were between our waking and sleeping states, in which living memories arose of entirely different circumstances of life, when the relation of one human being to another was determined, not by anything like consciousness as it is at present, but by the old clairvoyance. And in their great Folk-Epics the peoples depicted the experiences which arose within them during the period when the old clairvoyance was dying away and present-day consciousness was beginning to dawn.

The materialist says that man's life of soul has unfolded, by degrees, out of the material processes in the human organism—out of processes which are also to be found in lower forms of life. Spiritual Science, however, makes it clear that the elements of “soul-life” as they are in the animal would never have been able to give rise to the threefoldness of Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul, and that it is far more a matter of this inner trinity of the three “members” of the soul having flowed down from a spiritual world. Therefore when we look into the spiritual world we can speak of three down-flowing streams, with which three Beings in the spiritual worlds are connected, Beings who are the direct Inspirers of the Sentient Soul, the Mind Soul and the Consciousness Soul. We have to think of the Creators of these three manifestations of the life of soul in that super-sensible world with which, in primeval times, human beings were in direct communion.

We know that the moment our consciousness rises into the spiritual world, no matter whether this is the result of deliberate training, as will be the case today, or whether through the old clairvoyance, the human form becomes an “Imagination.” In those olden days, too, the soul attained to a form of Imagination, beholding in pictures the outpouring of the threefold human soul from the spiritual world. The Finnish epic tells of three Heroes. To begin with, these three Beings seem strange and remarkable in the highest degree; they have something superhuman about them and at the same time something that graduates into the genuinely human. But if we examine the matter more closely, and with occult means, it becomes apparent that these three figures, these three Heroes, are the Creators and Inspirers of the threefold powers of the soul in man. The Creator of the Sentient Soul is the figure to whom, in the Kalewala, the name of “Wainamoinen” is given; the Creator of the Mind Soul is “Ilmarinen,” and the Creator of the Consciousness Soul, “Lemminkainen.” And so in the National Epic of this remarkable people we find, in a form of Imagination springing from the original, ancient clairvoyance, what is rediscovered by modern spiritual research. The human being of today has the outer form we see before us, only because the foundations of this threefold life of soul were laid down in the course of evolution on Earth. (I indicated this in the public lectures given in the Berlin Architektenhaus: “The Origin of Man in the Light of Spiritual Science,” and “The Origin of the Animal World in the Light of Spiritual Science.”)²

We must picture to ourselves that there was a time in the process of the Earth's development when neither human beings nor animals were in existence, when all that was present was a kind of undifferentiated “substance”; the beings who first detached themselves were those which have reached the animal stage. When all the animals were there, man was still waiting until other conditions of Earth-existence had set in and because he had waited for these other conditions, he was able to become the recipient of his present form. In other words: while the animals developed their various forms on the Earth, man remained in the spiritual world above; his development began only when the animals had already assumed their destined forms. The foundations of the threefold soul-Sentient Soul, Mind Soul, Consciousness Soul—were laid in man and it was then possible for him to enter Earth-existence in the external form in which he now lives.

With this in mind, we can say: Man, as the created being we know today, sent down the animal kingdom before him and then followed himself, when the Earth-conditions were such that he could bring to manifestation in outer form, the threefold life of soul that had been laid into his being. What does this really mean? Knowledge of these occult truths restores to the traditions of religion, which rest upon occult foundations, their ancient value and meaning. Man received Earth-substance into himself when he was able to recast, to remould it into his present form—a form able to receive the imprint of the threefold life of soul. Thus man elaborated Earth-substance according to the laws of his life of soul, made Earth-substance subject to the plan underlying his life of soul, and became Earth-Man; he fashioned Earth-substance after the model of the threefold, prototypal soul. Think of the Biblical picture of the moulding of the substance of Earth (not the “dust” but the substance of Earth) into Man. We now discern profound meaning in this Biblical conception upon which so much scorn has been poured by modern “enlightenment”—as it is called. For the passage points to the time when the animals, having descended at an earlier period, were already in existence and when, out of Earth-substance, the being who now stands before us as bodily Man, was fashioned, at a later stage, according to the model of the soul.

In the Kalewala it is wonderful to find this process presented, with great imaginative power, as the “forging” of a mysterious instrument called the “Sampo.” The most curious explanations have been given of this mysterious instrument, the “Sampo.” In reality it is the human ether-body, forged by the interworking of the three soul-members—it is the ether-body, the imprint of which is the physical body. All that is necessary here is to give indications, without entering more closely into details. The National Epic of Finland quite obviously derives from the memory of the Finnish people in which clairvoyant perceptions of ancient times had been retained; through these perceptions, some knowledge still persisted of the descent of man as a being of soul—a threefold soul—into the physical body. What is noteworthy in such a matter is that in the old heroic sagas of humanity,we again find the truths and knowledge acquired today of the spiritual worlds. The Kalewala is an example of what is to be found in many ancient records of importance to humanity and is, moreover, one that emerged from oblivion only in the nineteenth century! For it had been entirely forgotten and was compiled during the course of that century from folk-songs extant among the Finnish people.

In the early years of the nineteenth century, nothing had been written down of the Kalewala as we possess it today; the songs were heard from the people, had lived only among them. The simple fact is that in the nineteenth century a certain doctor, realised that the people sang of many interesting things, and set about collecting the songs. Then a compilation was made and they assumed fresh importance. They attracted considerable attention and were translated into all the European languages. Scholars then proceeded to give senseless explanations of them ... but all that really matters is that they are there, having lived among the people.

Approaching the matter with the spiritual knowledge in our possession today, it becomes apparent, if we are willing to recognise it, that in what had survived there among the people and was gathered from among them, there is occult content which can be rediscovered today, just as occult content can be rediscovered in Homer's Iliad, in the Odyssey, in the songs of the Niebelung and elsewhere. Only we must be willing to seek earnestly, not applying anything in the way of allegorical or symbolical interpretation but rather allowing what is actually there to make its own impression upon us. What we ourselves have found in the realm of occultism, shines forth in Imaginations deriving from times of hoary antiquity. But in this case there is something of particular interest, as I myself discovered. When the Kalewala came into my hands, I heard that the closing runes—which make allusion to a connection between the spiritual life of ancient Finland and Christianity—must obviously have been a later addition; for whereas all the rest bears the character of ancient Paganism, the closing runes introduce an essentially Christian element—but very delicately and lightly. And then, strangely enough, I discovered that this belongs fundamentally to the Kalewala, that the poem is inconceivable without these closing runes. This means that in its origin and life among the people, the Kalewala quite naturally culminated in a delicate reference to Christianity—and, it may be added, to the most impersonal, “non-Palestinian” Christianity that it is possible to imagine, hardly recognisable by Christian concepts as they now are! Here, therefore, it is clear that from the same primeval soul there issued something that could not have been born at the same time as Christian culture among the other peoples of Europe: for Christian culture arose long after clairvoyance had been able still to look back to those primeval ages when the threefold soul was “membered” into the human form. And so here, among the Finnish people, we have an indication of the link between the ancient clairvoyance and the influence subsequently brought into play by Christian culture. This is something quite remarkable and unique—perhaps nowhere else to be found on the Earth. It may be that the veneration in which the Kalewala is held in Finland has preserved this epic from the fate that has befallen the Iliad. I do not know if many of you are aware that scholarship first of all hacked the Iliad into fragments and then declared that it was not written by a man bearing the name of “Homer”—indeed that it was not the work of a single writer but was only put together from collected songs, later on. The Kalewala, of course, was actually a compilation, but nevertheless, it forms a complete whole, one coherent whole. Possibly, in the future, a few changes here and there may be necessary, but nevertheless it is complete in itself. And so we have before us here, gathered from the consciousness of the people, a number of occult Imaginations. If we follow the matter in the Akasha-Chronicle, we find that the Kalewala leads back to the ancient and sacred Mysteries of northern Europe, and that the truths it contains were inspired by the Initiates, given forth to the people and instilled into them.

Why have I been telling you these things?

Matters of which we have been hearing for years were also spoken of in Helsingfors and will be spoken of in other parts of Europe too. But the public lecture which I was able to give on the subject of the occult content of the Folk-Epics, with particular reference to the Kalewala, was something new, especially belonging to Finland. (9th April, 1914.) One then realised that the essence of Spiritual Science will more and more make itself felt over the whole Earth. For do we not all feel that with Spiritual Science we are at home in the spiritual life? We are everywhere at home, for Spiritual Science is the light which illumines the path to the Spirit trodden by mankind all over the Earth. It is an overpowering experience to rediscover through Spiritual Science, the real content of this collection of folk-poems which form themselves into one whole. We find how right on into the ninth, tenth and eleventh centuries, the Folk-Soul became articulate in poetry, still possessing vital memories of the old clairvoyance once possessed by these unique Finnish peoples who to this day retain many customs and arts reminiscent of an ancient form of magic. And then we realise that Spiritual Science alone can lead to an understanding of these things, make them intelligible to us!

One of the many signs of the great spiritual happenings of the near future may be indicated in the following way. Spiritual Science has taken us into the region of an entirely unknown tongue—for the Finnish language differs from all other European languages; externally, one understands nothing of it and it is like being transported into an absolutely strange land. What knowledge does Spiritual Science bring us? How does Spiritual Science enable us to speak with this people who, so far as the last centuries are concerned, have remained remote from the other peoples of Europe? We speak with them about what is holiest and most sacred to them and is now coming to life again so strongly that people are reaching out for the Kalewala and the eyes of the whole world of culture are turning to it. In what is the most sacred possession of a people, we learn to understand the speech of the Folk-Soul!

So, too, it can be the whole world over, when we realise what must be the very root—nerve of theosophical life. We are standing on the threshold of a new disclosure of spiritual truths. Attention has often been drawn to this, above all in my Rosicrucian Mystery Play, The Portal of Initiation. Reference is there made to the fact that times are approaching when the souls of men will become more and more open to receive revelations from the spiritual world which will break in upon them as a kind of natural experience. In the course of the next three thousand years, men will gradually “grow into” the spiritual world. Through Spiritual Science, however, we must learn to understand why, and to what extent this will come about.

In the first, very ancient period of the Post-Atlantean era, that of the Holy Rishis of India, culture “flowed” as it were, directly from and was inspired by the human ether-body; in the epoch of ancient Persia, culture was inspired by the Sentient Body, the Astral Body; in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch by the Sentient Soul; in the Graeco-Latin period by the Mind or Intellectual Soul; and in our own epoch by the Consciousness Soul. There will follow a form of culture inspired by the Spirit-Self, and so on. If you keep in your minds a picture of the whole course of Post-Atlantean culture, you will find as it were a descending curve until the time of the Graeco-Latin epoch. It is clearly perceptible, and permits of no denial, that this age represents the lowest point of man's descent to the physical plane; the most characteristic and remarkable feature of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch is that spiritual life is all interwoven, intertwined, entangled with life on the physical plane. But in that same epoch comes the impulse of the Mystery of Golgotha—and necessarily so. You have only to think of what you already know in this connection. There is, however, something else of importance to remember. The actual course of human evolution comes to expression in manifold ways in the life of the individual. In the little book, The Education of the Child in the Light of Spiritual Science, it is said that up to the seventh year the development of the physical body is of primary importance: this phase corresponds, in the evolutionary process of mankind as a whole, to the period preceding the Atlantean catastrophe. The period of life between the seventh and the fourteenth years is a recapitulation—although veiled and obscured—of the culture connected with the ether-body which reached its highest glory in the epoch of ancient India. The period from the fourteenth to the twenty-first year of life is a recapitulation of the culture inspired by the astral body, corresponding to the epoch of ancient Persia. The Egypto-Chaldean period is reflected in the life of the individual human being from the twenty-first to the twenty-eighth year; and the Graeco-Latin epoch is reflected in the life of the individual between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years. This is a very important period; for just as at that time Post-Atlantean humanity swung over from a descending to an ascending culture, so there can be a turning-point in the life of the individual between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years. At the middle point of his earthly existence, the individual faces at one and the same time a descending and an ascending curve of life. After the thirty-fifth year he passes as it were into the period of outward decline, into a process of “withering.” In the individual human life at this time there must be something which corresponds with the swing-over from the descending to the ascending curve of culture. That the Mystery of Golgotha took place during this particular period of the life of Christ Jesus, between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years, was not a matter of chance; it could not be otherwise, as those who know anything of these connections will realise. The Mystery of Golgotha could only be enacted during the period of life connected specifically with the development of the Mind Soul. Since the end of the Middle Ages we have passed into the period of the unfolding of the Consciousness Soul. This will last for a very long time; and then will come the period of the evolution of Spirit-Self.

Now in the life of the individual there is something irregular—magnificently irregular—about the appearance or awakening of the “ I,” the Ego. At some future time I will elaborate this but at the moment I can only indicate it. The regular course of things is the development of the physical body up to the seventh year, of the ether-body up to the fourteenth year, and so on, up to the twenty-eighth year. Then, and only then—if conditions took a regular, straight-forward course, would the “ I ” awaken in the Mind Soul; for only then does the external organisation of the human being contain the proper and suitable instrument for the “ I ”. But the “ I ” awakens, actually, at a very early period of childhood, quite independently of the external organisation—at that point of time to which, in later life, the memory reaches back. Why is it that the birth of the “ I ”, instead of occurring between the twenty-eighth and thirty-fifth years in accordance with the development of man's external organisation, actually occurs during the earliest years of childhood? It is because the Luciferic forces have brought about a certain displacement as between the inner and the outer man. The Luciferic forces are connected with “retardation” in time. The “ I ” within us is grounded upon Luciferic forces, upon remembrance of what has remained to us of our experiences in life. Lucifer emancipates the “ I ” which is thus made free and independent of the outer organisation. For a time it was necessary for man to be connected, externally, with something other than his “ I ” alone. To maintain his rightful place it was necessary to form a link with a Being who had lived during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch, had reached his thirtieth year, and was then inspired by the Christ, by a Power which could not live on the Earth beyond the thirty-third year, but which in the thirty-third year passed through Death. To begin with, it was an external, historical link. What I have often described to you from the one side, I want you now to consider from the inner side. The human being remembers back to the point in his life when consciousness awakens; his remembrance stretches back to the birth of the “ I,” the Ego: for his actual entrance into Earth-existence is shrouded in sleep. Of what precedes the birth of the “ I ” we have to be told by our parents, by our elder brothers and sisters, by our seniors. Just as the memory of the human being now reaches back to the awakening of this Ego—the Luciferic Ego—so, later on, he will see, as in an Imagination, another Ego, another “ I ” before him. This will come about during the next three thousand years as a development of great significance in the evolution of humanity. In the future, man will remember that at a certain point of time in his childhood, the Luciferic “ I ” awakened; and he will also remember back to another point of time, when the “Christ-Ego” appears, in contrast to the Luciferic Ego. Instead of the one point, there will be two. The fact that this will arise as a memory will be the proof that the Christ-Event has not still to take place, but that it has already taken place. In short, just as a man at the present time remembers back to the awakening of the “ I ”, so, in time to come, the Imagination of the second “ I ” will be within his field of remembrance, enabling him to find the way to what we describe as the new Appearance or Manifestation of Christ.

The fact that man is growing onwards to new experiences, spiritual experiences of an entirely new kind, is something that must be understood in the light of Spiritual Science; for naturally, there must be preparation for these experiences. The human soul is moving towards new experiences. That is one thing that must be realised in Spiritual Science. The second is this. These new experiences are of such a nature that they will bring peace, concord and harmony upon the Earth and among men. And it will indeed be so! That is why it is such an overpowering experience to be able to understand the Folk-Spirit in another corner of the Earth. The poetry inspired by the Folk-Spirit is illumined by Spiritual Science—but we must be willing to steep ourselves in what actually springs from this Folk-Spirit, and interpolate nothing else.—That must be the attitude of a spiritual conception of the world.

And now let us face facts.—What is the present position? Men have quarrelled, have fought and shed blood through the ages over religious opinions; but if the root-nerve of Spiritual Science is understood, there will be no more conflict in the future about particular religious opinions. Men's minds will be directed to the spiritual facts themselves, and differences of opinion on the various problems of religion will exist just as they exist in other spheres—but not in such a way as to lead to bloodshed and strife; for it will be recognised that the revelations given to the different peoples point back to vast and mighty wisdom. Men will find the foundation and ground of this wisdom and recognise the truths that are contained in the various religions. The Science of Comparative Religion has done far-reaching work in connection with the several religions and the points of resemblance to be found in them. Splendid results have been achieved—but what, in reality, is the attitude that is almost invariably adopted? The attitude, more or less clearly expressed, is that all the religions are false! The Science of Comparative Religion brings out the errors far more clearly than the truths contained in the religions. Spiritual Science, on the other hand, directs its attention to the truths, to the Initiation-Knowledge which they contain. To what does this lead? What, for instance, will be the attitude of a Christian to a Buddhist? The Christian will realise the sublimity and splendour of the Buddhist system; because Christianity itself will learn to understand Reincarnation and Karma, the Christian will recognise the greatness of this teaching of Buddhism. And he will have knowledge, too, of the existence of certain Individualities in world-evolution who rise from the rank of “Bodhisattva” to that of “Buddha.” The Christian will understand something which spiritual development alone can make clear to him, namely, that in the twenty-ninth year of his life, the son of King Suddhodana became the Buddha. The event could only take place at that particular age, as a study of Spiritual Science will show. These things are connected with what is said in the little book, The Education of the Child. With this knowledge the Christian will also realise that such a Being does not descend again to Earth in a physical body. Christians who are Theosophists, or, if you prefer, Theosophists who are Christians, do not regard these teachings of Buddhism as mythical fables, but, together with the Buddhists believe in the truth that in his twenty-ninth year the Bodhisattva became Buddha and will not return in a physical body. The Christian respects this belief; he believes what the Buddhist believes, is at home on the soil of Buddhism, does not regard it as childish phantasy. He knows that in the royal son of King Suddhodana there dwelt an Individuality who rose to such spiritual heights that he need never again descend into a physical body, but sends his influence in another way into the evolution of humanity. Understanding the truths contained in Buddhism, the Christian will never interfere in the spiritual life of a Buddhist in such a way as to alienate him from his religion.

And what will be the attitude to Christianity of a Buddhist who also happens to be a Theosophist? He will try to grasp what it signified when in a man known as Jesus of Nazareth, in the thirtieth year of his life, the “ I ” was replaced by the Being Whom the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture called the “Christ,” and Who dwelt for three years in the body of Jesus of Nazareth. He will understand what is meant by saying that the “Substance” of Christ which passed through death with Christ Jesus has streamed over human culture; and he will try to understand that this life, from the Baptism by John in the Jordan to the Mystery of Golgotha, represents an event which took place once and once only in the evolution of mankind, and that like the Buddha, He who was once incarnate in Jesus of Nazareth can never again come down to the Earth. The Christian who is also a Theosophist understands that the Bodhisattva, having become Buddha, ascends into the spiritual worlds; the Buddhist who is also a Theosophist recognises those spiritual facts which form the essence of Christian belief, namely, that the Christ-Being descended into the body of Jesus of Nazareth, lived in that body for three years and passed through death; and that thereafter His power streams through the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. Mutual understanding among the confessions of faith on the Earth and therewith mutual harmony—that is the essence and core of theosophical teaching. If the Christians were to say that an Individuality might appear as the reincarnated Buddha, it would be an absurdity, and the Buddhist peoples would rightly resist any such teaching being disseminated among them. Discord would inevitably arise in communities of Christians if they were informed that the Christ might incarnate again in the flesh. The task of Theosophy is to bring about mutual understanding between the religions on Earth which are founded upon Initiation. When this is understood, Theosophy* will live truly in the hearts of men; there will be no founding of new sects, no proclamations of new, physical prophets, for whom humanity no longer waits in that external sense. People will then learn to understand the Rosicrucian principle which has remained unbroken since the founding of Rosicrucianism, namely, that those who are charged with the task of teaching, may not previously speak to the outer world of their mission. Indeed it is a venerable rule in Rosicrucianism that a teacher of the Rosicrucian Order is never outwardly proclaimed as such by his contemporaries; the fact that he is such a teacher may not be spoken of until a hundred years after his death—not before—because only so can the impersonal element be preserved in a genuine spiritual movement.

Clear understanding of the fact that we are entering upon a phase of development in which the human soul will become more and more aware of the inflow of the Spiritual and thus of the super-sensible Christ-Event of which we may speak prophetically—and a clear realisation that Theosophy must always lead to an understanding of what is sacred and holy to each individual ... these are the two factors which make men true Theosophists within the Theosophical Movement. Indeed a man's very attitude to them can tell us whether he has or has not understood the task of Theosophy in the present age.

• 1. See also: The Connection of the Human Being with the Elemental World. Finland and the Kalewala. Lecture given at Dornach, 1914. Not yet published in English.
• 2. 4th and 18th January, 1912. Not yet published in English.

When we think of all the achievements of the spiritual life, all the insight into the spiritual world and conceptions of the universe which have come to birth during the course of human existence, we have, on the one side, a picture of great and significant progress in the evolution of mankind on the Earth; and when this progress is investigated by Spiritual Science, it becomes clear that the human being—the single individual—participates in this general progress in that he passes through the successive epochs and time-periods in reincarnations; in this way he is able not only to preserve everything that his soul has assimilated in ancient and more recent times, but also to play a real part in the whole evolutionary process. Thus when a man has lived as a being of body and soul in one epoch of culture, he does not vanish from the field of evolution, but remains, in order again to take part in what Earth-existence has later become. In a general sense, progress of this kind is certainly to be perceived. But many of our studies will remind us that this progress is not so straightforward a matter that it could be said to begin with the simple and the primitive, rising from thence into the heights; on the contrary, it will be found that progress—indeed the whole process of evolution—is full of complication.

The First Post-Atlantean epoch of culture after the great Atlantean catastrophe was that of ancient India. Its sublimity and power of vision into the spiritual worlds have never since been equalled, nor will its heights be reattained until the Seventh Post-Atlantean epoch—after the Fifth and Sixth have run their course. Thus in certain forms of spiritual life there is a decline, followed again, in due course, by an ascent. Graeco-Latin culture, for instance, was a most noble expression of the inner union existing between the Greeks and their Art, and of the wise ordering of civic life in Greece and Rome, whereby a certain harmony in the conditions of life on the physical plane was created. But an utterance of a great Greek is also indicative of the character of this epoch: “Better it is to be a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of the Shades.” This indicates that in an epoch of golden prime on the physical plane, men had only very limited consciousness of the significance of the spiritual world lying behind and beyond the physical plane. Since that time the intensity of the union between the human being and life on the physical plane has waned, together with the noblest fruits of that union; on the other hand, however, mankind begins, gradually and perceptibly to ascend once again to the spiritual worlds. This will serve as an illustration of the complicated course taken by human evolution. When emphasis is laid on the blessings and high lights of one particular epoch, this most certainly does not imply that lesser value is to be attached to other epochs which lack certain characteristics. Although we speak again and again of all that Christianity has brought into the world, we know that its impulse is only beginning and that the spiritual heights attained in the East before the coming of Christianity, have not again been reached. All this must be remembered, because there must be no thought or suggestion that in bringing forward the merits of one epoch, we do less than justice to the greatness and significance of others. In this sense I ask you to pay attention to a difference that is neither a merit on the one side nor a failing on the other: I want simply to describe a certain difference between pre-Christian, Oriental culture and Christianity (not Pagan or even ancient Hebrew culture)—a difference which becomes clear when insight into Christianity has been deepened by Spiritual Science.

In typically Oriental conceptions of the world there is a firmly established principle to which repeated allusions are made but to which, up to now, Christianity has paid little heed. Oriental culture has knowledge of the great cosmic Laws revealed today by Spiritual Science, namely, those of the return of the human being in different Earth-lives, and of Karma. Whereas Christianity through the centuries has had eyes only for the life of a man between birth and death, and its continuance in a simple heavenly life, the Oriental world possesses definite knowledge of the return of man in repeated lives on Earth; and the knowledge of this great manifestation of law in the evolution of humanity constitutes much of the profound significance in Oriental teachings. As a result of this, Oriental culture contains teachings regarding the leaders and great heroes of human evolution which differ fundamentally from anything taught in the West. In the Oriental world-conception we find references to Beings of whom it is said from the outset that they return again and again and that the importance of their influence can be measured by their achievements in successive Earth-lives. The very name, “Gautama Buddha” is indicative, for “Buddha” is not a proper name like “Socrates” or “Raphael,” but denotes a rank. The world of thought from which Buddhism has grown speaks of many Buddhas “Buddha” is a rank. Before “Gautama Buddha” the royal son of King Suddhodana—became the “Buddha” of whom Oriental teachings speak, he was a “Bodhisattva.” In other words, the Oriental conception of the world perceives the Individuality who passes through the different incarnations, ascending from incarnation to incarnation and finally reaching the height at which the rank of “Buddha” is attained Such an Individuality is then no longer called by a proper name. In speaking of the characteristics of the Buddha, Buddhism rarely refers to “Prince Siddhartha,” but far more often to a rank, attained not only by him but to which every human being can attain. And so, in pointing to the great leaders, the East points to the Individuality who passes through repeated Earth-lives; the greatness and significance of these leaders are attributed to the merits they acquired through repeated lives on Earth.

And now compare this with characteristic features of western culture. There we are told of the greatness of a Plato, a Socrates, of a figure like Paul; even in the Old Testament, a figure like Moses stands out in strong relief, and, later on, Raphael, Michelangelo, Leonardo da Vinci among many others. The West speaks of the single personality—not the “individuality” who passes through repeated lives on Earth. Attention is directed not to the being who goes on from birth to birth, from death to death, but to the one personality who lived from a certain point of time to another. The East directs its attention more to the onward progress of the Individuality from one incarnation to another, whereas western culture has been little concerned as to who Socrates, for example, could have been in previous Earth-lives, or what becomes of him in later lives. It is the same with Paul and with all the others. This is a very fundamental difference. The matter may be summed up by saying that the whole trend of the West hitherto has been to lay emphasis upon the importance of the personality, of the single life of the human being. Only now, when we are on the threshold of a great change in the spiritual life, are we beginning—having acquired in western culture a gauge as it were for the single personality—to discern a principle of existence which Oriental culture accepts as a matter of course, namely, the development of the Individuality within the single personalities, through many lives. A perspective of the future fraught with great significance is here opened up, of which mankind will stand increasingly in need.

Christian thought has actually lost sight of something which the East has always possessed and knowledge of which has now to be reacquired. The course of evolution is such that certain outworn fragments must be discarded and new elements added; ancient heritages must be rescued again, but in a new form and through a new impulse. In olden times, clairvoyance was a natural gift in humanity. It had to fade away and be replaced by thinking based upon purely external observation and perception; this will be enriched by the clairvoyance of the future and will add something of untold significance to human life. The West had to pass through a period during which mankind was split up, as it were, into separate personalities, but now that men stand on the threshold of a deepening of thought and experience, they will themselves be aware of a longing to find the thread uniting the fragments which make their appearance in the life of the human being between birth and death. The light of understanding will thus be shed on the forces which flow onwards through the stream of spiritual development and human progress. Let us illustrate this by a particular example:—

In the lecture on “The Prophet Elijah in the Light of Spiritual Science”¹ I spoke of what occult research reveals concerning this prophet. I do not propose to go into further details now, but will only say that in the light of occult knowledge, Elijah was one who proclaimed with power and deep intensity that the primal, original form of what humanity may call the “Divine” can be glimpsed only in the innermost centre of man's being, in the “ I ”. The great prophetic message of Elijah proclaimed that everything the outer world can teach is, at most, semblance and parable, that realisation of the essential nature of man can only arise in the “ I.” Elijah could not, in his time, proclaim the power and significance of the single, human “ I,” but he proclaimed the existence, as it were, of a Divine Ego, external to the human being. Men must recognise this Divine Ego, must realise that it rays into the human “ I ”. That this Divine Ego rises up within the human “ I ” and there unfolds its full power—such is the knowledge won by Christianity. The work and mission of Elijah are therefore a true heralding of Christianity. This can be said when the life of Elijah and his place in the history of human evolution are being described in the light of occult knowledge.

And then we may think of another life, the life of the personality known as John the Baptist. From the mouth of John, humanity was to learn what the immediate future held in store.... “Change the attitude of your souls! Do not look back to the times that are past, when men sought to find the Divine only at the starting-point of evolution; look, rather, into your own souls and into the deepest core of your being and then you will know that the Kingdoms of Heaven are near”.... This, was the substance of the message of the Baptist. In other words: the phase of development has come when, in very truth, the “ I ” can find the Divine within itself. The form in which Christianity was heralded by Elijah has changed with the flow of time. Something altogether different is represented by John the Baptist. But through Spiritual Science and a deepened understanding, we realise that one and the same Being lived in the prophet Elijah and in John the Baptist. We add to our understanding of the single life a principle of knowledge already possessed by the East, only the East did not lay such emphasis upon the power and force inhering in the single personality.

Going further, we can speak of that most remarkable personality who lived from 1483 to 1521, was born on a Good Friday and through this very fact, indicated, as it were, his living connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. I am referring, of course, to Raphael, the great painter. In the western world, as is only to be expected, it is customary to study Raphael as a figure in himself, but it will very soon become clear to deeper insight, that what the West has to say with regard to Raphael has many shortcomings. This figure of Raphael presents a remarkable spectacle to those who aspire for a more profound understanding. It is as though his genius came with him at birth. In a manner of speaking it can be said that he “let himself be born” on a Good Friday, in order to indicate his connection with the Mystery of Golgotha. It is quite obvious that from the very first, his life gave promise of all his subsequent greatness. Orphaned at an early age, he was thrown out into the world, and finally into the brilliance and splendour of Rome; there, within the span of a short life, we see him rise step by step to heights of fame. What is there to be said about this remarkable life? Think of the environment into which Raphael was born—it was in the period at the turn of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries. It was a time when disputes in the world of religion were rampant and widespread, when Christianity was scattered into countless sects over the whole Earth, when mighty and also terrible conflicts were being waged in Christendom. And now we turn to Raphael's paintings. It is a strange experience! They seem to make us forget what was happening all around in the Christian world at the time and a kind of jubilation at the power with which Christianity has taken root in human evolution streams out from them. Think of a picture like “The School of Athens” as it is generally called. We see all those remarkable figures, deciphered by pedants with the aid of historical guide-books, as Socrates, Diogenes, and so forth. This, however, means nothing whatever from the point of view of Art. But if we take the New Testament and read the Acts of the Apostles attentively, we feel that in this picture we have before our very eyes the whole vivid difference between the pre-Christian views prevailing in Greece and those of Christianity; we also find this in the picture usually, though erroneously, known as the “Disputa.” “The School of Athens” really depicts the scene in the New Testament when Paul came among the Greeks, saying to them: “Until this day you have heard of many Gods; but the Divine does not express Itself in images. You have spoken great words concerning the living Gods, but there is something still greater: the Glory of the God Who died on the Cross and has risen again!“ We feel the power of the message as we stand before the picture called “The School of Athens,” and look at the remarkable figures of the philosophers listening attentively as Paul speaks. When the picture is actually before us, the pedantic interpretation given to it later on—that the central figures are Aristotle, Plato, and so forth—fades into insignificance. We feel that Raphael was trying to depict the moment when Paul came among the Greeks. If we study the New Testament closely, we shall be able to identify the figure of the man with the hand pointing forward so significantly, as a personality drawn from the New Testament account. The New Testament, therefore, provided the model for a personality depicted in this picture, namely, the personality of Paul.

And so we pass from one picture to another, forgetting all the statements that have been made about the one or the other, for a great force streams out of them; we feel that Christianity is living on in its mightiest power in the paintings of Raphael and that they portray a Christianity in which there can be no strife or splitting into sects. Recent times, however, have had little understanding of the Christianity which pours its living influence through Raphael's paintings. When we look at them even more closely, still another feeling comes to us. It is as though their creator wanted to portray the eternal youthfulness, the eternal power of victory in Christianity. And then perhaps we ask ourselves: In what form did the influence of these paintings live on?

Before very long, a despot like Bernini—who accomplished so much for Art—was giving warning against imitation of Raphael; it is even possible to say that Raphael was “forgotten.” In Germany and in the west of Europe during the eighteenth century there is a strange story to tell in regard to men's understanding of Raphael. In the whole of Voltaire's works you will find hardly a mention of Raphael. The name of someone else may also occur to you, although he held a very different view later on. Goethe's experience when he visited the Dresden Gallery for the first time, was a strange one. When you yourselves stand before the “Sistine Madonna” you will probably imagine that the picture must have filled Goethe with enchantment, and this may well be assumed in view of all the eulogies with which he later sang its praises. We have to remember however, what he had heard from the officials of the Dresden Gallery and from those who were the official custodians of the picture. He was informed by them that the Child in the arms of the Mother, the Child Whose eyes express a rare gift of seership, was painted with realistic vulgarity, that it could not be from the hand of Raphael himself but must have been painted over by someone else; and that the little heads of Angels could not possibly have been Raphael's own work. The coming of the Sistine Madonna to Dresden was not crowned with triumph! But at any rate it is to Goethe's credit that after he had learnt to appreciate Raphael, he contributed a great deal towards an understanding of the Sistine Madonna and of Raphael himself.

Now let us think of the course, taken by evolution in the nineteenth century, leaving aside what occurred in Catholic countries and turning our attention to Protestant lands in which the dogma concerning the Virgin Mary is not essential to faith. There, not only the “Sistine” Madonna but all the other Madonnas of Raphael are veritably crowned with glory! Without thinking now of the originals, the many excellent engravings and reproductions are a proof of how men have endeavoured to present Raphael's creations to the world in the most perfect possible form. Few people, after all, have the opportunity of seeing the originals themselves. Naturally, no reproduction can convey the essence of the artistic power in a picture; to suppose any such thing would be ignorant and barbaric. But something else made its way into the evolution of mankind: in regions which would have nothing to do with the dogma of the Immaculate Conception, a form of Christianity independent of all differences of doctrine found entrance. While men have fought for these differences of doctrine in theories and systems, a picture of this great Mystery—in the characters of an “occult script,” as it might be said—found entry in the reproductions of Raphael's Art, filling the Mystery with new life. Here again is a heralding of Christianity from which great and glorious fruits will ripen in the future. And understanding of these things will be quickened by the experiences which have arisen in human beings at the sight of the “Sistine” Madonna, the “Madonna del Pesce” and other Madonnas, or from “The School of Athens,” the “Disputa” and other paintings of Raphael. Without being aware of it, men have in their souls today the feeling of an inter-denominational Christianity, conveyed by this wonderful “occult script.”

Raphael both heralded and established a new impulse in Christianity although, to begin with he was not understood. Occult investigation finds that the same Individuality who once worked in Elijah and later in John the Baptist, lived again on earth in Raphael.² This helps us to understand how the forces develop in the same soul from life to life, and to discern the effects of earlier causes. The Baptist was beheaded; his work came to light again in the achievements of his great successor. The new proclamation of the Baptist in the Raphael life was for long ages forgotten. It came to life again in what Spiritual Science teaches concerning the Christ-Impulse. What a light shines in our understanding when we gather up the threads leading through the single personalities, and in what vivid perspective the single personality stands there before us!

I said that the paintings of Raphael are like chants of jubilation at the might of Christianity. Raphael naturally keeps to the accepted events and facts, but out of his feelings he is able to portray them with a unique power. As our eyes wander over his paintings we realise with what majesty and sublimity he portrayed the forces of Christianity, and ask ourselves: What is it that Raphael did not paint? He painted no scene on the Mount of Olives, no Crucifixion. True, he painted a “Bearing of the Cross,” but it was a very poor picture and gives the impression of having been done to order. Neither did he paint any of the scenes leading directly to the Crucifixion. His creative genius begins to reveal itself again only when he portrays the figure of the great successor of John—the figure of Paul in “The School of Athens”; or when, passing over the other events in the life of Christ, he paints “The Transfiguration.” What Raphael has not painted helps us to understand that it was alien to him to portray those events on Earth (not events in the spiritual world) which took place after he was beheaded in his previous life. We realise why it was that Raphael painted fewer pictures of these particular events. When we look at the pictures, we feel that all those which portray events subsequent to the Beheading of John the Baptist, are not, like the others, born of earlier remembrances.

As we think of all this, another feeling, too, may arise in us. In a few more hundred years, what will have become of all the paintings which have been such great and mighty symbols in mankind? True, for some time yet the reproductions will be left to us, but not the originals—for so very long. Anyone who looks today with sorrow in his heart at Leonardo da Vinci's “Last Supper” realises what will become of the physical materials used in these pictures. It dawns upon us, too, that they can only be truly appreciated when, through Spiritual Science, we understand what it is that Raphael has painted, for example, in “The School of Athens” or the “Disputa.” What is to be seen today on the walls of the Vatican in Rome has been ruined by the many restorations. No real idea of the originals is possible, for they have been so grievously spoilt by the restorations. What, then, will have happened in another few centuries? No means of preservation devised by the mind of man will be able to prevent the materials from deteriorating. In another few centuries everything will have vanished. The subjects themselves, of course, will still be known; but the creations of Raphael's own hand will disappear. And then the thought arises: Is the process of human evolution such that things continually come into being only to sink, finally, into non-existence?

Our gaze wanders further and falls upon the youthful figure of a German poet—Novalis. To begin with, we find in his writings a most wonderful and unique resurrection of the Christ-Idea, of which the following may be said. If we steep ourselves in Spiritual Science and with the means it provides, try to understand the coming of the Christ-Impulse into the evolution of humanity, and then turn to Novalis—wherever we look, something seems to spring into life. Inspirations of the greatest grandeur concerning matters of Spiritual Science are to be found everywhere. Inspirations that are like lofty dreams of Science. From Novalis comes something that finds its way into mankind like seed—seed which will spring to life in times to come. Here again is a heralding of Christianity! In spite of all differences, it is again a beginning, just as the work of the Baptist was a beginning. We are drawn irresistibly to the remarkable figure of Novalis, feeling that a stream of living Theosophy goes out from him, inspired by the power of Christianity. We feel that here, too, is a proclamation of Christianity for the future.

Occult investigation finds that in Elijah, in John the Baptist, in Raphael, in Novalis, the same Individuality lived and worked. In Raphael there is a new resurrection of the work of John the Baptist, and it may indeed be said: Raphael himself is able to ensure that his work will not perish when his paintings are no longer to be seen on the walls, just as he was able to prevent other achievements from passing away. Just as he provided for the revival, in a new form, of what it had once been his mission to proclaim, so he will always provide, in incarnations yet to come. Thus does the Individuality bear through eternity what has once been accomplished.

It may be that concrete examples like these, given as illustrations of abstract laws and principles, will do more than the external teachings of Spiritual Science, to render the theosophical conception of human life as intelligible as those things which confront us in the outside world. Deep insight may come to us when, in the light of such concrete examples, we observe processes operating more secretly in the evolution of the human soul. As spiritual research is still a young science, men who have studied Raphael hitherto can naturally know nothing of the power and impulse he bears through the ages. But because the time has come when the idea of the reincarnation of the human being is to dawn, even though nothing concrete is known about it, undefined intuitive feelings may arise here and there. A striking example of this has come again to my mind during the last fortnight. I remembered how Herman Grimm, a most gifted writer on the History of Art and a distinguished student of Raphael, speaks of the painter. Naturally, when Herman Grimm was writing about Raphael, he knew nothing of Spiritual Science and studied only the single life of Raphael. He observed Raphael's fame through the centuries, its decline and subsequent growth, and discerned how, in his creations, Raphael lives on through time. And then there dawned upon Herman Grimm the remarkable thought which he expressed in his work on Raphael (he had wanted to write a volume, but it remained a mere fragment). He says there, expressing an entirely instinctive feeling: When we ponder on the things that will endure in the evolution of mankind, and thus catch a vista of the future, the thought arises that all these things will be lived through again! This is an eloquent indication of how the thought of “re-experience” rises instinctively, like a longing, in the souls of men who observe evolution thoughtfully and sensitively, for the very reason that without such a conception, the rest has no meaning. This is of infinite significance. And when we reflect about these things, an idea that is beautiful and true comes to us of what Spiritual Science will be able to do for the evolution of humanity, and of the enrichment which human life in all its forms will receive through knowledge of the laws on Reincarnation and Karma. But if the life of humanity is to be thus enriched, men will have to learn to observe the Spiritual with the same exactitude with which they observe the Physical; they will have to perceive how repetition in the physical world is a great law of existence, and that recurrence—as in the return of the soul into the body—is also a law governing the return of the fruits of the various lives. Such an experience, however, is always preceded by others—by human longings and hopes, and instinctive knowledge which has been unfolding during recent years. When we think of these things, it seems as though Spiritual Science has been growing and developing without consciousness on the part of human beings, but that they were already dreaming of it, instinctively divining its approach. There are some, however, who have pondered about the spiritual life, and they have indicated what they felt concerning the rhythmic recurrence of phenomena and even concerning the return of the human soul.

It is interesting, here, to speak of a case—which I could multiply a hundredfold—because it is an example of what is alive in all those who have contemplated the picture presented by human evolution and in their life of feeling have discerned the rhythmic recurrence, the rhythmic return of events. I will quote one example, which shows how this thought has taken root, causing something to spring to life in the soul. This writer could not have been a theosophist in the modern sense, for what I am going to refer to is a poem written in the year 1835.³ The writer could have had no knowledge of the vista of human evolution one day to be opened up by Spiritual Science. Yet something rises up in him that is like a dream of the future of humanity—an instinctive perception of recurrent phenomena in human existence. I am speaking of the poet Anastasius Grün, who in the year 1835 published a poem (Schutt) in which he depicts five recurrences of a certain happening, rhythmic repetitions of the spiritual message working in humanity. The poem depicts how on Easter Day, Christ re-visits the Mount of Olives in the Spirit, in order to look again at the places where He had lived and suffered. The poem speaks of five returns, four of which lie in the past, and the fifth in the future. The first occurs in the period after the destruction of Jerusalem. The second, “when Christ beholds the conquest of Jerusalem by the Crusaders”; as He looks down, Christ sees what is happening in the places He had once known. The third return falls in the period when Islam was spreading its power over Jerusalem; the fourth in the period when humanity, split into countless sects, was quarrelling about the mission of Christ. All this is vividly and graphically described by Grün. Then there opens out the vista of a return of Christ on an Easter Day in the far distant future. Although the picture is dreamlike and Utopian, we cannot fail to discern—apart from the actual content of the poem—something of the blessing experienced by the soul when spiritual knowledge, especially as it has unfolded since the thirteenth century, opens up glimpses of a future when a spiritual culture will spread peace instead of wars and strife. Grün sees the blessings of peace in the culture of times to come and speaks of a future return of Christ to the Mount of Olives on an Easter Day, describing it as it appeared to his imagination. Children are playing on Golgotha; they have been digging in the ground and find a strange thing made of iron, not knowing at all what it can be; it proves, subsequently, to be a sword. And in the mood of exultation which comes upon him, Grün says that there will come a time when the very purpose of such an instrument as a sword will have been forgotten and the sword will be an object of amazement to men. Then he says that the iron will be used as a plough and describes the feeling which the rhythmic return of Christ to the Mount of Olives quickens in him. What has been forgotten and will again be revealed, is a Cross of Stone! It is raised again and Grün says that something happens to the Cross, indicating what part the Cross will play hereafter. In the following verses he describes what feelings arise in him when the children unearth a Cross and set it up for all the world to see—and he speaks, too, of the function and the power of the Cross in mankind:—

Ob sie's auch kennen nicht, doch steht's voll Segen,
Aufrecht in ihrer Brust, in ewigem Reiz.
Es blüht sein Name rings auf allen Wegen,
Denn, was sie nimmer kannten—war ein Kreuz!

Sie sahn den Kampf nicht und sein blutig Zeichen,
Sie sahn den Sieg allein und seinen Kranz!
Sie sahn den Sturm nicht mit den Wetterstreichen,
Sie sahn nur seines Regenbogens Glanz!—

Das Kreuz von Stein, sie stellen's auf im Garten,
Ein rätselhaft ehrwürdig Altertum,
Dran Rosen rings und Blumen aller Arten
Empor sich ranken, kletternd um und um.

So steht das Kreuz inmitten Glanz und Fülle
Auf Golgotha, glorreich, bedeutungschwer:
Verdeckt ist's ganz von seiner Rosen Hülle,
Längst sieht vor Rosen man das Kreuz nicht mehr!

(The following rendering is by “C.F.B.”)

Though yet they knew, or knew it not, full-fraught
With blessing and upreared within their breast
It stands and ceaseless calls, while all around
Its Name lies blazoned upon every path.
For what they knew no longer was—a Cross!
The strife they knew not, nor th'ensanguined Sign;
They saw but victory, and the victor's crown.
'Twas but the Rainbow-Glory filled their soul.
In garden fair they set the Cross of Stone—
Relic of bygone ages, strange, and venerable,
Roses entwine and flowers of every hue
Lay their soft arms about Its Stem.
Thus stands the Cross of Golgotha, resplendent,
Glorious—Its meaning heard to find,
Its form all hidden 'neath a rosy veil!
Men see no more the Cross, for roses there.

• 1. See: Turning Points in Sprirtual History, by Rudolf Steiner.
• 2. See: On the Meaning of Life, by Rudolf Steiner.
• 3. See also: The Art of Recitation and Declamation. Lecture IX. Not yet published in English.

The question as to the meaning and purpose of existence frequently arises in life and in the sphere of philosophy. Study of Spiritual Science will certainly produce a kind of humility in regard to this question, for although we know that investigation of the spiritual worlds leads thought and perception beyond the material world of sense, we also realise that it is not possible to speak forthwith about the primal origins or the ultimate and highest meaning of life. The retort of superficial thinking here will certainly be: “What, then, do we know, if knowledge of the meaning and purpose of life is beyond our reach? ”

An analogy that is entirely in line with the attitude of Spiritual Science and indicates what is permissible or not permissible in regard to this question, can be put in the following way: Suppose a man wants to journey somewhere—In his home town he can only get information as to how to reach a much less distant place, but he is sent off with the assurance that once there, further help will be available. Although he makes inquiries here and there as he goes along, he cannot know the exact path which will bring him to his final destination; nevertheless he is sure of arriving eventually because he is always able to find his way from place to place.

As students of Spiritual Science, we do not ask about the “ultimate goal” but about the one lying immediately ahead, in other words, about the goal of the Earth. We realise that it would be senseless to inquire about the “ultimate goal” for we have recognised that “evolution” is a reality in the life of man. It must therefore never be forgotten that at the present stage of our existence it is not possible to understand the goals of much later phases of evolution and that a higher vantage-point must be reached if we are to understand the meaning of a far distant goal. And so we ask about the goal lying immediately ahead, realising that by keeping it before us as an ideal and striving with the right means, we shall eventually attain it, thereby reaching a further stage in development. At that stage it will be legitimate to ask about the “next” goal, and so on. Thus if it were ever suggested that Spiritual Science might tend to make a man arrogant because his outlook extends beyond the ordinary world into a spiritual world, in reality his attitude will be one of humility towards these sublime matters about which superficial questions are so often asked.

We inquire, to begin with, about the goal of the Earth. In other words: What is it that man adds, essentially, to the fruits of the preceding periods of Saturn-, Sun-, and Moon-evolution, by developing on the Earth through repeated physical incarnations? We will here recall certain matters which will help us to associate concrete and definite ideas with what may be called the “meaning and purpose of Earth-evolution.” Let me speak, to begin with of the following.

When intellectual thinking, based upon reason, came to birth during the Graeco-Latin epoch—it would actually be true to say, in the sixth century B.C.—a certain thought found frequent utterance, namely, that all philosophy, all deeper contemplation upon the secrets of existence, proceeds from Wonder, Amazement. In other words: As long as the human being can feel no wonder at the phenomena of life around him, so long is his life vapid and thoughtless, and he asks without intelligence about the why and wherefore of existence. “All philosophy begins with wonder” was a much quoted saying during the ancient Graeco-Latin epoch. What, in reality, does it signify in man's life of soul?

It would be difficult today to find anyone in civilised Europe who has never set eyes on a locomotive in motion; not so very long ago, however, there were such persons—although nowadays they would, of course, only be found in very remote districts. If such a person sees a train moving along, he will feel wonder and amazement at the sight of an object going forward without any of the means with which he is acquainted. It is a known fact that many such people, in their astonishment at seeing a locomotive in movement, asked if the horses pulling it along were inside! Why were the people cast into amazement and wonder by what they saw here? It was because they were looking at something which in a certain sense was known, and at the same time unknown to them. They knew that things move forward, but whatever they had seen had always been provided with quite a different means of movement. Now they were looking at something on which they had never set eyes before. And this gave rise to wonder.

If during the Graeco-Latin epoch, men could only become philosophers when they were capable of wonder, they must have been persons who perceived, in everything taking place in the world, something at once known and unknown, in so far as the happenings and phenomena seemed to contain more than appeared on the surface—something unknown to them.

Why had the attitude of the philosophers to be that the primary causes and certain attributes of things in the world lay in a sphere unknown to them? As it will be admitted that philosophers are at least as clever as people who give no thought at all to what goes on around them, it cannot be supposed that philosophers are capable of accepting only what is to be perceived by means of the ordinary senses. Therefore they must find something lacking—or rather, they must surmise the presence of something which sets them wondering—something that is not present in the world of sense. And so, before the days of materialism, the philosophers always sought for the Supersensible in the phenomena presented to the senses. The wonder felt by the philosophers, therefore, is associated with the fact that certain things are not to be comprehended through what presents itself to the eyes of sense. They said to themselves: “What I there perceive does not tally with what I picture it to be; I must therefore conceive that super-sensible forces are present within it.” But in the world of sense the philosophers perceived no super-sensible forces. That alone is enough to make a thinking man realise that a subconscious memory, not reaching into consciousness, has persisted in the human being since times when the soul perceived something more than the actual phenomena of the sense-world. In other words: Remembrance arises of experiences undergone before the descent into sense-existence. It is as though the soul were to say: “I discern things and their effects which can only call forth wonder in me, because they are different from what I have seen before; enlightenment on them can only be found by means of forces which must be drawn from the super-sensible world.” And so all philosophising begins with wonder, because in reality man approaches the phenomena of existence as a being who comes into the world of the senses from a super-sensible world and finds that the things of the sense-world do not tally with what he perceived in the super-sensible world. Wonder arises in him when the form in which the things of sense are made manifest, can only be explained by knowledge he once possessed in a super-sensible world. And so wonder points to the connection of man with the super-sensible world, to something belonging to a sphere he can only enter when he transcends the world in which his physical body encloses him. This is one indication of the fact that here, in this physical world, there is a continual urge within the human being to reach out beyond himself. A man who can only remain shut up in himself, who is not driven by wonder beyond the field of the “I,” of the ordinary Ego, remains one who cannot reach beyond himself, who sees the sun rise and set without a thought and with complete unconcern. This is the kind of existence led by uncivilised peoples.

A second power which releases the human being from the ordinary world, leading him at once away from material perception into super-sensible insight, is Compassion, Fellow-feeling (Of this, too, I have spoken). Those who go heedlessly through the world do not regard compassion as having any great mystery about it; but to the thoughtful, compassion is a great and mysterious secret. When we look at a being only from outside, impressions come from him to our senses and intellect; with the awakening of compassion we pass beyond the sphere of these impressions. We share in what is taking place in his innermost nature, and transcending the sphere of our own “I”, we pass over into his world. In other words: we are set free from ourselves, we break through the barriers of ordinary existence in the physical body and reach over into the other being. Here, already, is the Supersensible—for neither the operations of the senses nor of the reasoning mind can carry us into the sphere of another's soul. The fact that compassion exists in the world bears witness that even in the world of sense we can be set free from, can pass out beyond ourselves and enter into the world of another being. If a man is incapable of compassion, there is a moral defect, a moral lack in him. If at the moment when he should get free from himself and pass over into the other being, feeling, not his own pain or joy but the pain or joy of that other—if at that moment his feelings fade and die away, then something is lacking in his moral life. The human being on Earth, if he is to reach the stature of full and complete manhood, must be able to pass out beyond his own earthly life, he must be able to live in another, not only in himself.

Conscience is a third power whereby the human being transcends what he is in the physical body. In ordinary life he will desire this or that; according to his impulses or needs he will pursue what is pleasing and thrust aside what is displeasing to him. But in many such actions he will be his own critic, in that his conscience, the voice of his conscience sounds a note of correction. Final satisfaction or dissatisfaction with what he has done also depends upon how the voice of conscience has spoken. This in itself is a proof that “conscience” is a power whereby the human being is led out beyond the sphere of his impulses, his likes and dislikes.

Wonder and Amazement, Compassion or Fellow-feeling, Conscience—these are the three powers by means of which the human being, even while in the physical body, transcends his own limitations, for through these powers, influences which cannot find entrance into the human soul by way of the intellect and the senses, ray into physical life.

It is easy to understand that these three powers can only unfold through incarnations in a body of flesh. Man must, as it were, be kept separate by a body of flesh from what pours into his life of soul from another sphere. If a body of flesh did not separate him from the spiritual world and present the outer world to him as a sense-world, he would be incapable of wonder. It is the material body which enables wonder at the things of the world of sense to arise in man, compelling him to seek for the Spirit. Compassion could not unfold if the one human being were not separated from the other, if men were to live an undivided existence in which a single flow of spiritual life pervaded the consciousness of them all, if each soul were not separated from other souls by the impenetrable sheath provided by the physical body. And conscience could not be experienced as a spiritual force sending its voice into man's world of natural urges, passions and desires, if the material body did not hanker after things against which warning must be given by another power. And so the human being must be incarnated in a physical body in order that he may be able to experience wonder, compassion and conscience.

In our time, people concern themselves little with such secrets, although they are profoundly enlightening. But in a past by no means very remote, a great deal of attention was paid to these things:—

Think only of the world of the Greek Gods, the Gods of Homer; think of their actions and activities; try to understand the nature of the impulses working in Achilles, a being who stands there like a last survivor of an earlier generation on Earth. He, too, was born of a divine mother. Read through the Iliad and the Odyssey and ask yourselves whether this being, standing halfway between Gods and men, was ever stirred by anything like “conscience” or “compassion”? Homer builds the whole of the Iliad around the fury of the “wrath” of Achilles—and wrath is a passion. Everything in the Greek legend centres around this; the Iliad tells of what came about as the result of a passion—the wrath of Achilles. Consider all the deeds of Achilles described in the Iliad and see if you can say of a single one that Achilles is here moved by anything like compassion or conscience. Neither is there a single example of the stirring of wonder. The very greatness of Homer lies in his power to depict these things with such sublimity. When Achilles is told of some terrible happening, his behaviour is far from that of a man filled with wonder. And then turn to the Greek Gods themselves: they give vent to all kinds of impulses which are certainly of the nature of egotism when they manifest in a human being enclosed in a physical body. In the Gods they are spiritual impulses. But among the Greek Gods there is no compassion, no suggestion of conscience, nor anything like wonder. Why not? Because Homer and the Greeks knew that these Gods were Beings belonging to a period of evolution preceding that of the Earth—a period when the Beings who were then passing through their “human stage” under the conditions prevailing in existence, had not yet received into the life of soul the powers of wonder, compassion and conscience. It must be constantly remembered that the earlier planetary conditions through which the Earth has passed and in which such Beings as the Greek Gods underwent their human stage, were not there for the purpose of implanting “Wonder,” “Compassion,” and “Conscience” in the life of soul. That is precisely the mission of Earth-evolution! The purpose of Earth-evolution is that there may be implanted into the evolutionary process as a whole, powers which could otherwise never have come into existence: Wonder, Compassion and Conscience.

I have told you how the birth of conscience can clearly be traced to a certain period of Greek culture. In the works of Aeschylus, what we call “conscience” played no part; there were only remembrances of the avenging Furies, and not until we come to the works of Euripedes is there any clear expression of “conscience” as we know it now. The concept of conscience arose only very gradually during the Graeco-Latin epoch. I have told you that the concept of wonder arises for the first time when men begin to philosophise in the world of Graeco-Latin culture. And a remarkable fact in the spiritual evolution of Earth-existence throws far-reaching light upon what we know as compassion, and also, in the true sense, love. In the age of materialism it is exceedingly difficult to maintain in true and right perspective, this concept of compassion or love. Many of you will realise that in our materialistic times this concept is distorted, in that materialism associates the concept of “love” so closely with that of “sexuality”—with which, fundamentally, it has nothing whatever to do. That is a point where the culture of our day abandons both intelligence and sound, healthy reason. Through its materialism, evolution in our time is veering not only towards the unintelligent and illogical but even towards the scandalous, when “love” is dragged into such close association with what is covered by the term “sexuality.” The fact that under certain circumstances the element of sexuality may be associated with love between man and woman is no argument for bringing so closely together the all-embracing nature of love or compassion, and the entirely specific character of sexuality. So far as logic is concerned, to associate the concept of, say, a “railway engine” with that of a man being “run over,” because engines do sometimes run over people, would be just about as intelligent as it is to connect the concept of love so closely with that of sexuality—simply because under certain circumstances there is an outward association. That this happens today is not the outcome of any scientific hypothesis but of the irrational and, to some extent, unhealthy mode of thinking prevailing in our time.

On the other hand, another telling fact points to the significance inherent in the concept of love and compassion. At a certain point in the evolution of humanity, and among all the peoples, something is made manifest which, while differing in many essentials, is identical in one respect all over the Earth, namely in the adoption of the concept of love, of compassion. It is very remarkable that six or seven centuries before the inpouring of the Christ-Impulse into humanity, founders of religion and systems of thought appeared all over the Earth, among all the peoples. It is of the highest significance that, six centuries before our era, Lao-tse and Confucius should have been living in China, the Buddha in India, the last Zarathustra (not the original Zarathustra) in Persia, and Pythagoras in Greece. How great the difference is between these founders of religion! Only a mind abstracted from reality and incapable of discerning the differences can suggest, as is often mischievously done today, that the teachings of Lao-tse or Confucius do not differ from those of other founders of religions. Yet in one respect there is similarity among them all; they all teach that compassion and love must reign between soul and soul! The point of significance is this: six centuries before our era, consciousness begins to stir that love and compassion are to be received into the stream of human evolution. Thus whether we are thinking of the birth of wonder, of conscience or of love and compassion in the stream of evolution ... all the signs point to the fact that in the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture, something was imbued into mankind which we may recognise as the “meaning and purpose of Earth-evolution.”

It is so superficial and foolish when people say: “Why was it necessary for man to come down from the worlds of Divine Spirit into the physical world, only to have to reattain them? Why could he not have remained in the higher worlds?” Man could not remain in those worlds because only by coming down into the physical world of Earth-evolution could he receive into himself the forces of wonder, love or compassion, and conscience or moral obligation.

We look at the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch of culture and perceive, during its course, the dawn of impulses which—in reality only from that time onwards—spread more and more widely among mankind. It is very easy today to emphasise how seldom humanity is ruled by compassion and love, how seldom by conscience. But in pointing to these things, we must also be mindful of the fact that in the Graeco-Latin age, slavery was still an accepted custom, and that even a philosopher as great as Aristotle still regarded the existence of slaves as a necessary principle of human life; we must also remember that since those days, love has so far gained ground that even if today inequalities still persist among men, there is already present in their souls something like a feeling of shame that certain conditions exist. This in itself indicates that the forces which entered at that time into evolution are unfolding within the souls of men. Nobody would dare nowadays—if he is to avoid the tragic fate of Nietzsche—(the “followers” of Nietzsche can be ignored altogether, for in his right mind Nietzsche would have repudiated them)—to stand openly for the introduction of slavery as it was in Greece. Nobody will deny that the greatest of all forces in the human soul is that of love and compassion, and that it must be man's task to make the voice that sounds out of another world into the soul, more and more articulate.

Holding firmly in our minds that the unfolding of the three powers described constitutes the meaning and purpose of Earth-evolution, we turn to the greatest of all Impulses—the Christ-Impulse which poured into evolution during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch. Even outer circumstances indicate that this Impulse is given at the very time when the Earth is ready for the development of the three powers of wonder, compassion or love, and conscience, or moral obligation, as intrinsically human qualities. Many studies have given us a picture of how the Christ-Impulse made its way into the evolution of humanity.

I want here to refer to one aspect of the Christ-Impulse. I have told you that certain spiritual, superhuman forces were held back in the spiritual worlds at the beginning of the evolutionary process on the Earth. This Impulse streamed into the Earth at the time of which an indication is given in the Bible, namely, at the time of the Baptism in the Jordan. It was an Impulse, therefore, untouched by the Luciferic forces as it had been kept back until the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch; in that epoch it streamed into humanity. And now think of this in connection with certain things we have ourselves experienced.—If people are incapable of giving any concrete explanation of how the spiritual world plays into the physical world, it is really out of place for them to come out with crude and unreal ideas like that, for example, of the “Three Logoi.” I have said many times that the word “Logoi” can convey to the ordinary intelligence nothing more than its five letters. When it is alleged in certain quarters outside that here we speak of Christ as the “second Logos,” we do well to realise that misrepresentation and distortion are the order of the day. We ourselves are quoted as the source of statements which have actually originated somewhere else! Our constant endeavour is to deepen, to widen and to gather from every side, knowledge that can shed light on the Christ Idea. Yet outside our field of work, by talking round an abstract concept, people allege that we speak of the Christ as the “Second Logos.” In the Theosophical Society, conscience ought to be too sharp to permit such allegations. So long as sheer misrepresentation of other people's views is possible, the Theosophical Movement cannot be said to have reached any particularly high level, and while this sort of thing goes on, it is futile to boast about freedom of opinion in the Society. This is an empty phrase as long as people allow themselves to spread false ideas of the views held by others. Certainly there must be freedom to spread every shade of opinion—but not freedom to misrepresent the views of others! Spiritual conscience must be sharpened in this respect; otherwise all feeling for truth would in the end be driven out of the Theosophical Movement and then it would not be possible to cultivate the true spiritual Movement within the framework of the “Theosophical Movement.” These things must not be glossed over but taken really seriously. Certainly, there may be fewer publications, if the aim is to print only those things which are founded upon genuine, reliable knowledge. But after all, what harm will be done if there is less printing? What does it matter if less is said, so long as what is said is true and in accordance with reality? It was recently stated in periodicals abroad that the Christ is spoken of by us as the “Second Logos” and that we are said to be cultivating a “narrow” Theosophy, suitable for Germany, but not for any other country; we are said to be cultivating a “narrow” Theosophy, whereas a really “broad” Theosophical Movement is being conducted from a certain centre in Leipzig of which you have heard. When things of this kind are to be read, it can only be concluded that there does not exist in the Theosophical Movement the sharpness of conscience that is the pre-requisite of a spiritual movement. And if we lack this sharpness of conscience, if we do not feel, the most intense responsibility to the holiest truth, we shall make no progress on any other path. These things have had to be said. And within the Theosophical Movement it will above all be necessary to have eyes for the quality of love and compassion.

If we conceive the Christ Impulse to be the down-pouring of that spiritual power which was kept back in the ancient Lemurian time in order to flow into evolution during the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch at the point marked by the Baptism in the Jordan, reaching its culmination in the Mystery of Golgotha—then it is clear that He Who is known as the “Christ” was not, even at that time, incarnated in the ordinary sense, in a physical human being. We know what complicated processes were connected with the man “Jesus of Nazareth” in order that for three years of his life the Christ Impulse might live within him. We are therefore able to understand that for three years the Christ Impulse lived on the Earth in the three sheaths of a human being, but we realise, too, that even at that time, the Christ Impulse was not “incarnated” on the Earth in the ordinary sense but that He “pervaded” the body of the Being “Jesus of Nazareth.” This must be understood when it is said that it is not possible to speak of a “return” of Christ, but only of an Impulse which was present once, during the time of the events in Palestine beginning with the Baptism in the Jordan, when there remained only the physical body, the ether-body and the astral body of Jesus of Nazareth; within these sheaths the Christ was then present on the very soil of the Earth. From that time Christ has been united with the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth and can there be found by souls who are willing to receive Him. From that time onwards—and only from that time onwards—He has been present in the spiritual atmosphere of the Earth. The great turn given to Earth-evolution lies in the fact that from that time forward there was a power in the Earth which it did not previously contain.

We know that what we actually see in the kingdoms of Nature around us is not reality, but “Maya,” the “Great Illusion”. In the kingdom of the animals we see the individual forms coming into being and passing away; the Group-Soul alone endures. In the plant kingdom, the individual plants appear and disappear, but behind them there is the Earth-Spirit which does not pass away. So it is, too, in the kingdom of the minerals. The Spiritual endures, but the Physical, whether in the animal, plant or mineral kingdom, is transient, impermanent. Even the outer senses discern that the planet Earth is involved in a process of pulverisation and will at some future time disintegrate into dust. We have spoken of how the Earth-body will be cast off by the Spirit of the Earth, as the human body is cast off by the individual human Spirit. What will remain as the highest substance of the Earth when its goal has been reached? The Christ Impulse was present on the Earth, so to say as “spiritual Substance.” That Impulse endures and will be received into men during the course of Earth-evolution. But how does It live on? When the Christ Impulse was upon the Earth for three years, It had no physical body, no ether-body, no astral body of Its own, but was enveloped in the three sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth. When the goal has been reached, the Earth, like man, will be a fully developed being, a meet and fitting vehicle for the Christ Impulse.

But from whence are the three sheaths of the Christ Impulse derived? From forces that can be unfolded only on the Earth. Beginning with the Mystery of Golgotha, whatever has unfolded on the Earth since the Fourth Post-Atlantean period as the power of wonder, whatever comes to life in us as wonder—passes, finally, to the Christ, weaving the Astral Body of the Christ Impulse. Love or Compassion in the souls of men weaves the Ether-Body of the Christ Impulse; and the power of conscience which from the time of the Mystery of Golgotha until the goal of the Earth is attained, lives in and inspires the souls of men, weaves the Physical Body—or what corresponds with the physical body—for the Christ Impulse.¹

The true meaning of words from the Gospel can only now be discerned: “Whatsoever ye have done to one of the least of these My Brethren, ye have done it unto Me.” (Matt. 25. 40). The forces streaming from man to man are the units integrating the Ether-Body of Christ: love, or compassion, weaves the Ether-Body of Christ. Thus when the goal of Earth-evolution is attained, He will be enveloped in the threefold vesture woven from the powers that have lived in men—and which, when the limitations of the “ I,” have been transcended, become the sheaths of Christ.

And now think of how men live in communion with Christ. From the time of the Mystery of Golgotha to the attainment of the goal of Earth-evolution, man grows more perfect in that he develops to the stature that is within his reach as a being endowed with the power of the “ I.” But men are united with the Christ Who has come among them, in that they transcend their own “ I ”—and through wonder, build the Astral Body of Christ. Christ does not build His own Astral Body, but in the wonder that arises in their souls, men share in the forming of the Astral Body of Christ. His Ether-Body will be fashioned through the compassion and love flowing from man to man; and His “physical body” through the power of conscience unfolding in human beings. Whatever wrongs are committed in these three realms deprive the Christ of the possibility of full development on the Earth—that is to say, Earth-evolution is left imperfect. Those who go about the Earth with indifference and unconcern, who have no urge to understand what the Earth can reveal to them, deprive the Astral Body of Christ of the possibility of full development; those who live without unfolding compassion and love, hinder the Ether-Body of Christ from full development; and those who lack conscience hinder the development of what corresponds with the Physical Body of Christ ... but this means that the Earth cannot reach the goal of its evolution.

The principle of Egotism has to be overcome in Earth-evolution. The Christ Impulse penetrates more and more deeply into the life and culture of humanity and the conviction that this Impulse has lived its way into mankind, free from every trace of denominationalism—as, for example, in the paintings of Raphael, this conviction will bear its fruit. How Christ may truly be portrayed is a problem still to be solved. Men on Earth will have to be greatly enriched in their life of feeling if, after the many attempts made through the centuries, another is to succeed to some slight extent in expressing what the Christ is as the super-sensible Impulse living on through Earth-evolution. The attempts made hitherto do not even suggest what form such a portrayal of Christ should take. For it would have to express how the enveloping sheaths woven of the forces of wonder, compassion and conscience are gradually made manifest. The countenance of Christ must be so vital and living that it is an expression of the victory won over the sensory, desire-nature in men of Earth—victory achieved through the very forces which have spiritualised the countenance. There must be sublime power in this countenance. The painter or sculptor will have to express in the unusual form of the chin and mouth, the power of conscience unfolded to its highest degree. The mouth must convey the impression that it is not there for the purpose of taking food but to give utterance to whatever moral strength and power of conscience has been cultivated by men through the ages; the very structure of the bones around the teeth in the lower jaw will seem to form themselves into a mouth. All this will have to be expressed in the countenance. The form of the lower part of the face will have to express a power whose outstreaming rays seem to shatter the rest of the way that certain other forces are vanquished. With a mouth like this, it will be impossible to give the Christ Figure a bodily form similar to that possessed by the physical human being today. On the other hand, all the power of compassion will flow out of His eyes—the power that eyes alone can contain—not in order to receive impressions but to bear the very soul into the joys and sufferings of others. His brow will give no suggestion of thought based upon earthly sense-impressions. It will be a brow conspicuously prominent above the eyes, arching over that part of the brain; it will not be a “thinker's” brow which merely works upon material already there. Wonder will be made manifest in this projecting brow which curves gently backwards over the head, expressing wonder and marvel at the mysteries of the world. It will be a head such as is nowhere to be found in physical humanity.

Every true representation of the Christ must be a portrayal of the Ideal embodied in Him. When man reaches out towards this highest Ideal and strives through Spiritual Science to represent it in Art, this feeling will arise in greater and greater strength:—If you would portray the Christ, you must not look at what is actually there in the world, but you must let your whole being be quickened and pervaded by all that flows from contemplation of the spiritual evolution of the world, inspired by the three great impulses of Wonder, Compassion and Conscience.

• 1. See also: Christ and the Twentieth Century (25.1.12). Published in the volume entitled: Turning Points of Spiritual History.

The last lecture dealt with the subject of how the Christ Impulse will unfold in future times, and also, of course, in our own epoch. We heard that sheaths will weave themselves as it were around the Christ Impulse: Wonder into an Astral Body; feelings of love or Compassion into an Ether-Body; the power of Conscience into what corresponds to a Physical Body. Thereby that Ideal Being Whose “ I ”—the Christ Impulse Itself—passed into the Earth through the Mystery of Golgotha, will reach completion in the course of the time still remaining to Earth-evolution. The fundamental character of the future Ideal of humanity was described in one of its aspects and the present lecture will endeavour to add yet another, different picture.

The Christ Impulse came, so to say, in the middle of the epoch following upon the great Atlantean catastrophe. This epoch may be said to extend from the time of the Atlantean catastrophe to the next great catastrophe of which you may read in the lectures on the Apocalypse. (Nuremburg, 1908.) In the middle of this period, the most important of all events in Earth-evolution takes place—the coming of the Christ Impulse. As the last lecture indicated, it is not necessary to turn our eyes to Palestine in order to realise that something of the highest importance was taking place at that time in Earth-evolution. We have only to study the Graeco-Latin epoch of culture, lying as it does in the middle of the Post-Atlantean period, and recall one of its characteristic features; this again can be compared with a similar feature in the preceding Third epoch and in our own epoch.

The essential and fundamental character of a Greek Temple has often been described. Its form stands there as a complete, self-contained, independant whole, even when it is not actually before our eyes, even when we conceive of no human being anywhere near it. Inside a Greek Temple, human beings always seem to be a disturbing element; they do not really belong to it, they do not belong inside it. For what, in reality, is a Greek Temple? We can only understand it in its whole form and structure, if we think of it as the dwelling-place of a living, invisible God who has come down to the physical plane. That is the reason why every Temple is dedicated to one particular God. And when we picture the God in the Temple—with no human beings present—the God for whom a dwelling-place has been built on Earth ... then we have grasped the “idea” embodied in the Greek Temple. Human beings really have no place there. This was the idea underlying the whole architecture of a Greek Temple. Such architecture could only arise in an epoch when the Divine Spiritual was known to pervade all existence on the physical plane. Men whose paths appeared to be everywhere steeped in the Divine could feel all the depth of meaning contained in words uttered by one of themselves: “Better it is to be a beggar in the Upper World than a king in the realm of the Shades!” ... that is to say, in the world lying on the other side of the Gate of Death. It was the period when human beings experienced, in greatest intensity, their union with the physical plane and with the Spiritual pervading the physical plane.

Let us compare a Greek Temple with a building of the same character in the preceding epoch—and with buildings which, in our own epoch, indicate its fundamental attitude and trend. Think of an Egyptian Temple, even of the Pyramids: they become intelligible only when we see them as expressions of man's aspiration to the Divine—to the Divine Godhead who has not yet descended to the physical plane. In the architecture of the Egyptian time, every line, every form, expresses the striving of man towards the Divine-Spiritual. But these mysterious and deeply symbolical buildings indicate in themselves that men must have undergone preparation before the architectural forms could help them to find the way to the Divine-Spiritual. They needed preparation: they must have reached the first stage of Initiation. The same applies to the architecture of Asia Minor. In our own epoch, Gothic architecture gives the keynote. This is an occult fact. It is impossible to have the same conception of a Gothic Cathedral as of a Greek Temple; for a Gothic Cathedral is incomplete without the congregation of believers. It is simply not complete without the human beings within it! All its forms seem to convey that they are there to receive the prayers of the believers—the “believers,” in contrast to the “Initiates” in ancient Egypt. Anyone who can discern what these things mean, realises from the course taken by the evolution of Form from the Egyptian Temple, through the Greek Temple, to the Gothic Cathedral, that the impulse leading to the unfolding of the human “ I ” entered at a certain point into the process of earthly existence. Wherever we look we can perceive how the Christ Impulse lays hold of man, leaves its stamp and signature upon all happenings, all development, and it seems grotesque when philosophical or theological thought declares that acceptance of such an Impulse rests upon the basis of historical records. It does not rest upon any historical record whatever, but simply and solely upon a discerning, clear-sighted observation of human evolution; for no matter where we look, we see that development follows the same course as that revealed in Architecture. The Initiate who alone was capable of understanding the architectural forms of the Egypto-Chaldean epoch—the Third Post-Atlantean epoch—knew that he must raise himself above the level of ordinary manhood: then and only then could he ascend into the region of Divine Spiritual life. The Initiate of the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch knew that in the physical world he was living together with the Divine, but he had very little connection with what the Greeks called the World of Shades, because by that time man had descended more deeply into physical existence. And when the Gods did not mingle with men in the Temples, the Greeks felt no connection with that other world.

Since the Fourth Post-Atlantean epoch these conditions have changed—changed in the sense that it is possible now for every single soul to find the path to the Divine-Spiritual. It is extremely important to realise this for it is the most concrete expression of the fact that in ancient times men were much nearer to the Spiritual in their consciousness, in their knowledge and in their life of soul. Then came the descent to the physical plane and now there must be a gradual re-ascent. We are living in the age when the re-ascent must be undertaken consciously—whereas, to begin with, the Christ Impulse worked unconsciously in men.

Our own epoch is a kind of recapitulation of the Egypto-Chaldean period. Of the Graeco-Latin epoch there is no recapitulation, for it lies in the middle of the seven consecutive periods. The Third epoch is being recapitulated, in a certain form, in our own age; the Second epoch, that of ancient Persian culture, will be recapitulated in the Sixth epoch by which our own will be followed; and in the far distant Seventh epoch, before a stupendous catastrophe, the First epoch, that of ancient Indian culture, will be recapitulated—not, of course, in the same form, for the recapitulation will everywhere bear the imprint of the Christ Impulse.

A certain consciousness existed, especially in olden times, of what has come to pass in the evolution of mankind. Olden times, of course, were paramountly conscious of the descent of humanity, the descent to the physical plane from the heights of Divine-Spiritual existence. But for every process there must be preparation. There had been preparation, too, for the Impulse given by the Mystery of Golgotha in the Fourth epoch—the Impulse for the re-ascent. This Impulse had its “forerunners”—in Elijah, John the Baptist and others. But consciousness of the fact that mankind has descended from Divine-Spiritual existence and in the future must re-ascend into the worlds of Divine Spirit, was present not only in the culture which eventually made its way into the West; evidences of such consciousness are to be found in every civilisation.

A very widespread and characteristic idea finds expression in the traditions of practically all the peoples—an idea which may, it is true, have very ramified applications, but can finally be associated with a definite and specific tradition. It is a tradition upon which there has been much reflection and upon which occult knowledge alone can shed light, namely, the tradition of the “Flood.” Much that is connected with this tradition refers, of course, to far earlier times, but the following is brought clearly to light by occult investigation. Nearly all the peoples who have left reliable historical records or legends refer to the Flood as having taken place about three thousand years before the Mystery of Golgotha; that is the period indicated by the legends. There is not enough time today to explain why this last Flood which was supposed to have occurred three thousand years before our era, cannot be taken to indicate a great physical catastrophe or deluge. Obviously it does not refer to the Atlantean catastrophe, for that took place very much earlier. The “Flood,” therefore, must mean something entirely different. Yet the fact should not be lost sight of that the traditions of all the peoples in question place the Flood in the fourth millennium before our era. Although the dates vary a little, they tally in the main essentials.

At this point I will ask you to remember that in the First Post-Atlantean epoch, when the Holy Rishis were the great teachers of men, culture was inspired, paramountly, by the human ether-body; during the ancient Persian epoch, culture was inspired by the astral body, the sentient body; in the Egypto-Chaldean epoch by the sentient soul; in the Graeco-Latin epoch by the mind or intellectual soul; in our present epoch by the consciousness soul (or “spiritual soul”). And now the time is approaching when the powers of the Spirit-Self will gradually be imbued into culture. In that development proceeded in this way, the experiences arising in man's life of soul underwent deep and far-reaching change. Just think of it. The picture of the world presented to a man of the earliest Indian epoch, of which even the Vedas have no knowledge, received its essential character and stamp from the working of the ether-body. Through the ether-body man cannot direct his gaze to the outer world in the way that is customary in our time. His perception, his picture of the world cannot be as they are today; where the forces of the ether-body are in operation, everything arises from within. A man of today can only have an idea—dim and lifeless at that—of perception which derives from the ether-body, when he recalls the character of his dreams. But the dreams and visions through which, during the ancient Indian epoch, one human being became known to another, were living and real in the very highest degree. To imagine that when one human being met another, the outer perception of him was the same as it is today, would be quite erroneous. The man of ancient India saw pictures—but in those times the other human being physically before him was enveloped in an auric cloud, shrouded in a kind of mist. The character of perception was altogether different compared with perception as it is at the present day, these pictures, although full of the greatest spiritual import, were blurred and hazy. The forces streaming down from Cosmic Space, from the world of the stars—it was these forces that were seen in such clarity and brilliance in those ancient times. In the Second Post-Atlantean epoch the power to look outwards gradually unfolded but, strangely enough, the faculty for gazing into the great Cosmic Spaces remained. Whereas perceptions of the world below were still hazy and without definition, the ancient Persian gazed with lucid clarity into the world of the stars. It is therefore intelligible that Zarathustrianism should point directly to Cosmic Space, to the light of the Sun, to “Ahura Mazdao” or Ormuzd. This was because the astral body was paramountly active. By the end of the ancient Persian epoch, the faculty of looking outwards into the physical world was already in its preparatory stage. The impulses leading to perception as it is in our day have been developing for long, long ages. Thus the impulse to look out into the physical world was gradually instilled into man, leading him to the entirely new mode of perception which began to light up by slow degrees.

When the ancient Persian epoch was drawing to its close and the next period was glimmering like a dawn of the future, men felt: “We shall no longer be able to experience with such intensity the Divine heritage that has come to us from the olden days of Atlantis, when with their power of inner, clairvoyant vision, men lived in communion with the worlds of Divine Spirit ” ... The gaze was turned back to the past. What mattered most for these men were their remembrances in which living pictures arose like dreams—dreams of how the Gods had fashioned the world through the ages of Lemuria and Atlantis. They felt that these remembrances were withdrawing, were fading away from humanity and that conditions were approaching when man must work with a faculty which tells him of the outer world, clouds the bright light of the inner world of the Spirit, and compels him to look from within-outwards, if he is to master the external world. This age was drawing nearer and nearer. Those who had the deepest, clearest perception of the dawn of the new epoch were men who at that time were the knowers and sages in ancient India. They felt it in the form, as it were, of a Divine Impulse, compelling the human being to think for himself, through inner activity, about what confronts him in the physical world to which he was descending. Picturing this Impulse as a Divine Being, the successors of the first, very ancient Indian culture—those who were living now during the Second Post-Atlantean epoch—called this Being “Pramathesis.” These men felt: “The God Pramathesis is drawing near, snatching human beings away from the guidance given by the ancient Gods; God Pramathesis is causing the disappearance of all that ancient clairvoyance revealed concerning the world and is forcing man to look outwards into the physical plane. Darkness is creeping over the world of the ancient Gods. A time is approaching when in their life of soul men will no longer be able to gaze into the world of the Gods, but when their eyes will be turned to the outer world. Kaliyuga, the ‘Black Age’ is approaching; the bright age of ancient Divinity is giving place to the age when the Gods of old withdraw. It is the age inaugurated by the God Pramathesis!”

Kaliyuga was said to begin at a time which lies 3,101 years before our own era; this is the time of the “Flood” according to Indian tradition. For it was said that the Flood coincides with the coming of Kaliyuga, and Kaliyuga was conceived to be the offspring of the God “Pramathesis”.

Kaliyuga broke in upon the world, reaching its close in our own age. Now that the ascent to the spiritual world must begin, a spiritual science has come to mankind. Kaliyuga began 3,101 years before our era, and ended in the year 1899 A.D. That is why 1899 is a year of such importance. The re-ascent to the spiritual worlds—this must be the ideal of the future.

The age preceding the onset of Kaliyuga was, however, an age characteristic of the ancient Persian epoch when the old remembrances rose up within man via the astral body. Now he was to turn to the world outside. This was a great and epoch-making transition. In the case of many human beings it came about in such a way that for a time all vision departed from them and darkness spread over their souls. This condition of darkness did not last for long periods, actually only for weeks. But men passed into this condition of sleep, and many never came out of it. Many of them perished and only relatively few were left in widely scattered regions. There is not enough time today to describe the conditions actually prevailing at that time. It can only be said briefly that owing to so large a number of human beings having succumbed, conditions were dark and sinister in the extreme and at only a few scattered places did men awaken from the great spiritual deluge that spread over their souls like a sleep. This condition of sleep was felt by most souls as a kind of “drowning” and by only a few as a re-awakening. And then came the “Black Age,” the age devoid of the Gods.

Were these things known to other human beings on the Earth? They were indeed. To our astonishment we find widespread evidence of knowledge among the peoples that a deluge had submerged the consciousness of men and that in the Third Post-Atlantean epoch, through the development of the sentient soul—in other words, outward-turned vision—an entirely new power must have been inaugurated. The Indians divined this when they said: Kaliyuga is the offspring of Pramathesis. And what did the Greeks say? In Greece, “Pramathesis” becomes, “Prometheus”—which is exactly the same. Prometheus is the brother of Epimetheus. The latter represents one who still “looks back” into ancient times. Epimetheus is the one whose thoughts turn backward; Prometheus sends his thoughts forward, to the world outside, to what takes place there. Just as Pramathesis has his offspring in Kaliyuga, so, too, Prometheus has his offspring. The Greek form of “Kaliyuga” is “Kalion.” And because the Greeks felt it to be the age of Darkness, the “ d ” is prefixed and the word becomes “Deukalion”—which is really the same word as “Kaliyuga.” This is not ingenious fancy, but an occult fact. It is clear, therefore, that the Greeks possessed the same knowledge as the Indian sages. This is quoted merely as an example, indicating that in their conditions of old clairvoyance, knowledge of these truths came to men and they were able to express them in majestic pictures. The Greek legend tells how, on the advice of his father Prometheus, Deukalion builds a wooden chest; in this he and his wife Pyrrha alone are saved from destruction, when Zeus proposes to exterminate the human race by a deluge. Deukalion and Pyrrha land on Parnassus, and from them issues the new human race. Deukalion is the son of Prometheus—and in the intervening period comes the flood, denoting among manifold peoples, a condition of consciousness.

These wonderful pictures which have been preserved in the traditions of so many of the peoples, show us how truths concerning the evolution of mankind have survived among them.

As men lived on gradually into the age of Kaliyuga, into the Third Post-Atlantean epoch, the ancient clairvoyant knowledge faded away. We who have to recapitulate the Third epoch, must bring this kind of knowledge to life once again, but in an entirely new form. The lecture given a fortnight ago (The Idea of Reincarnation and its Introduction into Western Culture) dealt with this subject. Western culture, the beginnings of which were mingled with the ancient Hebrew culture, has to concentrate primary attention on the single personality living on the physical plane between birth and death; Western culture cannot focus its main attention on the Individuality who passes through the different epochs, but concentrates upon the existence of the one personality, whose life between birth and death runs its course on the physical plane, not in the higher worlds. Now that Kaliyuga has come to an end, consciousness must be imbued with the forces necessary for the further evolution of the human race; what was lost during Kaliyuga must be raised again from the depths. Our eyes must be directed more and more to the onflowing life of the Individuality. I have spoken of a series of lives in the West—Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis—and have shown how by the addition of knowledge derived from the spiritual worlds, we can perceive the continuous thread of the soul, the onflowing life of the one Individuality in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael, Novalis.

In our Movement, development of this insight must be a conscious aspiration, for it is a necessity in the evolution and culture of the Earth. No progress would be possible by the mere continuation of the old experiences, the old knowledge. I have emphasised often enough all that it means for the minds of men to enrich and make fruitful the heritage of ancient times by means of the new knowledge now available. It must, however, be realised that just as the transition from life inspired by the astral body to a spiritual life of soul, primarily in the sentient soul, was fraught with deep significance, so, now, we must work our way from life in the consciousness soul to life in the Spirit-Self. I have intimated how this will take place by saying that during the next three thousand years, an increasing number of human beings will experience the Appearance of the Christ Impulse, will be able to experience the Christ Impulse in the spiritual worlds. But actual realisation of the influences streaming in from the spiritual world will have to unfold in greater intensity in the times lying ahead of us. It will not suffice to know, in theory, that “generally speaking” the human being lives on after death; man's whole picture of life must carry the sure conviction that when the human being passes through the Gate of Death, he lives on still, death being merely a transition. We must realise, not as a theory, but as actual knowledge, that while a human being is alive, he works upon us physically, through his body; after his death he works spiritually, out of the spiritual world, upon our physical world. He is present in very truth. We must learn to see life in the light of such a fact and to reckon with what it involves.

Suppose it is our task to educate children.—Anyone acquainted with these things is well aware that to educate children who up to their twentieth year still have parents living, is a very different matter from having to educate children whose fathers died when they were four or five years old. When education is taken in deep earnestness, and the individuality of the child really studied (it is not a matter of speculation!)—especially in the case of a child whose father is dead, we shall often discern that there is something unusual at work here, something we cannot, at first, quite get hold of. Moreover we shall not succeed in getting to the root of it, if we adopt the modes of thought drawn from materialism. But here and there the thought may occur: “Here is a strange current of the times. Most people regard those who belong to it as fools; but it may be worth while to find out what these Theosophists have to say about the destiny of human beings after death. The Theosophists tell us that although human beings discard their physical bodies at death, the content of their life of soul, their hopes, aspirations and so forth, live on, and are not inactive. Indeed they are often more active after death than when the human being was living on the physical plane, enclosed in his body” ... Those who speak like this, have paid attention to the results of spiritual research and will realise that the father is working upon the child from the spiritual world; moreover that he has definite hopes and longings which make their way into the life of the child! With this knowledge, success may come where it was not possible before, and we know how to deal with sympathies and antipathies which may express themselves in the child. To succeed with children we need to know more than that the air affects them, and that when the air is chilly they may catch cold. We must have knowledge of the influences playing from the spiritual world into the physical, and of the form they take.

These things are still regarded as nonsense, but the time is not far distant when the very facts of life will compel people to take account of them and to reckon with what endures in the form of live and potent impulses after human beings have passed through death. Not until then will the concrete reality contained in the spiritual conception of the world be grasped.

Naturally, these influences from the spiritual world are not at work in the case of children only; influences also come from individualities in the spiritual world who were connected with human beings at a later age of life. To begin with, a man may be quite unaware of these influences. (Again I am not inventing but telling you of actual observations, confirmed by spiritual investigation.) After a time a man may say to himself: “I do not know why I am impelled to this or that action, why I have this impulse; something is urging me to think quite differently now, about certain things.” Subsequently he may have a very striking dream. Little heed is paid to things of the kind nowadays, but men will gradually become aware that it is not the “form” but the content of the dream that is of importance. From this you may conclude that if Edison had made his discoveries in a dream, they would have been just as effective! Suppose a man dreams that some unknown person comes to him, someone he cannot even think of as an acquaintance, indeed cannot place at all. This person comes into his life of dream and various things happen ... Finally he realises that this person whom he cannot recall, who died perhaps fifteen years before, is working into and influencing his life. Whereas previously he felt that certain impulses were urging him on, he is now fully aware that these impulses, in the form of a dream-picture, are working into his night-consciousness. This is often characteristic of the connection between impulses within us and influences working upon us in the shape of dreams. Such experiences will become increasingly familiar.

And now, in conclusion, let us see how they will become familiar.

Suppose someone today reads one of the many biographies of Raphael. He will get the impression that in a certain respect Raphael stands there as a phenomenon, complete in himself, giving forth the highest and best that was in him, but so enclosed within his particular sphere of work that it is difficult to imagine him rising still higher or transcending the level he had actually reached. And again: Raphael's creative genius seems to have been alive in him from the the very beginning ... On the subject of its phenomenal manifestation in Raphael's early boyhood the biographies have nothing to say. And why?

The biographies give the information that Raphael's father was Giovanni Santi who, among other activities, was also a writer; he died when Raphael was eleven years old, but before his death he had placed the boy under the tuition of a painter. It is also known that Giovanni Santi was himself a talented painter but that there was something in him which he could not bring to expression. We feel that there was something in the soul of Giovanni Santi which did not make itself manifest because his outer nature frustrated it. He died when the boy Raphael was eleven years old. From the very way in which Raphael develops we can discern the source of the powers which enabled him to reach maturity and perfection so rapidly they are the influences playing into him from his father, forces coming from the spiritual worlds. Anyone who tries to write a true biography of Raphael in the future will have to emphasise the point that Giovanni Santi, the father of Raphael, died in 1494, when the boy was only eleven years old. Giovanni Santi was a distinguished man, who during his life on Earth aspired to great things. And his aspirations continued when, living on without frustration in the spiritual world, he was sending down to his beloved son—in the form of delicate and intimate spiritual influences—forces which his own constitution had prevented him from bringing to expression in the physical world.

To say this is no disparagement of Raphael's genius, for the ground must naturally have been there. We know that he was the reincarnation of John the Baptist and had only to receive into himself those forces which it was his particular mission to bring into manifestation at that time. Thinking of this, we can perceive the interplay between the spiritual world and the physical plane. Future study of the life of Raphael will have, at every turn, to concern itself with the influences which poured from the Spiritual into the Physical. Then we shall have a picture of “wholeness”—of forces working around us, through us, in us. Thus will spirituality again be instilled into culture. But it must not surprise us if those who are unwilling today to listen to any suggestion of the introduction of spirituality into culture, are contemptuous of this spiritual conception of the world; for it is something completely new. It is a dawning of the new power of the Spirit-Self. And a time will come—I ask you to write this deeply into your souls—when men will think of the materialistic culture which is now on the way to its close, as they once thought about the age preceding the Flood, yearning and longing for the future culture which, when it came, was something wholly and essentially new. Theosophists, however, should not merely strive for this ideal in theory, but receive it into their very souls; they should regard it as their good Karma to know about the course of human evolution and therewith of human culture.

These things will have to be pondered over for a time, because I am not yet in a position to say exactly when the next lecture can take place.¹ But we know well that time is required to make Spiritual Science an integral force and impulse in our hearts and minds; and we know, too, that it is part of spiritual development not only to understand the truths but actually to unfold all that the great ideas born from a spiritual conception of the world can say to our hearts.

• 1. Between the date of this lecture and the next of the series (18th June, 1912), Dr. Steiner had given two lectures in Copenhagen: On the Meaning of Life, 23rd and 24th May, 1912; three lectures in Norrköping: Anthroposophical Ethics, 28th and 29th May, 1912; and two lectures in Christiania: Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy, 2nd June to 12th June, 1912.

It will be my task today to speak of the nature and being of Man, in order that the next lecture may contribute to an understanding of the development of mankind as a whole.

We will begin by considering something of primary and immediate importance in the life of the human being as he stands before us on the Earth. You know, of course, that the human being, as we see him, is not the creation of the Earth alone, but that his origin must be traced back to much earlier conditions of existence. From many writings and lectures you know that through spiritual-scientific research these preceding conditions of evolution, the preceding embodiments of the planet Earth, can be discovered and appropriately known as the pre-earthly “Saturn-condition,” the pre-earthly “Sun-condition” and the pre-earthly “Moon-condition” of our planet. The forces in man as a “whole” being do not proceed merely from processes that have been in operation on the Earth: the being of man contains heritages, as it were, from the earlier planetary conditions. These heritages have remained and are active in man. The human being in his whole nature can be understood only when we know that the first foundations of the physical body were laid during the ancient Saturn period; development proceeded through the Old Sun period and the Old Moon period, and the present form and structure of the human body did not unfold until the period of Earth-evolution proper. In the other principles of human nature, too, heritages of pre-earthly conditions, not merely forces originating on the Earth, are actively in operation. Today, however, we will think of what man is as a creation of the Earth, living out his existence on the Earth; we will think of what is incorporated in his being during the Earth-period, in pursuance of the mission of the Earth.

The powers or principles derived specifically from the Earth can be differentiated into three. There is, firstly, man's earthly consciousness; it is derived from the Earth and the forces of the Earth. It is, of all principles, the one that is most immediately present in the human being as he moves about the world today; and the purpose of everything that has come to pass in the process of the Earth's evolution has been to enable the human being, here on the Earth, to unfold his present consciousness. Consciousness is the most intensely present, the most familiar reality; it pervades and fills all waking existence; in it your thoughts, perceptions, feelings and impulses of will run their course, in so far as you are “awake” human beings. This consciousness you know so well was not possessed by man in the pre-earthly conditions of the Earth, nor indeed during the first period of Earth-evolution proper—which, to begin with, was only a recapitulation of pre-earthly conditions. Man acquired it gradually; or rather, it was bestowed upon him by the Creator-Powers of the Universe.

In order to possess this consciousness the human being must waken from sleep and must make use of the senses, that is to say, of the instruments of the body. That he must also make use of instruments other than the senses, is obvious; for in this everyday, waking consciousness he does not merely formulate ideas and thoughts but also has feelings, experiences, impulses of will. This whole content of consciousness, filling and forming it, needs the outer, physical body, the earthly body; when an idea or thought is formed, the being of soul-and-spirit makes use of the instrument of the physical body. From this it is easy to realise that the consciousness into which the human being wakens in the morning is dependent upon the earthly body; and that when he thinks, feels or wills in this ordinary consciousness, he can only do so because he has the physical earth-body as an instrument.

As you will have read in the book Occult Science, the states of consciousness between death and a new birth are essentially different from those of consciousness as it is on Earth. For consciousness changes according to its instrument, and between death and rebirth, as a being of soul and spirit, man has at his disposal instruments of a different character from those available to him during life in the physical body. The physical body, from which the instruments of the everyday consciousness are formed, disintegrates and decays at death. Or rather, in the sense of Spiritual Science it would be better, instead of using the word “decay,” to say that it is given over to the element of universal Nature, for the dissolution or decay of the physical body to be observed outwardly is only illusion, maya. In reality, a great and mighty process underlies what is called the “dissolution” or “decay” of the human body. Whatever in man belongs to Nature passes over to Powers standing behind existence. At death the physical body of earthly man slips away, falls away from him; so that in speaking of man as a being of the Earth, we can only say that the instrument of his everyday consciousness falls away from him at death.

The first of the three principles of the Earth-man, therefore, is his consciousness. In considering his whole being, however, something must be kept separate and distinct from what is known as “consciousness” per se in ordinary sense-existence—something that is not, in the same sense as thinking, feeling and willing, to be included in the general sphere of consciousness. What we call memory is distinct from these other processes. The thoughts and feelings arising from the store of memory and of remembrances, are not subject to the same laws as the consciousness of which we have here been speaking. In order that consciousness may exist at all, the physical body must be preserved in its accustomed form. In respect of its “substance” the physical body is being renewed all the time; after seven or eight years we have within us quite other physical substances than were previously there. The physical substances change, but the “form” remains. And the form must remain, for it is the instrument for the ordinary consciousness. The ordinary consciousness can unfold thinking, feeling and willing during the time the physical body retains its form. If, however, the memory and the remembrances were bound up with the “physical body,” they would not be able to survive for very long—at most for as long as the various substances of the physical body remain. This means that if the memory were bound up with the physical body, we should be able, at most, to remember back for six or seven years. The physical body is not, however, the instrument of the memory; in earthly man the instrument of the memory is the ether-body, or life-body. The ether-body is actively in operation through the whole life of man on Earth—so that what has been taken into the memory, from the first moment of consciousness to death, can remain all the time. It is this ether- or life-body which carries remembrances, memory pictures, from one period in life across to the other. The instrument for the earthly consciousness, therefore, is the physical body; the instrument for memory and remembrance is the ether-body. We should not be able to carry the remembrances of our life across the period stretching between death and a new birth if something quite definite did not take place—if, after forsaking the physical body at death we did not remain for a certain space of time in the ether- or life-body. This is the interval after death during which the past life spreads out like a great panorama, a great tableau. This “life-tableau” can only appear to us because after death we retain the ether-body for a short time. The ether-body is the instrument for acts of remembrance or recollection and if we were to lose it altogether at death or immediately afterwards, no such tableau could rise-up before us. We must be able to use the ether-body as an instrument, and something takes place while this life-tableau is before us after death. This whole life tableau is gathered into, “inscribed” as it were, into the universal life-ether permeating space. And there it remains—in the universal life-ether. What was retained at the beginning for a few days only, is now inscribed in the universal life-ether in which we live perpetually. Because it is thus inscribed it is present throughout our further existence between death and the new birth in the future. We take with us through that period an “extract” of our ether-body, so that a connection can always be established with the life-tableau that has been inscribed into the universal life-ether. This is a kind of permanent organ whereby the remembrances of the last life remain accessible.

In consciousness per se there is, and can only be, the immediate Present; the immediate reality of “being” would vanish with the passing moment if, as men of Earth, we could only unfold consciousness in acts of thinking, feeling and willing. That we are able to preserve what is contained in our life of thinking, of feeling and of will, is due to the ether-body; and even after death it is still preserved, in the universal life-ether. There we have the second principle of earthly, human existence: that which does not take flight with the passing moment, but remains in existence, preserved in the universal life-ether. Thus in the man of Earth, two principles are to be specified: earthly consciousness, and memory or remembrances—which are not to be identified with the consciousness as such.

What, then, is the third principle?

The second principle is distinct from the first in that it does not permit experiences simply to pass away, but preserves them. The third principle of earthly man differs in an important respect from the second. In so far as thoughts have become memories, they have a definite character. Everything that is entrusted to the memory has this characteristic: during your life it is your own, personal possession, part of your own, personal “estate.” Memories that go with you through life until the time of death, are your innermost possession, a possession remaining in you as a personality, until your death. It will not be difficult to realise that what you carry with you through life in your memory, in your remembrances, really means nothing in the outer world. It is within you, and only after death does it begin to mean something in the outer world—when it is inscribed into the universal life-ether. In the universal life-ether it is the “registered mark” of your personality. It was inner experience during life and after death it remains for the following period of eternity as the register of your personality. There it is—inscribed into the life-ether. The “Inner” during life becomes the “Outer” in the life-ether after death. Up to the time of death these memories and remembrances are carried within us as our own, inner possession, and from death onwards they are inscribed like an open secret, as it were, in the life-ether; there they live and we remain connected with them because an “extract” from the life body goes with us and we can always look back to what we once experienced. Just as memories and remembrances remain within us during earthly life, so, after death, we are in the life-ether, together with the experiences of our past earthly life.

It is different with all that even during our lifetime became outward reality—not remaining inward as did the remembrances and memories. Truth to tell, every single step we take with our feet during earthly life becomes outer fact, outer reality; for not only are we able to remember it, but the very step registers our “mark” upon the earthly realm—in that we move through the air, for one thing. Even in the physical sense, the whole of our active life becomes outer reality. And to what a still greater extent is this true of the moral life!

Good and kind-hearted actions in very truth become outer reality. Deeds born of compassion or of sympathy with the joys of our fellow-men do not live on only within us but also in the other human being, in our whole environment. All the time, the marks and traces of our life are being impressed upon Earth-existence. The man for whom we performed a deed of compassion or a deed born of fellow-feeling with his joy or suffering, carries the influence and effect of our action on with him through life. What we have felt and done lives on in the others, in the outside world. Think about this, and it will soon become plain that such actions do not belong exclusively to the man who performs them in the sense that his memory-pictures belong to him, but pass over into the world outside as active influences.

What is imparted in this way to the outer world during a man's lifetime is not like his memory-pictures inscribed in the ether-body. The ether-body is too intimately and fundamentally part of the whole personality to enable these actions and the effects of them to be registered in it. Nor would this be for the good during earthly life. For if some unkind or mischievous deed, for instance, were immediately to be inscribed in the ether-body, the man would be doomed, throughout his whole life, to be aware of it; it would be a force in his ether-body and in certain circumstances suffering would be entailed; working its way into his life-forces, the bad action would make him ill, discontented, feeble. If acts were inscribed in the ether-body, as are the remembered thoughts, life would be made impossible for earthly man. Just as the ether-body is the instrument for the thoughts, in so far as they become remembrances and memories, so is the astral body the instrument for deeds. Deeds proceed from the astral body. The astral body is the instrument for every action—as I have said, an action becomes part of and works as an influence in the outer world. Everyday consciousness is bound up with the physical body; remembrances and memory with the ether-body; delicate and rarified though the astral body is, every action, remaining as it does as an influence in the outer world, has its source in the astral body. The consequence of this is that actions remain in a certain sense bound up with the astral body, just as memory remains with the ether-body. While the human being is still living in the ether-body after death, the “tableau of memory” unfolds—the memories of the life that is just over remain in the ether-body. When the ether-body has been laid aside after death and all that has been preserved in the form of personal memories has been inscribed into the universal life-ether, man's life continues, but now wholly in the astral body. In the astral body he has to live for a long time, bound up with the outer effects caused by his life. After death the human being lives through his actions in backward sequence; he lives backwards through everything he has done to other beings on the earth. For a period amounting approximately to a third of the time of his life, he is living in his astral body through all the actions he performed on Earth. And just as the personal memories are inscribed into the universal life-ether when the ether-body is laid aside a few days after death, so in the period during which the human being is bound up with the astral body, all his deeds are inscribed into the all-pervading cosmic astrality. They are within the cosmic astrality and he remains connected with them, just as he is connected with his personal memories which have been recorded as an abiding inscription in the cosmic ether—only his deeds are inscribed as it were into a different cosmic register. While the human being is living backwards through the deeds and acts performed in the past life, they are all inscribed in the cosmic astrality and he remains connected with them. Through his astral body, therefore, the earthly man remains connected with his deeds.

What I have just described is Karma. What has been inscribed into the all-pervading cosmic astrality by a man's deeds—that, in very truth, is karma. That a strong moral stimulus lies in such knowledge, is quite obvious, and possible allegations to the effect that Spiritual Science does not provide the deepest moral basis for life would be malicious calumny.

In what sense may we speak of a strong moral impulse in the principles of knowledge here described? Deeds performed during life are inscribed, after death, into the cosmic astrality. If a man has committed wrongs and has not, to the best of his ability, been able karmically to put them right during life, all such actions are written into his karma and remain connected with him. (Assuming that already in earthly life he did all he could to right some wrong or sinful action, he would thereby be spared from having it inscribed into his karma.) In that as a human being of the Earth he has an earthly astral body, he has his karma.

As a being of the Earth, then, man has, firstly, consciousness, of which the physical body is the instrument; secondly, his memory, with the ether-body or life-body as its instrument; and thirdly, karma—which belongs to him just as consciousness belongs to him in the physical body. In this sense, earthly man is a threefold being, consisting of his earthly consciousness, his memory, and his karma. Without these principles he is not, in the real sense, an Earth-man. A being who were to go about on Earth without unfolding in his physical body the consciousness belonging to human existence on Earth, would not be Man. A being who did not unfold the faculty of memory belonging to human existence on Earth, would not be man. Nor would a being who went through life in an earthly body without creating karma, be Man. What constitutes the Earth-man is that he unfolds consciousness through the physical body, memory and remembrance through the ether-body, and through the astral body creates karma. These are the “earthly” principles in the being of man. A fourth principle must be added, namely, the Ego, the “ I.” This is the principle of which we know that it flashed up, for the first time, in Earth-existence. The “ I ” passes from incarnation to incarnation, is within us while we are unfolding our earthly consciousness, while we are preserving picture after picture in our memory and while we are accumulating karma from one incarnation to another. The “ I ” is within us, within these three principles of earthly manhood. What, then, still remains to be said about the earthly man?

The “ I ” flashed into manifestation for the first time on the Earth. The foundations of the physical body of earthly man were laid down during the Old Saturn period of evolution. Although after the Old Moon period, Earth-evolution changed the nature of the physical body, the physical body is not a product of the Earth proper. The same is to be said of the ether-body—which was laid down in germ during the Old Sun period—and of the astral body for which the first foundations were laid during the Old Moon period. Let us try to picture the human being the following way. When Earth-existence began, man came over from a pre-earthly evolution, as a being consisting of physical body, ether-body and astral body. In the course of Earth-evolution his physical body was transformed into the instrument for his earthly consciousness, his ether-body into the instrument of his personal memory, and his astral body into the bearer of karma. Physical body, ether-body, astral body—these were bestowed upon man by earlier, pre-earthly periods of evolution, after which the Earth, in accordance with its mission, elaborated these three principles of his being. Let us keep them distinct. The physical body of man has become the marvellous, wonderful structure it is, because it has passed through three stages of metamorphosis, together with the three earlier embodiments of the planet Earth; if it had remained as it was after the expiration of the Old Moon period, it would have been endowed with all the inner qualities it now possesses, but would not have been metamorphosed in such a way as to enable it to become the instrument of consciousness for earthly man. The physical body has not only the perfection it had attained at the end of the Old Moon-evolution but, in addition, it has been so transformed as to become the bearer of the earthly consciousness of man. In the same way, the ether-body has all the perfections previously contained within it, but only since the beginning of Earth-evolution has it developed the forces which make it the bearer of man's personal memory. The astral body had acquired many perfections during the Old Moon period, but only through the operation of earthly processes could it become the instrument for the creation of karma. The “ I ” alone has been equipped with all its powers solely by the Earth. What the Earth itself worked into the being of man is to be observed only in the “ I,” the Ego.

What, then, has really been added to the human being by the “ I ”?

Let us suppose that man had all the qualities and attributes which the Earth-mission has instilled into him, but not the “ I.” This is, of course, an impossible hypothesis because the “ I ” had necessarily to be bestowed upon him.—But let us assume that without unfolding the “ I,” a being possessed the earthly qualities contained in physical body, ether-body, astral body. Even if it had not been possible to develop these qualities and attributes on the Earth, their development might have been possible on other planetary bodies, and Spiritual Science is able to study the conditions of existence prevailing on other planets. A being of this kind would be able to unfold waking consciousness as it exists in man, would possess the faculties of thinking, feeling and willing, but would not connect his thoughts, experiences, feelings or impulses of will, with an “ I ”-consciousness. Nevertheless it would be possible for such a being to have, like earthly man, consciousness, remembrances, the power to retain ideas and thoughts in the memory, and also karma. Such a condition would not be possible in an earthly man; but let us envisage that there might exist a being of his kind. What would there be within him? Consciousness, Memory, Karma—as they are within the human being. But in the earthly human being, the “ I,” too, is present. What, then, is brought about by the “ I ”? Since karma is created, essentially, by the astral body, how does the “ I ” operate within its own sphere of karma?

What is brought about by the “ I ” itself is of even greater moment than human karma. For karma remains connected with the human being. Deeds performed in some life persist as his karma, and he can make compensation for them in a later life. In reality it is the astral body which causes karma to remain. But the “ I ” is a spiritual potency, a spiritual being. What the “ I ” creates, as the astral body creates karma, does not remain connected with man but detaches itself from him as forms created by thoughts. Whereas what is inscribed in his karma remains connected with him and is instilled into subsequent phases of Earth-evolution, something else—of a very definite character—is brought into existence by the human “ I,” and passes over into other worlds—as memories pass over into the cosmic life-ether. Just as karma is inscribed in the cosmic astrality, so the creations of the “ I ”—the forms created by thoughts and feelings—go forth into the world. Karma remains connected with the human being; but there are other creations—creations of the “ I ”—which detach themselves from him, to begin with, simply as forms, and live on as spiritual forms in the universe. What, then, is it in the human being that lives on? Firstly, his personal memories; secondly, his karma; thirdly, the forms born of his thoughts and feelings. But whereas he remains connected with his memories and with his karma, these thought-forms detach themselves from him and, as forms, become independent. As lifeless forms—which actually go forth as forms—the creations of the “ I ” live on in the outer world.

In the preceding lecture we studied the principles and powers in the being of man belonging specifically to Earth-existence. Certain forces operating in human nature are, in reality, “heritages” from the earlier embodiments of the Earth: from the Old Saturn period, the Old Sun period and the Old Moon period. These heritages from primeval epochs of evolution are contained in the physical body, the ether-body and the astral body of the earthly human being; but it is the Earth, the forces deriving actually from the Earth, that have made the physical body into the instrument of man's present form of consciousness. The ether-body has received, specifically from the Earth, the qualities whereby it becomes the bearer of the memory, the instrument of remembrance. The astral body itself developed during the Old Moon period of evolution—the planetary predecessor of the Earth—and the Earth adds the forces which provide for the operation of human karma. But something else exists as an activity, an expression of the human personality, something specifically connected with the “ I ” in man which has been acquired only during Earth-evolution. Waking consciousness, memory and remembrance, the operation of karma—these were the active principles added to the physical-, ether- and astral-bodies in that man was endowed with the “ I.” We said that the forces of the “ I ” are sent outwards, towards the outer spiritual world, and that these forces, unlike those inhering in karma, or in memory, do not remain inexorably bound up with the human being. A man's memories and remembrances remain part of him; his consciousness, obviously, has significance only for him, for other beings have quite different forms of consciousness; and karma is bound up with the human being in so far as it has to operate during the earthly incarnations to adjust and make compensation for his deeds. But “forms” or “forces” begotten of thoughts or feelings—these detach themselves from the real “ I ” of man, and in a certain respect acquire independent existence, independent reality. Unlike the other forces, they do not remain connected with him.

Now in respect of the forms or forces deriving from the “ I ” of man, a sharp distinction must be made. The human “ I ” or Ego can unfold either selfishness or selflessness in the inner life. According to whether selfishness, or selfless love and compassion are unfolded, these “forces” or “forms” operate quite differently. The forces of selfish thoughts become forces of disturbance, even of destruction; they pass into the spiritual world actually as destructive forces. On the other hand, all forces of selfless thoughts enter into the spiritual life of Earth-evolution, not as destructive but as upbuilding, constructive forces. In that these forces of selfless thought detach themselves as it were from the “ I ” of man, they leave behind certain traces in him. Especially is it true of forces begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings, that as they go forth from the “ I,” they leave traces behind in the human being—traces which are quite perceptible. The more the “ I ” sends out forces born of selfless thoughts and feelings, the more does a man develop individuality of form, of gesture, facial expression, and so on—in short, the power inherent in his own being. The forces of selfish, self-seeking thoughts and feelings, however, operate in him in such a way that he has little power to give expression to his own individuality. We must therefore ask: What is the principle underlying the distinction to be made among the individual forms of men in the course of the evolution of humanity?

Everything that is “form” on the Earth derives from the Spirits of Form. The name “Spirits of Form” is actually given to these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies because everything that has form, shape, life—everything that takes on shape inwardly and evolves an outer form, has received the essential impetus for this form from the “Spirits of Form.” Now all these Beings of the Higher Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. Not only man, but in a certain sense all the Beings of the different Hierarchies are involved in a constant process of evolution. In our present age, the Spirits of Form are moving to the higher rank of “Spirits of Movement”; the “Spirits of Personality” to that of “Spirits of Form; the “Archangeloi” to that of “Spirits of Personality” or “Archai.” As the Spirits of Form move upwards in rank they no longer function, in the primary sense, as “Spirits of Form,” but the succeeding Spirits of Personality do not, at once, assume the functions of Spirits of Form. This will help you to understand that something quite definite will come about during the second half of the period of Earth-evolution into which we have now passed. At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the Spirits of Form stamped the principle of form into man; this comes to expression in the different human forms. Just as the various races have developed their characteristic qualities, and individual human beings take on the traits of the several races, so have the various groups of humanity as a whole all over the Earth received their stamp from the Spirits of Form. What the Spirits of Form stamped into human beings has long since passed into the processes of heredity; it has long since become a heritage, handed down from generation to generation. In a sense, the Spirits of Form leave man greater freedom as they themselves move into a higher category and withdraw from the form-creating function devolving upon them at the beginning of Earth-evolution. So far as the Beings of the Hierarchies are concerned, man is drawing nearer and nearer to his “coming of age.” But of this we must be clear—The Spiritual Beings, moving up as they do to higher ranks, have themselves to evolve, and prepare for the next planetary condition of the Earth, in order that during the Jupiter-existence they may endow the beings who once belonged to the Earth with forms which will then be appropriate. Towards the end of a planetary age it is always the case that the being of central importance—and on the Earth this is man—is left free, so that the qualities with which he was originally endowed may pass more freely into his own hands. In the course of Earth-evolution in the future, therefore, the forces of form, the forms begotten by thoughts and feelings, will assume greater and greater importance. And in so far as they are selfless, in so far as they are the offspring of selfless wisdom, selfless love, these forces will work formatively upon man. For the design or pattern of the evolutionary process may be indicated in the following way. The further we go back into the past, the more do we find that the outer form of the child resembles that of its forefathers; but the further we go into the future, the more will the human being, in his outward appearance, become an expression of the individuality who passes on from one incarnation to another. This means that in one and the same family (even now it is very frequently the case and nobody with an eye for such things will deny it) there will be less and less likeness between the faces of the children and between the faces of the children and between the other parts of the human figure, for the reason that the forms will no longer be the expression of family or race, but more and more the expression of the individuality. Anyone with a knowledge of Spiritual Science, if he really observes human beings living all over the Earth, can perceive, even today, side by side with the inherited characteristics of race or family, more and more strongly individual lineaments of face, head, and other bodily forms; he can perceive the striking differences in form and figure among members of one and the same family. In this respect, of course, we are in a period of transition; but the Sixth Post-Atlantean epoch is in preparation, together with its paramount characteristic, namely, that unlike the conditions obtaining in earlier periods of culture, outer marks of race will be much less of a criterion. In the Sixth epoch the criterion all over the Earth will be the extent to which the individuality has impressed upon his countenance and upon the whole of his being, the forces left behind by the forms begotten of selfless thoughts and feelings—especially those deriving from wisdom.

It is contrary to every principle of true Spiritual Science to say that just as there was one leading race in each of the culture-epochs in the past, so in the future, too, there will be another such race, distinguished by physical attributes. The ancient Indian culture was borne and sustained by a leading race; so, too, was the culture of ancient Persia, of the Egypto-Chaldean and Graeco-Latin epochs. But already today it is apparent that culture, instead of being borne by one specific leading race, spreads over all races. And it is by Spiritual Science that culture—a spiritual culture—must be carried over the whole Earth, without distinction of race or blood. It is already apparent that our epoch will be succeeded by another of quite a different character, an epoch when, all over the Earth, the extent to which a man expresses his innermost being in his outer form, will be made manifest. It would be sheer contradiction of every principle of Spiritual Science to speak today of continental limits, or the limits of any particular territory, in connection with human beings belonging to the Sixth epoch of culture—for they, in the future, will be spread over the whole Earth. Only one whose vantage-point is not that of Spiritual Science, who has some queer bee in his bonnet that a kind of wheel revolving in spiritual evolution causes everything to repeat itself just as spring, summer, autumn and winter repeat themselves when a year has run its course—only such a one could make the statement that what was necessary for the creation of races in earlier times will simply be repeated for the Sixth epoch. Such a statement would be entirely at variance with true Spiritual Science, and would cut across all knowledge of the actual and real progress of humanity. The inner power of the soul becomes more and more manifest as evolution goes forward. The old is not repeated merely in slightly different form, but actual progress takes place in the evolution of humanity. If Theosophy is to keep faith with its good old principles—the first of which is to promote culture without distinction of race, colour, and so forth, it will not cherish groundless hopes of a future culture emanating from one particular race. The deeper connection of Theosophy with the actual course of evolution consists precisely in this:—that the processes operating in world-evolution are understood, that thinking and feeling are brought into harmony with theosophical knowledge, and the necessary impulses of will made effective in the world. In order to understand how the power of the soul will more and more be made manifest in humanity, it is only necessary to bring out one point clearly, and then we shall realise how the human being evolves as an individual. (The point that has been developed today has been dealt with repeatedly, for many years.¹).

At the beginning of Earth-evolution, the human being was part of a group-soul—as expressed in race, blood, family and so on—to a far greater extent than was the case later on. As evolution continues he becomes more and more of an individual, develops his individuality. We have heard what an important part certain forces play in the development of the individuality during Earth-evolution: consciousness that is dependent on the physical body; memory and remembrance which are dependent upon the ether-body; and karma, whereby a man can make real progress, in that his imperfections and faults do not remain but can be overcome by him as he passes through one incarnation after another. But the “forms” or “forces” created by thoughts and feelings, although they detach themselves from the human being and lead an independent existence, are nevertheless closely united with him, in that they leave vestiges behind; these vestiges, as they are sent out by the “ I ”, contribute to the definition of the individuality and man gradually divests himself of the qualities belonging to the group-soul. The trend which will become more and more general over the globe and will form the essential, fundamental character of the Sixth epoch of culture, is no kind of approach to a new group-soul, but far rather the laying aside of the attributes of the group-soul. Intimately connected with this is the fact that the spiritual guidance of human beings will become more and more a matter individual to each one; they will have greater inner freedom in this respect.

Anyone who has understood the trend of the little book The Spiritual Guidance of Man and of Mankind will realise that a movement in this direction is in very truth taking place in the human race. It is a fact that in ancient times men lived under external leaders and teachers, but even in those days, leadership was gradually becoming an inner concern. Just as the outer form becomes an expression of the Individuality, so does the path to the spiritual worlds taken by human beings become more and more their individual concern. It is the duty of those who have insight into the signs of the times to insist that human beings have not remained stationary at an earlier stage of development, that the forces once employed, cannot be repeated in the same form, simply because men have gone forward in their evolution. In the age that is coming, the souls of men will become more and more mature, able to discern and perceive those things of which Spiritual Science teaches today.

The “Mystery of Golgotha,” as the essential Christ Event, was an outer happening, striking into the physical world; a future Christ Event will be an inner concern, inasmuch as the soul of man has been so quickened by the first Christ Event that in days to come, the way to Christ will be found in the Spirit, out of the life of soul.

Wherever you look in Spiritual Science as it is presented here, you will always find—even in the case of very specialised details—that it is consistent with your own powers of reason and free judgment, provided only that you make a real effort to apply this free power of judgment. In that the individual human being is all the time becoming more accessible to influences from the spiritual world, the authority of external leadership will gradually lose its weight. It is very important to realise that the ancient wisdom exists and must be understood, that understanding of it can constantly increase if men's souls are open to the spiritual worlds and if they strive to grasp this wisdom with their powers of reason. This is the very essence of progressive evolution. However specialised the subjects may be, appeal to individual reason and judgment must never be excluded. It is a very different thing to bring forward some young man and announce that he has this and that incarnation behind him! If I were to tell you such things I should beg you at the outset not to believe them simply on my word—but I should never dream of making such assertions authoritatively, for the simple reason that you could not possibly convince yourselves objectively of their truth. When, however, it is said that the same Individuality was present in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis—all long since dead—you can yourselves discover by studying their lives, whether there are reasonable and sound grounds for such a statement. And no other kind of appeal must ever be made: the respect due to each individual soul demands that such a test should be within the realm of possibility. There are, of course, lazy-minded people who say: “We have to “believe” you when you speak of the same Individuality having lived in Elijah, John the Baptist, Raphael and Novalis.” ... No! they are not obliged to believe it ... but they can try, at least, to find evidence in the different lives of what, admittedly, can only be actually discovered by occult research. This evidence can be found, and it is pure laziness when people say that if someone speaks of the incarnations of human beings long since dead, this must be taken on authority just as is the case when the incarnations of some young person living today are announced. That is a very different matter! In this respect a deep appeal must be made to Theosophists to put everything to the test of reason and not to rest content with the cheap excuse that things cannot be proved. They can be proved, if there is willingness to do so. This must be constantly emphasised.

A kind of counterbalancing process operates in the world and while, on the one hand, the development of the individuality is progressing, on the other, something else will become more and more universal, namely, the objective knowledge which must be acquired by man. Objectivity of knowledge, uniformity of knowledge does not gainsay the principle of individuality. Mathematics in itself is an illustration of this fact. And so it is the task of occultism—if one may speak of occultism having such a task at the present time—to provide objective wisdom and knowledge of the universe. Even although, in the nature of things, the ideal is not immediately in sight because not every individual has sufficient time and opportunity to put specific details to the test, it is true, nevertheless, that although things can actually be discovered only through occult research, they can be examined and endorsed by every individual; it is not necessary to take them on faith. All that is required is to reflect about things, with reason and sound judgment. Let us take a definite case, remembering that what will be said about it is applicable everywhere.

Suppose someone says: “Mankind has evolved. Progress is a reality in evolution. This progress reveals itself in the fact that man is becoming more strongly individual in his nature and being. It follows that whereas in olden times, leadership was vested more in persons, in times to come this kind of leadership will be superseded by objective wisdom, objective knowledge; personal leadership will recede and become merely an instrument and means for bringing objective wisdom to the human being. The ideal vantage-point is that the occult teacher is no different from a teacher of mathematics, who quite obviously has his function. But mathematics are not accepted merely on the authority of the teacher of mathematics; every individual accepts mathematics because he gradually acquires knowledge and understanding of the fundamentals. Hence the element of wisdom and of knowledge will more and more supersede the element of personality” ... Suppose that such a statement were confronted by another, to the effect that “the world rolls onwards like a wheel; in olden days there were great Teachers of humanity, and new ones are about to come ...” When faced with a statement like that, it is not possible to adopt the easy-going principle that either the one or the other may be believed; it is a matter, then, for deciding: which of the two is acceptable to reason? There is the choice between deciding whether no progress is to be ascribed to humanity and everything thought of as eternal repetition, or whether humanity does really progress and that evolution has meaning and purpose. Those who refuse to recognise any meaning in evolution can speak, if they like, of the eternal repetition of epochs of time; but those who see meaning and purpose in Earth-existence as brought to light by occult research, will not speak of eternal repetition of the same things—which does not, in fact, take place.

It is all-important to realise that the faculties of man have developed and that in this development—to take one example—the following is involved. In the ancient Mysteries each human being was obliged to submit to certain enactments and procedures directed to his own person; thereby he became an “Initiate.” He passed through the “different grades of Initiation.” In and through the Mystery of Golgotha these grades of Initiation became a world-historical Event, made manifest for all humanity. What had in olden times been an affair of one or another particular centre of Initiation, became a world-historical event, passed into the common estate of humanity, and was thereafter accessible to every advancing individuality. In my book Christianity as Mystical Fact, therefore, the Mystery of Golgotha is described as the culmination and, in a sense, the close of the ancient Mysteries, because it brought all the ancient religions into one great unity. Occultism reveals still more clearly how the several streams of culture are gradually converging into one; but as they converge, they must be recognised and identified. The very operations of occult research reveal how the fruits of this research harmonise with what everyone can accept for himself, from his own observation of happenings on the physical plane.

Let us take a very far-reaching example, of which you may well say, to begin with: “There he is telling us something that really cannot be put to the test of reason, nor even approached by reason.” You may well say this, when it is first put before you.

My book An Outline of Occult Science describes how, at one time, Sun, Moon and Earth were united in a single planetary existence; the Sun then separated off and, at a later stage, Mercury and Venus; still later, Mars separated off from the Sun. The further we go back in time, the more does such a process become a spiritual process and the question it is essential to understand is really this:—Who were the Beings who thus separated? Of primary importance as regards the Earth, was the Christ Being, the great Sun Being Who through the Mystery of Golgotha subsequently united again with the Earth. Thereby all the antecedents of Christianity were brought to a kind of climax and culmination in Christianity itself. With the Mystery of Golgotha, a mighty Cosmic Power streamed into Earth-evolution. It might conceivably be argued that if the Christ came once and once only, this would imply injustice to the souls who lived before His coming. If a materialist were to bring forward such an argument, it might be understandable, but it would certainly not be understandable if it came from a Theosophist. For he knows that the souls living today also lived in earlier times, before the Mystery of Golgotha; the coming of Christ, therefore, is of equal significance for the souls of the pre-Christian ages, because they all incarnate again in the times following the Mystery of Golgotha. There is, however, this point to be made and it must be understood by Theosophists, namely, that in a certain sense the Buddha forms an exception. We must reach the vantage-point of the true Buddhist who says that the Individuality in the Buddha was that of a “Bodhisattva” who was born as the son of King Suddhodana, rose in his twenty-ninth year to the rank of Buddha, thereby attaining a height whence he need no longer return to a body of flesh. That, therefore, was the final incarnation of the Bodhisattva Individuality who does not reincarnate in the era following the founding of Christianity. The lectures in Christiania² drew attention to the fact that a very special mission in the universe devolves upon an Individuality as sublime as the Buddha. The Individuality who became the Buddha had been sent from the hosts of Christ on the Sun to the “Venus men” before they came to the Earth (see also the description in Occult Science); the Individuality of the Buddha, therefore, had been sent forth by Christ from the Sun to Venus, as His emissary. This Individuality came to the Earth with the “Venus men” and had thus reached such an advanced stage of development that through the Atlantean, on into the Post-Atlantean era, he was able to attain to the rank of Buddhahood before the coming of Christ. He was in very truth a “Christian” before the time of Christ. We know, too, that later on he revealed himself in the astral body of the Jesus-Child of St. Luke's Gospel—since he need no longer return in a body of flesh. United as he is with the Christ Stream, a different task devolves upon him for the times to come. (This task was described in greater detail in the Christiania lectures.) The Buddha need not incarnate again in a body of flesh. It fell to him to fulfil a certain Deed on Mars—a Deed not identical with the Mystery of Golgotha but to be thought of as a parallel—namely, the Redemption of the people of Mars. There is, of course, no question here of a Crucifixion as in the Mystery of Golgotha, for as may be read in Occult Science, the people of Mars are quite differently constituted from human beings on Earth. These things, of course, are the results of occult observation and can only be discovered through clairvoyant investigation.

Now let us think of this fact—that the Buddha was an emissary of the Christ and had lived on Venus. Then think of the uniqueness of the Buddha-life, of its fundamental character, and proceed as I did myself. First, there came to me the occult knowledge: Buddha goes from Venus to Mars in order there to accomplish a Deed of Redemption for the beings of Mars. And now take the life of Buddha, and observe how strikingly it differs from the lives of all the other founders of religion in that period. The teachings of all the others tend in the direction of concealing the doctrine of reincarnation; Buddha teaches reincarnation and founds a community based essentially upon piety, upon a kind of remoteness from the world. Ask yourselves whether there are beings for whom this quality would be of fundamental significance—beings whose redemption could be wrought by all that the Buddha had lived through and made his own? If it were possible, now, to say more about the constitution of the Mars beings, you would see that the Buddha-life was a kind of preparation for a higher mission; that it occurred in Earth-existence as a kind of culmination and can have no direct continuation. You may compare much in the Buddha-life with the indications given by occultism and then you will be able to form some real judgment of matters with such far-reaching cosmic connections. To discover them—that will still be beyond you; but you will be able to examine and study them with the help of all the material at your disposal, and you will find agreement and conformity among the indications given. That Buddha is connected with Venus was known, also, to H. P. Blavatsky. In her Secret Doctrine, she writes: “Buddha=Mercury”—“Mercury,” because in earlier times the names for Venus and Mercury were confused and reversed. “Buddha = Venus” would be the proper form. A knowledge possessed by occultists today is already hinted at in H. P. Blavatsky's Secret Doctrine—but it must be understood correctly.

These things are connected with the whole process of advancing evolution. The evolution of man must be studied in connection with the whole universe; man must be thought of as a microcosm within the macrocosm. The fact that Beings do actually mediate between the several planets is entirely in line with these concatenations of cosmic existence, so that a being like the Buddha can actually be regarded as a mediator between planets. A good principle on which judgment of all these things may be based, is recognition of human progress as a reality, recognition of “evolution,” not as a catchword, but as a truth.

How can we fail to realise that evolution is a reality? Goethe has shown with such beauty that in each plant, green leaf, petal, calyx, stamen and pistil are a unity and yet progress is clearly to be observed—from the green leaf to the petal and the fruit. Progress in the spiritual life is still more clearly perceptible. It would be pure abstraction to say that the path of the Mystic has everywhere been the same, among all peoples and in all ages. If one were content with cheap persuasion it would be quite easy to tell people that the mystical experience of a Yogi has never differed from that of a Christian Saint. But such a statement would not be based upon knowledge of the facts—not even of the external facts. The experiences of a Yogi and those of a Christian Mystic like St. Theresa, for example, differ fundamentally and essentially! Is it not casting all sense of truth to the winds to compare the experience of an Indian Yogi with experiences that are permeated through and through with the Christ Principle—or with the Jesus Principle in the case of St. Theresa? As true as there is a difference between the red petal of the rose and the green leaf on its stalk, so is it true that there is a difference between experiences arising in the practice of Yoga and those of a later age. There is a fundamental difference and a progression as well. Even if many lapses occur, it can be perceived, nevertheless, and the progress outruns and overcomes the lapses.

It is possible for everyone to put these principles to the test of reason—and that is essential. For Theosophy must be given under the assumption that it speaks to the innermost soul, the innermost heart, but is also grasped and assimilated. It would imply that human beings could never come of age, if in the future they were obliged to wait, in the same way as was necessary in olden times, for the coming of World-Teachers—and this quite apart from the fact that no true occultism will ever speak of such an abstract principle of repetition, because it is a direct contradiction of what actually happens. As world-evolution progresses, the factor of independent judgment and examination will assume greater and greater importance. That is one of the reasons why it is so difficult in the present age to speak truly of an Individuality who is so misunderstood, even among occultists—I mean the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. Those who have a real link with him will never disobey the principle here described. But recognition of the principle of evolution—which reveals itself most clearly in the intrinsic worth of a human being—is difficult and gradual. Christian Rosenkreutz whom we recognise as the one by whom the true occult movement will be led on into the future and who will assuredly never add weight to his authority by means of any outer cult, will be misunderstood—he more than all. Those who have any knowledge of this Individuality know, too, that Christian Rosenkreutz will be the greatest of martyrs among men—apart from the Christ Who suffered as a God. The martyrdom of Christian Rosenkreutz will be caused by the fact that so few make the resolve to look into their own souls, in order there to seek for the evolving individuality, or to submit to the uncomfortable fact that truth will not be presented ready-made but has to be acquired by intense struggle and effort; requirements of a different character will never be brought forward in the name of the Individuality known as Christian Rosenkreutz. These requirements are in line with the character of the present age and with what is felt by men of the present age, even if in many respects they misinterpret it. The present age feels quite distinctly that the principle of individuality will assume greater and greater prominence. Even if here and there this truth is expressed grotesquely and sometimes far too radically, the very fact that it is expressed is indication of a sound instinct in humanity. Many a time one is amazed that in spite of the materialism and the many absurdities current in modern civilisation, an absolutely true instinct, although it is often pushed to extremes and caricatured, prevails in regard to many things. An example occurs in a book recently published: Zur Kritik der Zeit, by Walter Rathenau. It contains a passage to the effect that the time for the founding of sects, for belief in authority, has gone forever as a possible ideal for mankind ... As, however it is a fact that every sound development in our time calls forth its opposite, belief in authority and mania for dogma are rampant in certain circles. And yet: anyone who knows the world today will realise that nothing can so deeply undermine peace and harmony among men as non-recognition of the principle here outlined. The ideal of man must be to fathom and recognise objective truth, to be led through objective truth itself into the spiritual worlds. Hindrances would be laid in his path by attempts to base some truth upon narrow, personal authority—a mode of procedure that is, furthermore, quite impermissible so far as the future is concerned. This must be clearly understood. Many years of work in the field of Spiritual Science have shown how very difficult things are. Not only here, but wherever theosophical work is possible, it is always difficult to make this principle of theosophical striving the root-nerve of theosophical activity. The reason of the difficulty is that there are always people who will not bestir themselves to grasp what must be the fundamental impulse of our age. Objections that may crop up here and there would die a natural death if people would only give a little thought to the fundamental requirements of the times and realise that humanity is ever and everywhere going forward. To lay hold of the whole essence and spirit of Theosophy—that is what matters! But it would run counter to the very essence of Theosophy if a certain teaching that is being broadcast today were to find any widespread acceptance, namely, that culture which should be the common property of all mankind without distinction of race and colour, is conditioned by some particular continental factor. Is it really possible to take back with one sentence what has been proclaimed in another? Is it difficult to see the contradiction when it is said on the one hand that universal wisdom must be spread as a possession of all men without distinction of race and other differences, while on the other it is said that the civilisation of the future rests with a race localised within geographical boundaries? It is high time to reflect on these things and get to the root of them. Is it possible to speak of the progress of humanity when it is constantly reiterated that the same need—in this case, the authority of a personal teacher—exists in the world as of yore? Is it possible to say that man's own spiritual forces must grow stronger, that he must by his own efforts find the way to the spiritual world, if this is made dependent upon the authority of a single individual on the physical Earth? It is extremely easy to say that all opinions have equal weight in the Theosophical Movement. This remains a catchword when it is not taken really in earnest. Above all it remains a catchword when the opinions of others are misrepresented. Once before I have been obliged to say that “equal right of opinion” is no more than a phrase if our work here—which has nothing whatever to do with any specific territory or race on the Earth—is presented by the other side as though it were suitable only for the German mind. It is an affair of humanity, like mathematics—not the affair of any particular nation. To speak of our work here as being an affair of one particular nation, of a strictly limited territory, is an untruth. To quote a catchword does not justify the spreading of untruths in the world. In such circumstances, moreover, the other side may well become the victim of injustice. A semblance of intolerance may easily be created, simply because a stand has to be taken for the truth. The hour shows signs of becoming very serious in this connection. What I am saying here will be understood only by those who take Theosophy in real earnest and will not countenance things that run counter to the fundamental principles of theosophical work. Suppose one were obliged to ward off certain untruths from those who cannot put everything to the test for themselves, can the other person say: “That is intolerance”? He can, of course, say so if, under the guise of truth, he is merely seeking domination and authority! In the future, spiritual truth will work by reason of its own inherent strength, its own power, independently of physical circumstances. And it will be a great and splendid achievement if Theosophy can promote unity of culture over the whole Earth. Not for personal reasons, not for national reasons, nor for any “human” reasons whatever, but for purely theosophical reasons it makes one's heart bleed that in England today the President of the Theosophical Society should be making speeches which really cannot be described as “theosophical” but are eminently political. Thinking of the good old traditions of Theosophy, the heart bleeds to hear it said in a theosophical address that the day will come for proclaiming: “England together with India, at the centre; America and Germany, right and left. One World Policy under the banner of Theosophy!” ... And then we are accused of “intolerance” when it is necessary to protest against the introduction of the personal element into the leadership—where it should never be. It makes an occultist's heart ache that the label “theosophical” should be tacked on to this kind of statement. Once again I repeat: the heartache is not caused by personal or human considerations but for purely theosophical and occult reasons. It is grievous that the root-principle of theosophical teaching should be tainted—either consciously or unconsciously—with national and imperialistic aspirations! It is grievous to me not because I have anything whatever against any country or any aspirations on the Earth, but because the placing of such aspirations in the foreground shows at the very outset that the most intensely personal element is insinuating itself into the true ideal of Theosophy.

Many times I have spoken earnest words of the tasks and aims of Theosophy. The occultist does not speak without reflection. He knows very well when he must use such words! What I have said to you is entirely remote from any emotion, any desire, any sympathy or antipathy; it is demanded by something you may perhaps yourselves realise, namely, the seriousness of the hour—I mean, for Theosophy, for Occultism. As I have so often said, Theosophy must draw from the well-springs of human wisdom the message that is needful for mankind in the present age. If Theosophy is to move towards this ideal, it must stand on its own feet, set up its own rules of conduct—not only for what it has to say, but for how it has to confront the world—in order that standards prevailing in the outside world shall not play into our theosophical Movement. For there they become an evil, a great evil. As often as certain usages current in the outside world are introduced into the theosophical Movement, just so often is the Movement handed over to the forces of destruction. To outside eyes, these usages, when introduced into Theosophy, sometimes assume so grotesque a form that the world will certainly take good care not to copy things that may grow from the rich and fertile soil of occultism. Every kind of league exists in the world today—for the promotion of Peace, Vegetarianism, Anti-Alcoholism and what not—all of which are perfectly justifiable goals. But when the basic principles of a society are stretched in order to include the foundation of Unions or even Orders connected with the coming of figure-heads, founders of religion, future World-Saviours³ ... then the outside world will certainly not follow suit! I cannot imagine that a Statesman would found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman, or a General to await the coming of a great General in the future!

These things are so simple that only a little reflection is necessary. For to found an Order to await the coming of a World-Saviour is just as grotesque as it would be to found a league to await the coming of a new Statesman or a great General. A certain person who is striving today to found a branch of such an Order, used the following argument to me: “Yes, but after all, in the year 1848 a league was founded for the purpose of uniting the German States—and then there was Bismarck too ... he certainly helped to bring the German Reich to birth.” I could only reply: “Really I am not aware that a league was ever founded to await the coming of a “Bismarck”!

Do you think I am saying this jokingly? I say it because occultism has also this side to it, that if it is not cultivated in the right way, it can actually undermine instead of developing the powers of judgment, and I say it because I am in deep earnest about these things. Many occult teachings have been gathered together here; in fifty years, possibly, one point or another may have been investigated still more closely, may have to be differently expressed.

But even if no fragment remains of the knowledge that has brought forward—I do desire that one thing shall have survived, namely, this: that here there was inaugurated and sustained a theosophical-occult movement taking its stand solely and entirely upon integrity and truth. Even if in fifty years it is already said; Everything must be corrected; but at least they were out to be true, to let nothing happen except what is true ... even then my ideal would have been attained. That integrity and truth can prevail in an occult movement, whatever storms may rise up against us in the world—I am not so arrogant as to say that this has been “achieved,” but rather that this is the goal towards which we have striven.

• 1. The reference here is to certain prejudiced and faulty views contained in the teachings emanating from the Theosophical Society.
• 2. Man in the Light of Occultism, Theosophy and Philosophy
• 3. For those who have only lately become acquainted with the Anthroposophical conception of the world, let it here be mentioned that these words were spoken at the time when Mrs. Besant had founded the “Order of the Star in the East,” with objects similar to those indicated here, and rejected by me. Mrs. Besant's subsequent malicious agitation against Germany is, moreover, a direct result of the errors into which she was falling at that time.

People who have made some study of Anthroposophy, and particularly of the basic principles of reincarnation, karma and other truths connected with man and his evolution, may well ask: Why is it so difficult to gain a true, first-hand conception of that being in man which passes through repeated earth-lives—that being, which, if one could only acquire more intimate knowledge of it, would inevitably lead to an insight into the secrets of repeated earth-lives and even of karma? It is certainly true to say that as a rule man misinterprets everything connected with this question. At first he tries, as is only too natural, to explain it through his ordinary world of thought, through the ordinary intellect, and he asks himself: To what extent can we find, in the facts of life, proof that the conception of repeated earth-lives and karma is true? This endeavour, which is essentially of the nature of reflection, can, admittedly, lead man to a certain point, but no further. For our world of thought, as at present constituted, is entirely dependent on those qualities of our human organism which are limited to one incarnation; we possess them because, as men living between birth and death, we have been given this particular organism. And on this particular formation of the physical body, with the etheric body which is only one stage higher, everything that we can call our thought-world is dependent. The more penetrating these thoughts are, the better able they are to enter into abstract truths—so much the more are they dependent on the outer organism that is limited to one incarnation.

From this we may conclude that when we pass into the life between death and a new birth—that is to say, into the spiritual life—we can least of all take with us what we experience in our souls—our thoughts! And our most penetrating thoughts are what we have most of all to leave behind.

It may be asked: What is it that man more particularly discards when he passes through the Gate of Death? First of all, his physical body; and of all that constitutes his inner being he discards practically to the same extent all the abstract thoughts formulated in his soul. These two things—physical body, abstract thoughts, scientific thoughts as well—are what he can least of all take with him when he passes through the Gate of Death. It is in a certain sense easy for man to take with him his temperament, his impulses, his desires, as they have been formed in him, and especially his habits; he also takes with him the mode and nature of his impulses of will—but his thoughts least of all. Therefore, because our thoughts are so intimately bound up with the outer organism, we may conclude that they are instruments not very well adapted to penetrate the secrets of reincarnation and karma, which are truths extending beyond the single incarnation.

All the same, man can reach a certain point, and indeed he must develop his thinking up to a certain point, if he wishes to gain insight into the theory of reincarnation and karma. What can be said on this subject has practically all been said either in the pamphlet, Reincarnation and Karma from the standpoint of modern Natural Science, or in the chapter on reincarnation and karma in the book Theosophy. Scarcely anything can be added to what is said in these two publications. The question of what can be contributed by the intellect will not further concern us to-day, but rather the question of how man can acquire a certain conception of reincarnation and karma; that is to say, a conception of more value than a mere theoretical conviction, able to bring about a kind of inner certainty that the real soul-spiritual kernel of being within us comes over from earlier lives and passes on into later lives.

Such a definite conception can be acquired by means of certain inner exercises which are by no means easy; indeed they are difficult, but they can nevertheless be carried out. The first step is in some degree to practise the normal kind of self-cognition, which consists in looking back over one's life and asking oneself: What kind of person have I been? Have I been a person with a strong inclination for reflection, for inner contemplation; or am I one who has always had more love for the sensations of the outer world, liking or disliking this or that in everyday life? Was I a child who at school liked reading but not arithmetic, one who liked to hit other children but did not like being hit? Or was I a child always bound to be bullied and not smart enough to bully others?

It is well to look back on one's life in this way, and especially to ask oneself: Was I cut out for activities of the mind or of the will? What did I find easy or difficult? What happened to me that I would like to have avoided? What happenings made me say to myself: “I am glad this has come to pass ”—and so on.

It is good to look back on one's life in a certain way, and above all to envisage clearly those things that one did not like. All this leads to a more intimate knowledge of the inner kernel of our being. For example, a son who would have liked to become a poet was destined by his father to be a craftsman, and a craftsman he became, although he would sooner have been a poet. It is well to know clearly what we really wanted to be, and what we have become against our will, to visualise what would have suited us in the time of our youth but was not our lot, and then, again, what we would have liked to avoid.

All that I am saying refers, of course, to life in the past, not in the future—that would be a false conception. We must therefore be quite clear as to what such a retrospect into the past means; it tells us what we did not want, what we would have liked to avoid. When we have made that clear to ourselves, we really have a picture of those things in our life which have pleased us least. That is the essential point. And we must now try to live into a very remarkable conception: we must desire and will everything that we have not desired or willed. We must imagine to ourselves: What should I actually have become if I had ardently desired everything that in fact I did not wish for and which really went against the grain in life? In a certain sense we must here rule out what we have succeeded in overcoming, for the most important thing is that we should ardently wish or picture ourselves wishing for the things we have not desired, or concerning which we have not been able to carry out our wishes, so that we create for ourselves, in feeling and thought, a being hitherto unfamiliar to us. We must picture ourselves as this being with great intensity. If we can do this, if we can identify ourselves with the being we have ourselves built up in this way, we have made some real progress towards becoming acquainted with the inner soul-kernel of our being; for in the picture we have thus been able to make of our own personality there will arise something that we have not been in this present incarnation but which we have introduced into it. Our deeper being will emerge from the picture built up in this way.

You will see, therefore, that from those who wish to gain knowledge of this inner kernel of being, something is required for which people in our age have no inclination at all. They are not disposed to desire anything of the sort, for nowadays, if they reflect upon their own nature, they want to find themselves absolutely satisfied with it as it is. When we go back to earlier, more deeply religious epochs, we find there a feeling that man should feel himself overwhelmed because he so little resembled his Divine Archetype. This was not, of course, the idea of which we have spoken to-day, but it was an idea which led man away from what usually satisfies him, to something else, to that being which lives on beyond the organism existing between birth and death, even if it did not lead to the conviction of another incarnation. If you call up the counterpart of yourself, the following thought will dawn upon you. This counterpart—difficult as it may be to realise it as a picture of yourself in this life—is nevertheless connected with you, and you cannot disown it. Once it appears, it will follow you, hover before your soul and crystallise in such a way that you will realise that it has something to do with you, but certainly not with your present life. And then there develops the perception that this picture is derived from an earlier life.

If we bring this clearly before our souls, we shall soon realise how erroneous are most of the current conceptions of reincarnation and karma. You have no doubt often heard anthroposophists say when they meet a good arithmetician: “In his previous incarnation this man was a good arithmetician!” Unfortunately, many undeveloped anthroposophists string together links of reincarnation in such a way that it is thought possible to find the earlier incarnation because the present gifts must have existed in the preceding incarnation or in many previous incarnations. This is the worst possible form of speculation and anything derived from it is usually false. True observation by means of Spiritual Science, discloses, as a rule, the exact opposite. For example, people who in a former incarnation were good arithmeticians, good mathematicians, often reappear with no gift for mathematics at all. If we wish to discover what gifts we may probably have possessed in a former incarnation (here I must remind you that we are speaking of probabilities!)—if we wish to know what intellectual or artistic faculties, say, we possessed in a former incarnation, it is well to reflect upon those things for which we have least talent in the present life.

These are true indications, but they are very often interwoven with other facts. It may happen that a man had a special talent for mathematics in a former incarnation but died young, so that this talent never came to full expression; then he will be born again in his next incarnation with a talent for mathematics and this will represent a continuation of the previous incarnation. Abel, the mathematician who died young, will certainly in his next incarnation be reborn with a strong mathematical talent. [¹ But when a mathematician has lived to a great age, so that his talent has spent itself—then in his next incarnation he will be stupid as regards mathematics. I knew a man who had so little gift for mathematics that as a schoolboy he simply hated figures, and although in other subjects he did well, he generally managed to get through his classes only because he obtained exceptionally good marks in other subjects. This was because in his former incarnation he had been an exceedingly good mathematician.

If we go more deeply into this, the fact becomes apparent that the external career of a man in one incarnation, when it is not merely a career but also an inner vocation, passes over in his next incarnation into the inward shaping of his bodily organs. Thus, if a man has been an exceptionally good mathematician in one incarnation, the mastery he has obtained over numbers and figures remains with him and goes into a special development of his sense-organs, for instance, of the eyes. People with very good sight have it as a result of the fact that in their former incarnation they thought in forms; they took this thinking in forms with them and during the life between death and rebirth they worked specially on the shaping of their eyes. Here the mathematical talent has passed into the eyes and no longer exists as a gift for mathematics.

Another case known to occultists is where an individuality in one incarnation lived with intensity in architectural forms; these experiences lived as forces in his inner soul-life and worked strongly upon the instrument of hearing, so that in his next incarnation he became a great musician. He did not appear as a great architect, because the perception of form necessary for architecture was transformed into an organ-building force, so that there was nothing left but a supreme sensitiveness for music.

An external consideration of similarities is generally deceptive in reference to the characteristics of successive incarnations; and just as we must reflect upon whatever did not please us and conceive of ourselves as having had an intense desire for it, so we must also reflect upon those things for which we have the least talent, and about which we are stupid. If we discover the dullest sides of our nature, they may very probably point to those fields in which we were most brilliant in our previous incarnation. Thus we see how easy it is in these matters to begin at the wrong end. A little reflection will show us that it is the soul-kernel of our being which works over from one incarnation to another; this can be illustrated by the fact that it is no easier for a man to learn a language even if in his preceding incarnation he lived in the country associated with this particular language; otherwise our school-boys would not find it so difficult to learn Greek and Latin, for many of them in former incarnations will have lived in the regions where these were the languages of ordinary intercourse.

You see, the outer capacities we acquire are so closely connected with earthly circumstances that we cannot speak of them reappearing in the same form in the next incarnation; they are transformed into forces and in that way pass over to a subsequent incarnation. For instance, people who have a special faculty for learning languages in one incarnation will not have this in the next; instead, they will have the faculty which enables them to form more unbiassed judgments than those who had less talent for languages; these latter will tend to form one-sided judgments.

These matters are connected with the mysteries of reincarnation, and when we penetrate them we obtain a clear and vivid idea of what truly belongs to the inner being of man and what must in a certain sense be accounted external. For instance, language to-day is no longer part of man's inner being. We may love a language for the sake of what it expresses, for the sake of its Folk-Spirit; but it is something which passes over in transformed forms of force from one incarnation to another.

If a man follows up these ideas, so that he says: “I will strongly desire and will to be what I have become against my will, and also that for which I have the least capacity”—he can know that the conceptions he thus obtains will build up the picture of his preceding incarnation. This picture will arise in great precision if he is earnest and serious about the things just described. He will observe that from the whole way in which the conceptions coalesce, he will either feel: “This picture is quite near to me”; or he will feel: “This picture is a long, long way off.”

If through the elaboration of these conceptions, such a picture of the previous incarnation arises before a man's soul, he will, as a rule, he able to estimate how faded the picture is. The following feeling will come as an experience: “I am standing here; but the picture before me could not be my father, my grandfather, or my great-grandfather.” If however the student allows the picture to work upon him, his feeling and perception will lead him to the opinion: “Others are standing between me and this picture.” Let us for a moment assume that the student has the following feeling. It becomes apparent to him that between him and the picture stand twelve persons; another may perhaps feel that between him and the picture stand seven persons; but in any event the feeling is there and is of the greatest significance. If, for instance, there are twelve persons between oneself and the picture, this number can be divided by three, and the result will be four, and this may represent the number of centuries that have elapsed since the last incarnation. Thus a man who felt that there were twelve people standing between him and the picture, would say: “My preceding incarnation took place four centuries ago.”—This is given merely as an example; it will only actually be so in a very few cases, but it conveys the idea. Most people will find that they can in this way rightly estimate when they were incarnated before. Only the preparatory steps, of course, are rather difficult.

Here we have touched upon matters which are as alien as they can possibly be from present-day consciousness, and it cannot be denied that if we spoke of these things to people unprepared for them, they would regard them as so much irresponsible fantasy. The anthroposophical world-picture is fated—more so than any of its predecessors—to oppose traditional, accepted ideas. For to a very great extent these are imbued with the crudest, the most desolate materialism; and those very world-pictures which appear to be most firmly established on a scientific basis have, in point of fact, grown out of the most devastating materialistic assumptions. And since Anthroposophy is condemned to be labelled as the outlook cultivated by the kind of person who wants to know about his previous incarnations, one can readily understand that people of the present day are very far from taking anthroposophical views seriously. They are as far remote from the inclination to desire and to will what they have never desired or willed, as their habits of thought are remote from spiritual truths. The question might here be asked: Why, then, does spiritual truth come into the world just now? Why does it not leave humanity time to develop, to mature?

The reason is that it is almost impossible to imagine a greater difference between two successive epochs than there will be between the present epoch and that into which humanity will have grown when the people now living are reborn in their next incarnation. The development of certain spiritual faculties does not depend upon man, but upon the whole purpose and meaning, the whole nature, of earth-evolution. Men of the present day could not be more remote than they are from any belief in reincarnation and karma. This does not apply to students of Anthroposophy, but they are still very few; neither does it apply to those who still adhere to certain old forms of religion; but it applies to those who are the bearers of external cultural life: it sets them far away from belief in reincarnation and karma. Now the fact that people of the present day are particularly disinclined to believe in reincarnation and karma is connected in a remarkable way with their pursuits and studies—that is, in so far as these concern their intellectual faculties—and this fact will produce the opposite effect in the future. In the next incarnation these people, whether their pursuits are spiritual or material, will have a strong predisposition to gain an impression of their previous incarnation. Quite irrespective of their pursuits in this age, they will be reborn with a strong predisposition, a strong yearning for their last incarnation, with a strong desire to experience and know something of it. We are standing at a turning-point in time; it will lead men from an incarnation in which they have no desire at all to know anything of reincarnation and karma, to one in which the most living feeling will be this: “The whole of the life I now lead has no foundation for me if I cannot know anything of my former incarnation.” And the very people who now inveigh most bitterly against reincarnation and karma will writhe under the torment of the next life because they cannot explain to themselves how their life has come to be what it is.

Anthroposophy is not here for the purpose of cultivating in man a retrospective longing for former lives, but in order that there should be understanding of what will arise in connection with collective humanity when the people who are alive to-day will be here again. People who are anthroposophists to-day will share with those who are not the desire to remember, but they will have understanding, and therefore an inner harmony in their soul-life. Those who reject Anthroposophy to-day will wish to know something of it in the next life; they will really feel something like an inner torment concerning their previous incarnation but they will understand nothing of what it is that most distresses and torments them; they will be perplexed and will lack inner harmony. In their next incarnation they will have to be told: “You will understand the cause of this torment only if you can conceive that you have actually willed it into existence.”—Naturally, nobody will desire this torment, but people who are materialists to-day will in their next incarnation begin to understand their inner demands and the advice of those who will be in a position to know and who may say to them: “Conceive to yourselves that you have willed into existence this life from which you would like to flee.” If they begin to follow this advice and reflect: “How can I have willed this life?” they will say to themselves: “Yes, I did perhaps live in an incarnation where I said that it was absurdity and nonsense to speak of a following incarnation, and that this life was complete in itself, sending no forces on into a later one. And because at that time I felt a future life to be unreal, to be nonsense, my life now is so empty and desolate. It was I who actually implanted within myself the thought that is now the force making my life so meaningless and barren.”

That will be a right thought. Karmically it will outlive materialism. The next incarnation will be full of meaning for those who have acquired the conviction that their life, as it now is, is not only complete in itself but contains causes for the next. Meaningless and desolate will be the life of those who, because they believe reincarnation to be nonsense, have themselves rendered their own lives barren and void.

So we see that the thoughts we cherish do not pass over into the next life in a somewhat intensified form, but arise there transformed into forces. In the spiritual world, thoughts such as we now form between birth and death have no significance except in so far as they are transformed. If, for instance, a man has a great thought, however great it may be, the thought as thought is gone when he passes through the gate of death, but the enthusiasm, the perception and the feeling called to life by the thought—these pass through the gate of death with him. Man does not even take with him the thoughts of Anthroposophy, but what he has experienced through them—even to the details, not the general fundamental feeling alone—that is taken with him. This in particular is the point to grasp: thoughts as such are of real significance for the physical plane, but when we are speaking of the activity of thoughts in the higher worlds we must at the same time speak of their transformation in conformity with those worlds. Thoughts which deny reincarnation are transformed in the next life into an inner unreality, an inner emptiness of life; this inner unreality and emptiness are experienced as torment, as disharmony.

With the aid of a simile we may obtain an idea of this by thinking of something we like very much, and are always glad to see in a certain place—for instance, a particular flower blooming in a certain spot. If the flower is cut by a ruthless hand, we experience a certain pain. So it is with the whole organism of man. What causes man to feel pain? When the etheric and astral elements of an organ are embedded in a particular position in the physical body, then if the organ is injured so that the etheric and astral bodies cannot permeate it properly, pain is the result. It is just like the ruthless cutting of a rose from its accustomed place in a garden. When an organ has been injured, the etheric and astral bodies do not find what they seek, and this is then felt as bodily pain. And so a man's own thoughts, working on into the future, will meet him in the future. If he sends over into the next incarnation no forces of faith or of knowledge, his thoughts will fail him, and when he seeks for them he will find nothing. This lack will be experienced as pain and torment.

These are matters which from one aspect make the karmic course of certain events clear to us. They must be made clear, for our aim is to penetrate still more deeply into the ways and means whereby a man can make yet further preparation for coming to know the real kernel of his being of spirit-and-soul.

• 1. The Norwegian Niels Henrik Abel (1802–1829), of whom Hermite said: “He has left mathematicians something to keep them busy for five hundred years.” Two days after Abel's death in poverty, from tuberculosis, a letter came saying that he was to be appointed Professor of Mathematics in the University of Berlin.

The thoughts contained in the last lecture will in that form have seemed to many incomprehensible, perhaps even matters of doubt; but if we go further into the subject to-day they will become clearer.

What was it that was presented to us in the last lecture? For the whole being of man it was somewhat similar to what a man accomplishes when he is in some position in life where he has to reflect upon earlier occurrences and experiences, and call them back into his memory. Memory and remembrance are experiences of the human soul which, in ordinary consciousness, are really connected only with the course of the soul's life between birth and death—or more exactly, with the period of time which begins in the later years of childhood and lasts until death.

We know that in ordinary consciousness our memory goes back only to a definite point of time in our childhood, and we have to be told about earlier events by our parents, elder relations or friends. When we consider this stretch of time, we speak of it in relation to the soul-life as “remembered.” It is not, of course, possible here to go more deeply into the meaning of the words “power of remembering”or “memory,” nor is it necessary for our purpose. We need only bring clearly before our souls that everything designated by these words is bound up with reflecting on past events or experiences. What we spoke of in the last lecture is akin to this reflecting, but it must not be equated with ordinary memory; it should be regarded rather as a higher, wider power of memory which leads us beyond this present incarnation to a sense of certainty that we have had previous earth-lives.

If we picture a man who needs to recall something he learnt at an early period of his life, and attunes his soul to bring out of the depths what he then learnt in order to follow it through in the present—if we form a living conception of this process of recollection, we see in it a function which belongs to our ordinary faculty of remembrance. In the last lecture we were speaking of functions of the soul, but those functions ought to lead to something that arises in our inner being in relation to our earlier earth-life, similar to that which arises in our souls in this life when we feel a past experience springing up in memory. Therefore you must not regard what was said in the last lecture as though this were all that is needed to lead us to an earlier earth-life, nor as though it were able immediately to evoke a right conception of the kind of people we were in an earlier incarnation. It is only an aid, just as self-recollection is an aid, helping us to draw forth what has disappeared into the background of the soul's life. Let us briefly sum up what we have grasped concerning such a recollection in reference to a former earth-life. This can best be done in the following way:

A little self-knowledge will render many of life's happenings comprehensible to us. If something disagreeable happens and we do not fully see the reason for it, we may say to ourselves: “I really am a careless person, and it is no wonder this happened to me.” This shows at least some understanding of what has happened. There are, however, countless experiences in life of which we simply cannot conceive that they are connected with the forces and faculties of our soul. In ordinary life we usually speak of them as accidental. We speak of accidents when we do not perceive how the things that befall us as strokes of fate are connected with the inner leanings of our soul, and so forth. In the last lecture attention was drawn also to events of another kind—experiences through which in a sense we extricate ourselves, by means of what we generally call our Ego, from some situation we are in. For example: a man may be destined by his parents or near relations to a certain calling or position in life, and he feels he must at all costs leave it and do something else. When in later life we look back on something like this, we say to ourselves: “We were put into a certain position in life, but by our own impulse of will, by our personal sympathy or antipathy, we have extricated ourselves from it.”

The point is not to pay attention to all manner of things, but to confine ourselves in our retrospective memory to something that vitally affected our life. If, for instance, a man has never felt any desire, nor had any motive to become a sailor, a will-impulse such as was referred to in the last lecture does not come into consideration at all, but only one whereby he actually brought about a change of fate, a reversal of some situation in life. But when in later life we remember something of this kind and realise that we extricated ourselves, we should not cultivate any rueful feelings about it, as though we ought to have stayed where we were. The essential point is not the practical outcome of the decision, but the recollection of when such turning points occurred. Then with regard to events of which we say, “This happened by chance,” or “We were in such and such a position but have extricated ourselves from it,” we must evoke with utmost energy the following inner experience.

We say to ourselves: “I will imagine that the position from which I extricated myself was one in which I deliberately placed myself with the strongest impulse of will.” We bring before our own souls the very thing that was repugnant to us and from which we extricated ourselves. We do this in such a way that we say: “As an experiment I will give myself up to the idea that I willed this with all my might; I will bring before my soul the picture of a man who willed something like this with all his might.”

And let us imagine that we ourselves brought about the events called “accidents.” Suppose it has come back to our memory that at some place a stone fell from a building on to our shoulders and hurt us badly. Then let us imagine that we had climbed on to the roof and placed the stone so that it was bound to fall, and that then we ran quickly under it so that it had to fall on us. It is of no consequence that such ideas are grotesque; the point is what we want to acquire through them.

Let us now put ourselves right into the soul of a man of whom we have built up such a picture, a man who has actually willed everything that has happened to us “by accident,” who has desired everything from which we have extricated ourselves. There will be no result in the soul if we practise such an exercise two or three or four times only, but a great deal will result if we practise it in connection with the innumerable experiences which we shall find if we look for them. If we do this over and over again, forming a living conception of a man who has willed everything that we have not willed we shall find that the picture never leaves us again, that it makes a very remarkable impression on us, as though it really had something to do with us. If we then acquire a certain delicate perception in this kind of self-probation, we shall soon discover how such a mood and such a picture, built up by ourselves, resemble an image we have called up from memory. The difference is only this, that when we call up such an image from memory in the ordinary way, it generally remains simply an image, but when we practise the exercises of which we have been speaking, what comes to life in the soul has in it an element of feeling, an element connected more with the moods of the soul, and less with images. We feel a particular relationship to this picture. The picture itself is not of much account, but the feelings we have make an impression similar to that made by memory-images. If we repeat this process over and over again, we arrive through an inner clarification at the ‘knowledge,’ one might say, that the picture we have built up is becoming clearer and clearer, just as a memory-image does when one starts to recall it out of dark depths of the soul.

Thus it is not a question of what we imagine, for this changes and becomes something different. It goes through a process similar to that which occurs when we want to remember a particular name and it nearly comes and then goes; we have a partial recollection of it and then say, for instance, Nuszbaumer, yet we have a feeling that this is not quite right, and then, without our being able to say why, the right name comes to us—Nuszdorfer, perhaps. Just as here the names Nüszbaumer, Nüszdorfer, build each other up, so the picture rights itself and changes. This is what causes the feeling to arise: “Here I have attained something which exists within me, and by the way it exists within me and is related to the rest of my soul-life, it plainly shows me that it cannot have existed within me in this form in my present incarnation!” So we perceive with the greatest inner clarity that what exists within us in this form, lies further back. Only we must realise that we are here dealing with a kind of faculty of remembrance which can be developed in the human soul, a faculty which, in contradistinction to the ordinary faculty of remembrance, must be designated by a different name. We must designate the ordinary faculty of remembrance as “image-memory,” but the faculty of remembrance now in question must really be described as a kind of “feeling and experience memory.” That this has a certain foundation can be proved by the following reflections.

We must bear in mind that our ordinary faculty of remembrance is really a kind of image-memory. Think how a specially painful event that perhaps happened to you twenty years ago, reappears in memory. The event may come up before you in all its details, but the pain which you suffered is no longer felt to the same extent; it is in a sense blotted out of the memory-image. There are, of course different degrees, and it may well happen that something has struck a man such a blow that again and again a fresh and more intense sorrow is felt when he remembers the experience. The general principle, however, holds good: so far as our present incarnation is concerned our faculty of remembrance is an image-memory, whereas the feelings that were experienced, or the will-impulses themselves, do not arise again in the soul with anything like the same intensity.

We need only take a characteristic example and we shall see how great the difference is between the image that arises in the memory, and what has remained of feelings and will-impulses. Let us think of a man who writes his Memoirs. Suppose, for example, that Bismarck, in writing his Memoirs, has come to the point when he prepared for the German-Austrian War of 1866, and imagine what may have taken place in his soul at that highly critical point, when he led and guided events against a host of condemnations and will-impulses. Do not conceive how all this lived in his soul at that time, but imagine that all he then experienced under the immediate impression of the events, sank down into the depths of his soul; then imagine how faded the feelings and will-impulses must have become by the time he wrote his Memoirs compared with what they were when he was actually carrying out the project. Nobody can fail to realise what a difference there is between the memory-image and the original feelings and will-impulses involved.

Those who have gone a little way into Anthroposophy will understand what has often been said: that our conceptual activity—including the conceptual activity related to memory—is something which, when roused by the external world in which we live in our physical bodies, has meaning only for this single incarnation. The fundamental principles of Anthroposophy have always taught us the great truth that all the concepts and ideas we make our own when we perceive anything through the senses, when we fear or hope for anything in life—(this does not relate to impulses of the soul, but to concepts)—all that makes up our conceptual life disappears very soon after we have passed through the Gate of Death. For concepts belong to the things that pass away with physical life, to the things that are least enduring. Anyone, however, who has given any study to the laws of reincarnation and karma can readily understand that our concepts, as we acquire them in the life that flows on in relation to the outer world or to the things of the physical plane, come to expression in speech, and that we can therefore in a sense connect the conceptual life with speech. Now everyone knows that he has to learn to speak some particular language in a given incarnation; for while it is obvious that many modern schoolboys incarnated in ancient Greece, none of them find it easier to learn Greek by being able to remember how they spoke Greek in a previous incarnation! Speech is entirely an expression of our conceptual life, and their fates are similar; so that concepts drawn from the physical world, and even the concepts we must acquire about the higher worlds, are in a sense always coloured by subjective pictures of the external world. Only when we have insight do we realise what concepts are able to tell about the higher worlds. What we learn directly from concepts is also in a sense, bound up with life between birth and death. After death we do not form concepts as we form them here; after death we see them, they are objects of perception; they exist just as colours and tones exist in the physical world. In the physical world what we picture to ourselves by means of conceptions carries an impress of physical matter, but in the disembodied state we have concepts before us in the same way as here we have colours and tones. A man cannot, of course, see red or blue as he sees them here with his physical eyes, but what he does not see here, and about which he forms concepts, is the same for him after death as red, green or any other colour or sound is here. What we learn to know in the physical world purely through concepts, or rather ideas (in the sense of Philosophy of Spiritual Activity) can be seen only through the veil of the conceptual life, but in the disembodied state it stands there in the way that the physical world stands before our consciousness. In the physical world there are people who really think that sense-impressions yield everything. That which man can make clear to himself by means of a concept—as for instance the concept ‘lamb’ or wolf—embraces everything the senses give us; but that which transcends matter can actually be denied by those who admit the existence of the sense-impression only. A man can make a mental picture of all he sees as lamb or wolf. Now the ordinary outlook tries to suggest that what can here be built up in a conceptual sense, is nothing more than a “mere idea.” But if we were to shut up a wolf and for a long time feed him on nothing else but lamb, so that he is filled with nothing but lamb-substance—nobody could possibly persuade himself that the ‘wolf’ has thereby become ‘lamb.’ Therefore we must say: obviously, here, what transcends a sense-impression is a concept. Certainly, there is no denying that what bodes forth the concept, dies; but what lives in ‘wolf,’ what lives in ‘lamb’—what is within them and cannot be seen by the physical eyes—this is ‘seen,’ perceived, in the life between death and rebirth.

Thus when it is said that conceptions are bound up with the physical body, we must not infer that man will be without conceptions, or rather without the content of the conceptions in the life between death and rebirth. Only that which has worked out the conceptions, disappears. Our conceptual life, as we experience it here in the physical world, has significance only for the life of this incarnation. In this connection I have already mentioned the case of Friedrich Hebbel, who once sketched out in his diary an ingenious plan for a drama. He had the idea of the reincarnated Plato in a school class, making the worst possible impression on the teacher and being severely reprimanded because he could not understand Plato! Here, too, is a suggestion that Plato's thought-structure—all that lived in him as thought—does not survive in the same form in his next incarnation.

In order to obtain a reasonable view of these things, we must consider the soul-life of man from a certain point of view. We must ask ourselves: What do we carry about as the content of our soul-life? First, we have our concepts. The fact that these concepts, permeated with feeling, can lead to impulses of will, does not prevent us from speaking of a specific life of concepts in the soul. For although there are people who can hardly confine themselves to a pure concept but immediately they conceive anything flare up in sympathy or antipathy, thus passing over into other impulses, this does not mean that the life of concepts cannot be separated from other contents of the soul.

Secondly, we have in our soul-life experiences of feeling. These appear in a great diversity of forms. There are the well-known antitheses in the life of feeling which can be spoken of as the sympathy and the antipathy we feel for things, or, if we want to describe them more emphatically, as love and hate. We can say that these feelings produce a kind of stimulus, and again there are feelings which bring about a certain tension and release. They cannot be classed with sympathy and antipathy. For a soul-impulse which can be described as a tension, a stimulus, or as a release, is different from what comes to expression in mere sympathy or antipathy. We should have to talk for a long time if it were a question of describing all the different kinds of feelings. To these also belong what may be described as the sense for beauty and for ugliness, which is a specific soul-content and does not resemble feelings of sympathy and antipathy. At all events it cannot be classed with them. We could also describe the specific feelings we have for good or evil. This is not the time to enlarge upon the difference between our inner experiences regarding a good or evil action, and the feelings of sympathy or antipathy for such actions—our love of a good action and hatred of an evil one. Thus we meet with feelings in the most diverse forms and we can distinguish them from our concepts.

A third kind of soul-experiences are the impulses of will, the life of will. This again must not be classed with what may be called experiences of feeling, which can or must remain enclosed within our soul-life, according to the way in which we experience them. An impulse of will says: " You shall do this, you shall do that." For we must distinguish between the mere feeling we have of what seems good or evil to ourselves or to others, and what arises in the soul as more than a feeling, when we are impelled to do good and to refrain from evil. Judgment can remain rooted in feeling but the impulses of will are a different matter. Although there are transitions between the life of feeling and the impulses of will, we ought not on the basis of ordinary observation to class them together without further consideration. In human life there are transitions everywhere. Just as there are people who never arrive at pure conceptions but always express simultaneously their love or hatred, who are thrown hither and thither because they cannot separate their feelings from their conceptions, so there are others who, when they see something, cannot refrain from going on, through an impulse of will, to an action, even if the action is unjustifiable. This leads to no good. It takes the form of kleptomania and so forth. Here there is no ordered relationship between the feelings and the impulses of the will, although in reality a sharp distinction should be drawn between them.

Thus in our life of soul we live in ideas, in feelings and in impulses of will. We have seen that the life of ideas is connected with a single incarnation between birth and death; we have seen how we enter life and build up our own life of ideas. This is not the case with the life of feeling, or with the life of will. Of those who insist that it is, one can only think that they can never have observed intelligently the development of a child. Consider a child in relation to the life of ideas before it can speak; it relates itself to the surrounding world through its conceptions or ideas. But it has very decided sympathies and antipathies, and active impulses of will for or against something. The decisiveness of these early will-impulses has actually misled a philosopher—Schopenhauer—into the belief that a man's character cannot be altered at all during life. This is not correct; the character can be altered. We must realise that when we enter physical life the position as regards the feelings and the impulses of will is in no way the same as it is regarding the life of concepts, for we enter an incarnation with a very definite equipment of feeling experiences and impulses of will. Correct observation might indeed make us surmise that in the feelings and will-impulses we have something that we have brought with us from earlier incarnations. And all this must be brought together as a ‘feeling-memory’ in contradistinction to the ‘concept-memory’ which belongs to one life only. We can arrive at no practical result if we take into account only a concept-memory. All that we develop in the life of concepts cannot call forth an impression which, if rightly understood, says to us: You have within you something which entered this incarnation with you at birth. For this we must go beyond the life of concepts; recollection must become something different, and we have shown what recollection can indeed become. How do we practise self-recollection? We do not merely picture to ourselves: “This was accidental in our life, such and such a thing befell us, there we were in a position of life which we abandoned,” and so forth. We must not stop at the concepts; we must make them living, active, as if there stood before us the picture of a personality who had desired and willed all this. We must experience ourselves in this willing. This is a very different experience from that of merely recalling concepts; it is an experience of living oneself into other soul-forces, if I may put it in that way.

This practice of drawing on will and desire in order to fill the soul with a certain content—a practice that has always been known and cultivated in all occult schools—is confirmed by what we know from anthroposophical or similar knowledge of the life of thinking, feeling and willing, and can be understood and explained thereby. Let us be quite clear that in giving a specific content to the life of feeling and will we must develop something which resembles memory-concepts, but does not stop there. It is something which enables us to develop another kind of memory—one that gradually leads us beyond the life enclosed in one incarnation between birth and death.

It must be strongly emphasised that the path here indicated is absolutely good and sure—but full of renunciation. It is easier to imagine on all sorts of external grounds that one has been Marie Antoinette or Mary Magdalene, or somebody like that in a former incarnation. It is more difficult by the methods described to construct out of what actually exists in the soul a picture of what one really was. For this reason we have to renounce a good deal, for we can readily be deceived. If someone says: “But we may be simply imagining it all,” then we must answer: “Yes, and it is also quite possible to imagine something in relation to our memories that never existed.” All these things are no real objections. Life itself can provide a criterion for distinguishing real imagination from fancy.

Somebody once said to me in a town in South Germany that everything in my book Occult Science might be based on simple suggestion. He said suggestion could be so vivid that one could even imagine lemonade so strongly that the taste of it would be in the mouth; and if such a thing is possible, why should it not be possible for what is present in Occult Science to be based on suggestions—Theoretically such an objection may be raised, but life brings the reflection that if anyone wishes to show by the example of lemonade how strongly suggestion can work, we must add that he has not understood how to carry the idea to its logical conclusion. He ought to try not only to imagine lemonade, but to quench his thirst with purely imaginary lemonade! Then he would see that it cannot be done. It is always necessary to carry our experiences to their conclusion, and this cannot be done theoretically but only by direct experience. With the same certainty by which we know that what arises from our memory-concepts is something we have experienced, so do the impulses of will we have called forth with regard to the accidents and undesired happenings arise from the depths of the soul as a picture of earlier experiences. We cannot disprove the statement of anyone who says: “That may be imagination,” any more than we can disprove theoretically what numerous people imagine they have experienced and quite certainly have not, nor prove to them what it is they really experienced. No theoretical proof is possible in either case.

We have shown in this way how earlier experience shines into present experiences, and how through careful soul-development we really can create for ourselves the conviction—not only a theoretical conviction but a practical conviction—that our soul reincarnates; we come to know that it has existed before. There are, however, experiences of a very different kind in our lives—experiences of which, when we recall them in memory, we must say: “In the form in which they appear, they do not explain an earlier life to us.” To-day I shall give an example of only one kind of such experiences, although the same thing may happen in a hundred, in a thousand, different ways.

A man may be walking in a wood, and being lost in thought may forget that the woodland path ends within a few steps at a precipice. Absorbed in his problem, he walks on at such a pace that in two or three steps more it will be impossible for him to stop, and he will fall over to his death. But just as he is on the verge, he hears a voice say, “Stop!” The voice makes such an impression upon him that he stops as though nailed to the spot. He thinks there must be someone who has saved him. He realises that his life would have been at an end if he had not been pulled up in this way. He looks round—and sees nobody.

The materialistic thinker will say that owing to some circumstance or other an auditory hallucination had come from the depths of the man's soul, and it was a happy chance that he was saved in this way. But there may be other ways of looking at the event; that at least should be admitted. I only mention this to-day, for these ‘other ways’ can only be told, not proved. We may say: ”Processes in the spiritual world have brought it about that at the moment when you reached your karmic crisis, your life was bestowed on you as a gift. If things had gone further without this occurrence, your life would have been at an end; it is now as though a gift to you, and you owe this new life to the Powers who stand behind the voice.”

Many people of the present time might have such experiences if they would only practise real self-knowledge. Such occurrences happen in the lives of many, many people in the present age. It is not that they do not happen, but that people do not pay attention to them, for such things do not always happen so decisively as in the example given; with their habitual lack of attention, people overlook them. The following is a characteristic example of how unobservant people are of what happens around them.

I knew a school inspector, in a country where a law was passed to the effect that the older teachers, who had not obtained certain certificates, were to be examined. Now this school inspector was an extremely human person, and he said to himself: " The young teachers fresh from college can be asked any question, but it would be cruel to ask the older men who have been in office for twenty or thirty years the same questions. I had better question them about the contents of the books from which they have taught the children year after year," And lo!—most of the teachers knew nothing of what they themselves had been teaching to their pupils. Yet this man was an examiner who understood how to draw out of people what they knew.

This is only one example of how unobservant people are of what takes place around them, even when it concerns their own affairs. We need not then be surprised that things of this kind happen to many people in life, for only by a true, deliberate self-perception do they come to light. If we bring the proper devout attitude to bear on such an event we may experience a very definite feeling—the feeling that from the day our life was given to us as a gift, its course from then onwards must assume a special direction. That is a good feeling, and works like a memory-process when we say to ourselves: “I had reached a karmic crisis; there my life ended.” If a man steeps himself in this devout feeling, he may experience something that makes him realise: “This is not a memory-concept such as I have often experienced in life—it is something of a very special nature.”

In the next lecture I shall be able to speak more fully of what can only be indicated to-day; for this is how a great Initiate of modern times tests those whom he thinks fit to be his followers. For the events which are to take us into the spiritual world proceed from spiritual facts which happen around us, or from a right understanding of them. And such a voice, calling as it does to many people, is not to be regarded as a hallucination; for through such a voice the leader whom we call by the name of Christian Rosenkreuz speaks to those whom he chooses from among the multitude to be his followers. The call proceeds from that Individuality who lived in a special incarnation in the 13th century. So that a man who has an experience of this kind has a sign, a token of recognition, through which he can enter the spiritual world.¹

There may not be many as yet able to recognise this call, but Anthroposophy will work in such a way that, if not in this incarnation, later on men will give heed to it. With most people who have such an experience to-day it is not completed in the sense that one can say of them in this incarnation: “They have met the Initiate who has appointed them his own.” One could say it rather of their life between their last death and their present birth. This is an indication that something happens in the life between death and rebirth; that we experience there important events—perhaps more important than in our life here between birth and death. It may happen, and in individual cases it does, that certain persons now belonging to Christian Rosenkreuz came to him in a former incarnation, but for most people the destiny that is reflected in such an event occurred in their last life between death and rebirth.

I am not saying this to recount something sensational, nor even for the sake of relating this particular occurrence, but for a special reason; and I should like to add something else in this connection, from an experience I have often had in our Movement. I have often found that things I have said are easily forgotten, or retained in a different form from that in which they were said. For this reason I sometimes emphasise important and essential things several times over, not in order to repeat myself. Therefore to-day I repeat that there are many people at the present time who have passed through an experience such as has been described. The point is not that the experience is not there, but that it is not remembered, because proper attention has not been paid to it. Therefore this should be a consolation to those who say to themselves: “I find nothing of the kind, so I do not belong to those who have been chosen in this way.” They can have the assurance that there are countless people at the present time who have experienced something of the kind—I reaffirm this only in order that the real reason for saying these things may be understood.

Such things are told in order to draw our attention again and again to the fact that in a concrete sense, and not through abstract theories, we must find the relation of our soul-life to the spiritual worlds. Anthroposophical Spiritual Science should be for us not merely a theoretical conception of the world, but an inner life-force; we should not merely know, “There is a spiritual world to which man belongs,” but as we go through life we should not only take account of things which stimulate our thinking through the senses, but should grasp with comprehension the connections which show us: “I have my place in the spiritual world, a definite place.” The real, concrete place of the individual in the spiritual world—that is the essential point to which we are calling attention.

In a theoretical sense men try to establish that the world may have a spiritual element, and that man is not to be considered in a materialistic sense, but may have a spiritual element within him. Our particular conception of the world differs from this, for it says to the individual: “This is your special connection with the spiritual world.” More and more we shall be able to ascend to those things which can show us how we must view the world in order to perceive our connection with the Spirit of the Great World, the Macrocosm.

• 1. See the volume entitled Christian Rosenkreuz. Notes of lectures given during the years 1911 and 1912.