The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Before we begin our actual esoteric study we should say that we in our esoteric stream must separate ourselves completely from the other one that goes through the world and that's promoted by Ms. Besant. For reasons of truthfulness we can separate ourselves from the deeds of a personality, but we must not change our love for the personality and should direct even more sympathy towards her, precisely because we must reject her deeds. As Ms. Besant wrote in 1906: “Judge has fallen on this perilous path of occultism, Leadbeater has fallen on it, very likely I too shall fall ... If the day of my fall should come I ask those who love me not to shrink from condemning my fault, not to attenuate it, or say that black is white; but rather let them lighten my heavy karma as I am trying to lighten that of my friend and brother ...” For occultism is indeed a perilous path, and everyone should consider that forces can slumber in the depths of the human soul that may not appear in ordinary life, but that come to light if one treads the perilous path. That's why one should constantly watch one's own soul and remember the words: “Watch and pray.”

Anyone who wants to enter spiritual worlds must practice strict self-knowledge. The Essene order, whose teachers also taught the Jesus of the Luke Gospel, had two rules that can show us how far away moderns are from spiritual things. One rule said that no Essene should speak about worldly things before the sun rose or after it set. And for those who had gone up to higher grades this rule was reinforced by one that forbade one to even think profane things at the indicated times. Another rule said that before the sun comes up every Essene should ask that this might happen and that the sun's power might shine over mankind every day ... These rules show us how important the connection of our being is with the events in the spiritual world from which we emerge in the morn, and in which we submerge when we go to sleep in the eve.

How little moderns live in accordance with these laws of outer and inner cycles is no doubt shown by an outer cycle like the transition of New Year's Eve into the new year. Everything that people do there and undertake before going to sleep seems to be designed to connect oneself particularly deeply with material things, whereas people should be doing a retrospect at this moment. Corresponding to this outer cycle is an inner one in man: that of waking and sleeping. In the eve a man draws his astral body and ego out of the physical and etheric bodies and lives in a purely spiritual world. Let's take a look at the moment of going to sleep, until unconsciousness gradually sets in. An ordinary man has no consciousness in the spiritual world at night. It may happen that clairvoyant moments occur and he then sees pictures of what he's left lying behind. What he sees will depend on his temperament and character. A man who feels that his stay in his bodies is like living in a house will see the physical and etheric bodies as a house with a portal through which he has to go when he wakes up. A melancholic who experiences the perishable side of earthly existence will see the image of a coffin in which a dead man lies. One who has a strong feeling that Gods built the house of his body during the old Saturn and Sun periods may see an angel or light form that hands him a chalice, representing an ancient, primal word of mankind: We're born from God.

What the Essenes did in the morn before sunrise can't be done any more today, so when a modern esoteric comes back into his physical and etheric bodies he should permeate himself with the holy feeling that sublime Gods prepared and built up these bodies during Saturn and Sun evolution so that we can develop consciousness in them. With this consciousness an esoteric will ask the God—the spiritual sun that the physical sun represents—to maintain and leave him this physical and etheric body each morn when he steps out of the spiritual world, to develop consciousness in the physical world. For where would we be if someone would take away this physical and etheric body overnight? We would then be overpowered by a feeling of unconsciousness. If we permeate ourselves with the fact that the Gods have built us this physical and etheric body we'll then have the experience that our brain, or any other organ, is not just bound to our physical body, but that it expands to a hollow sphere in which stars are imbedded that run in their orbits, and that these stars that are travelling in orbit are our thoughts. Thereby the microcosm becomes the macrocosm. The mighty forces of the whole cosmos are compressed in our brain, and we feel their connection with us. We can describe everything that led us through Saturn, Sun and through the hereditary line to our present birth with the saying: We are born from the Gods.

Just as we would have to remain unconscious if we couldn't dive down into our physical and etheric body in the morning, so passage through the portal of death extinguishes all conscious life. Before the Mystery of Golgotha a man received a consciousness after death from reserve forces that were given to men on their way that gave him consciousness in the spiritual world. But this gift of the Gods had gradually been used up, and a Greek knew that it was his lot to live in the realm of the shades after death. This was in accordance with the will of the Gods. Consciousness was shadowy and dim, and that's why Greeks had one of their greatest men say: Better to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the shades.

A new substance was created through the Mystery of Golgotha that could give consciousness to men when they were in the spiritual world after death. This substance flowed out of the Mystery of Golgotha. A man can develop consciousness in the spiritual world after death through an immersion in this Christ substance. That's why every evening when we go to sleep and into the spiritual world we should remind ourselves of this and permeate ourselves with the feeling: We die in Christ.—For only the Christ impulse can keep us conscious in the spiritual world after death through its death-overcoming vital force. But there's nothing in the physical world that's great and holy enough to enable one to understand this Mystery that was given through Christ Jesus, so one shouldn't use anything that belongs to the world, not even the words of language in order to refer to this Mystery, the great unfathomable secret that's contained in what flows out from the Mystery of Golgotha. That's why an esoteric is silent in word and thought at the place where the sacred, unspeakable name would have to be said. He just feels the sacredness of this moment: In ... morimur.

But even if a man has consciousness after death, he doesn't have self-consciousness yet, that through which he recognizes himself as an individual being in the spiritual world and finds himself together again with the brothers and sisters he was with in the physical world. The only thing that can help us to find our being again and to awaken with self-consciousness after we were immersed in Christ substance is our experience of our higher I that's given to us by the Holy Spirit, through whom we have to hope: We'll be resurrected in the Holy Spirit and will awaken to self-conscious life.

Dear attendees! Since I have repeatedly been allowed to speak in this city about topics of spiritual research, it will not be inappropriate to address the important question of where the truths of this spiritual research come from and where the sources of error lie. This must be recognized as something important, especially with regard to supersensible research, since orientation regarding truths and errors in every field of human life is of undeniable importance, and since, as is easy to see, in a field that takes us into such uncertain and error-prone regions, this orientation is of particular necessity. Spiritual research leads us to those areas from which the most important questions and riddles of life arise, initially less those questions and riddles of life that arise from the various fields of science - these are actually, insofar as we are dealing with science in the ordinary sense of the word, much more remote than the questions and riddles of spiritual research, which we encounter, so to speak, at every step we can take in life. In a sense, these riddles and questions of life can beset us at every moment of our existence. If we look at what spiritual research can give to life, albeit from a broad perspective, it initially comes down to two important questions. The first question is contained in the significant word 'man's fate'; the other is contained in the word that is so closely connected with all man's longings, with all his doubts, with all his hopes: the word 'immortality'. It is not as if spiritual research were exhausted by answering the two questions or riddles indicated, but the wide field of this research interests wide circles above all because its results are summarized in an appropriate answer to these questions.

Human destiny! What questions and what riddles lie in these words. We see a human being born into existence. We can predict from the little caring environment he has around him that hardship and misery will accompany his existence. And when we see him growing up with only limited mental abilities and emotional traits, we can say that he will perhaps become a rather unhelpful member of human society and that in many respects he will perhaps be a burden to himself and a torment to his soul. On the other hand, we see a person come into life surrounded by caring hands from the very beginning. We may see certain special gifts and abilities emerging in him early on, and we can predict that he may spend his life in happiness, that he can become a useful member of human society, that he may experience his life in enthusiasm and inner bliss, and all this suggests the question of why, which external science can answer so little.

The other question is that of immortality. It comes to us from life, but at first it confronts us in an egotistical way: that man desires survival after this life from his hopes, his longings, from a satisfied or unsatisfied life. Frequently, this question is raised out of selfish desires; but it need not be so. It can approach us as objectively as any other scientific question. We see this particularly when we consider how, in the course of the nineteenth century, more and more people had to break with the old traditions and beliefs, who not only doubted the survival of human activity after death, but who even believed that they had certainty that with death, consciousness of the human being closes forever, that the soul life, so to speak, gives itself up in it. Such people often belonged to spiritually highly striving beings. They said to themselves: I do not claim an egoistic survival after death; I can resign myself to the thought that what I have worked for will be handed down to humanity after my death. Selfless devotion of their acquired knowledge and the happiness they had experienced was their endeavor when the gate of death closed before them.

It is precisely in the face of such a world view that the question of immortality approaches us in a truly scientific way, for we can indeed say: Is it compatible with all that we otherwise know as the laws of existence, that the human being really is approaching a conclusion in his work and striving when the gate of death closes? Perhaps one could agree with such devotion for ethical reasons, but from the point of view of the laws of world economy it is different. We need only have a little feeling for what is achieved in the world by human souls, and we will say to ourselves: In the course of human life, the powers of the souls themselves create substantial facts, facts that, since the souls are individual, take on an individual character. We cannot readily see such individual creations, as they arise from the human soul, incorporated into the general stream of human development without having to admit that the world economy has a break, for we must feel that the best, the noblest, the most important thing our soul can work for is individual, in the sense that only the one soul can work for it within itself. We may give much to the general public, but our best would completely disappear from the world when the human being ceased to exist, when the gates of death closed. Without taking into account our desires, our hopes and longings, we are faced with the necessity of contemplating the immortal in human nature in the face of all that is mortal.

So the question arises before our soul, but if this question is to be answered, a science is needed that goes beyond the sensual, beyond the outer, physical nature. For nothing can give us an answer as to why these or those facts present themselves to us when we enter life. The question of destiny is not answered by physics and natural science. These must remain indifferent when they consider their facts, how these facts approach human hearts and souls. The why cannot fall within the scope of external science, nor can the question of immortality, since science depends on concepts of the mind that are bound to the instrument of the brain. What it can observe arises with death, disappears with death; if it cannot penetrate into the [gap in the transcript], we have no hope of seeing the question of immortality answered by it.

The way in which attempts are now being made to find answers to such questions in the present day (through spiritual science) is, however, not at all popular in the present day. Prejudice after prejudice favors a spiritual research activity; and perhaps the reasons will emerge from the lectures themselves, why there is so much resistance in the wider circles of the present, one may say, not only theoretical resistance, but even hatred, against what is emerging in a scientific way as spiritual research, in order to solve the characterized riddles of life and to find many other things that are connected with them.

Today we will talk about how man can truly look into the worlds from which the answers to such questions arise. We cannot get by in this world with the ordinary powers by which we know the outer world; and if man were not able to develop other powers than the ordinary powers of knowledge, there would be no possibility for him to penetrate into such worlds. All questions converge in the one: Is there a possibility for man to develop other powers of knowledge than those which [outer] science uses, which are thus exhausted in the observation of the senses and the mind bound to the brain? If man were only a being of the senses, it would be impossible for such powers to exist. Only someone who admits that the sense body of man, that which one can see with the eyes or grasp with the hands, is permeated by another entity, a supersensible entity, can come to the assumption of such powers. And basically, a logical certainty that it is so is provided by a very everyday observation, the kind of observation that is only rarely made because man does not consider what he experiences all the time to be worthy of special observation.

The mystery of death remains interesting for people because it comes unexpectedly, suddenly, and frighteningly; but what happens every day in the same way, the state of transition between waking and sleeping, is paid less attention to; nothing comes up to people that awakens uncertainty in them, because the same thing happens to them again and again in this state of transition. But for those who want to undergo a deeper observation of life, it is precisely the state of change [between waking and sleeping] that becomes particularly significant. We can say: Would it not be logically absurd to think that what takes place in the soul in terms of passions, drives and desires, longings and hopes, images and ideas from morning till evening, that all this sinks into nothingness when we fall asleep and is recreated from nothingness when we wake up? That would be absurd; nevertheless, no external sensory observation, no mind bound to the brain, will ever find in the sleeping human body that which surges up and down in the soul during wakefulness.

So at least initially the hypothesis can be put forward that there is a spiritual element in human nature that leaves it during sleep and moves back into it when we wake up, when the human body is then left by the soul, this inner truth moves into spiritual worlds during sleep. When sleep is over, the spiritual element comes back from the spiritual world into the physical body. This cannot be observed with the mind, but it will become clear if one only thinks logically. Now, of course, such an assumption can only be valid, only then convincing, if one can grasp that which is invisible and leaves the human body during sleep, if one can prove its real reality. How this happens is what we will now deal with.

Let us observe how a person presents themselves when they are asleep. We become unable to move our external limbs. All the senses die away, the body is overcome by a heaviness, the powers that it has in the waking state are withdrawn from it. We see, so to speak, our body falling away from us as we fall asleep. But we also perceive how consciousness dies with this loss of physicality, how it slowly fades and is then surrounded by complete darkness. But if the soul-spiritual, which permeates the body during the day, is present, then we have to say that it is not capable of developing inner forces during sleep, not even the kind of forces that could give it inner knowledge of itself. It is so weak in the normal human being that it cannot become aware of itself if it does not have the instrument of the body. If such a spiritual-soul element is present, for the real, that it feels that it is losing its body, then we must say: this is of such a nature that it needs the tool of the body to develop consciousness, to evoke forces. And when it is left to itself, it is not strong enough to develop an inner life; it can only do so if it opposes the resistance of the body.

But this does not mean that proof of its existence has been provided. This proof will only be provided if man can succeed in making this inner life, which otherwise makes use of the body, so strong that it can develop inner life and consciousness even without the bodily. Even for the proof of the spiritual and soul life, everything depends on whether the human being can develop a spiritual life without the help of this outer corporeality, of sensory perceptions. What would such a spiritual life be like? It would be something similar to sleep and yet different from it. When we fall asleep, we feel our inner life cease, our consciousness fade away. It fades away because the external sensory impressions are silent. We would have to be able to artificially induce this moment through arbitrariness, that is, be able to silence the external sensory impressions and still evoke a state that is not unconsciousness but is consciousness. This state is or would be similar to sleep in that we command all external senses and the brain to stand still and yet consciousness does not occur. The spiritual researcher must bring about this state in himself.

We will understand this best if we compare it to another state that is similar and yet quite different. When man is able to develop spiritual-soul forces outside of his body, to perceive in a spiritual world, then he penetrates into a world that lies beyond the mind bound to the brain, beyond the senses; then a supersensible world speaks to him in his being, as the senses speak to his being when he makes use of the senses. In this way man would become a spiritual researcher; and if such a world could be experienced in this way, then man would penetrate into the spiritual world, then proof would be supplied that everything outwardly visible is based on a spiritual substance. If this is the case, then this spiritual must always be there, then the visible world that surrounds us must be based on a spiritual. The only reason for this is that it does not show itself because we cannot perceive it. We experience the invisible spiritual world like a blind person experiences colors.

Now there is a state that is not considered in spiritual science, that is not applied by it, but that can serve us in our understanding of the actual spiritual state in the present, that is the state that is usually referred to by the term 'mediumship'. Please do not misunderstand me; the human being as a medium is not, as the spiritual researcher wishes, to come to a conclusion. How does human nature become a medium? Mediumistic experiences are brought about by the fact that the ordinary expressions of the soul, the life of will, the life of feeling, are suppressed by some process or other, so that the person is as if put into a kind of sleep. Under certain conditions, however, human nature can be induced to make statements, even to speak and write, without the person knowing about it and without consciously observing the processes. Thus, spiritual expressions can occur that can only be attributed to an entity whose intelligence has descended. Nor should one be advised to do what is called the development of mediumistic qualities. They are present in some personalities even without special training.

Let us consider again: What happens to a person who, in this way, comes to spiritual expressions as a medium? His own soul life is tuned down, completely extinguished, that is, his conscious soul life; he knows nothing of his revelations. We find something there that can otherwise only come from the conscious soul. We can say that we see there what is the everyday expression, how it spreads like a veil over the subconscious soul activity, which in turn is connected with the physical body and expresses itself when the conscious soul activity is suppressed. Thus, soul activity rests in the depths of human nature; we can bring it out when we make conscious soul activity completely passive.

This is not the way of spiritual science; but it shows us not only that there is soul activity where there is consciousness, but also that spiritual-soul activity is in human nature and shows itself when we suppress consciousness. This process, which produces the medium, is exactly the opposite of what should happen for the spiritual researcher. While the soul activity, the consciousness, is being reduced for the medium, it must be strengthened for the spiritual researcher, and this is done by the person evoking intense soul processes, soul processes that are usually referred to as 'concentration of thought', 'meditation' or 'contemplation'. These processes, which we shall endeavor to explain more fully, take place in an inwardly active spiritual life and ultimately lead to certain states of mind that represent three stages, three stages that one ascends to fully enter the spiritual worlds.

I ask you not to be put off by the words. The words used here are not used in the sense in which they are not liked to be heard in ordinary life. So you must not understand anything by them other than what I will explain afterwards.

We can describe the three stages as imagination, inspiration and intuition. All three stages are achieved by an increase in the life of the soul, by an inward strengthening. When a person lives in the ordinary, everyday life with nature and other people, he gets his impressions through the senses and then processes them with the mind. In this way, a person is concerned above all that what he imagines, senses and feels corresponds to external things; he forms such ideas to which he can attach the hallmark of truth through agreement with the outside world. As long as he remains in this state, an inner, spiritual life cannot develop. A certain concentration, meditation, that is, contemplation, must occur.

In order to avoid abstractions, we shall give a brief and precise description of how such an inward arousal of higher spiritual powers is achieved. (Please refer to my writing “How to Know Higher Worlds?”). What is described in this book will be hinted at here. Concentrated thinking proceeds in such a way that one first tries to free oneself from all external sensory impressions, to develop strong powers to keep one's eyes from colors and light. All sensory impressions must be suppressed so that one becomes completely inattentive and uninterested in the outside world. Then, through special training of the will, one silences all the memories that have accumulated in the course of one's life. One tries to become free of all worries and suffering; in a word, one tries to be within oneself. What kind of exercise of the will is needed to find such a state can also be seen in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds?”.

It is possible to make the will so strong that the outer senses and the mind are silent. Just as one can learn in ordinary life to turn one's attention away from objects, so one can arbitrarily suppress all impressions from outside by strengthening one's willpower. On the one hand, this brings about a moment similar to falling asleep; however, it must not come to unconsciousness. This is achieved by taking, through the power of the soul, into one's own soul, images that one has prepared for oneself. Such images are best when they do not correspond to any external events or things.

We will now place such a particular image before our souls, an image that is one of many thousands that the spiritual researcher uses for himself, but which can show the principle: that a person imagines he has two glasses in front of him, one filled with water and the other empty. He pours, so we want to imagine, from the filled glass into the empty some water, but this would not make the filled glass emptier and emptier, but always fuller and fuller, and the more we pour out, the fuller it becomes. It is an absurd notion, but it can be an allegorical notion for something that confronts us enigmatically in life. What is meant here is what we call love. Does the loving soul, which lovingly gives to the needy, which, so to speak, gives from itself what is contained within it, does it become emptier because of this? No, what is given out of love always makes us fuller and richer. That is the quality of love, that we give our own being and yet become richer and richer.

If we imagine this property of love through the symbol of the water glasses just characterized, then we have done something similar to what we did in geometry. If we look at a circular medal, we can put it down and then imagine a circular shape. So you can be completely unaware of the intrinsic nature of a thing, but you can visualize and draw the circular shape and completely disregard what you have in front of you. In the circle, everything that relates to the circular nature becomes clear. Figuratively, you have extracted something that is in this thing. This is how one visualizes things in geometry, and one also does this in spiritual research in a higher sense.

You extract from a process the nature of love, which encompasses such mystery and unfathomability that no human being can exhaust it, you take out the quality of becoming ever richer and you focus the soul on the symbol. You can also form other symbols. Such images are better for the meditative life than representations taken from the external world; in them, the soul still clings to the external world. But if we choose such images that have nothing to do with the external world, then we can live with distraction from everything external in our inner life. We live there when we direct all our soul powers for a while towards the one image. We can also use other symbols for such inner work, and the spiritual researcher has to do such an exercise a thousand times. Wisdom as such is not luminous, but we can imagine it under the image of a luminous sun and surrender to the symbol that expresses the idea of inner warmth. We can experience something in the process that we also feel when we imagine wisdom inwardly. We can also imagine love for the warmth spreading throughout the world.

Many, many examples of such images could be given. Someone could easily come along and say: So the spiritual researcher wants to indulge in ideas that are not true! But they are also not there to depict something external; they do not want that, but they want to bring the soul life within them to activity. While in our everyday life, or when we are occupied with scientific matters, we may have content in our soul that we cannot see, while our soul life is spread over many things, in meditation we draw together all our soul forces and focus them on this one idea; this makes it particularly strong when we make an effort to hold on to this idea and do not let anything else into our soul for a long time.

For the actual accomplishment of the matter, comprehensive inner measures are necessary, which you can also find in my book “How to Know Higher Worlds.” Especially effective are moral intuitions, impulses of the will, which the soul symbolically visualizes and to which it surrenders with the same love and enthusiasm that are otherwise awakened by things that stimulate us from the outside and make an impression on us. All training for true spiritual research is based on this kind of strengthening of the inner life, [in a] gathering of all the soul into a single idea; at times one works on this idea. This is meditation. And this meditation rises to contemplation when we are able to dwell vitally in such an inner soul content for a longer period of time, as we are otherwise in a comfortable space with our physicality. When we come to bring ourselves equally consciously into such a voluntarily induced state of soul, then we live in inner contemplation. Through this, that which in human nature is not dependent on the tool of corporeality is inwardly activated.

This provides real proof that there is such an inner spiritual realm, and it brings us closer to proving that it is something real that withdraws during sleep, that it is only too weak in ordinary life, but shows itself inwardly animated when we bring it to inner activity through such exercises as those described.

When a person has practiced this for a while, the point is reached when he finds that even when he does not artificially conjure up such images, does not artificially conjure up the symbols, his inner life is prepared in such a way that it generates such images from the subconscious, so to speak. This is the important moment, it is like a rebirth of the soul's life when, without our artificially inducing it, we see image after image emerging from the depths of our soul, emerging before us like a second world, a world outside the world.

But now the important thing begins, so that man may be led to the truths and not to the errors of spiritual research. A world of images rises from the depths of the soul, a world of images that someone who is not familiar with these things, but is familiar with today's view of such conditions, will take as visions, hallucinations, delusions. Today's world view believes that in such things, which go beyond ordinary life, it can only perceive the pathological. But the path to the truth of spiritual research consists in the fact that it can only emerge from a practiced life of the soul that knows how to distinguish between delusions and realities, including those in the realm of the soul. Therefore, every genuine schooling in spiritual research must lead to the moment when the described occurs, a strong inner will can be made in the person who wants to become a spiritual researcher, a decision that will not be present if the condition occurs pathologically.

This can be seen by observing ordinary life. Many of you will have noticed how people with a morbid mental life, when they have delusions, are far more convinced of the truth, of the reality of their own ideas, than of the reality of the outside world. It is often easy to dissuade people from a conviction, but with someone whose mental life is a morbid one, it would be a wasted effort. What happens then? What happens is that what a person has created through the power of his own soul life, he loves out of a strong feeling; in his imagination he also brings with him the longing for it to be reality, and so a world is built up before him, but one that he has only created himself. As soon as a person takes such a world as truth, he cannot be a spiritual researcher. Such a strong willpower is necessary when, through meditation training, the images that we call imaginations arise; a strong resolve is needed that is precisely opposed to unhealthy ideas, that now says to itself: All that you feel rising up in you as a world of images, even without your intervention, is nothing more than a mirror image of your own soul life. What you have within you, you have brought forth through your own efforts, and it presents itself to you. They are nothing but shadowy images of your own being. And it is not only the ability that belongs to the spiritual researcher, that one can bring it to the point where imagination occurs, more important is the strong will training in the face of this world, to always hold fast to the images of enchanting beauty, that they are only shadowy images of our own self.

This mistake is repeatedly made by those who have not undergone proper training and who, for whatever reason, come to a certain inner vision of images: they mistake this world for a real world because it can be a beautiful one, because in it, the human being feels happy. A spiritual researcher must be able to dispense with such a way of thinking. What must be formed in the course of training is the strong decision, and when this decision itself is made into a kind of meditation, when one repeatedly immerses oneself in this decision and applies all the soul's powers to all as shadow images, then this determination is strengthened and one acquires the ability to erase the imaginative world again; one can erase it again through an inner strength; then one has reached an important stage of spiritual research.

What you can achieve is as follows: you can say that it can be compared to what we call forgetting our thoughts in ordinary life. You know that everything you have experienced rests in your consciousness. How could a person live if all his experiences, pain and joy, were always present in his memory? But you know that what has long been forgotten can from time to time be recalled in the soul. Just as an idea from ordinary life plunges into oblivion, so too must the whole imagination be pushed into oblivion, into the unconscious, through the strong willpower discussed. This requires a strong mastery of the human being over himself, because the human being is intimately connected with what he has produced through his power. He has achieved a strong victory over himself when he is able to erase everything he has produced on the first level of spiritual knowledge.

Only then do we live in our true self, only then have we developed stronger forces within us than before. If we cannot do this, we know that we are still too weak to truly penetrate into spiritual worlds. Experiencing truths in the spiritual world is only possible if the experiences are brought about through spiritual training. When we have succeeded in doing this, then the images come up again in a completely different way – like forgotten images come up again, but in the same way as they were – so the imaginations come up again in a changed way. Before, they were images, like visionary or fantastic images; afterwards, they come up in such a way that we know we are now dealing with a real world, with a supersensible world. Before, they were images; now they are processes that are real, like the processes of the sense world.

Now someone might say that one could indeed now indulge in self-suggestion. What gives us assurance that things are real when we have become so master of ourselves? Yes, the way we experience things - nothing else can give us assurance, but this is the same way that gives us proof of the realities of the external, sensual life. There is no other proof! This can best be appreciated by pointing out Schopenhauer's main error. One can fully acknowledge a mind like Schopenhauer's even when pointing out his main error. When he says that the world around us is only in our imagination, then he makes this mistake, because one can distinguish in the world - but only who distinguishes life - whether something is imagination or reality. Imagine glowing iron. You will not get burned by imagining it. But if you perceive and touch the real glowing iron, you will get burned by it. Nothing can prove reality to us as much as direct experience. Full experience is the only thing that gives proof of reality. It has been said: Why should not what comes before the soul be suggestion, since man so easily succumbs to suggestion? One can imagine drinking lemonade; there is no reality here, but one enjoys the taste of the lemonade as if it were reality. One can admit this, but it is not a matter of a partial experience, but of a full experience. One can experience the taste in one's imagination, but one's thirst is not quenched by it! The full experience, the quenching of thirst, presupposes reality, not imagination.

Just as man can only receive the evidence of reality through experience in the external sense world, so he only acquires the ability to distinguish between reality and deception in the spiritual world through strict spiritual training. In the manner described, the spiritual researcher comes to a stage where he is confronted with a new kind of being, of facts that lie behind the sense world. By strengthening the life of the soul, real spiritual eyes are created in one's own soul life, so that man may find a new world.

Also with regard to his own life, man can only come to reality through such imagination. If a person first forms such imaginations, as they have been described, with regard to his own life, if he imagines this or that in a symbolic way, what he has experienced, if he meditatively delves into his own past life, then this life can come to his soul in a kind of images. If he is then able to gain control over these images, if he can erase this life by conjuring it up before his soul, he has won the victory over himself. Just as he [now] sees something occurring externally that is real, but he has erased everything that is connected with his present life – when he follows this process, he comes to something that belongs to him but not to his present life. There he actually ascends to what we call his previous life on earth, and he arrives at the realization of his previous lives on earth. For this is what spiritual science leads us to: our previous earthly lives, and in so doing it provides us with proof that our entire life, in repeated earthly lives and in the intervening periods in the purely spiritual realm, is a continuous process. This idea may be unappealing to the mind, but it is something that will become part of our culture in the future.

But then the question of fate dissolves in a strangely strange way, in that we know: this is not the first time we have lived this life and we still have many more lives on earth ahead of us. Back then, [in earlier lives on earth], we prepared ourselves for what now determines our destiny. And the question of immortality gains its proper illumination when we look at the gate of death in such a way that we pass through it, then live in a purely spiritual world, in order to enter a new life on earth with all that we have acquired, which yields the fruits of earlier lives. Then we are not talking in general terms about immortality, which is composed limb by limb. We gain from the certainty that we see our own lives, certain abilities that teach us to see that another and yet another life must follow. Thus genuine spiritual scientific research leads us to the truth, but the right path must be taken in the sense indicated.

All such knowledge then leads further to that stage where we not only see what arose in images, but also acquire the ability to experience in a non-pictorial way, so to speak: inspiration. Through inspiration, we penetrate into the meaning of things and entities, and through intuition, the next level of inner life, we become one with things, we experience what lies invisibly in things as spirit.

One can say in response to such an argument: Yes, when the spiritual researcher enters into a spiritual world and can say from this spiritual world how the riddle of fate is to be solved, can say: Yes, an immortal lives in you – this applies only to the spiritual researcher. That is not the case. The truth about the nature of spiritual research must also become clear if it is to become a factor in our culture.

What does the spiritual researcher gain when he enters higher worlds? He comes to recognize his essential soul core, to be able to say to himself: When the hair turns pale, when the body gradually withers, then a soul core weaves within me, which I feel becoming stronger and stronger, acquiring strength in life, then living in an intermediate life [between death and a new birth], and then coming to life again in a new earthly life. One could say: Only the spiritual researcher can experience this certainty. What then do other people have to gain from it, who can only use their intellect? If we want to recognize this, we have to realize that everything that the spiritual researcher brings is nothing other than the experience of the spiritual world. But an urge and an impulse asserts itself in him immediately; it is the urge to bring down everything one experiences in the spiritual world into the concepts of the real world. The true spiritual researcher is not satisfied with his journey into the spiritual worlds until he can clothe in logical forms what he knows from the spiritual worlds — so that his experiences are understandable to all people. And the spiritual researcher has no certainty about immortality, no certainty about destiny, until he can express his experiences in general ideas and concepts.

How does he relate to his ideas then? He relates to them as a painter who is learning to paint, who is learning how to handle colors, who is learning everything that belongs to the art of painting, relates to the picture that he brings onto the canvas. What the painter learns is all his own business at first. But then the picture is before us. Two people can stand before this picture. One may be inclined to spiritualize everything, then he will understand the secrets that the person has placed in the picture. The other would only look at the color combinations in the picture. Just as the painter relates to his picture and is not satisfied until his skill is reflected in it, so the spiritual researcher relates to his experience when he has conveyed it to other people in an understandable way. This picture, when it is painted by the true spiritual researcher, is such that every understanding observer who stands before it can understand it - explanations would only disturb, because the picture must be grasped inwardly. If a person has only enough impartiality and free power of judgment, he can accept it as a mental image, which he can absorb; he then has everything that the spiritual researcher was able to fathom in the spiritual world. One must be clear about the fact that in what the spiritual researcher puts into his picture, there is nothing that cannot be grasped with the mind, with the means of healthy thinking.

Everything we need for the strength of life, everything we need at all, cannot come to us through the research of science, but through spiritual science - through what we absorb when the spiritual researcher presents his perceptions in ideas. The strange thing is that the spiritual researcher does not receive what he needs for his life through his research, but through what he can have in common with ordinary people: Only when the spiritual researcher has made the seen comprehensible to other people does he gain security in life, orientation in relation to fate and satisfaction. Through spiritual research, one gains insights into the entire world; but what the research can be, the spiritual researcher cannot gain from it if it cannot be presented in comprehensible forms. And the spiritual researcher cannot be served by anything other than what he can make useful to the non-spiritual researcher. There must be spiritual researchers; and you will see from my book “How to Attain Knowledge of Higher Worlds” that every person can come to a certain level of this knowledge. In order to acquire what the soul needs for the security of life, for the joy of living, for the security of its roots in the immortal, what the soul needs so that man can look forward to old age with peace of mind, can be recognized through the results of spiritual research, and in this the spiritual researcher attains nothing more than the other; and only then does the spiritual researcher have something of his ideas when he has presented them in the forms of common sense.

That is the truth about spiritual research; that is the truth about the relationship of spiritual research to life, and it must be firmly held that from this spiritual research itself only that has value which can be so placed in life. The spiritual researcher who can live in the spiritual world may see many things, but what he sees there has value only if he can also judge it. Some people can indeed come to visions through exercises if they do not go through everything that has been characterized as the true way today; they can come to see many things – but what value, what significance the vision has, whether it has any truth value, can be quite unknown to them personally. One must first be able to judge what one sees; one must first be able to appreciate it in its significance for life. But where does one gain this possibility? Through nothing other than the power of judgment and morality that one has already acquired in ordinary life before entering the spiritual world. He who has a moral sense will enter the spiritual world with it and be able to judge things rightly. The one who is foolish or immoral will only be able to judge what he sees wrongly. Therefore, a person's value is not increased if he is able to see the supernatural through all kinds of means. Even the spiritual researcher is only valuable through that which makes a person valuable, through sound judgment and moral strength. But the havoc that unhealthy judgment and immorality wreak when the spiritual researcher enters the spiritual worlds with them will be shown to us tomorrow when we speak of the errors of spiritual science.

The question could be raised: Yes, but what then are the truths of spiritual research? Just as it is impossible to list the truths of another science in an hour, it is equally impossible to list the truths of spiritual science in an hour. It should be shown how man comes to the truth in spiritual research and not to error, how man, through the development of the forces slumbering in him, creates spiritual eyes and spiritual ears, to use Goethe's words, in order to see into a spiritual world. Now one cannot say that this is a rule as truth, that this is a rule as error; one can only say that the soul of man will mature on this path to see truths and not errors. This path should be spoken of today. Tomorrow the sources of error will be clearly explained. Today's and tomorrow's lectures belong together. Today's lecture should show how the human soul can strengthen itself spiritually in order to perceive the spiritual world, just as the eye and the mind can perceive the sensual world. In this way, the human soul perceives everything. That it is born out of the external world of the senses and at the same time [is] in the spiritual being, a saying by Goethe tells us:

If the eye were not sunlike,
How could we behold the light?
If the power of God did not live in us,
How could we be enraptured by the divine?

It is true, in ourselves there must be an eye, with all its power, for us to behold the light; the eye must be solar. And for a person, there must be an inner activity of God's life so that he can perceive God.

But such a saying in the Goethean sense is not meant as it would be said by [Schopenhauer], for example: the world is a representation. We would be far from the meaning of Goethe's saying if we believed that we should create the whole external world only as an imitation of the inner world, as some philosophers claim. This must be said, as Goethe says: Man would have no eyes if sunlight did not permeate space. And just as it is true that we only recognize light through the eye, it is equally true that we only have an eye because light floods space, for it is light that has brought out the eye in the first place. Beings that had eyes but have lived in caves for many generations lose the organ of the eye, the eyes atrophy. The eye is a creature of light. Thus the fact that we have organs for light, through which we can have it, is at the same time proof of the existence of light. The fact that man can experience spiritual things in himself, that he can awaken supernaturality in himself, is proof that the supernatural is not only in him and that he does not dream it, but that the spiritual that interweaves all space and time has brought forth the spiritual in us in the first place, as light brings forth the eye.

Thus we can supplement Goethe's beautiful saying, which points us to our inner light and sun, to our inner divinity, with a saying that is from the inner spirituality of man for the outer reality of the spiritual. We can summarize the result of our reflection on the reality of that spiritual in which we rest, as we rest as sense beings in the material world; we can summarize it by juxtaposing Goethe's saying with the other saying:

If the world were not [endowed with the sun],
How could eyes blossom for the being?
If existence were not God's revelation,
How could people come to be filled with spirit?

Dear attendees! In the field of spiritual research, which was discussed here yesterday, it is even more necessary than in any other field of knowledge of life to search for the sources of error. It is especially necessary for the reason that on the paths of truth, of which we spoke yesterday, error lurks at every turn, so to speak, and because the nature of error in relation to the exploration of the spiritual worlds is quite different from that in the exploration of the sensual world in which man lives. It may be said that, to a certain extent, an old saying of the great philosopher Aristotle can serve as a motto for the seeker of truth on his way into the spiritual worlds. This saying sounds simple at first, but it is quite difficult to follow. It reads:

Only he can know the truth who has ceased to love his own opinion.

This saying applies to all of life's experiences and wisdom, but it applies to a particularly high degree in the field we are dealing with here. In our external life, what is contained in this saying is disregarded everywhere, so to speak. What do we hear people emphasize more often than: This is my point of view on any given matter, this is my opinion. And particularly in our time it is emphasized again and again that it is justified, and only justified, if every human being asserts his point of view, so to speak, his opinion about some matter. Of course, one can admit such a demand of life up to a certain limit, but to the real truth, namely to the truth in the spiritual field, such a point of view cannot lead. For one's own opinion – one has formed it in life entirely according to one's personal education, the personal circumstances in which one has lived, according to the part of the world that has just come across one; and it does not actually take much to realize that this opinion, which an individual personality has formed, can at least have only a narrow validity under all circumstances.

Now, in the realm of intellectual life, the fact that we bring our opinions, our view of life, our point of view with us when we engage in research intervenes in a completely different way than in any sensual realm. In ordinary life, where we are dealing with external things, we can say that error corrects itself at every turn. If we form a false opinion about this or that being or this or that process in the sensory world, we only need to let the appearance of this being or this fact itself affect us, and the incorrect judgment is, so to speak, eliminated. We cannot approach a matter with an incorrect judgment without the matter itself proving us wrong. In the spiritual realm, it is quite different. There it is a matter of course that all beings, all facts receive their very special coloration from that which we bring with us as our own soul constitution, as that which lives in our soul. And we carry a wrong opinion into the spiritual world with us; it lays itself like a veil over the corresponding observation. And if we want to hold on to this wrong opinion, then the spiritual fact, which is veiled by our opinion, cannot convict us of lying. It wraps itself in the garment of our wrong opinion and appears to us in a completely false form.

If, on the other hand, we want to point to mediumship as the antithesis of true spiritual research – without recognizing it as justified for spiritual research and without expecting to gain anything from it – then this is only for the sake of explanation. Those people who, in the manner already discussed yesterday, want to receive messages from the spiritual worlds through mediums or somnambulists are usually very concerned that their medium does not pick up, let us say, spiritual-scientific truths or any convictions from certain points of view about the spiritual world. For the people who make use of mediums are justifiably afraid that in the event that the medium has absorbed certain thoughts about the spiritual world into the ordinary consciousness and soul life, the fact that when the medium is put into his sleep-like state, what he has absorbed comes out again in his revelations, that, so to speak, the personal interferes with what the medium is supposed to reveal. And such people believe that they can only come to real, factual revelations of the spiritual world that stands behind the physical world when they have eliminated all personal feeling from the medium, when there is, so to speak, no predisposition at all to put anything personal into his revelations.

What do such people strive for? [They strive] to eliminate the personal, everything that comes from elsewhere than from the subconscious depths of the medium. That is why most is given to such revelations of mediums of which one can be certain that the mediums have not been in contact with the matter concerned in any way. If the medium speaks in a language of which one knows that it is unknown to him, then most is given to such revelations, and rightly so. What such persons strive for, who make use of mediums, can serve as an explanation. For even if spiritual research does not use anything that comes from this side, it is still true for the true spiritual researcher, who makes himself an instrument to penetrate into the spiritual worlds, that he must strip away the personal, that is, that which is only attached to his own soul life and is peculiar to his own soul life.

This is a more difficult task than is usually believed, because it requires something that is, so to speak, extremely difficult for ordinary consciousness to understand. It is necessary [that which] is called in spiritual research “the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold”. The threshold here refers to that which demarcates the realm of the sense world from the spiritual world. What is this “Guardian of the Threshold” if we start from ordinary life and its relationship to truth? Because basically, this Guardian of the Threshold is the sum of those forces and powers that prevent people from true self-knowledge in their ordinary lives and that lead them to this self-knowledge if they want to become a spiritual researcher. But in everyday life, self-knowledge is not an easy thing, and precisely because the human soul clings to what it has formed from its experiences, from everything it encounters. And this is precisely how the various points of view arise, the struggles of opinions, where materialism and spiritualism, realism and idealism, and many other points of view, which people advocate with devotion, but which make it impossible for people to understand each other, especially with regard to the most important things.

What is the actual situation regarding these points of view? Anyone who considers the human soul in relation to the rest of existence will be able to see, when he delves into the matter, that idealism, materialism, realism and so on arise as human opinions because man always has only a limited and then forms his opinion from this; and he loves this opinion of his, and it is actually love that inspires him for this opinion and makes him think that this opinion is the only possible one and fights against other points of view. This love is basically self-love. That which we have achieved, which is so closely connected with us that we actually become the thing itself - it is understandable that we love it. If we give it up, we give up ourselves. That is the significance of clinging to certain points of view in life: everyone feels that if they give them up, they give up themselves, because their whole self has taken on the coloration of the point of view. A person cannot but affirm this point of view.

There are people who, through their lives or the direction of their science, through their preoccupation with purely external things, which live in their ideas, people who are accustomed to only fix their eyes on what is material about things, become materialists; their attention is diverted from everything that is not material, and they are materialists, not because idealism is wrong. For anyone who really understands the arguments will soon see that materialists have good reasons for their assertions. But idealists also have good reasons for their views, and only someone who is biased in his materialistic direction actually sees bad reasons for idealism. Man only opposes idealism and insists on materialism when he adopts the habits of thinking that he only has to do with material things. Other people are, so to speak, less affected by the hardness and density of matter. They are more directly pointed to the struggles and victories of human life through their abilities and circumstances. Such people become idealists. They see the reasons that speak for idealism, and since they have never learned to pay attention to the reasons that speak for materialism, they regard materialism as the great error that must be fought.

And so one could characterize all spiritual directions; one would always have to lead them back to what the people have in the way of abilities and circumstances. But those who have come to a broader horizon, like Goethe, knew, and this is known by anyone who can look at the different worldviews impartially. Goethe knew that all points of view have a certain one-sidedness and that basically, for and against each point of view, much can be argued. Some people, however, also realize this, and then they easily come to the conclusion that the truths lie between the different points of view, so that a balance can be found, so to speak. But anyone who wants to know the truth in this area can be compared to a person who sits between two chairs. But the right thing would be to use both chairs, depending on the circumstances. To this end, he who is able to relate human opinions to their relationship to the all-encompassing world will come.

[Goethe says]: Truth does not lie between the different points of view, but between these lies the task, the path to truth. What does that mean? It means that when considering the individual world views, one must say that materialism is fully justified in the material realm, and that those who want to explain the material world with spiritualism will not uncover anything. Concepts of materialism belong in the world of materialism, and the mistake of materialism is not that materialism is used to explain the material, but that one also wants to explain the spiritual realm with materialism. It is the other way round for spiritualism. The enthusiastic idealist will speak everywhere of the spiritual and spiritual forces; he is like someone who looks at a clock and does not want to explain the mechanism of the clock in a mechanical way, but seeks a demon inside it that moves the hands forward. This is what one comes to and must come to if one wants to come to the truth about the different worldviews, which are only opinions after all: that one is able to see the justification and limitations of the different views.

What prevents man from doing this? Depending on the field of the world and of life, man loves his point of view with true self-love; he cannot get out of himself, cannot put himself in the place of another point of view. That is why it is so resented when one looks at Haeckel and puts oneself in his mind and does not everywhere have the tendency to fight Haeckel from a spiritual or ideal point of view, and when one turns to other minds and looks at them just as objectively. The true spiritual researcher must be able to put himself in the shoes of the positive and negative aspects of the various points of view. For it is a peculiarity of human nature that when a person applies such a method to his soul, as was discussed yesterday, then his opinions and points of view change with him. We can observe this very well, especially with the opposing points of view - idealism and materialism.

Someone who rejects everything spiritual, who is a strict materialist, will not apply any method to his soul as described yesterday; all of this is nonsense and folly to him. From his materialistic point of view, he is right. But the one who, as a spiritual researcher, not only sees the material effect in life, but can look into the whole mechanism of life, into the spiritual forces that stand behind the sensual, knows that it is not the material opinion that prevents this person, who rejects all methods of spiritual research, from coming to it. Man can deny the spiritual world if he wants. But this spiritual world does not only exist in a separate spiritual realm; this spiritual world is also present everywhere in the sensual, material world. Even in the matter that the materialist alone observes, spirit is present everywhere. But this spirit, which only lives in the material, is the spirit, the power that, when it works through man – and it does so when he has the thinking habits of moving only in the material – causes him to be incapable of directing his soul's reflection, his soul's direction, to the spirit at all. There is something in all material existence that has such an effect on us that it draws us away from the spirit, distracts us. There we see how error works.

In our studies of spiritual research, as they now try to engage in the spiritual cultural life of the present, we call this spirit, which lives in matter and works there as a force that darkens man's view of the spiritual world, the Ahrimanic spirit. This spirit is the same one that Goethe portrays in Faust as Mephisto, who accompanies Faust, who accompanies every human being, because every human being has to deal with the material world. This, then, is the power that darkens our view of the spiritual world. Materialists can indeed deny the spirit with their concepts, but it would be a serious mistake to believe that they can do any harm to the reality of the spirit. It takes revenge on them and obscures their views. This is the peculiar effect in the soul of the materialist, that this spirit erects a wall, that man cannot see the spiritual world; so the materialist denies the spiritual world because the spirit of matter inspires him to do so. You can deny him, but you cannot escape him, and what is buzzing around in the world as materialism is actually the inspiration of the [Ahrimanic] spirit. Goethe was right when he has Faust confront the mothers in such a way that Mephisto presents the spiritual realm as a nothing. But Faust says: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.” – The materialist should admit to himself that he belongs to a certain group of people about whom Mephisto says:

The devil this little group never sees

And even if he had them by the collar.

It is precisely the material spirit that the little people do not feel and that inspires their materialism. In this way, if we go deep enough, we see how materialism cancels itself out, because it is itself a product of the spirit.

Let us now take the idealist's point of view. He wants nothing to do with materialism; he has formed ideas and feelings that only lead him into spiritual spheres. It would certainly not occur to him to apply what has been said to himself, but the one-sidedness of the idealistic point of view is evident precisely in these points. If the idealist, who rejects matter, applies the method mentioned yesterday to himself and gains access to the spiritual world, his way of thinking and feeling, his whole attitude, confronts him there; he carries it into this world, and the result is that this person can enter the spiritual world, but he sees everything through the spectacles of his opinions and ideas, and [he sees] that there are a great many such beings in the spiritual world that are called demonic natures, which do not appear in the external world but live in the spiritual world. These beings are too insignificant for our world – and who distract man from the world to which he nevertheless belongs, since he is born as a human being in a physical body; so the idealist, if he is narrow-minded, is very easily driven into certain methods in the world that we call demonic. He is so firmly rooted in this that, whereas he used to understand nothing of matter, so to speak, he now shuns it. People then end up in all kinds of false ascetic directions. He wants nothing more to do with matter, and his error leads him to an estrangement from the world to which he really belongs. He falls into loneliness.

This example shows us that errors in the spiritual realm are more disastrous than in the sensual realm. In the sensual world, errors are corrected; in the spiritual realm, however, errors are like realities that confront us, although these realities themselves are brought in by us. We cannot get through them. All errors [in the spiritual realm] affect our personality like realities. In the sensual realm, one can become free of errors through refutation; in the spiritual realm, there is no way but through struggle, for one must fight against that which appears as real. In the field of spiritual research, therefore, the fight will not be a mere logical one, but an ongoing spiritual work, a fight against the powers of error, for there are the powers of error.

The question now arises: How can we find the way to become efficient fighters against error in the spiritual field? We can do this through true self-knowledge! How do we go beyond the one-sidedness of materialism, spiritualism, idealism and realism in our [ordinary] lives? By making the decision once in our lives to see how we actually came to our opinions. This is a momentous decision, less difficult to grasp than to carry out. When we trace our lives back in strict introspection and ask ourselves how we came to this or that school of thought, when we examine how our attitudes and opinions arose, then we, so to speak, put ourselves together, then there comes a point where it can become difficult for us, where our minds feel great resistance. Whether one was a materialist or idealist or insisted on some other opinion that one thought was the only right one – then one feels: one has only received this opinion through one's own experience. Then comes the moment when one first feels what opinions and worldviews actually are.

As long as you interact with the world without prejudice and carry your views with you, you don't even notice how much you love your opinions; but once you withdraw from the world and realize how you have become a materialist, how you have become a spiritualist, then you come to the point of saying to yourself: Yes, basically, when you no longer have these or those thoughts, what remains of you? Then you become completely empty? You feel how you gradually cut yourself out of yourself. What then comes is that terrible moment in life when you see yourself disappearing, when you turn your gaze to the formation of your opinion. But no one can come to a worldview who does not practice self-knowledge. Then you stop insisting on your opinion, only then do you understand the saying of the old wise man Aristotle:

Only those can recognize the truth who have ceased to love their own opinion.

Then you really start to love your opinion when you have to give it up, just as you really feel love for a being when you lose it. The moment you recognize the origin of your opinion and learn to give it up, that's when you really love it. That is what our mind experiences.

If you now come to the realization that all these points of view are valid, you feel for a while as if you are floating in the air between the different points of view, standing without a floor in the world with your soul's existence. It exercises self-knowledge if you look at it as worldly wisdom without crossing the threshold. But there is a direct path from this self-knowledge, if it is energetically carried out, really into the world, to which attention was drawn yesterday. For the one who is left with no play on words by what has been described, who experiences it inwardly, with inner pain, who experiences it with all his energy, who has warmth for what happens in the world, who cannot stand coldly before the world, such a person, in this self-inspection, will experience one of the meditations that were pointed out yesterday. Because such introspection is an important kind of meditation. If it is done often, then something arises that is similar to the imagination that was shown yesterday, but such an imagination that refers to ourselves. And what then arises as a result of the introspection of ordinary life, if one takes introspection that far – what then arises is: one sees how one is in one's own being. Before, you only knew your opinion, but now you see how far you have brought each part of the soul that lies below your conscious life, that goes from life to life, in the present life.

This then arises from the spiritual world itself. You come to realize what you actually are as a human being; you never came to this realization in ordinary life. We only rarely occupy ourselves with ourselves, but when we descend into ourselves, we spiritually face ourselves. This self-knowledge is what we have called “the encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold”. For that which rests in the part of the soul that goes from life to life does not show itself in ordinary life, and as long as it does not show itself, we cannot enter the spiritual world. In ordinary life, our own nature veils the spiritual world from us; at the moment we want to enter the spiritual world, we have to have the aforementioned encounter with the Guardian of the Threshold, we have to objectively face our own being, which we now face in a reincarnated being.

Then we come to see the depth of our own being, which we were spared in life, and it may be said: This world institution is beneficial, that this guardian of the threshold hides himself for ordinary life, because you can easily imagine that a person is not always strong enough to give up that which he must love most; a fear and terror of himself, so to speak, would overtake the unprepared and unripe person for true self-inspection to such an extent that it would have to bring irregularity into his inner soul life. Therefore, all true schooling for the path into the spiritual world is such that the disciple is made ready for the encounter with the “Guardian of the Threshold”. The mere enunciation of what has just been said can never be intimidating. It is only when one has one's own beingness before one that one feels that it is that which, if not faced and recognized, would prevent one from ever entering into truth into the spiritual world. We only see the spiritual world clearly when we have placed this Guardian of the Threshold within us, when we contemplate him as another being, that is, when we have been reborn. Only then can we judge how what we have been up to now is the source of all error.

Then the great, powerful fact arises before us, which can be formulated in the question: Where do the errors of spiritual research come from? They come from what we personally are; that is mixed with truth and error. We can only separate these when we can look at ourselves objectively. Only when we have ourselves in the world we are looking into, can we find a way to fight the powers of error. But there is still another difficulty, because the feeling of facing nothingness increases when one enters the spiritual world. As long as one is connected in some way with the external world, that external world is always the cause that one still loves one's own individuality too strongly. But when you look at yourself, when this peculiarity has become something like an object of the external world, then the evil temptation approaches us, that we are seized by an infinite love for our self - and never is the spiritual researcher more in danger of falling into error than now. Therefore, it takes all courage to tear all self-love out of the heart from this moment on; one must tear it out of the heart if one wants to fight errors.

So we can say that basically moral courage is the deciding factor at a certain level of spiritual realization when it comes to overcoming errors, and then we see how it becomes possible to fight the errors when we feel the source of the errors, our personal self, standing before us. If we can do this, then we will also be able to turn a healthy gaze back into ordinary life; then we will find that both those demonic powers and those Ahrimanic powers that inspire materialism, and also the enthusiastic powers, that all these spiritual powers and spiritual entities are the revelations of the spiritual world. Only then do we face the full reality. Only then do we gain a sound judgment of those who fall into errors of spiritual science, that they do not want to believe in real spiritual powers in the historical course of human development, but speak of ideas that guide the course of history.

In the nineteenth century, historians appeared who spoke of ideas in history. Those who understand the facts in this area know that ideas live in people, but that they cannot work to understand them. These ideas can no more work in history than a painter can paint a picture. And when in our time a doctrine arises that seeks to replace a historical and personal Christ, saying that one can believe in the idea of Christ, this doctrine is based on the view that ideas can have an effect, that ideas are not merely the expression of real beings. But only when we recognize the spiritual Powers standing behind them, can real life be understood.

When one accepts such a world-view, one need not be a spiritual researcher oneself to see whether his teachings are true. Man must pass through self-knowledge, for the assurance and elevation of his life. It is absolutely true that when the spiritual researcher forms and fashions what he has researched into human ideas, then everyone who is unbiased enough can understand these images. And that is why it must be emphasized that the true path of the listener to the spiritual researcher is not to devotedly surrender to the authority of the spiritual researcher, but rather the true relationship of the listener to the confessor is one that arises out of the free judgment of the listener. The spiritual researcher can only come to a correct judgment about what he sees if he applies his common sense, his healthy thinking, and if this thinking is morally and intellectually sound. But this brings us to the point where we can not only speak of the errors themselves, but also of the errors that arise in the dissemination of spiritual research, and these are very important. It is not possible to specify individual errors and how to avoid them. Rather, it can only be said that whoever advances more and more conscientiously to true spiritual research will avoid the errors that lurk everywhere. We will fight error when we recognize ourselves. Errors also arise when there is not the right relationship between those who profess and the spiritual researcher himself. Here too we have all kinds of points of view. A large number of our contemporaries reject everything that comes from spiritual research. The spiritual researcher can understand such points of view. That is why he finds so much opposition, because spiritual research is something that is new to our culture and that thinking is not yet attuned to. That is one way in which spiritual research is encountered today. A number of these people do come, however, when they realize the errors of materialism and gradually approach the results of spiritual research. It is different with the confessors. Just as much as criticism of the spiritual researchers, they experience, on the other hand, false confession, which recognizes authority and does not see that everything can be tested. The spiritual researcher does not shy away from a close examination, only from those examinations that arise from a superficial scientific approach, but not from a thorough one. It is the right approach to take what the spiritual researcher offers, to be inspired and then to examine it with the mind through which it can be examined. But besides the dismissive people, there are many who find it easier to simply believe instead of examining. And it is from these people that the kind of confession comes that leads above all to error after error in the spread of spiritual research. Because one does not check, but accepts what the spiritual researcher gives, the spiritual researcher is considered something of a higher animal by such a believing confessor. Because he looks into the spiritual world, he is considered a higher being.

It is correct to not see such a spiritual researcher as a special being. The value of a spiritual researcher does not depend on his ability to see into a spiritual world, but on his moral and intellectual qualities. This is, so to speak, an area of purely human research, because its results are connected with all the hopes and longings of man, and just as one is not held in higher esteem for pursuing mathematical or geometrical science, so one should not be held in higher esteem for being a spiritual researcher. When one peers into the spiritual world, one does not yet need to have a judgment about what is seen; one can look in and see many things and tell the greatest nonsense and the greatest errors from this world. Only then, when one regards the spiritual researcher, so to speak, as nothing more than an instrument through which spiritual truths flow into the world, and then checks for oneself, only then does one have the right relationship to the spiritual world. Otherwise, how could charlatans so easily set themselves up alongside the real spiritual researchers? But those who do not want to examine cannot distinguish between what has been conscientiously gained and what has been gained by false and even fraudulent means.

The spiritual researcher can only save himself from his confessor by not being tempted to become overconfident in the faith that is placed in him. There are natures that, when they see that they are being regarded as something special, communicate all kinds of things that have only been obtained by false means. That is why charlatanry and humbug are often indistinguishable. And much less harmful in terms of the dissemination of spiritual research are the critical opponents, as long as they are not driven by their longing than the blindly faithful followers. In no other field is belief in authority worse and more harmful than in the field of spiritual research, and in no other field is this belief so at home. A healthy dissemination of spiritual research and spiritual science in our time, which wants to avoid errors within what it disseminates, must above all be concerned with eliminating blind faith from all dissemination of spiritual science.

However, we are still far from this ideal in many respects because of the complacency of the many, because they no longer check whether what the spiritual researcher says is justified. If they like what is offered, they accept it on blind faith in authority. It is always possible to apply common sense to what is presented in spiritual science, and when one sees that the spiritual researcher is endeavoring to place the results of his research in such strict [gap in the transcript] images, when does not tend towards enthusiasm on the one hand or carelessness on the other, but when one sees how he treats all matters of spiritual research in the same logical way as external matters, only then is he a true spiritual researcher. Then, when he sees more and more souls of the present and the future incline towards spiritual research in this way, then the objection cannot be raised that [Jelder should be a spiritual researcher. Just as not everyone needs to become a botanist to understand botanical research, not everyone needs to become a spiritual researcher either – although anyone can become one.

But the ideas of spiritual research must spread more and more, because we live in a time when souls long for what only spiritual science can give. Its facts are what souls long for today and will long for more and more. He who can grasp the spirit of the time knows that certain needs of the soul can only be satisfied if spiritual science finds its way to the hearts and souls. But since the time itself will ensure that there will be enough spiritual researchers, and since one only needs logical mind and a sense of truth [to see the results of spiritual research], then through these spiritual researchers one will find the way that open up the perspective for everyone to enter the spiritual worlds, that spiritual world from which man can come security, joy, hope for the life in which he is, and that which opens up when the gate of death closes. That security, which can develop with the approach of wisdom towards old age, when our body decays, to prepare to go through a spiritual existence, to come back to this earth to continue its work - that security, that certainty will these souls, these personalities find in the spiritual world.

This perspective will arise for more and more souls of the present and the future: the opportunity to look into this spiritual world. And a time will come when truly every single person, not just the spiritual researcher, will stand there in such a way that [he] will take a very simple stand against all denial of the spiritual world. These people will become so great as the force of the reasons for spiritual research [for the same] continues to grow. Such secure souls will behave towards the deniers of the spiritual world as Goethe once behaved when the philosophy that came from Greek thought, which could not come to terms with the laws of movement, came before his soul. They said that there was no movement, that it was only apparent, that when a body moves, it is actually at rest in every moment; but movement is not composed of rest, so there is no movement. There was such a school of philosophy! Goethe, when he heard about this philosophy, said:

They may see what they want,

You remain calm, remain silent;

And if they deny you movement,

Walk around in front of their noses.

In this way, movement is proven by the evidence of walking in front of their noses.

If one could delve a little into the certainty of the souls that must come, which will gradually feel the force of the spiritual-scientific proofs, such souls will then confront the deniers of the spirit just as surely as Goethe confronted the deniers of the movement. Such souls will then perhaps say to those who disdain to regard as foolishness the science of the spirit:

Adversity may arise,
but you remain calm, remain cheerful,
and if they deny the spirit,
do not brood over it.
Yes, in the end even agree with them,
their spirit is in a bad way.

Question and Answer

Question: Is the soul of the deceased aware of the life just concluded?

Rudolf Steiner: In “Occult Science”, we have attempted to characterize the nature of consciousness. Those who want to inform themselves must let the presentation given there take effect on them. [One can answer the question] with an absolute “Yes”, but this “Yes” needs to be explained, and that is only possible through a detailed presentation.

Question: Why are new embodiments always necessary, in other words, why is there never any rest?

Rudolf Steiner: The questioner probably regards rest as something desirable, which underlies the question. What can be meant by the concept of rest here? Rest that is the rest of death or some other kind of behavior? It is impossible to find out what is meant by 'calm' here. Of course, not all of life's mysteries can be solved in a lecture, and many things must remain unsaid. Of course, the embodiments do not continue uninterruptedly from eternity to eternity; they once took a beginning from a purely spiritual existence, and at the end of the earth we will be in a different spiritual state, no longer returning to the earthly existence. But in the meantime, we have to undergo incarnations. Repeated earthly lives are necessary because only in this way can a person approach the all-round development and realization of his potential, approaching his goal in an ascending and descending wave. That is precisely the course of earthly development; the earth never remains the same after a certain number of centuries; consider all that has changed, not only in culture, since the founding of Christianity! One experiences great intervals, not short ones, between two successive earthly lives. The soul is therefore in a position to always experience something new.

Question: In which incarnation will we be resurrected on Judgment Day, in the first or in the last?

Rudolf Steiner: Incarnation is not fixed; one must be clear about how the word “incarnation” is meant here: how “resurrection” is meant. One must first understand St. Paul's teaching on the spiritual body. This has nothing at all to do with the physical body. Only then can an answer to this question be given.

Question: What dreams at night, the soul or the brain?

Rudolf Steiner: This is easy to answer from what was said yesterday. The soul is in the astral world during sleep, and the human being experiences his dreams inwardly; of course it is not the brain that dreams, but the soul.

Question: What consolation can a person who is not clairvoyant find in the doctrine of reincarnation, since only the spiritual researcher can see his past incarnations and the other person would have to despair because he cannot see for himself?

Rudolf Steiner: In the lecture it was said: It does not depend on doing research in the spiritual worlds oneself, but rather, when these things are expressed in concepts, everyone can understand them and the spiritual researcher himself has no more from them than what he gains from his clairvoyance by expressing them in concepts. The doctrine of re-embodiment is something that gives life security and content. So this question is already answered in the lecture. One should also read the booklet 'Reincarnation and Karma'. Then one will find what can give the soul security and comfort, and that it has been ensured that the non-spiritual researcher also has the opportunity to understand it. Question: I have already taken part in two introductory courses, but I still do not understand how it is possible that some people are doing badly, some are doing well; often highly developed people are doing badly, while the rich libertine finds no punishment, but still lives a joyful life.

Rudolf Steiner: The latter does not follow from the doctrine of reincarnation, because it is not the case that life always advances, but [that] it ascends and descends, as [it] just [the] causes [it] yield. That a rich libertine would find an even more joyful life, such a question arises from a complete misunderstanding of the overall course of human life. If someone observes another person or themselves and finds another person noble or themselves quite noble, or afflicted by suffering and misfortune, the judgment they make in the given moment is by no means always decisive.

I will give you a comparison: Let us imagine a young person who has lived off his father's pocket until the age of eighteen, let us assume that it was not a bad life. When he is 18 years old, his father loses his fortune. He was not doing badly before, but he gets into this bad situation; now he has to learn something proper when he has not learned anything proper before. Now, at this time of his life, he will consider this stroke of fate as something quite difficult, quite undeserved. When he is 50 years old, he may look back and say to himself: If that hadn't happened back then, I would now be a good-for-nothing and would know nothing about the world. At 50 years old, he will judge [it] quite differently than at 18 years old.

We are usually not the right judges of our own clumsiness. Later, however, we will judge more objectively, especially from the spiritual world in the time between death and birth, or in subsequent earthly lives, when one can already look back; because everyone will achieve that; humanity is developing; everyone will be able to look back, which now only the spiritual researcher can do. Then one will say: That which seemed inexplicable at first, that was precisely the reason why I had to strongly resist, why I released forces that became the most important for further development, for ascent. In ordinary life one will see that already; one experiences many things. Many a person who, as a prospective spiritual researcher, looks at life more intimately and in more depth, will know how to tell about it. Then you look back on what brought you joy, pleasure and many other things, and you look back on the struggles, evil and pain you went through. You look back on all kinds of things. You will say to yourself: I am grateful to fate for the many joyful experiences I have had. But would you rather give up your joys or your sufferings? Then you may perhaps come to the realization: I would rather give up my joy and bliss, because I owe my pain and suffering my realization. You first have to know what becomes of the causes.

In short, one should not make the judgment of such a question so easy. Spiritual science has a deeply satisfying answer to all such questions.

Question: Would the same result be obtained if, for example, the astral body were perceived in the same way by several spiritual researchers?

Rudolf Steiner: This question cannot be answered meaningfully with a simple “yes” because what the spiritual researcher perceives in a kind of imaginary vision is only to some extent based on complete objectivity. What applies in the sensory world, that one can look at things from a different point of view, applies to a higher degree in higher worlds. If two people write a travelogue about the same area, there will still be a great difference. But one need not doubt altogether that these areas exist. And if we look into the ever-flowing, fleeting astral body, then it is understandable that the external image is different, even though the reality is quite the same. Therefore, one can answer this question in the affirmative, even if the external images are different, but no more different than when two people form an image of a physical-sensory object; seeing and representation are different in a certain way. Everything depends on the objectivity of the observer; it is always assumed that real spiritual researchers describe things.

Question: Must not the stripping away of the standpoint be taken so far that even what is peculiar to the human species is eliminated? [...]

Rudolf Steiner: The first question concerns the generic. What exactly is the generic? When we speak of the generic, we often imagine something quite abstract. But the concept of 'generic' can only be applied in the right sense to the realm of nature that is below the human being. Within the animal kingdom, the concept of the generic is fully justified because it cannot be a mere concept for a one-sided observation. For when people who are full of whims and fancies find that there are only individual dogs, and thus no such thing as “dog nature” or “wolf nature”, the retort is that if one only allows the individual being, for example the individual being “wolf”, to count, and not what reigns in it supersensibly, thus only recognizes the material, then the refutation is easily given. If a wolf only eats lambs, it shows that it does not become a lamb just because it eats lambs. But in the animal kingdom, we are interested in what lives in the species, just as we are interested in the individual, the ideal, in the human being. Therefore, only humans have a biography.

Some will find this strange because one can also have a biography of animals. It should not be denied that a mother dog can give a biography of her dogs, a mother cat a biography of her cats. But that is not the point. A teacher can also ask children to present the biography of their pens. But what is biographical in the individual is only found in humans. The concept of the species only makes sense in the case of humans if one lives in an abstract philosophy. On the other hand, the ideal in the human being is not exhausted in the species. What adheres to the human being through the people, the tribal characteristics, belongs to him in a different direction than to the animal. This species-like quality is even stripped away from the ideal; in the true sense of the word, one cannot even speak of it. At the beginning of the development of the earth, man was entirely a generic being, but in that lay the idea that individuals would all become ideal, so that the generic aspect plays a secondary role in man.

Question: Without doubt, the one who is to face the Guardian of the Threshold has to overcome great dangers that he does not know in advance; how can he protect himself, or is there no protection?

Rudolf Steiner: The path is followed in a concrete way if one follows what is given in “How to Know Higher Worlds”. Through this, the qualities are also implanted in the soul to enable one to pass the encounter in the right way. There are still great difficulties, but one has also acquired stronger forces.

Question: What can be said about Mohammed and his mission? Why did he have to come 600 years after Christ?

Rudolf Steiner: It is not possible to answer this question briefly; it would lead to the greatest misunderstandings. The answer would have to be given from the fundamentals. 600 years after the Christ Impulse, Mohammed gave content to such a human community, which was predisposed, on the one hand, to the sometimes fantastical mind and, on the other, to the fine elaboration of the intellect. Compared to the Christ impulse, it was something of a setback, an atavism. This shows how development generally occurs: in advances and setbacks. The nature of this Mohammedanism must be understood from the whole nature of development: the Christ impulse, the greatest religious impulse, which must gradually become part of the evolution of the earth, while the Mohammedan impulse had to oppose it before.

Question: Are the Theosophists in favor of cremation? Rudolf Steiner: Theosophists do not take sides for this

or that party, but these things are a matter of knowledge. One says what is true and right, and then everyone can build their own view of what they want to take up into life as impulses of will.

Such questions cannot be answered in absolute terms. The various stages of human development are different, and the same is not best for all times, but people change, and with that, the emergence or lack of emergence of human institutions changes. On the whole, for the time that has passed, and for a large number of people in the future, cremation is not an important [right?] thing, although the propagandists of cremation are, so to speak, pioneers of the future. But people have to mature, everything has only relative validity, so also the question: bury or burn for one age or another. For spiritual contemplation, many things appear different than for external perception.

Question: How do you reconcile the view that all people have already experienced life on earth with the fact that the earth used to be less and less populated?

Rudolf Steiner: This is a mere mathematical calculation, and it will be seen that what has been said is simply a bold assertion. The question comes up almost after every lecture. The intervals between two lives are not the same for all people. Sometimes there are many more people embodied in one age than in another shortly before. Let us assume that in the seventeenth century 100 souls were incarnated and in the sixteenth century 100 as well, and the intervals between their embodiments were different, then in the nineteenth century the 100 from both groups may have incarnated again, so there are 200 in the nineteenth century. Because the intervals are different due to the entire karma of the souls, there is an increase in certain periods of time. The conscientious person cannot speak of anything else. The time since the last incarnation is on average longer than the time that separates us, for example, from the discovery of America. But if it is claimed that the number of people is increasing, then one must first ask: How can this be proven by external things? For example: Who has studied the increase for China; so what is the population of the whole earth; or what worlds have perished; or what was before the discovery of America, and long before America was discovered? So with conscientious research, this claim cannot be made in the physical world.

Question: What does the speaker say about Adventism, where the world history is explained from Daniel and Revelation of John, and now the time is coming when Christ promises his return and the world will change socially and politically?

Rudolf Steiner: It is a well-known phenomenon that the sects today take the “viewpoint of all viewpoints” and are completely in love with their point of view, to a much greater extent than is the case with other people. And to give someone who belongs to a sect an explanation for this or that symbol, or to dissuade them, or to make something understandable, is usually a pure impossibility for this incarnation. But anyone who fully grasps the Aristotelian principle that 'only by disregarding one's own opinion can one arrive at the truth' has the right point of view. Anyone familiar with spiritual science knows that when you look at things more deeply, they cannot be taken quite so literally and in quite such a way as they often are from such a point of view. Nevertheless, nothing should be said against the piety and the cozy intimacy of the souls who are caught up in such a point of view, and one can have the highest respect for it. But in such sects one does not go beyond the point of view, which narrows the truth. Those who look back at the development of mankind will find that there have always been sects that have said the same thing. They said: In fifty years the return of Christ will be here. He did not come, but that did not refute the teachings; and however often the refutation occurred through the facts, it did not harm the point of view. It was no means a means of somehow refuting such a “point of view of points of view”.

Question: Is there any contradiction between spiritual science and positive Christianity?

Rudolf Steiner: The questioner usually understands positive Christianity to mean what he understands by Christianity. I cannot go into this further, I would have to talk a lot about the Christ impulse, the Christ presence.

Question: How can the doctrine of rebirth be understood empirically or philosophically?

Rudolf Steiner: I must refer you to the literature, “Occult Science” and so on; because one lecture would not be enough to answer this question; even if I would be able to give some lectures this very night, some listeners might not be able to; I do not want to boast!

Question: Is there a third cognitive faculty?

Rudolf Steiner: Imagination, inspiration, intuition; I am a little surprised that questions are being asked as if it were a fact that the lecture had not been listened to at all; after all, my answer was a detailed response to this question.

Question: Is there a real and practical difference between soul and spirit?

Rudolf Steiner: Well, it follows from Theosophy that they should not be lumped together. This lumping together happened quite recently in history; a council decreed that soul and spirit are not two different things, lumped them together; since then they have no longer been distinguished, not even in science; although science is not aware that it is following an ecclesiastical dogma. There is a real difference in the relationship to the body. The relationship of the spirit to the body is different from the relationship of the soul to the body and vice versa.

Question: Should not someone who grows up in the theosophical view, who first gets to the bottom of the view of this view, become free of it?

Rudolf Steiner: That is as if someone who has just eaten had to eat again immediately, because outwardly nothing has changed in this person, at least not in many cases, because he has just eaten. One attains self-knowledge when one stands outside of one's personal self; that is, one attains freedom through self-knowledge. If you now want to become free again, where you have already become free, this is even less justified than with the meal. But then you have already achieved liberation; there is no need to become free a second time after you have just become free. The point of view cannot be compared with mere materialism or individualism, because spiritual research uses all the different points of view, but not to stand on them, but to characterize them. And the truth is not in the middle, but by the reasons that can be given for it, these points of view appear to illuminate the real truth from different sides. Only those who get stuck in abstractions can apply what is applicable to one thing to another. But just as in real life you don't just have the general human characteristics, but are first a child, then a man, then an old man, and can't ask whether you have to shed the stage of childhood again, so the question of self-knowledge is there once, but not again. There is then knowledge in the world within, and from that point on, self-knowledge begins for the human being; that is the conclusion of self-knowledge, the self-knowledge that is acquired selflessly by the individual and thus has a selfless character.

Cologne, May 11, 1913

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

If we look back at the way in which souls celebrated the summer solstice festival before the Mystery of Golgotha – what we now call around St. John's Day – and at how they felt and experienced that time, we arrive at very different feelings from those which the souls of the present experience at this moment of the year. In the past, the souls – and these are, after all, our own souls – lived with nature as a reality. The falling of snowflakes, the whispering of the wind in the forest, the light that flashes from lightning, the rolling of thunder, the patter of rain, all this was the speech of the gods for the souls of that time; and they understood that language and lived the life of the gods. When the sun barely showed itself during the winter around Christmas time, it also became lonely and dark inside them, and with the falling snowflakes they felt how they were cut off from the activities of the gods. And when spring came and everything began to sprout and sprout, the souls themselves came to life again, and it became warm in the souls. And in proportion as the sun sent its rays to the earth, they could again listen to the conversation of the gods; then they felt at one with nature and with everything that spoke from it. But the same souls can no longer hear the same, no longer experience it. The gods are becoming more and more silent, and we see the seasons changing without feeling more connected to them. Why is that?

This is because, after the mystery of Golgotha, everything had to change. That which used to affect people from the outside is now supposed to work within the person themselves. All those forces that once worked directly on people in nature are still working, but now they work on people from within. With our inner soul forces, which are to become stronger through the descent of the I into us, we must find the forces within ourselves that once spoke to us from outside in thunder and lightning, in rain and wind. Now they speak to us in our knowledge, now they bring forth moral strength and wisdom in us, now they warm us inwardly and enable us to understand all people, to speak from person to person and to establish the love that shall bind all souls together, so that humanity will rediscover itself as one great unity, since the whole of humanity lies spread out in each person's heart.

The festivals that people now celebrate with the changing seasons are no longer external festivals, where people cheered or became silent together with nature, but have now become internal celebrations. And the hope arises that one day, in full realization, we will fully experience them. When the young green sprouts up and all spring shoots awaken, then the feeling awakens within us that the slumbering seed of the spirit will awaken in us, and we celebrate Easter in this warming hope. And when we approach the Feast of Pentecost and thus the high point of the year, we expect that this spirit, as the Holy Spirit, as the Spirit of Truth, will come into us and bring us knowledge and wisdom. Those people who set the dates of the holidays in the post-Christian era did so out of the deepest wisdom and intuition.

The Luciferic spirits wanted to give man that which they already had on the old moon, the spirit self or the fifth principle, before man was quite ready with the development of the fourth principle or the I. Thus, man received the fifth principle in an immature state. The true form of the fourth principle is shown to us by Christ, and this is indicated to us in the forty days, or four times a small cycle of ten days, which elapse between the resurrection and the ascension. Only then can the fifth principle come to people in the right way. And that is indicated in the Feast of Pentecost, the Feast of the Descent of the Holy Spirit, which in turn comes ten days later - or as a fifth cycle - after the Ascension.

We know that the Elohim want to give us the powers of the ego on earth, through which we can absorb spiritual wisdom into our minds. However, this can only happen slowly and gradually, and all further development will be available for this purpose. The Luciferic spirits, who had already absorbed the powers of the I in the ancient world and were therefore far ahead of man, now want to give man the fifth principle. They do this by directing attention to the possibilities of the earth that can be fully grasped by the intellect. All arrogant natural science comes from Lucifer's will. He wants to permeate man with the fifth principle, bypassing the fourth. The ego-powers are used to sharpen the intellect for earthly purposes; they lead it further and further away from contact with the gods, who want to impart their wisdom to us, just as it now flows down from the occult world in the theosophical teachings. If we absorb the teachings that are issued from this temple, then the wisdom that they contain will gradually be able to be processed by our minds and the powers of our ego will grow, so that we will increase in inner moral strength, which will bring us true freedom, which is determined from within the human being.

Notes from the estate of Elisabeth Vreede First degree

We live in a transitional age in which greater changes will take place than in any other transitional period. Things have happened in the supersensible world that the supersensible beings expect at least some people on earth to grasp and to build on in their work.

Man has not five but twelve senses. In addition to the five senses usually enumerated, there are seven more that do not open outwards but are situated internally; these are:

1. the sense of speech, by which we grasp the spoken word;
2. the sense of thought, by which we can connect concepts and thoughts with what we have heard;
3. the sense of self, by which we know that other people are also endowed with a self. We only experience our self internally, not with the help of that sense organ. These senses are located in the soft parts of the brain;
4. a sense of balance, by which we can consciously stand upright - in contrast to mechanical objects;
5. a sense of mobility, by which we perceive our movements, such as walking and so on;
6. the sense of life, by which we feel well or unwell, fresh or depressed;
7. the actual sense of touch, that is, the distinction between hard and soft and so on. This is not an external sense organ, because you only find the resistance that you have to overcome when touching the object. What is usually called the sense of touch also includes the sense of warmth, which is one of the external senses. This has its organ in the skin; the sense of hardness, however, has only an internal organ, not an external one like the skin.

Of the twelve senses, therefore, only five are turned outwards; these are hearing, sight, smell, taste and warmth. The twelve senses are related to the twelve signs of the zodiac. Just as the Sun is something quite different - when viewed occultly - when it is in a different constellation, so man is quite different depending on whether he is connected to one or other sense organ. When he sees, he is all color; when he hears, he is all sound, and so on. But just as the sun is ultimately something other than the signs of the zodiac, so man is inwardly something other than his senses.

The division of the senses into seven and five is like the division of the starry sky when the sun rises in Aries and seven constellations are above the horizon and five are hidden below the horizon. And just as two of these seven stand at the boundary points, half on and half below the horizon, namely Aries and Libra, so among the seven inner senses there are also two that stand on the boundary between the inner and the outer, namely the sense of balance and the sense of self, which nevertheless already relate our inner being to something else that is outside us.

The fact that there are five senses that are open to the outside world comes from Lucifer, from the Luciferic influence. Originally, all the senses were inner senses. That is why it is also said in the Bible: “Your eyes” - ears and so on - “will be opened.” Originally, the eyes were only intended to reflect that which was perceived spiritually in images that one would have seen inwardly. The ears were also intended only to inwardly transform sounds into what one would have heard as spiritual sounds.

This is how the Elohim wanted to make the human senses; and what we still have now as light generation in the eye itself - for example, through pressure on the eye or through imagination - these are the last remnants of what the Elohim wanted to make out of the eye. But when Lucifer opened human eyes, man would still have been unable to perceive the physical if Ahriman had not transformed the external world so that people could perceive the physical. He wove darkness into the light, creating colors that humans can now perceive, but only that, because humans cannot see light itself. He, Ahriman, placed sound in the air, so that one hears only a faint echo of the real sound through the vibrations in the air.

Now Lucifer and Ahriman are powerful spirits, but they now have under them hosts of less powerful beings, down to the smallest elemental beings, who work in a grain of sand. Among these are also the hosts of Mammon, against whom Michael has been fighting for eons. The Mammonite spirits work to attain all knowledge only through the senses and to register it with the mind that is bound to the brain. Since the fifteenth or sixteenth century, they have been active in modern natural science, and the fact that such spirits as Huxley, Darwin and Haeckel are materialists is because, before their last birth, they passed through a sphere in which the still unconquered hosts of Mammon exercised their influence. Since the last third of the nineteenth century, however, they have been defeated by Michael, who is working there as an emissary of Christ. He has pushed them out of heaven and thrown them down to earth.

That is what happened in the transcendental world and the transcendental beings expect that man will continue their work. For these mammonitic spirits are now on earth, and they are now fighting to gain control on earth after being defeated in heaven. When a person like Maack writes about xenology (the doctrine of the foreign) or allonomy (the doctrine of the other) and at the same time says that this “foreign” or “other” cannot be recognized - when he proposes to build a transcendental mechanics (which is the same as saying that in Cologne you want to eat with a spoon what is on a plate in Paris) is nothing more than the effect of these hosts of Mammon. From xenology to the Turkish war, there is a straight line.

Therefore, we are called upon to continue the work of Michael and not to let these spirits rule on earth.

Those who allow what has been said to sink in may gradually see small flames of realization. We no longer have the right to expect a great spiritual outpouring like the one at Pentecost, but we may consider ourselves in full humility as small flames in which the light is reflected. If it has been said of a certain Adyar event that it can only be compared to the Pentecostal outpouring, then that seems to us to be blasphemy. But we may hope that what once descended as the Holy Spirit will awaken in us the little flame that has been placed in us and will bring us the knowledge of the truth.

This evening and tomorrow I feel obliged to speak to you of what we have become accustomed to call the Mystery of Golgotha, but I will attempt to speak of it in a somewhat different way than until now. What has been said previously, although certainly esoteric, has had a more esoteric-theoretical content. I have spoken about the essence and significance of the Mystery of Golgotha for humanity. That it is to a certain extent the central phenomenon for the whole evolution of humanity on earth and to what extent it is the central phenomenon has been considered. This has been taken wholly from sources of occult investigation. The thought-sources have been broached which stream out from the Mystery of Golgotha and which develop and are living in our earthly evolution. If human evolution on earth is observed from a clairvoyant vantage point, the significance of the Mystery of Golgotha can be grasped.

Now, however, I am obliged to speak more concretely about the events which took place at the beginning of our [Christian] era. I will speak of the events, the forces which live on in the aura of the earth, and which may be observed esoterically. Tomorrow I will speak of the reasons why now, in our times, these things must be revealed within our anthroposophical circles. Today I will try to indicate some of the things that occurred in Palestine at the beginning of our era. And I hope that in your hearts, in your souls, when the event of Golgotha, which [until now] has been characterized more in conceptual form, does not lose any of its significance if we look directly and concretely at what happened at that time.

In lecture cycles about the Gospels of Luke and Matthew, I have already had the opportunity of speaking about this subject. It is a fact that two Jesus children were born at approximately the same time at the beginning of our era. I pointed out that those two Jesus children were very different as far as character and capabilities are concerned. The Jesus very well described by the Gospel of Matthew descended from the Solomon line of the House of David. In him lived the soul, or the “I” of the person we know as Zarathustra.

[Translator's note: In other places, Rudolf Steiner went into more detail about the two Jesus Children. But as his audience here was familiar with the subject, he only gave a kind of resumé. For the interested readers I suggest they compare the birth stories in the Gospels of Matthew and Luke. They will note immediately that the genealogies of the two boys are completely different from King David to Joseph, the father of Jesus. They will also see that in Luke there are shepherds and “no room at the inn” and the famous stable where Jesus was born, and there are no kings or magi. In Matthew the three kings/magi are indeed an important presence. But they do not adore a carpenter's son born in a stable. No, they have come to Bethlehem to salute the new or future King of the Jews. Although Matthew does not describe the birthplace, it is unlikely to be a stable. The flight to Egypt does not occur in Luke, only in Matthew, whose parents had more to fear, living as they were with the future king. Furthermore it is most strange that Jesus the carpenter's son was so well educated that he could teach the rabbis in the temple. Ah, but that was the Jesus according to Luke. The Jesus described by Matthew descended from a royal family and would be in infinitely better condition to do so. Taking all these things, and more, into consideration, it can be considered obvious that there were indeed two Jesus children.]

When we consider such an incarnation, we must be especially clear about one thing: that even when such an advanced individual, as Zarathustra certainly was, is again incarnated—namely in the time he was born as Jesus—in no way must he know in childhood or youth that he is that individual. It is not necessary to be able to say: I am this person or that person. That is not the case. It is, however, true that in such cases the enhanced capacities gained by having passed through such an incarnation become evident early and thus define the child's character. So it was that the Solomon Jesus child—as I would like to call him—in whom the I of Zarathustra lived, was endowed with enhanced capabilities which enabled him to easily absorb the culture and the knowledge to which his earthly contemporaries had attained. In that child's environment—especially in those times—existed the whole cultural civilization of humanity in words, gestures and deeds—in short, in all that could be seen and heard. A normal child absorbed little of what he saw and heard. This child, however, absorbed with great ease all the sparse indications in which existed everything humanity had achieved by then. In short, he proved himself to be greatly gifted at absorbing all the available scholarly knowledge. Today we would call such a child “highly gifted”. Up until his twelfth year he quickly learned everything to be learned in his environment.

The other Jesus was completely different. His character is well reflected in the Gospel of Luke. He descended from the Nathan line of the House of David. He had no gift for scholarly learning, nor did he show interest in it up until his twelfth year. On the other hand, he showed to a high degree what we can call capacity of the heart, compassion for all human happiness and suffering. He showed himself to be especially capable in that he concentrated less on himself and was less able to attain exterior knowledge. But from earliest childhood on he felt the suffering and the joy of others as his own suffering and his own joy. He could transpose himself into the souls of others; he possessed this ability in the highest degree. The Akasha Record indicates that the differences between the two Jesus children could not have been greater.

After both boys had reached their twelfth year, an event occurred which I have often characterized: that when the Nathan-Jesus traveled to Jerusalem with his parents, the I of Zarathustra, which had been in the other, the Solomon-Jesus, left his body and took possession of the Nathan Jesus's physical, etheric and astral bodies. The result was, therefore, that everything that this royal-I was capable of was now active in the soul of the other, the Nathan-Jesus child. And this boy, now possessing all of Zarathustra's power, without knowing it, caused astonishment in the scholars among whom he emerged teaching—as it is also described in the Bible. I have also indicated how the other, the Solomon-Jesus, from whom the I had departed, soon thereafter declined and, after a relatively short time, died.

It must be understood that when the I of a person leaves him—as was the case with the Solomon-Jesus child—he does not necessarily die immediately. Just as a ball continues to roll on for a time under its own inertia, so does such a person continue to live on through the strength which lives within him. Now someone who cannot observe human souls in a precise way will notice little difference between a person who has lost his I and a person who still has one. Because in normal life the I in a person we are observing does not play such a dominant role. What we experience in another person is to a very small extent a direct manifestation of his I, but rather the manifestation of his I through the astral body. That other Jesus-child retained his astral body, however, and only someone who can carefully distinguish—and it is not easy—whether old habits and thoughts still continue to act in a person or whether new elements are present, can thereby determine if the I is still present or not. But a decline begins, a kind of dying out, a withering away. And such was the case with this Jesus boy.

Then, through a stroke of karma, the biological mother of the Nathan-Jesus and also the father of the Solomon-Jesus died soon after the passing over of the Zarathustra-I from one boy to the other. And the father of the Nathan-Jesus and the mother of the Solomon-Jesus became a married couple. The Nathan-Jesus had no physical siblings, and the step-siblings whom he now acquired were the siblings of the Solomon-Jesus. From the two families one was formed, which henceforth resided in the town now called Nazareth—so that when we refer to the Nathan-Jesus, in whom the Zarathustra-I lived, we use the expression: Jesus of Nazareth.

Today I would like to relate something about the life of Jesus of Nazareth as a youth—from research in the Akasha Record—in a way that enables you to understand a certain important moment in the earth's evolution which the Mystery of Golgotha had prepared.

For a seer the life of Jesus can be clearly divided into three phases. The conversation with the scholars in his twelfth year had already shown that he possessed an inner capacity, provided by the passing over of the Zarathustra-I, to be enlightened, to receive enlightenment and to connect it with the capacities which lived in the soul of Zarathustra. It was shown that an enormous force of inner experience was in his soul, so that as he developed from his twelfth to his seventeenth and eighteenth years it can be seen how inner enlightenment became richer and richer, and especially enlightenment related to the evolution of the ancient Hebrews and the Hebrew people in general.

At the time Jesus lived in the Hebrew people, the grandeur of what had existed as secrets of the cosmos during the times of the ancient prophets was no longer present. Many of the old revelations of the prophets lived on, but the original capacity to receive spiritual secrets directly from the spiritual world had faded out long before. They were studied from the preserved scriptures. There were still some, such as the famous Rabbi Hillel, who, because of his individual development was still able to perceive something of what the ancient prophets had proclaimed. But that force, which existed during the ancient epoch of the Hebrew people, the time of the prophetic revelations, was long since no longer present in those few individuals. A decline in the spiritual development of the Hebrew people was clearly apparent. Now, however, what had once been revealed during the time of the prophets emerged from the depths of Jesus of Nazareth's soul as inner enlightenment.

But I wish to draw your attention less to the historical fact that in one person what had been revealed during the prophets' time appeared again by means of inner enlightenment. I would rather like to emphasize to you what it felt for such a relatively young soul—the soul of the thirteen to fourteen year old Jesus of Nazareth—to feel a revelation coming to him in total isolation, a revelation which no one else in his surroundings felt. At most the best of them perhaps had a dim glimmer of it.

Try to imagine yourselves in such a position, in the soul of someone possessing such great knowledge alone, and understand that the Mystery of Golgotha had to be prepared by such feelings of loneliness and isolation taking possession of Jesus of Nazareth's soul. When you stand alone on a psychic island as he did, who from his childhood on had felt such solidarity with all men, but now did not feel that he could share his knowledge with them because they had sunken to a level where they could no longer receive the revelation. He suffered greatly having to know something which the others could not comprehend, but also wishing so strongly that it could also arise in their souls that a mission was being prepared.

All that gave him the fundamental impulse to say: a voice resounds in me from the spiritual world. If humans could hear it, it would provide an infinite blessing for them. In olden times there were people who could hear it. Now, however, they have no ears with which to hear. That pain of solitude pressed ever deeper on his soul.

Such was Jesus of Nazareth's inner life from his twelfth to his eighteenth year. For this reason he was not understood by his biological father and his stepmother, and even less so by his step-siblings, who often mocked him and considered him half mad. He worked hard in his father's carpentry. But while he was working the feelings I have just described lived on in his soul.

Then, when he was around eighteen, he left home to travel. He went through Palestine and the surrounding pagan areas, working at his trade. He was led by his karma. As he wandered through Palestine his extraordinary character was seen by all the people he met. During the day he worked, evenings he sat together with the people. And the people with whom he sat from his nineteenth until around his twenty-fourth year had the feeling, although they were not always conscious of it, that he was an extraordinary individual, such a one as they had never encountered before; they could not even have imagined that such a one existed. They did not know what to make of him.

If you wish to understand this, to penetrate into the secrets of human evolution, it is necessary to take into account that experiencing what the young Jesus of Nazareth did—as I have just described—causes deep sorrow in the soul. But this sorrow is transformed into love. And much deep love in life is transformed sorrow of this kind.

Deep sorrow, pain, has the capacity to transform itself into love, which does not merely act like ordinary love, but through the very existence of the loving being streams out like far reaching auras. So those people who were together then with Jesus believed that they were in the presence of much more than a mere man. And when he had departed from a place and they sat together evenings, they had the sense of his real presence. They felt as though he were still there. And it happened more and more that the people with whom he had stayed, when they sat together around the table, had visions in common. They saw him enter as a spirit-figure. Each one had this vision at the same time, that Jesus was once again among them, that he spoke with them, told them things just as he had once done in physical form. He was visible among them long after he had left. What caused this effect was pain and sorrow transformed into love. The people with whom he was felt themselves to be united with him in a special way. They felt that they were never again separated from him. They felt that he remained with them and that he always returned.

But he did not only travel around in Palestine, his karma also led him to pagan places. (It would take too long to describe here the reasons for his karma doing this.) This was after he had recognized the declining developments in Judaism. And he learned how in the religious rituals of the pagans, just as in Judaism, what was originally revelation had also died out. Thus in the second phase he had to experience the decline of humanity from a previous spiritual plateau. But he perceived how paganism declined differently than Judaism.

His perception of Judaism's decline was a more inner experience, gained by enlightenment. He saw how the revelations from the spiritual world which were once proclaimed by the prophets had ceased because there were no longer ears to hear them. He learned about how it was with paganism in a place where the ancient pagan religious services had fallen into disrepair, and where the fall of paganism was physically evident. The inhabitants of the place had fallen victim to leprosy and other hideous diseases. Some had become malignant, others lame. The priests abandoned them and had fled. When Jesus was first seen, the news spread like wildfire that someone very special had arrived. For now even in his outer appearance he had achieved the transformed suffering which was love. They saw that a being had come like none who had ever walked on the earth. Soon the news spread and many came running to him, for they thought a priest had been sent to them who would again officiate at the sacrifices. Their own priests had fled—so they came running. The Akasha record shows this, just as I am describing it.

He had no intention of officiating at the pagan sacrifice. However, he now saw in vivid imaginations the enigma of the decline of pagan spirituality. He could directly perceive what had flowed into the secrets of the pagan mysteries: that the forces of high divine beings had flown down to the sacrificial altars. But now instead of the forces of the good spirits streaming down, all kinds of demons, emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman, streamed down to the holy altars. He perceived the fall of pagan spiritual life not by inner enlightenment, as with Judaism, but through external visions.

It is very different to get to know things theoretically than to visualize how once divine-spiritual forces flowed down to an altar and now demons did so, which caused abnormal mental states, diseases and so forth. Such spiritual visualization is quite different from knowing something theoretically. But Jesus of Nazareth was to see this in direct spiritual visualization, see how the emissaries of Lucifer and Ahriman worked. He was to see how they did harm to the people.

Suddenly he fell down as though dead. Frightened, the people fled. But as he lay there as though carried off to a spiritual world, he received an impression of all the ancient revelations that had once been told to the pagans. Therefore, just as he had perceived the secrets which had been proclaimed to the old prophets and which were now not even a shadow in Jewish culture, through spiritual inspiration he was able to hear in which way they had been proclaimed to the pagans.

The strongest impression made on him was what I attempted to investigate, and what I spoke of for the first time on the occasion of the foundation stone laying of our building in Dornach. It could be called The Reverse Our Father, because it was the reverse of the substantial content of the prayer the Christ Jesus' disciples attributed to him. Jesus of Nazareth perceived something like a reverse Our Father, so that he was able to feel in these words the secret of human evolution and incorporations in earthly incarnations in a concentrated format.

Amen,
Es walten die Übel,
Zeugen sich lösender Ichheit,
Von ändern erschuldete Selbstheitschuld,
Erlebet im täglichen Brote,
In dem nicht waltet der Himmel Wille,
Indem der Mensch sich schied von Eurem Reich
Und vergaß Euren Namen,
Ihr Väter in den Himmeln.

Amen,
Evil rules,
Witness of the dissolving I,
Selfhood's guilt to others attributed,
Experienced in daily bread,
In which heaven's will be not done,
For man deserted your kingdom
And forgot your names,
You fathers in the heavens.

That is—in stammering words—what expresses something like the laws governing how human beings incarnate from the macro-cosmos into the micro-cosmos. Since I came to know these words, I have found them to be an extraordinarily meaningful meditation form. They exercise a force on the soul which is quite extraordinary, and the more one studies them the more force they have. And then when one tries to resolve and understand them one realizes that in them the secret and destiny of humanity is condensed and how the reversal of the words reveals how the microcosmic Our Father which Christ proclaimed to his followers could originate.

But Jesus did not only perceive this secret of the original pagan revelations. When he awoke from the vision, he learned from the fleeing people and the demons the entire secrets of paganism. That was the second immeasurable pain which sank into his soul. First he learned decisively about the fall of Judaism by recognizing what had been revealed to Judaism before its fall. Now he learned the same about paganism. In this way he consciously experienced the fact that in his surroundings the people had to live in the sense of the words: “They have ears but do not hear what the secrets of the cosmos are.” Thus he attained to the unlimited compassion he had always felt for humanity and can be expressed as follows: now that he could see such things, humanity should receive the content of his visions—but where were the beings who would communicate it to humanity.

He had these experiences until his twenty-fourth year, approximately. Then his karma led him back home at the time his father died. He lived there with his step-siblings and his foster or stepmother. Whereas his stepmother previously had shown little understanding for him, now she showed more understanding for the great pain he bore within him. Then other experiences followed from his twenty-fourth to his thirtieth year, during which he found ever more understanding from his stepmother, although things were still somewhat difficult. These were also the years in which he came to know the Essenes better. Today I will only indicate the main points of how Jesus learned of the Essene Order. This was an order of men who separated themselves from the rest of humanity and developed a special life of body and soul in order to again ascend to the ancient revelations of the spirit which humanity had lost. With strict exercises and strict ways of life, the striving souls were to reach a stage where they could reunite with the spiritual region from out of which the ancient revelations had originated.

In this group Jesus of Nazareth also met John the Baptist, although strictly speaking neither were Essenes. The Akasha Record shows this clearly. But from what I have explained it is clear that an exceptional person was present who made an extraordinary impression on everyone. He so impressed the Essenes that despite guarding their spiritual activities as holy secrets, which they revealed to no outsider, they willingly spoke with Jesus about important secrets of their order concerning what they had achieved for their souls. Thus Jesus learned that in those times there were still ways for people to rise to the heights where humanity once sojourned and from whence it had since descended.

But what also made a deep discomforting impression on him was that an Essene, if he wished to ascend to those heights, had to separate himself from humanity and live a life outside the society of others. That was not the way of universal human love, as Jesus of Nazareth felt it. He could not tolerate that a spiritual wealth exist that is unavailable to all, but only to a select few in detriment to humanity as a whole.

What he felt can be expressed as follows: They are a few individuals, and there will always be fewer who find their way back to the ancient revelations, but it is just when those few separate themselves that the rest must live in decadence, for they must accomplish the material work for those who are no longer there.

Once as he was leaving the Essene Order community he saw in spirit two figures fleeing from the gate. He had the impression that the Essenes protected themselves from these two figures, whom we call Lucifer and Ahriman in anthroposophical terms, driving them away by means of their spiritual exercises, their ascetic way of life and the strict rules of their order. Nothing of Lucifer and Ahriman should touch their souls. Therefore Jesus of Nazareth saw Lucifer and Ahriman fleeing, but he also knew that because of such a community having been established, where Lucifer and Ahriman could not enter and the Essenes wanted nothing to do with them, they turned even more to the other people. That was evident to him. Again it is completely different when one knows this only through theory and when one sees what individuals do for their own advancement and as a consequence Lucifer and Ahriman are sent to other people because they have been expelled from the presence of the former. He realized that it was no path of salvation which the Essenes followed, but was one which through separation and at the cost of the rest of humanity only seeks their own advancement.

An immense compassion engulfed him. He felt no joy at the ascension of the Essenes, for he knew that other people must sink lower while a few ascended. It all became clearer to him when he saw the same image at other Essene gates—there were more such communities—the image of Lucifer and Ahriman standing before the gates but unable to enter—and fleeing. Thus he realized that the methods and rules of orders such as the Essenes' impelled Lucifer and Ahriman to the other people. And this was the cause of the third extreme pain he experienced concerning the decadence of humanity.

I already mention that his stepmother had more and more understanding for what lived in his soul. So what now happened was meaningful as preparation of the Mystery of Golgotha: a conversation took place—according to research in the Akasha Record—between Jesus of Nazareth and his step or foster-mother. So advanced had her understanding become that he could speak to her about the threefold suffering he endured because of the decadence of humanity which he had experienced in the areas of Judaism and paganism as well as the Essenes. And as he described to her his lonely suffering, and what he had experienced, he saw that it affected her soul.

It belongs to the most wonderful impressions one can receive in the occult field to learn the content of this conversation. For in the entire field of human evolution nothing similar—I don't say greater, because naturally the Mystery of Golgotha is greater—but something similar one cannot see. What he said to his mother were not words in the usual sense, but they were like living beings which passed over from him to his stepmother and his soul gave wings to the words with its own force. Everything which he had so painfully endured went in this conversation as though on wings into the soul of his stepmother—words of his infinite love as well as his infinite suffering. So he was able to describe to her what he had thrice experienced as in a great tableau. It was then enhanced when Jesus of Nazareth gradually steered the conversation to his conclusions about the threefold decadence of humanity.

It is very difficult to put into words how he summarized his own experiences to his stepmother. But as we are prepared by spiritual science, we can use spiritual scientific terms and expressions to attempt to describe the sense of the conversation's ending. Naturally what I now say was not expressed in the same words, but it will provide an approximate idea of what Jesus wanted his stepmother to grasp:

When we look back at the evolution of humanity on earth, it is similar to an individual human life, only changed in later generations, and unconscious for them. The Post-Atlantis life of humanity revealed itself to Jesus of Nazareth—that after the great natural disaster in Atlantis, first an ancient Indian culture developed in which the great holy Rishis communicated their vast wisdom to humanity. In other words, it was basically a spiritual culture. Yes, he went on, just as an individual human being is a child between birth and the seventh year, in which different forces are at work than in later life, so spiritual forces were active during that ancient Indian time. But because those forces were not only present until the seventh year, but extended over the Indian's entire life, humanity was in a different stage of evolution then. During the course of their entire life they knew what today the child knows and experiences until its seventh year. Today we think the way we do between the seventh and the fourteenth and the fourteenth and twenty first years because we have lost the childhood forces which are suppressed in the seventh year. During that ancient time, because these forces extended over an entire lifetime, which today are only present until the seventh year, people in the first post-atlantic epoch were clairvoyant. They rose higher with the forces which today are only present until the seventh year. Yes, that was the Golden Age of human evolution. Then came another age, in which the forces extended over the entire life, which otherwise are only active between the seventh and fourteenth years. Then came the third epoch, in which the forces were active which otherwise are active between the fourteenth and twenty-first years. Then we lived in an epoch in which the forces which are active today between the twenty-first and the twenty-eighth years, were active during the entire lifetime.

Now we are approaching the middle of human life, Jesus of Nazareth said, which is in the thirties, where the forces of youth cease to grow and begin to decline. We are now living in an age that corresponds to the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year of the individual person, where his life begins to decline. Whereas in the case of some individuals other forces are present, in humanity in general they are no longer there. That is the great suffering, that humanity should become aged, having its youth behind it, being in the epoch corresponding to the twenty-eighth to thirty-fifth year. Where should new forces come from? The forces of youth are exhausted.

That is what he told his stepmother about the impending decadence of humanity, which caused him so much pain, for it was clear that humanity's situation was hopeless. The forces of youth were exhausted, humanity now faced old age. The individuals, he knew, would continue to live on from the thirty-fifth year until death as before, because they retained residues of the forces, but humanity as a whole did not have that, so something else must come: what for the individual is necessary from the twenty-eighth to the thirty-fifth year. The earth would have to be illumined macro-cosmically with the forces with which the individual must be illumined from the twenty-eight to the thirty-fifth year.

That humanity as such was becoming old, that is what is read in the Akasha Record and felt during what Jesus of Nazareth related. As he spoke in this way to his mother about the meaning of human evolution, at that moment he realized that what he was saying was part of himself, and something of himself flowed from his words, for his words had become what he himself was.

That was also the moment when in the soul of his stepmother flowed the soul which had lived in his biological mother who—after the Zarathustra-I crossed over to him from the other Jesus-child—had died and had lived in spiritual regions since Jesus was twelve years old. From then on she could spiritualize the stepmother's soul. Thus the latter now lived with the soul of the Nathan Jesus-child's biological mother.

But Jesus of Nazareth had united himself so intensely with the words with which he had expressed his pain about humanity, that it was as if this self had disappeared from his life's [physical, etheric an astral] sheaths, so that these sheaths became as they were when he was a small boy—only impregnated with all he had suffered since his twelfth year. The Zarathustra-I was gone and what lived in his three sheaths was only what remained through the power of the experiences. An impulse arose in these three sheaths which led him on the path to John the Baptist at the River Jordan. As in a kind of dream, which however was not a dream, but an enhanced consciousness, he went his way with only the three sheaths spiritualized and driven by the effects of what he´d experienced since he was twelve years old. The Zarathustra-I was gone. The three sheaths led him on, hardly noticing what was around him. He lived, with the I gone, wholly aware of humanity's destiny and its needs.

On his way to John the Baptist at the River Jordan, he met two Essenes with whom he had often spoken. Without his I he didn't recognize them. But they knew him and therefore spoke to him: Where goest thou, Jesus of Nazareth? What he answered I have tried to put into words. He spoke in a way that they did not know where the words came from. They came from him, yet not from him. “There where souls such as yours do not wish to see, where the suffering of humanity can find the rays of forgotten light.”

Those were the words which seemed to come from him. They didn't understand him; they realized that he didn't recognize them, so they asked: “Jesus of Nazareth, don't you know us?” Now even stranger words were spoken. It was as if he had said to them: You are like lost lambs, but I was the shepherd's son from whom you fled. If you recognized me, you would flee anew. It was long ago that you fled from me to the world.

The Essenes didn't know what to make of him, for while speaking to them his eyes took on a very special aspect. They seemed to be looking outward, then also inward. They seemed like eyes showing an expression of reproach for the people spoken to. They were eyes through which showed gentle love, but a love which became a rebuke for the Essenes, one which came from their own hearts. We can characterize what the Essenes felt when they heard him like this: “What kind of people are you? Where is your world? Why do you wrap yourselves in deceptive robes? Why does a fire burn within you which is not kindled in my father's house?”

They were silenced by these words. And he spoke further: “You carry the tempters mark, who caught you when you fled. With his fire he made your wool glisten. The hair of this wool stings my eyes. You lost lambs! He has filled your souls with pride.”

When he spoke these words, one of the Essenes answered: “Didn't we show the tempter the door? He no longer has anything to do with us.” Jesus said: “When you showed him the door he ran to other people. He attacks them from all sides. You are not elevated when you debase others. You only think you are elevated because you let the others decline. You remain as high as you are only because you make the others smaller, so you think you are great.” Jesus of Nazareth spoke in that way so the Essenes could take note. It impressed them so much that they could no longer see. Their eyes dimmed and Jesus of Nazareth seemed to disappear before their eyes. But then, when he seemed to have vanished, they saw his face from a distance, but hugely increased in size like a fata morgana, and very, very far away. And words came as though spoken by this fata morgana. They sensed them to be: “Vain is your striving because your hearts are empty which you have filled with the spirit which hides pride in the cloak of humility.”

Then the mirage also vanished and they stood there dismayed and depressed. When they could again see, they saw that Jesus had gone farther away while they were watching the face. And they could do nothing but be aware that he had gone on. Despondent, they continued to the Essene hostel and they never told anyone what they had experienced, but kept silent about it their whole lives. And they became the most profound of the Essenes, but they were silent and only spoke when everyday understanding was necessary. Their brother Essenes never knew why they were so changed. Until their deaths they never revealed what they had seen and heard. They therefore experienced the Mystery of Golgotha in a special way. For the others though, what they had experienced was imperceptible.

After Jesus had walked on for a while he met a man who was in deep despair. But, as I said, Jesus was so removed from earthly conditions that he didn't realize that a man had approached him. And he had such a strong effect on that man who was in such despair, that Jesus of Nazareth said something which may be described as: “Where has your soul led you? I saw you many thousands of years ago; you were different then!”

The desperate man heard this as though spoken from the approaching figure of Jesus of Nazareth. Because of these words, the man felt the impulse to say the following. On one hand he felt the need to speak, on the other to find the answer to his destiny: “In my life I have been highly successful. I always studied, and due to this learning I rose higher and higher over other men. With every honor I became prouder and I often said to myself: What a unique person you are, rising so high over your fellow men. I felt that my soul must worth more than the souls of others. My pride increased with every new honor. Then I had a dream. What a horrible dream it was! While I was dreaming my soul was filled with a feeling of shame. I was ashamed of dreaming such a thing. I was so proud in my life, and now I dreamed something I would never have wanted to dream. I dreamed that I asked myself the question: Who made me so great? And then a being stood before me and said: I made you great, I raised you high, and therefore you are mine. I felt scandalized at the revelation that I had not risen so high through my own efforts, but that another being had been responsible for my success. Still dreaming, I ran away. When I woke up I really ran away, abandoning all my achievements. I didn't know what I was seeking and so I have been long wandering about in the world, ashamed of all the things which once brought me such pride.”

After the despairing man had said this, the being who had appeared in his dream stood again before him, between him and Jesus of Nazareth. This dream figure blocked the figure of Jesus of Nazareth. And when the dream figure left, dissolving in mist, Jesus had also already moved on. When the despairing man looked around he saw Jesus a good distance away. And so he had to continue on his way in despair.

Then a leper approached Jesus, one whose disease and suffering was very advanced. And because of what that soul was feeling, Jesus again was obliged to speak. He said again: “Where has your soul led you? I knew you many thousands of years ago, and you were different.”

These words encouraged the leper to speak in the same way they had affected the desperate man. The leper said: “I don't know how I got this disease, it just came gradually. And other people no longer allowed me to be among them. I had to wander in the wasteland, could only beg for what the people threw to me. One night I came close to a dense forest. I saw a tree approaching me from a clearing. It blinked at me with its own light. I felt impelled to get closer to that tree. It urged me on. And when I was close to it, a skeleton came at me like a light from the tree. It was death standing before me in that form. And death said to me: 'I am you. I live off you. Fear not!´ And it continued: 'Why are you afraid? Didn't you love me during many lives on earth? Only you didn't know that you loved me, because I appeared to you as a beautiful archangel whom you thought you were loving.' And then death was not standing there before me, but the archangel which I had often seen and about whom I knew: That was the image I loved. Then it vanished. The next morning I awoke next to the tree, more miserable than before. And I knew that all the pleasurable indulgences I had loved, which lived in me as egotism, are related to the being who appeared to me as death and as an archangel and who claimed that I loved it and that it was myself. And now I stand before you and I do not know who you are.” And now the archangel appeared again, and then death, standing between the leper and Jesus, blocked the leper's view of Jesus of Nazareth. When the leper saw only the archangel, Jesus vanished, and then death and the archangel vanished. The leper had to continue walking and saw that Jesus of Nazareth had already advanced farther.

Those were the events which occurred on the path Jesus took between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism by John in the Jordan.

Tomorrow we will see how the these events—the meeting with the two Essenes, with the despairing man and with the leper—continued to affect Jesus of Nazareth's physical, etheric and astral bodies when he barely understood the world from which he was so detached, and were enlivened by what he received with John at the baptism in the Jordan.

If these events, which I have described as having taken place between the conversation with his stepmother and the baptism in the Jordan, seem unlikely or strange, then I can only say: Although they may seem strange, they are truly revealed by research in the Akasha Record. They describe events which are as singular as they must be, for they are in preparation for an event which can only happen once—what we call the Mystery of Golgotha. Whoever does not wish to consider the idea that something so special happened at that moment in the evolution of humanity will find human evolution difficult to understand.

Cologne, 18 December, 1913

Before continuing with the study of the life of Jesus Christ, I would like to mention some indications about the way such things are found. With few words such a comprehensive subject can of course only be characterized. But I want you to have an idea of what we can call occult research, at the stage where one can penetrate to such concrete facts as those which, for example, we considered here yesterday.

To begin with, we can say that this research rests on a study of the Akasha Chronicle. In general terms, I described how such reading in the Akasha Chronical is to be understood in articles in the magazine “Lucifer-Gnosis” which appeared under the title “From the Akasha Chronicle”. It should be clear that different facts about cosmic events and cosmic being must be researched in different ways, so now I would like to be more specific about what has already been said.

Basically in the universe there is nothing but consciousness. Except for consciousness, everything else belongs in the domain of maya, or the great illusion. You can find these facts in two places—in others as well—but especially in the description of the evolution of the earth from ancient Saturn to Vulcan in An Outline Of Occult Science, where the evolution from ancient Saturn to ancient Sun, from Sun to ancient Moon, from Moon to Earth, and so on, are described as stages of consciousness. This means that if one wants to reach these important facts, he must ascend to a stage of cosmic events where they consist of stages of consciousness. Therefore, if we are describing realities we can only describe various stages of consciousness. It is also included in another book published this summer: The Threshold of the Spiritual World. Shown there is how through a gradual ascension of the seer's vision it rises from the objects and processes around us, which disappear into nothingness, melt away so to speak, and finally reaches the region where there are only beings in various stages of consciousness. So the true realities of the world are beings in the various stages of consciousness. Due to the fact that we live in the human stage of consciousness, and in this stage of consciousness have no complete overview of the realities involved, the effect is that what is unreal appears to us as real.

You have only to ask yourselves the following question. Is a human strand of hair a reality, even in a narrow sense? Does it have an independent existence? It would be nonsense to say that a human strand of hair has an independent existence. It does make sense to consider it as growing from the human body, otherwise it is not possible for it to exist on its own. Everyone would agree that it is nonsense to speak of a strand of hair as having an independent existence. A plant is often seen as an individual being, but is no more an individual being than is a strand of hair. For what the strand of hair is to the head, the plant is to the earth organism, and it makes no sense to consider the plant in isolation. We must think of the earth as analogous to man and all plants on the earth as belonging to the earth, as does the hair on one's head. It is no more possible for a plant to exist as an independent being outside the earth organism than it is for hair to exist without a head to grow on. It is important to know when to cease considering something as an autonomous being. But everything which the human being can attain to which does not have its roots in consciousness is not an independent being. Everything is rooted in consciousness, only in different ways.

Let us take thought, that is, what we as humans think. At first these thoughts are in our consciousness, but not merely in our consciousness. At the same time they are in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy, the angeloi, the angels. But whereas we may have one thought, all our thoughts are the angels' thoughts. The angels think our consciousness. Thus you can see that when we ascend to clairvoyance, we must develop a different feeling towards perceiving the beings of the higher worlds than is the case in ordinary reality. If we thinks as we do in the physical-sensory earthly existence, we cannot achieve higher clairvoyance. One must not merely think, one must also be thought, and be aware that one is being thought. It is not easy—for human words have not yet been devised to describe what the feeling about this perceiving is. But to use a comparison: we make all kinds of movements and if we don't observe these movements in ourselves, but in the eyes of another and see there the reflection of our own movements we say to ourselves: by observing in this way we know that we are doing this or that with our hands or with our facial expressions. One already has this feeling at the next stage of clairvoyance. We know in general that we are thinking, but we see ourselves [doing it] in the consciousness of the beings of the next higher hierarchy. We let the angels think our thoughts. We must realize that we are not conducting our thoughts, but that the beings of the next hierarchy are conducting them. We must feel the interweaving, undulating consciousness of the angels. We then receive information about the continuous impulse of evolution, for example about the truth of the Christ-impulse, how it continues to be active now. The angels can think this impulse; we humans can also think and describe it, if we devote our thoughts to the angels so they think in us. We can achieve this by continuous practice, as I described in my book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and its Attainment. From a certain moment on we connect a feeling, a sensation with the words: “Your soul doesn't think any more, it is a thought which the angels think”. And when this becomes a truth for the individual human experience, we experience the thoughts about the truths of the Christ-impulse, also other thoughts about the wise guidance of earth evolution.

Those things related to the epochs of the earth's evolution—the ancient Indian epoch, the ancient Persian epoch and so forth—are thought by the archangels. By means of further [meditative] practice we are able not only to be thought by the angels, but to be experienced by the archangels. You must then come to the point where you know that you are delivering your life to the life of the archangels. In The Threshold of the Spiritual World I go into this in more detail: how you have the feeling, when you continue the exercises—I also spoke about this in Munich, using a grotesque example—as if you were to stick your head in an anthill, and the ants are the thoughts in movement. Whereas in ordinary life we think that we think our thoughts, through practice we realize that the thoughts think in us, because the angels think in us. And continuing with practice we arrive at the feeling that we are brought to various regions of the world by the archangels and thus learn about those regions. To correctly describe the [ancient] Indian or Egyptian cultures one must understand the meaning of: “Your soul has been brought to this or that time by an archangel”. It is as though our life body fluids knew that they support the life process and are carried through the organism as the blood is. Thus the seer knows that he is conducted through the life process of the world by the archangels. But where individual experiences of the soul are concerned, they can only be investigated if the soul gives meaning to the words: The soul delivers itself as food to the Archai, the spirits of personality.

What I just said sounds grotesque, but it is nevertheless true that one cannot investigate such concrete facts as the life of Jesus of Nazareth before one gives meaning to the words: One is eaten as spiritual food and thus serves the Spirits of Personality. Obviously this sounds like madness to people who live in the outer world. Of course it does! Nevertheless it is just as true as the piece of bread that enters our stomachs becomes our food, and if it could think it would know that its existence has meaning and purpose in that we make it our food. It is just as true that we humans have the purpose of serving the Archai as food. While we walk around here on earth we are at the same time beings who are continually consumed, eaten by the Archai. You will not deny that people in ordinary life don't know this, and that they would call it madness if someone told them something like this. Man is for the Archai what a grain of wheat is for you as a physical human being. Don't only know this theoretically, but live in respect to the Archai as a grain of wheat would live were it to be ground to porridge by our teeth and pass through our pallets and stomach with the awareness: I am human food. Therefore also know: I am the Archai's food, I am digested by the Archai; that is their life, which I live in them. To vividly know this means to enter the consciousness of the Spirits of Personality, the Archai. Just as what it means to enter the consciousness of the Archangels when one knows: Your soul is brought to this or that epoch by the Archangels; and what it means to enter the consciousness of the Angels when one knows: My thoughts are thought by the angels. If we wish to enter the higher worlds, the conditions of experience must be different. It is necessary to be knowingly consumed by the Spirits of Personality if concrete facts such as the life of Jesus of Nazareth in human evolution are to be investigated.

Perhaps what I have said will serve to show that this occult research is completely different from research in the outer world. If you can think the analogies through, they provide the correct hints: You can imagine yourselves as the grains of wheat ground into porridge by your teeth in order to have a mental image, which is an analogy for reading in the consciousness of the Archai. One must be mentally ground up and feel it. It means that higher research is not possible without inner pain and suffering. If it is so abstract that it doesn't hurt, as is research in the physical world, then research in the higher worlds cannot be achieved if it is to be more than complete fantasy.

Therefore my efforts yesterday in describing the life of Jesus to separate it from abstract concepts and descriptions. Remember what I said in an attempt to point out what is important. I said: this was the life of Jesus of Nazareth from his twelfth, eighteenth and up to his thirtieth year. What I described is less important than having a vivid feeling of what Jesus' soul went through, to feel the pain of loneliness, the endless pain of having to stand alone with the untruths about which there were many ears to hear. I wanted to point out Jesus of Nazareth's feelings. His great threefold compassion for humanity from his twelfth to his thirtieth year. Not by describing the events to yourselves or to others, will you know something about the meaning of Jesus' experience as preparation for the Mystery of Golgotha, but rather that by conceiving of an idea—a mental picture—which shocks and moves your souls, a picture of what that man Jesus of Nazareth had to suffer before the Mystery of Golgotha in order that the Christ-impulse could stream into the earth's evolution.

In this way a vivid idea of the Christ-impulse is brought about in that the suffering is reawakened, so that one must describe these facts which are related to such things by trying to bring to mind feelings. You can see this in how I tried to characterize in few words what Akasha research is. The more you are able to feel in yourselves the billowing, undulating feelings in a being such as Jesus of Nazareth was, the more you fathom such mysteries.

I have often spoken about what happened then—that through the baptism in the Jordan, after Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies [physical, etheric, astral] were spiritualized by the Zarathustra-I in them, the Christ-being entered them, that is, a being from the realm of the spiritual world descended whose destiny was to live bound in a human body for three years. It is important to understand what that fact means. Because this fact is fundamentally different from all other facts in the earth's evolution. Here we are entering into something which is not merely a human event in the earth's evolution. This must by clear.

We can consider this from a human standpoint. Then we say: “Once there was a man as we have described him. He received the Christ-being, the Christ-impulse”. But we can also consider it differently, although the considerations are rather skimpy on representations, that's doesn't matter. By means of our spiritual-scientific preparation, we will be able to make something of them.

Imagine that we are sitting in a council considering the Mystery of Golgotha not as men, but in a council of the higher hierarchies as the beings of the higher hierarchies are considering the Mystery of Golgotha. In a spiritual sense this change in viewpoint is possible. A comparison could be: We have a mountain before us and halfway up is a town. We can see the town from below, but it can also be observed from the summit. Naturally we mostly observe the Mystery of Golgotha from a human point of view. But we could also climb up to the sphere of the higher hierarchies. How then would we speak of the Mystery of Golgotha? We would have to say: When the earth's evolution began, the beings of the higher hierarchies had certain intentions for humanity. They wanted to guide the earth's evolution in a certain way. But Lucifer inserted himself into this intended guidance of humanity's earthly affairs. So if we are looking down at earth evolution as a being of the higher hierarchies, we see that Lucifer changed the direction of this evolution from our original intention.

And we say: Not everything that happens down there happens through us. Lucifer is continually intervening. Due to Lucifer's intervention, and later Ahriman's, a foreign element is present in human evolution. It could be expressed in such a way that the beings of the higher hierarchies say: “To a certain extent the sphere of the earth has been lost to us. There are forces there which distance the earth with its humanity from us”.

Guidance by the higher hierarchies is gradual; each participates according to its powers, first of all the lowest. All the hierarchies participate in earth's evolution, up to highest, but these latter leave certain tasks to their subordinates—to the Angels, Archangels and Archai. So they are the first to be active in the evolutionary process.

We transfer ourselves—in all humility of course—to the council of the higher hierarchies, not the council of men. Then we can say: “Our messengers, the Angels, Archangels and Archai are there; they could carry out our orders very well if foreign powers were not present in the sphere of earth”. So the great council decides something like the following: "Since we were not able to prevent Lucifer and Ahriman from interfering in the earth's evolution, our subordinates, the Angles, Archangels and Archai, have lost the ability, from a certain point in time, to do for humanity what had to be done according to our intentions." And this point in time was when the Mystery of Golgotha took place.

As this point in time approached, the gods of the higher hierarchies had to say: “We are losing the possibility for our subordinates to intervene in human souls. Because we could not deter Lucifer and Ahriman, we have only been able to act through our subordinates until this point in time. Thus forces arise in human souls, which can no longer be conducted by the Angels, Archangels and Archai. The human beings are turning away from us through the powers of Lucifer and Ahriman”.

That was really—if I may express it so—the mood in heaven as the point in time approached which was calculated to be the beginning of the new era. Because their subordinates could no longer sufficiently care for humanity from a certain point in time, it became the “angst” of the gods. You will not misunderstand this, for you are prepared by spiritual science to understand that expressions have a different sense and feeling value when used to characterize the higher worlds.

This divine anxiety grew, ever more tantalizing, ever more worryingly—if I may say so—in the heavens. So the decision was made to send the Sun Spirit down, to sacrifice him by deciding: “He shall choose a different lot from now on than that of sitting in the council of the gods: he shall enter the arena where human souls live. We sacrifice this Son Spirit to them. Until now he has lived among us, in the spheres of the higher hierarchies; now he will enter the earth aura through the portal of Jesus”.

That's how it looked from above in the council of the gods as the Mystery of Golgotha approached. It was an affair of the gods who guide the earth, not merely a human affair. It can be understood as not merely asking: What must be done so humanity is not lost on its precipitous path? Rather the question: What should we gods do in order to create a counterbalance for what has happened because we had to allow Lucifer and Ahriman into earth evolution?

And one can then create a feeling that the Mystery of Golgotha is other than a mere earthly affair, that it is an affair of the gods, an event of the world of the gods. Truly, it was more important for the gods that they had to give up Christ to the earth than it was for humanity to receive Christ.

And what is knowledge of the Mystery of Golgotha more than recognizing it as earth's central event? That when one observes the Mystery of Golgotha it is seen as an affair of the gods, that the gods opened a window to heaven, that the gods revealed their affairs to human eyes for a while and that men could observe these godly affairs! One must learn to feel this observing the Mystery of Golgotha by imagining that if one were to pass by the closed house of heaven, one could look through that window and see what otherwise is invisible behind the walls of the domicile of the gods.

The person with reverent feelings about the occult nature of the Mystery of Golgotha is like someone who walks silently around a house that is always closed, only suspecting what is happening inside. At one point there is a window through which he can witness a small part of what is happening inside. For humanity the Mystery of Golgotha is such a window to the spiritual world. Therefore we must feel what happened as the Christ-being descended into the body—or rather the three bodies—of Jesus of Nazareth. We should absorb this idea ever deeper, that we are witnesses to a godly affair through the Mystery of Golgotha.

When we speak of such things words must be used in a different way than in ordinary life. One must speak about such things as the gods' “angst” and “fear” before the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. One must use words about the spiritual affairs of humanity in a different way. It is very easy for those who are all too ready to denigrate what is meant in the most sacred sense—whether from stupidity, frivolousness, pride or other reasons. All they have to do is twist the meaning of words into how they are used in exoteric life. In that way it is possible to turn them into the opposite of what is meant, even though they come from the need to announce the truths of the spiritual world which are so difficult to wring from the soul. Their meanings are reversed, thereby making them sound ridiculous or satanic.

This is all too widespread in our times. And those who should be protecting the treasure of the sacred-spiritual truths, which are so necessary for human souls just in these times, are not wakeful enough.

How great is the comfort with which we like to feed our spirit! How often must we see lamentable things! If when speaking of the spirit one goes even a little beyond materialism, people declare themselves satisfied because that way they don't have to strain themselves, in particular they don't have to strain their sensibilities. What we must feel is that because we are taking part in a consideration of the most sacred developments in earthly evolution, we have a responsibility toward the treasures of knowledge relating to the spiritual world. There is great frivolity in our times about such things, and people tend to take it all lightly. You will notice it popping up here and there, but will only recognize its abominable nature if you're alert enough and your hearts are kindled enough for the most sacred of the spiritual truths. Perhaps then you can assess the value of the spiritual treasures and become their good guardians, for we are all called to guard them together.

Perhaps the easiest way to speak of something so important is: that the Mystery of Golgotha is not merely a human affair, but also an affair of the gods, and that we can observe this affair of the gods. But the way this is described will be distorted in such a way that I hesitate to even mention it. The time will perhaps come when it will be realized that we must reformulate the words of the sensible world when we use them for the super-sensible world, and that it is easy to insinuate other meanings to them.

Popular Christianity says what I have just indicated with the words: “The Father sacrificed his son for humanity”. These words describe what is felt by human hearts in a popular sense, though the true meaning is: The Mystery of Golgotha is an affair of the gods.

And if we consider all of what I have said, we can have an idea of what happened during the event which we call the baptism by John in the Jordan. The temptation, which is also described in the Gospels, followed. From the viewpoint of the Akasha Chronicle we would say: After Jesus of Nazareth took the Christ-being into himself he had to go into the wilderness. There he had clairvoyant visions, which are described fairly accurately by the words of the clairvoyant Gospel writers. It could also be said that now the Christ-being was really bound to the three bodies of Jesus. That means that he descended from the spiritual world and became limited to the capacities of the three bodies. Therefore it would be false to think that Christ, because he belonged to a higher world from which he had descended, could now immediately envision that higher world. That is not the case. Whoever finds this incomprehensible should think again about what it means to be clairvoyant. You are all clairvoyant! All! There is not one here who is not clairvoyant. So why don't you all see clairvoyantly? Because you haven't developed the organs in order to use the forces which reside in all humans. It is not a question of having the capacities, but rather of being able to use them.

The Christ-being had all possible capacities, but in the three bodies of Jesus of Nazareth he only had the capacities which corresponded to those three bodies. That is why they had to be prepared in such a complicated manner, for the capacities of these three bodies were indeed high capacities, greater than the corresponding capacities of all the other people on the earth. But Christ was bound to them just as your clairvoyant capacities are bound to the organs which you have, only cannot yet use. It was possible through the capacities which the Zarathustra-soul had left behind in Jesus of Nazareth's three bodies, the remnants of which now served Christ to confront a being who could arouse all the pride and arrogance that a human soul is capable of. This being confronted the Christ Jesus.

At that moment he sensed what that being was attempting in the language of visions—what the Bible describes with the words: “All the kingdoms you see before you”—kingdoms of the spiritual world—“can be yours if you recognize me as the lord of this world.” If one is full of pride and arrogance and brings it into the spiritual world, one can own this world's kingdom of Lucifer because arrogance submerges everything else if everything except arrogance is left behind. But man is not prepared for that; it would mean confronting a terrible destiny.

The Christ Jesus faced this possibility. Then two images appeared before his soul. The first was of his experience on the way to the Jordan river, which I described yesterday as having met the despairing man. And once again the figure which had appeared to that despairing man in a dream stood before Jesus of Nazareth's soul, who now said: “Recognize me as lord of the world”. Then he recognized that figure as the one he had seen at the gates of the Essenes: Lucifer! Therefore he knew that now Lucifer was speaking to him, and he repulsed the attack. He defeated Lucifer.

Then two beings came to attack him, and he had the impression which was more or less what the Bible describes. They said to him: “Show all your fearlessness, your strength, show what you can do as a man by throwing yourself from the heights and not fear being injured”. In such a case consciousness of strength and courage should awaken in the human soul, but it can also make him a sensualist. Two figures stood before him. Because Jesus had had the impression that it was Lucifer and Ahriman who had flown away from the Essene gates, he now had the impression that within one of them was the same being whom the leper had encountered and who had presented himself as death. Because of these experiences he recognized Lucifer and Ahriman. Thus he relived what he had experienced on the road to the Jordan. He also repulsed this attack. He defeated both Lucifer and Ahriman.

Then Ahriman came again. A kind of temptation ensued. He said to Christ Jesus something similar to what the Bible describes: “Make these stones into bread to show your power.” But now Jesus could not give a complete answer to what Ahriman demanded. He was able to repulse the first and the second attacks: the attack by Lucifer alone and the attack of both together. But now he could not repulse Ahriman's attack. The fact that he could not totally repulse Ahriman's attack had meaning for the effectiveness of the Christ-impulse on earth.

I must characterize what this mean in a popular, almost frivolous way: Make these stones into bread, so they become food for humanity. The higher hierarchies were not able to completely eliminate Ahriman from the field of the earth's evolution until the Vulcan epoch. It will never be possible through purely spiritual efforts to defeat Ahriman's inner temptations: the desires, cravings and lusts which arise from within, and what arises as arrogance and sensuality. When Lucifer attacks men alone he can be defeated by spirituality. Also when Lucifer and Ahriman attack together from within, they can be defeated through spiritual means. But when Ahriman is alone, he engulfs his effectiveness in the material events of earth evolution. That cannot be completely fended off.

Ahriman, Mephisto, Mammon—they mean the same. They are immersed in money and in everything connected with human egotism. The fact that it is necessary for human life to be commingled with materialistic things means that humanity must reckon with Ahriman. If Christ was to help earthly humanity in the right way he had to allow Ahriman to act. Ahriman, the material, must be active until the end of the earth's evolution. His work had to remain undefeated by Christ, not completely overcome. The Christ must accept the struggle with Ahriman until the end of earth evolution. Ahriman had to remain.

We as humans can overcome the attacks of Lucifer and the attacks of Lucifer and Ahriman together. The struggle in the material outer world must be fought out until the end of the earth's evolution. Therefore Christ had to hold Ahriman in check, but allow him to stand alongside him. For this reason Ahriman remained active during the three years that Christ worked in the body of Jesus of Nazareth, and he entered the soul of Judas and was decisive in the betrayal of Jesus. What happened through Judas is related to the temptation in the desert after the baptism in the Jordan.

Slowly and gradually the Christ-being united with the three bodies of Jesus. It took three years. At the beginning the bond was loose, and then it gradually pressed into the three bodies. Only when death approached were the three bodies truly permeated with the Christ-being. And all the suffering and pain experienced during the three stages of his development was immeasurably increased as he gradually was able to completely immerse himself in the three human bodies. It was a continual pain, but a pain which was transformed into love—and love—and love.

And then the following happened. When we consider how the Christ Jesus lived during the first, second and third years he spent with his closest disciples, we find it to be different in each year. In the first year Christ was, as I said, only loosely bound to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. So there were moments when the physical body was in one place or another and the Christ-being was elsewhere. The other Gospels report that the lord appeared to his disciples when his physical body was somewhere else—meaning that Christ wandered about the land in spirit.

That was in the beginning. Then the Christ-being bound himself more and more to the body of Jesus of Nazareth. Later, when Christ was with the circle of his closest disciples, they were so intimately united with him that he was never separated from them. The more he lived into his body, the more he lived in the inner being of his disciples. He traveled about the land with his disciples. He would speak through one of them, then through another disciple of the inner group, so that as they went about the land it was no longer only Christ Jesus who spoke, but one of the disciples; but Christ spoke through them. He lived in the disciples with such power that the facial expressions of a disciple through whom Christ spoke changed so much that the people who heard him had the feeling that he was the master. Another, though, who was really Christ, was so modest that he looked ordinary. In this way he spoke through one then another throughout the land. That was the secret of his effectiveness during the last of the three years.

As he went about with his disciples in this way and he seemed ever more dangerous to his enemies, they wondered: “How can we hunt him down? We can't arrest the whole bunch. For we can never know when we grab the one who is speaking if he's the right or the wrong one. If we grab the wrong one, the right one escapes.” That was their greatest fear. They knew that one spoke and then a different one did. And the right one was unrecognizable, for he took on the ordinary form of another.

There was something wonderful about that group. Therefore a betrayal was needed. The way this is usually described is mistaken. What is it supposed to mean that Judas had to kiss the right one? According to the usual accounts it should not have been difficult to trap Jesus of Nazareth. So the kiss would make no sense if someone who knew which was the right one had to point him out to those who could already have known anyway. But because of the reasons I have related, the enemies did not know who the right one was.

Only when the great suffering—the Mystery of Golgotha—was before him was the total union of the Christ-being with the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth accomplished. What happened then is beautifully described in the other Gospels. For the seer who reads in the Akasha Chronicle about what happened, it is a fact that while Christ was hanging on the cross something like an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around Golgotha. I can't say if it was an eclipse of the sun or a powerful darkening of the clouds, but a darkening like what can be observed during an eclipse of the sun took place in the area around the event of the Mystery of Golgotha.

When occult vision observes life on earth during such a darkening, all living things are shown to him differently than when there is no such darkening. In plants the connection of the etheric body and the physical body is different; and also in animals the astral body and the etheric appear completely different. During an eclipse of the sun it is different on the earth from when the sun is simply missing in the night. Of course this is not the case when in the ordinary sense the sky is covered with clouds; only when an especially thick darkening occurs. And such a darkening took place then. As I said, I cannot yet tell if it was an eclipse of the sun, but what can be seen was like an eclipse of the sun. While this transformation of the earth was taking place, also in the physical sense, he whom we call the Christ-being went over into the earth's living aura. Through the death of Christ Jesus the earth received the Christ impulse.

The greatest event to occur on earth must be described in such simple, stammering words, because it is impossible to even approximate this greatness with human words.

When the body of Jesus was taken down and placed in a tomb, a natural event occurred. A whirlwind arose, then the earth split open and the body of Jesus was taken into it as the shrouds were blown away from the body. It is awesome to see that the arrangement of the shrouds described in the Gospel of John coincides with this vision.

These two events: the darkening of the earth, the earthquake and the powerful whirlwind show at one point in the earth's evolution how natural events coincide with spiritual events. Otherwise such things only occur with living beings as, for example, when thinking and a decision of the will precede a hand's movement. In ordinary life we are only concerned with such mechanical phenomena. Only at a very special moment did a spiritual and two physical phenomena coincide—also in other earthly phenomena, but most especially with this one.

I don't think that the consideration of these concrete facts, which it is now possible to describe to a small number of people as a kind of Fifth Gospel, can detract from the grand ideas we have more theoretically worked through about the Mystery of Golgotha. On the contrary, I believe that if we try to let these concrete facts work on us more and more deeply we will feel what was previously presented more theoretically, more abstractly, strengthened. We will realize through these facts that in this our own time in earthly evolution important events will take place.

By means of these concrete facts you will perhaps be able to achieve the right feelings and nuance of soul about the Mystery of Golgotha, and it is this nuance of feeling that I wished to present to your souls with what I have related from the Fifth Gospel. Perhaps some of you will be able to attend other lectures on the Mystery of Golgotha, or we may be able to continue here in Cologne. For we must say: Regardless of the fact that people nowadays show so little interest in hearing about the facts we have spoken about today, there is a great necessity for such facts to flow into human evolution, especially now. Therefore they have been disclosed, although it is quite difficult to speak of these things. Nevertheless, although I may be inclined not to speak of them, I do so from a sense of inner responsibility, as long as there are people to hear them. They will be needed in humanity's evolution. Those who are hearing them now will surely need them for the spiritual work they are doing for further human development.

You see, gradually we are learning through our considerations what should arise in our souls in order to be useful members of advancing human evolution. That is the meaning of human development on earth—that human souls be more aware of their tasks.

The Christ has come. His impulse is working. For a long time he could act only in the unconscious; then he had to act through what was understood until that time. But it will be ever more necessary for man to learn to understand him, the Christ, who through the bodies of Jesus of Nazareth has entered the earth's aura and humanity's development.

Dearly beloved! For many years now I have been privileged to give one or more lectures here every year on the subject of what I dare call the spiritual-scientific world view. The friends of our spiritual-scientific world view were of the opinion that even in our fateful times such a lecture should be given here in this city again.

You will understand, dear ladies and gentlemen, that from the point of view of the spiritual-scientific world view, a consideration of our time must direct our feelings and emotions to what moves us in our immediate present as its most fateful content. We see various nations of the earth fighting with each other. Above all, we see Central Europe, as if locked in a great, mighty fortress, struggling for the most sacred goods. Every human soul must then, even if it wants to turn its thoughts to the most important, perhaps the highest riddle questions of existence, take with it the feelings that come from the events, which undoubtedly carry something tremendously significant in their womb , demand confidence, strength, hope from us, and above all demand of us that we survey the facts with open eyes, that we also allow the forces to come before our soul with open eyes, which come into play in the present.

Now it is truly not my intention to add yet another reflection to the already overwhelming literature and the abundant lectures on our current events. Tonight's discussion will cover a number of other topics that have often been discussed in our present time. It has already been said, and not without good reason, that one should not allow one's clear and certain view of the conflicting interests at stake in the present to become clouded, to become obscured by all kinds of mysticism, all kinds of metaphysical, that one must be clear about the fact that the present struggle owes its existence to political causes, social causes and the interests of the peoples, and that one should certainly not speak of the fact that the spiritual life can somehow be called fruitful among the causes of the present events.

Now, of course, the spiritual scientist in particular has every reason, my dear audience, to be careful not to fall into all sorts of speculation about how the world spirits themselves came into conflict with each other or the like. But one thing must always be emphasized: Even in those ancient times, at the beginning of the Middle Ages, when our ancestors, our Germanic ancestors, the inhabitants of Central Europe, were confronted with the old Roman Empire, which was coming to an end, even then people could say: It is only a question of the spheres of interest , on the one hand the Germanic peoples of Central Europe, on the other the peoples of Southern Europe, and one should not let one's clear view be clouded by all kinds of considerations of intellectual currents or the like when considering the immediate issue.

Of course, for the immediate present, for the view that only looks at the immediate present, it is so, it is fully justified. Nevertheless, the following may perhaps be considered. One will be able to say: Yes, certainly, just as English and German interests, political interests, are correctly viewed as being opposed to each other and have led to war, so in those days Central European and Southern European interests were opposed to each other; but if one considers the whole history that followed those events, one will still have to say: Yes, Europe was shaped back then as it had to be shaped so that the entire cultural development with all its content that has since taken hold could take place. And everything that happened intellectually afterwards was already in the womb of events back then. The way in which Christianity took root in Europe depended on the validity that the Germanic peoples were able to establish for themselves at the time. All subsequent culture, in which we are only beginning to immerse ourselves, was shaped by what happened at that time.

It is incumbent upon people of the present day not to live their lives only instinctively in the same way as people of that time, for example. Times have moved forward, and now it is a matter of allowing what is happening before one's soul, even from a certain higher point of view – I do not want to say that it underlies the events, I would like to emphasize that – but what is expressed in the tremendous struggle that has never been seen before in human development, to be seen with open eyes, that is, with full consciousness, I want to emphasize that.

This is one thing. The other thing, however, my dear audience, is this: that anyone who considers the spiritual events of the present and the past, insofar as the present has developed out of this past, will see that not only at the present time, but basically for a long time already, a struggle, a wrestling of the peoples of the earth, of the people of the earth for spiritual goods is taking place, a wrestling that has often been neglected in its special nature, and perhaps especially in the last few decades. But what is happening today, what has to be fought for today in blood and death, must remind us to take a look at what is going on in souls and how in what souls strive for and want, there is also a field of battle on our earth.

It is not my responsibility to get involved in political matters. But I may touch on the fact that in the future all the declamations and sophistries that are practiced today about the causes of the war, about what one or the other did to bring about the war, that this will crystallize, especially when deeper and deeper into the future, which may not be so very far away, the situation will be understood, that it is a matter of a defense that the peoples of Central Europe, in particular the German people, have to lead against powerful nations that do not want to let it happen. It is also clear to the objective observer and will become ever clearer that the German people have to fight a defensive battle. I call attention to this for the reason that the word defensive struggle must also be applied to the spiritual goods that are to be given from the depths of the German national soul to the world, but which must be defended against attacks that no longer present themselves as attacks but which are nevertheless attacks in a spiritual sense, so to speak, on the stage of world events.

To illustrate what I actually mean, let me give an example that seems rather remote, but is only an example. For more than a century, our German intellectual culture has included a certain area of intellectual property, the tremendous value of which is unfortunately still not fully recognized. For a long time now, when speaking of a thorough-going Weltanschhauung in harmony with the present time, reference has been made to the idea of evolution. It is said that humanity has advanced to the point of realizing that individual forms of life do not stand side by side, but that individual forms develop side by side. With tremendous magnitude – to use this expression – in a spiritually appropriate way, Goethe, at the end of the eighteenth century, out of the depths of German thinking, of German intellectual research, placed this developmental idea into world development, into world culture. And it may be said that the way in which Goethe has placed the idea of development in the spiritual world culture is one of the greatest things that has emerged in the development of humanity, at least in the spiritual realm, even if one compares it with everything that Goethe achieved as a poet.

Now it must be said that not everything that Goethe gave to humanity has directly flowed into the great stream of spiritual progress. Basically, few have yet recognized the full value of Goethe's spiritual achievement. On the other hand, the idea of evolution has entered world culture through Darwinism, I would say in a purely external, more materialistic-utilitarian form, from a non-German ethnic group.

Of course, one cannot say that there is something like struggle and war when looking at things so externally and superficially. But if you look at them internally, it is clear that something greater has simply been pushed back by the intellectual and external power of a less significant, English-influenced Darwinian idea. That is one thing. But countless examples of this could be cited. Countless things could be cited – we need not concern ourselves here with the deeper reasons – that within German culture impulses have been given that are being oppressed as such, even waged against, that are to be replaced by those who have surrounded them. The intellectual encirclement began long ago. And it will be, one may say a world luck - if the word is not misunderstood - it will be a world luck, if that which we are now experiencing in such a hard way makes us aware that we also need spiritual weapons. The future will teach that we need spiritual weapons to protect the deeper against the less deep. For those who look a little deeper, what is happening today out of blood and death is only a beginning; a beginning of a struggle that will also take place on the spiritual scene.

Now many things can help to find the way in the confusion that has arisen in relation to spiritual currents - the word is of course itself challenged today, but it may still be used because it best describes the present situation. And today's reflection is intended to point the way.

Spiritual science is by no means something - as it is meant here - that is already recognized in wider circles today. Rather, spiritual science is something that is even regarded as folly, as fantasy or reverie in wider circles. But the spiritual scientist does not allow himself to be deterred by this. When Copernicus put forward the new natural scientific world view in relation to their first thoughts, when Copernicus and Galileo appeared, what they had to say to humanity was also seen as fantasy in the eyes of those who wanted to hold on to what corresponded to their habitual thinking. He who observes the way in which truth advances through the world knows that spiritual science today is in exactly the same position as natural science was several centuries ago. And he finds it understandable, indeed self-evident, that it is still regarded by the vast majority of people today as fantasy, as reverie or worse.

Now, in earlier lectures, I have had a variety of things to present here from the field of spiritual science, how the view should be directed to something else. Today I can only present, not prove, but only hint at, some basic ideas that may interest us today, the spiritual-scientific views.

Sometimes we speak of the soul of the nation. However, the soul of the nation is a concept that can, it is to be hoped, be placed in a new light by spiritual science. What is the soul of the nation in our more or less materialistically thinking times? Well, if one wants to raise oneself to the concept of the national soul at all, one says: one looks at the qualities that always emerge in a national community, that is, what a group of people, who are called a nation, have in common, and one then comes to an abstract concept and does not think of anything further, of anything real, when one speaks of the national soul.

The spiritual scientist, however, speaks of the soul of a nation as something very real, as something one can call personal reality, as something personally real. The spiritual scientist speaks from his spiritual scientific research that just as we are surrounded in the physical world by the realm of minerals, plants, animals and human beings, we are surrounded by higher realms of the soul and spirit, by beings of a supersensible world. He does not speak of these beings of a supersensible world as if they were abstract concepts, but he speaks of these entities as if they were real realities. Just as someone in ancient times who had no idea about the nature of the atmosphere could believe that there was nothing around where we live, while the modern person knows, of course, that he is surrounded by air, so the person who is familiar with spiritual science knows that, in relation to our soul and spirit, we are surrounded by spiritual beings everywhere. But not in the sense of pantheism, but in the sense of a spiritual world that is populated by spiritual beings everywhere. And we also count the folk soul among such spiritual beings, we count the individual folk souls of the various peoples. We speak of real and individual beings when we speak of the folk souls of the individual peoples. I can only hint at this briefly today because time is limited.

But what the national soul has as an entity can only be understood by considering the relationship of this national soul to the individual soul within such a nation. And here we immediately come to an area where all of today's psychology is quite inadequate in the face of spiritual research. With this consideration, especially with regard to the contemplation of the soul, one stands at the beginning of a completely new way of looking at things with spiritual science. The person who speaks of the soul in the usual way of soul science today speaks of the soul as if it were a simple thing in which will, feeling and thinking and so on surge up and down. For the spiritual researcher, this is just as if one were to speak of color in general or of light in general. Anyone who has heard a little about physics knows that we can get behind the nature of light by observing the rainbow band of the entire spectrum, by observing how light manifests itself in connection with the phenomena of the world, let us say in a sevenfold or, for the sake of simplicity, in a threefold way. On the one hand, light manifests itself in the spectrum in such a way that we have, so to speak, reddish yellow on the outside, green in the middle, and blue-violet on the other side. And it is precisely through this that we come to understand the way in which light works. This enables us to look at light in terms of the way it works and to know that light really does live in the seven colors of the spectrum.

Just as the physicist today takes this for granted, so too will the science of the soul one day take for granted, but also as a scientific necessity, a threefold mode of action of the soul. And there we call that in the field of spiritual science, which, as it were, expresses itself in the soul as reddish-yellow expresses itself in light; we call that in spiritual science, in relation to the soul, the sentient soul. And we call that which, as it were, constitutes the center of the soul, as green is the center of the band of colors, the mind or feeling soul. And we call that which, as it were, appears on the other side as the manifestation of the soul, as blue-violet appears in the band of colors, the consciousness soul. And spiritual science must stand on the standpoint that one recognizes the soul from this structure just as one recognizes the mode of action of light from the color band. And just as light expresses itself everywhere, in every link, in every nuance of the color band, so the threefold effect of the soul expresses itself through what we call our self, our actual I. Truly, there will come a time when there is a science of the soul, as scientific as today's physics is, when the spectrum of the soul will be characterized as the sentient soul, as the mind or feeling soul, as the consciousness soul.

And if we now look at the individual peoples of Europe, we find: What characterizes them – but now in a real way, not in the abstract way that it is characterized by the previous ethnology – what characterizes these peoples is how the folk soul, the real, real folk soul, relates to the individual soul, the soul of the individual human being who belongs to the community of peoples.

And here we find, first of all, that the whole nature of the Italian people can be understood in a luminous way through this – I cannot go into this in detail now, but if it were described in full, one would see how what was previously ethnology would would step forward in a radiant way. The Italian people are characterized by the fact that the folk soul, insofar as it belongs to their nationality, intervenes in the individual soul of the Italian people, insofar as it belongs to their nationality, in such a way that this intervention occurs primarily in the sentient soul. Everything that has emerged as Italian culture is, comparatively speaking, the expression of a dialogue between the Italian folk soul and the sentient soul of the individual members of the Italian people. And all the one-sidedness, but also all the greatness of the Italian development, is based on the fact that the link of the soul life, the nuance of the soul life, which we call the sentient soul, is inspired and impelled in a one-sided way by the forces of the Italian folk soul.

Now one might think that I am only talking about abstract concepts with all these things. This is absolutely not the case. For spiritual science further shows us that these three members of the life of the soul, which have been enumerated, are really connected with the whole being, the comprehensive being of the human soul. And from the research in spiritual science, we can say that what we call the sentient soul initially forms the expression of all passions, all impulsive aspects of human nature; that it is the expression of the sensations that well up from the center of the human soul. But at the same time, it is also the part of the human soul that, as elementary as it is, as much as it is initially at a childlike stage, so it is connected with that which passes through births and deaths of the human soul, which belongs to the eternal part of the human soul, which passes through the gate of death and enters the spiritual world after death. Much more than the other aspects of the soul's life is that which unfolds in the sentient soul, that which belongs to the eternal in the soul.

But it also belongs to the eternal that the sentient soul contains only that which is linked to the eternal in the temporal, so that the human being directly lives this eternal as elementary life. If I could expand on this further, which would take many hours, it would point out to us how, precisely through this dialogue and these interactions between the Italian folk soul and the individual soul as a sentient soul, great Italian painting came into being, Dante's poetry came into being, who, let us say, gave a picture of the eternal in his “Divine Comedy”. All these bearers of Italian culture have given these things in such a way that one must say: What they have given is the result of the interaction of the national soul with the sentient soul of the individual, through everything that is accessible to the sentient soul of the individual soul. These things will be characterized in more detail when we turn to other nations and compare their characteristics with those of the Italian people.

But now something very peculiar happens. Apart from the general facts that I have just mentioned, we must also bear in mind that each age, each historical epoch, is assigned, as it were, the effect on a particular part of the human soul as a special mission in the course of time. It cannot be said that the wisdom that rules in the development of the world is always the same in all ages, so that the sentient soul, the soul of understanding or mind, the consciousness soul can work in the same way. That which comes from the human soul must meet the demands of world culture. And now, a deeper consideration of the spiritual development of newer peoples and especially of Europe shows that the activity of the sentient soul was essentially concluded by the middle or end of the sixteenth century, and that therefore the greatness of a people that is based on the sentient soul must be concluded by the sixteenth century. This in turn explains why everything that has been formed within Italian culture since that time, up to the present day, gives the impression of being outdated, and this can be said quite objectively. When we refresh our soul – and this is deeply satisfying for everyone – by drawing on the essence of southern Europe, as so many artists, as Goethe and others have done, it is due to the greatness of the Italian national spirit, which in the sixteenth century; the other is all after-effects, and it could easily be shown how it is prepared in the depths of the historical impulses, that what has since been asserted as Italian greatness must sound so hollow and empty. These things can now only be hinted at, as I said.

Some things, because they have to be briefly mentioned, have to be stated somewhat radically; but if you follow the lines of thought that are presented here, you will see how much more easily they can penetrate into the understanding that we must seek in the present, the understanding of the interrelationships between the peoples of Europe.

If we now consider the French national soul, we have to look for the essential peculiarities in the fact that there is an interaction between the very real national soul and the intellectual or emotional soul.

And everything that French culture has ever achieved can be explained by this peculiar interaction between the national soul and the intellectual or emotional soul of the individuals who belong to the French nation. This also explains why the French are particularly predisposed to combining and assembling facts, and to applying even the most profound concepts only in a way that is convenient for this world. This explains why even in the poetry of the French people, even when it rises to the classical heights, there is still an effort to construct as systematically as possible, for example in drama, to proceed as far as possible according to certain rules; this is the peculiarity of the intellectual soul. This intellectual or emotional soul brings to manifestation in the soul that which, so to speak, half points to the eternal of the soul, but which, on the other hand, points to the completely transitory temporal, which the soul experiences only in the physical world, in connection with the physical between birth and death.

Recently, some psychological societies have once again been pondering why the French mind in particular is so materialistic, why, let us say, even the greatest philosopher of the French people, Descartes – or Cartesius – constructed a philosophy entirely according to the model of mathematics. This is for no other reason than that the whole culture of the French mind comes from the interaction between the soul of the people and the soul of the mind or soul. How often are we Germans quite peculiar when we try to establish harmony between meaning and form in poetry, when we try above all to allow the content to flow into the form in such a way that the content creates its form, how are we when we now look at the same thing in the artistic products of the intellectual or emotional soul of the French, where it is especially important to build rhythm and rhyme in a systematic way. The French have a completely different feeling for rhythm and rhyme than we Germans do. We Germans are quite capable – and Goethe showed this throughout many of his dramas – of creating rhyming rhythms without rhyme. The French, who want to be justifiably French poets, find this quite impossible. Everything that makes up the peculiar character of French poetry, that which makes up the peculiarity of French characters, comes from the interaction of the French national soul with the intellectual or emotional soul of the individual.

If we now turn to the English people, we find that the individual Briton who seeks his connection with the national soul in his nationality is subject above all to an interaction between this national soul and the consciousness soul. Now this consciousness soul is that which, in relation to the outer man, in relation to everything that man is in his dealings with the world of the senses, is the most highly developed part of the soul. But at the same time it is the only thing that is limited to the world we pass through between birth and death. We can, so to speak, look up to the loftiest expressions of the British spirit, we will find everywhere that its expressions come from the interaction of the British national soul with the consciousness soul of the individual British, which, so to speak, is directed into the physical world with its best powers.

This peculiarity of the British character will become even more apparent to us if we now immediately mention the peculiarity of the interaction between the German national soul and the soul of the individual German. There we see – and we shall understand this later through individual expressions of the German nature – there we see that just as light manifests itself in all color nuances, just as reddish yellow, green, blue violet are all expressions of light, so the soul as a whole is the expression of the self, of the I. And that which constitutes the substance of the German people is rooted entirely in the ego, in the self. And the interaction between what we call the German national soul and the individual German, insofar as he stands within his nationality, is the interaction between the national soul and the ego. Hence the peculiarity of the German soul, that it is not one-sidedly attuned to the revelations of the sentient soul, the intellectual soul or the mind soul or the consciousness soul, but that it expresses itself sometimes in this way and sometimes in that; that it strives for universality, for the all-embracing, and that at the same time it strives for inner depth, always wanting to experience more deeply all the different nuances of the soul life in a living way. It can be said that just as the I, the self, is the deepest part of the human being, and the sentient soul, the mind or emotional soul, and the consciousness soul are its expressions, so it is with the German, insofar as he belongs to his people , that in relation to the most intimate part of his mind, in relation to the depths of his soul, when he rises to the best that can flow from the German nature, he holds a dialogue with his deepest soul with the spirit of his people. Thus he also has a feeling, sometimes only an instinct, but on the heights of humanity also a clear consciousness of this confrontation with the spiritual powers of the world.

If we now look back again at the peculiarities of the British people, it becomes clear to us – and I would like to give an example that has greatness, because no one will accuse me of citing Shakespeare to denigrate him, and I would of course consider myself to be a madman, like anyone else, would consider myself a fool if I were to doubt Shakespeare's greatness in the slightest; of course I count Shakespeare among the best poets in the world – but it is one thing to recognize the foundations of the world's effectiveness and another to form value judgments.

Let us consider one of Shakespeare's most characteristic works, the work in which Shakespeare's thoughts and feelings can come to us so fully from his soul, let us consider his “Hamlet”. Let us see how real riddles of the world and of humanity are brought to our soul in Hamlet. “To be or not to be, that is the question.” The ghost of Hamlet's father appears; one might say that the dead intrude into the world of the living. But do we recognize Shakespeare's greatness on the one hand precisely in the fact that he is able to present his characters in such a wonderfully sharply outlined way, in a typical and completely individual characterization, showing us precisely that the part of his soul that is called the consciousness soul is directed towards the external-historical. What is solid in the world about the human being on two legs and reveals itself through the human being is characterized by Shakespeare from the consciousness soul with a wonderfully sharp contour. That is the remarkable thing, that he has become one of the greatest, that he was able to characterize a world from the consciousness soul as it stands before us. That is the characteristic.

But let us look at him just at the point where he wants to touch the boundary that leads beyond the sensual world into the supersensible. He wants to touch it. He wants to cross over this boundary. Hamlet's soul shows what happens to a person who wants to cross over this boundary. The question is raised: to be or not to be? He looks towards the other world, but how far does Hamlet get? He only gets to the threshold, he looks into that land from which no traveler has yet returned.

In this we have the entire workings of the consciousness soul in that the poet is great at characterizing what is in the physical world; but uncertainty immediately befalls the soul when it wants to go beyond the physical world. Shakespeare in particular shows us how he also emerged from the interaction of the folk soul with the consciousness soul.

If we now compare this with an episode in the greatest world poem, which is also the greatest German poem and the greatest German intellectual achievement, we conjure up the scene in the second part of Goethe's “Faust” where the question of “to be or not to be” also arises before the human soul, and the spiritual world and the sensual-material world stand before the human soul full of significance. Mephisto is there, he has the key to the spiritual world, but he is the representative of the materialistic view, he is the representative of those beings who only see the material, the transitory, out of the spirit. He has the key, just as science has the key to the higher secrets, but, if it is only filled with materialism, it cannot enter into these secrets. Goethe even depicts Mephisto as having to place himself in relation to the higher mysteries. And Mephisto addresses to Faust a question that touches so closely on the Hamlet question: “You will enter the indefinite, you will come to nothingness.” There is a reference to that which is to assert itself in Faust as spirit. And Faust replies to Mephisto: “In your nothingness I hope to find the All.”

You see, this is the answer that comes from the depths of the I, the I that knows it is connected to the world spirit, the I that is directly strengthened by the fact that it is the German I that experiences the interaction between the national soul and what lives as the self in the soul. Doubt alone enters into the one-sidedness of the consciousness soul, the Hamlet doubt, precisely that which is truly experienced as the deepest. Then certainty enters and says: Because I experience the divine that flows and is through the world in my own inner being, I know that I must find the All in your [Nothingness]. That is the significant thing, that precisely this nature of the German essence has been expressed in the greatest German intellectual achievement. And what I have discussed in this one scene from Faust, it goes, like the spirit of Faust, through the whole of Faust. That is the significant thing, that at this point this influence of the folk soul into the depths of the soul is expressed through all the nuances of the soul.

But that is also what is so difficult for other Europeans to understand. It is this that appears to the other Europeans as an enigma. And enigmas that cannot be solved are best banished from the soul by such means as are now being used in the sophisticated and defamatory declamations that are being directed from all sides out of hatred towards the German national character, because it cannot be understood.

But from this interaction of the national soul with the individual soul of the human being, insofar as this human being is rooted in his nationality, follows what I would like to call the ever-rejuvenating power of the German spirit, of the German national soul. For by cultivating his innermost being, by being able to hold a dialogue with the national soul, the German always draws closer to this national soul. And when any cultural period has expired, when a cultural period has become decrepit and dies, then a new interaction of the German national soul with the national spirit occurs, a rejuvenation of the whole being. But through this direct contact with the national soul, the German essence not only rejuvenates that which lives within the German spirit itself, but also that which, as spiritual culture in the world, must also flow into the German essence.

Let us see how Christianity flowed into the old, worn-out cultures at the end of ancient times. Oh, one can observe how this Christianity adopted old forms, ancient forms of religions in the Greek and Roman folk. How that which was Greek philosophy was superimposed like a religious element, superimposed over that which was carried into human development as a living impulse as the deed of the living Christ.

And then we see how Christianity enters into the self-refreshing and rejuvenating spirit of the German being. This can be observed in individual phenomena. For example, let us see how the “Heliand” was written in the ninth century, a German way of presenting the events in Palestine that are grouped around Christ Jesus. If we allow this remarkable ninth-century poem to take effect on us, it shows us above all the peculiarity that here, out of the German spirit, the events surrounding Christ Jesus are described, who has taken Christ Jesus completely into his own mind, who sees a longing, an ideal in it, to live in his own soul life in such a way that the forces of Christ permeate this own soul life. Everything that is German soul should be permeated with Christianity. This is the source of the feeling that arises when reading the Heliand and letting it take effect in one: All this is related to us, the eternal of Christ is described to us in such a way that it does not appear as renewing, as rejuvenating an old culture, but rather that it appears as if the power of Christ itself is absorbed in its youthfully fresh achievement and is directly present, rejuvenating itself.

And then we see how, for example, such profound poetry, which of course did not originate on German soil in its first form, like Parzifal – and I could name others – how such poetry has been seized by the German essence, how it has been deepened, how the adventurous nature that was formerly associated with Parzifal appears to us in the works of Wolfram von Eschenbach and later in those of other writers, and how we see Parzifal as a representative of the striving human soul in general. We see in it something that lives in such a way that its striving is intimately connected with the forces in the human soul that strive for the highest, for the path to the spiritual. And we see, for example, how medieval religious spiritual life is grasped so profoundly by the power of what I have just explained. We see, for example, in the work of Meister Eckhart, this profound German mystic, how he constantly speaks of the fact that the divine must merge with the soul itself, that the soul can feel how God lives in it. Yes, that everything the soul experiences as thinking, feeling and willing can be experienced as if God Himself were thinking, feeling and willing in it. To let God rule completely within oneself becomes the ideal of German mysticism, the ideal of Meister Eckhart and others.

And if we follow the course of this spiritual current, we find numerous expressions by him that show us the same way of thinking. One of his expressions, I would just like to present it to you now for the reason that it can show this way of thinking so extraordinarily characteristically. It is a saying by Angelus Silesius:

I die and do not live either. God himself dies in me,
And what I am supposed to live, he also lives for and for.

Here we have direct proof of the intimate union of the individual human soul with the all-embracing spirit of the world. And do we not see in this an expression of an infinitely profound idea of immortality, an idea of immortality that can confront us, so to speak, in gigantic grandeur? Here Angelus Silesius says: I die and do not live either, God Himself dies in me. But when God Himself dies in me, it means that the event of death is experienced by the God who lives in me; then death can only be an appearance, because God cannot die in me! One sees that this profound German mystic grasps even the thought of death in connection with the divine, living permeation of the world, and he comes to the certainty of immortality from the experience of the divine world within himself. This stems from the fact that the German cannot remain with an old realization, but, as is so magnificently expressed in Faust, always strives for the sources of life. And even if he has studied everything, like Faust himself, he strives beyond everything, he strives for direct contact with the spirit of the world. For that is the peculiar nature, that is the essence, that the self seeks interaction with the national soul in German intellectual life. Therefore, out of this nature of its essence, the true German mind also feels in harmony with the eternal forces of the world that lie beyond death.

That is why we find such profound words in the works of Jakob Böhme and later in those of Fichte, in different ways in both, but both striving in the same direction. They said: He who grasps the essence of death from the depths of the human soul actually grasps that which is already immortal within mortal human nature. That which we carry with us through death is the self, which we have within us even while we live here on earth between birth and death. Therefore, Jakob Böhme, and later Fichte in the manner of Jakob Böhme, regards it as the highest goal to become aware of that which passes through the gate of death, that which lives in man as the eternal, to become aware of it already in earthly life, so that that which can be recognized as the fully developed eternal can be carried through the gate of death, out of the mortal body. And here Jacob Böhme expresses in a wonderful way the saying that is so characteristic of the peculiarity of the German national character as described. He says:

He who does not die before he dies
Perishes when he dies.

These are profound words! For it should be said: Those who are unable to unite during their life on earth in the body with the immortal, cannot in a proper way achieve the consciousness of their unity with the spirit freed from the body after death.

He who does not die before he dies
Will perish when he dies.

These words are spoken with such depth of feeling, and they are spoken by someone who wants to unfold her best powers by allowing the spirit and soul of her nation to weave into her own depths what it wants to give her.

In this respect, the Russian national spirit is incomprehensible, quite incomprehensible, precisely in terms of what is most deeply characteristic of the German national soul. This Russian national spirit, whose characteristic peculiarity, however strange it may seem to some, may appear strange to some, but since I can only characterize many things very briefly, sometimes radical words must be used -, this Russian national spirit, whose peculiarity in relation to Western European and, above all, Central European intellectual culture is arrogance, pride. When people often speak of the modesty of the Russian national spirit, this is based, in relation to what we see as characteristic, on a complete misunderstanding of the innermost impulses of this Russian national spirit. If one can see in the Italian people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the soul of the individual; if one can see in the French people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the soul of the mind or emotions; in the British people how there is an interaction between the national soul and the consciousness soul of the individual; and in the German being, a direct experience of the national soul in the self of the individual, then one must say: the Russian being, to this day he lives in such a way, despite all the forces he carries within himself, that the Russian national soul has not yet found its way into the individual soul. That is why someone who is completely immersed in Russian national identity, whether as a philosopher or as an artist, does not experience the kind of intimate coexistence that the German seeks through the characteristics just described within his being.

The Russian person does not know this flowing in of the forces of the national soul into one's own soul, into the individual soul. The Russian person sees something in the national soul that hovers over the individual souls like a mist. A Russian person, even a profound philosopher like Soloviev, who is the greatest philosophical mind of the Russian people, does not speak as a German would, for example, saying: I have my trust in the deepest core of my soul, which is within me, and it can connect with the divine that flows and weaves through the world. And so he is certain of true spiritual progress for humanity because he feels the power within him through which God reigns in him, which finds expression in the great creations of the German spirit.

That conversation, which every German, the simplest, most original German instinctively feels, is basically quite unknown even to a philosophical Russian person. And so we see, especially in the case of the most outstanding spirit of the Russian people, of the Russian world-view striving, in Soloviev, who died in 1900, we see in this great philosopher: when we go through his works, then one has to – forgive the expression – get out of one's Western European skin in order to live one's way into what one encounters there. It has greatness – that should not be denied, greatness should be acknowledged wherever it is to be found in the world – but it has greatness in such a way that when Solowjow, for example, speaks of what should happen through Russian culture should come, it will come as if from the heights of the mist, as a kind of nourishment, as something that should be sprinkled down by grace at a certain time into the deeds of the Russian people. He is waiting for a miracle. When God Himself works from the heights of the beyond into people, then people will move forward.

The Russian sees the folk spirit above the individual souls; he does not see it working in the three characterized soul powers, let alone really being able to grasp that intimate experience of the spirit in the individual soul itself, which is precisely the characteristic of the Central European folk striving. Therefore, we also find in the great philosopher the peculiarity that the folk soul does not grasp with its powers either the sentient soul, the intellectual soul, the emotional soul, or the consciousness soul. We find in Solovyov the peculiarity that these individual soul powers are at work in him. We see how they string together one idea and one sensation after another according to rules that we in Central Europe would never be able to perceive as logic or inner necessity. We see, as it were, the spirit of the people, revered by the Russian people, hovering in airy heights. And we see: there the souls can be active with their chaotically whirling soul forces. That this can be made clear precisely in the case of one of the greatest minds of the Russian world is remarkable.

And again and again we must remind ourselves of the momentous words spoken by Lessing in his Testament. Oh, this Testament of Lessing's, which is called 'The Education of the Human Race'! He explains how the whole development of humanity is a great unity. And he expounds an idea which, through spiritual science, will be elevated to the rank of a scientific truth: the idea of the repeated earthly lives of human beings. There are very clever people today who say: Well, Lessing created great things, but then he grew old. One need not attach so much importance to the fact that he came up with the idea that the soul always carries over again into a later epoch that which can be made fruitful in a later epoch by an earlier one. But Lessing truly did not grow old and decrepit, nor did he become weak-minded, as very clever people say, even if they do not say it in relation to this 'Education of the Human Race'. Rather, it was precisely at this point that Lessing grasped in the deepest sense what the human soul experiences when it can experience the rule of the world spirit within itself as the most characteristic of its deepest experiences. From this consciousness Lessing spoke the weighty word as in a testament: “I feel as a human soul through its own content, through its own essence; I too have surged from time to time, from eternity to eternity.” Through what I am, I am immortal. And now he concludes: “Is not all of eternity mine?”

There is a conception of the spirit, a cultural conception, which is the direct consequence of this ever-rejuvenating power of the German national soul.

Let us compare this with the belief of the great Russian philosopher, Solowjow, that what man can achieve can only be achieved by a miracle giving the Russian people their mission themselves. If we compare these two beliefs, we have every reason to understand why what is Russian in nature cannot understand what is Western European, what is Central European, and especially what is German in nature. And therein lies the entire arrogance, the entire arrogance of the Russian intellectuals, these Russian intellectuals who have been talking for a long time about how what the West has achieved in terms of culture is actually rotten, ripe for destruction, and that it must be replaced by something that could emerge from the forces of the Russian character into world culture. This was not given much consideration in times that were not as war-torn as our present fateful times, but it has always been the basic tenor of Russian intellectual life that Western culture is rotten.

We have seen the most diverse minds, Khomyakov, Katkov, Aksakov and so on, appear in Russian intellectual life in the nineteenth century. They all repeatedly say: Western European intellectualism must perish. One of these minds even went so far as to say: In this Western European culture, everything has been led by the impulses of art to that human-selfish, to that egoistic individualism, which leads people apart and founds everything that is to be established on violence, on servitude and hatred.

According to important Russian minds of the nineteenth century, these are the characteristics of Western European culture: “violence, servitude and hatred”. While, according to the same minds, Russian culture is said to be based on “freedom, concord and love”.

Now, Solowjow was an important mind, an important spirit. And precisely because he was so great, the feeling that he had to develop from his intimate connection with the Russian essence was that he says: the national soul still hovers above us. We have not yet connected with it in our individual souls. God must perform a miracle, must radiate down to us that which is to be our mission.

But he was convinced that it is up to the Russian people to redeem the world, because Western European culture has reached its death throes, because it has become decrepit. So he, Soloviev, says further: We do not want to destroy this Western European culture, but we want to heal it.

What has just been said about Russian culture should not be seen as a special impulse within the spirituality of the Russian people. For precisely in Russia, what is to be mentioned can be counted among the symptoms that arise from the instincts of nationality. Therefore, in Solowjow, as in his Slavophile predecessors (although he fought against them), we see a connection between what they, out of their arrogance, characterize as the mission of the Russian people; we see how they deduce the whole course of future politics from it. We see them, out of these impulses, demanding that Russia expand ever further and further against the West, that Constantinople become a Russian city, that the Sea of Marmara become a Russian lake, and so on. Everything that we are experiencing today, everything that underlies the attack that the Russian essence is also politically waging against the Central European, the German essence, everything is completely permeated, in terms of feelings and emotions, especially in the best Russians, by what has just been characterized, by the haughty conviction that Russia alone can save European culture, indeed world culture.

It is precisely the contrast between the German and the Russian nature that makes it possible to understand what the driving forces of our present world culture are and what struggles the German nature will be drawn into in the future, which will most certainly come.

Dear attendees, one can refer back to Goethe's “Faust” when one wants to show what is mentioned here as the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul, what has been characterized as such. Don't we see Faust standing there – Goethe wrote this scene in the 1770s , the words have become almost trivial, having been heard so often and probably already declaimed by everyone themselves – we see Faust standing there, wanting to escape from everything he has absorbed from the forces of the past, because he wants to connect directly in his soul with living knowledge, we hear his words:

Alas, I have now studied philosophy,

law and medicine,

and unfortunately also theology

to the full, with great effort.

There I stand, poor fool that I am,

and am no wiser than before!

Goethe wrote this from his own consciousness, from what he himself felt in the seventies of the eighteenth century.

Then came what can truly be called a 'rejuvenation of the German spirit' through German idealism. Goethe himself, like Faust, strove to absorb the sources of life with his thinking, feeling and willing into his soul. Then the great German idealistic philosophy, which had been pushed back precisely by the invasion of the French and also the Russian worldviews, came to Central Europe itself. Then came what must be seen as an achievement: the fact that these struggles again made it possible for the greatness of this German philosophical idealism to be discussed in wider circles.

And so they came, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, who tried to present law and medicine to the German people in a rejuvenated way. And they were not only philosophers, for Schelling wrote a yearbook for medicine; Fichte wrote a treatise on the state. And they all wanted to be theologians. The German intellectual powers that emerged from the depths of the German soul after Goethe wrote these Faust words were tremendous.

Alas, I have now studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately also theology
to the full, with great endeavor.
There I stand, poor fool that I am,
and am as wise as before!

But let us now assume that Goethe did not write these words of Faust in 1772, but only in 1840, after a new philosophy, a new jurisprudence, a new theology had passed through the German soul. Do you think that Goethe, if he had written the beginning of Faust in 1840, only after emerging from the Faust mood, would have written the words as follows:

Now, thank God,
I have studied with Fichte, Schelling, Hegel;
so there I am, I wise man,
and no longer need to be as stupid as before?

Even in the 1790s, despite all this greatness that had passed through German culture, Goethe would certainly have said:

I have now, alas! studied philosophy,
law and medicine,
and unfortunately theology as well
with great zeal and effort.
There I stand, poor fool that I am,
and am no wiser than before!

And again, just as before, Faust would have longed for the sources of life and sought his refuge in the living spirit that was to appear to him. The German does not crave knowledge that has grown old; he always craves that knowledge that has flowed from the depths of the soul and emerged into the visible world. He craves the rejuvenating power of the German spirit itself, as it lives in the interrelationship between the German national soul and the German soul of the individual.

That is what one must feel, ladies and gentlemen, if one wants to visualize the fundamental character of the German spirit. And one may say: it has actually been felt, felt even by those who now dare to say the most defamatory, hateful and poisonous things about the peculiarity of the German spirit in the most diverse languages.

Let us look, for example, to the West. It is very strange: if we go to the far West, we find an excellent spirit of the nineteenth century, Ralph Waldo Emerson. Emerson, as is natural for an English-writing writer, names the English as the first people in the world. Yet in numerous passages of his writings, he shows us that he values the Germans more than the English. And today, we can reflect on some of what this English-writing writer said, because it would be unpleasant for us to give a characteristic of our own nature in our own words. Emerson, who had a sense of the rejuvenating power of the German national soul, said the following about Goethe:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public:

— spoken in English in the nineteenth century, mind you —

that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth.

Now, I would like to say: What more could you want? In English, you hear that Goethe is the representative of Germanness, that he expresses something that he has in common with the whole nation: “that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth.”

In England and America, people respect talent, but they are only satisfied when it works for or against a party of their conviction. In France, people are delighted when they see brilliant ideas, regardless of where they lead. In all these countries, however, talented men write as far as their gifts reach. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind possesses neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed for the practical, nor, finally, the American adventurousness. What it does have, however, is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?” The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself on them. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it advocate? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get his ideas?

The English [...] only see the individual, they do not know how to grasp humanity as a whole according to higher laws.

The Germans think for Europe.

The English do not appreciate the depth of the German genius.

Dear attendees, the entire nature of this presentation shows what I have tried to characterize for you today from the perspective of spiritual science. Emerson senses something of this intimate connection between the self of the individual German and that which passes through the world as the Spirit of Truth, as an ideal that indeed hovers over German development. Emerson also sensed this, as he says in the following words:

For this reason, the distinctive terms used in higher conversation are all of German origin. While the English and the French, who are mentioned with distinction because of their acumen and erudition, approach their studies and their point of view with a certain superficiality and their personal character is not too deeply connected with what they have taken up and with the way they express themselves, is not too deeply connected, Goethe, the head and content of the German nation, speaks, not because he has talent, but the truth concentrates its rays in his soul and shines out from it. He is wise in the highest degree, though his wisdom may often be obscured by his talent. However excellent what he says is, he has something in his eye that is even better. [...] He has that fearsome independence that springs from contact with the truth.

From many of the hateful words we hear today, my dear audience, if you are sensitive to such tones, you can discern what Emerson calls “the fearsome independence that springs from the truth”. That independence that is so unbearable to those who cannot muster sympathy for such things. One truly does not need to be chauvinistic to express these things. They arise not only objectively for the observer who stands in the midst of the spiritual essence, they also arise for those who can rise above the peculiarities of their nation.

But one also has such feelings in other places, and in order to illustrate to some extent what I have discussed from spiritual scientific research, I would also like to add the following: Perhaps you know that one of those who spoke the most brutal, hateful, venomous words against the German 'barbarians' was the Belgian-French poet Maeterlinck, Maeterlinck, who himself found so much recognition within the German character. I would like to draw attention to a peculiar compatriot of Maeterlinck. And I would like to tell you a little about this compatriot in a very brief way. So, he is a fellow countryman of Maeterlinck, and a Franco-Belgian poet. When he talks about the influence that an archetypally German spirit, an archetypally German soul, has had on him, when he talks about the influence that Novalis has had on him, this Franco-Belgian poet says some very strange and significant things. It was some time ago, but it is still characteristic to hear a Belgian who writes in French talk about what the soul of Novalis has become for him. This Belgian says: “Isn't Novalis, out of his German uniqueness, a spirit who created something that cannot even be expressed, that is not limited to the earthly at all!”

And so this Belgian writer comes up with something special to describe the purely spiritual influence and the deep impression that Novalis makes on him. He thinks of saying: When you read Schiller or Shakespeare, you find everything that is poetically depicted in Schiller and Shakespeare, but it is only of interest to what is experienced by people on earth. But if one wants to characterize what the soul of Novalis wrote, one would have to assume that spirits from the spiritual heights, spirits from other planets would be interested in it. What Schiller and Shakespeare said is only of interest to people on earth; what Novalis wrote must also interest angels, it must also interest beings that have never heard of the earth. So significant, so deeply connected is what Novalis wrote with the spiritual forces of the German national soul. He characterizes the nature of the influence that the original German, Novalis, has had on him very peculiarly, and he says:

But if he needed other proof, it would lead him among those whose works almost stir silence. She would open the gate of the realm where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of their bodies. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises [by one step] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances with our higher worlds. She would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably [only] begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be on his guard unceasingly. On these heights alone, there are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and ideas [that resemble and are] as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly illuminated peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a [strange] reason; but [the people I am talking about have come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community [count].

This French-writing Belgian feels impressed by Novalis. He feels the magic breath of the German spirit as it flows from Novalis to him. If one were to believe what Maeterlinck, his fellow countryman, said about German “barbarism” after the outbreak of the war, one would not believe that this Belgian would have said: Oh, these useless screamers, who only resort to phrases, they should remain silent when it comes to matters of the mind!

In truth, it is difficult to question one's soul and to discern its weak childish voice amidst the useless clamor that surrounds it.

Yes well, my dear attendees, the French-writing Belgian whom I have quoted here has already spoken, but I have somewhat mystified you. It is the same person who said what I read about Novalis; it is Maeterlinck himself. He only spoke in this way in the healthy days of his soul. One can only believe when reading that it was said by a completely different personality. This is what has become of those who once felt something of the magic breath of the German soul. Maeterlinck himself wrote about Novalis in this way.

From this we can see what will be necessary to defend the German soul against the misjudgment of its essence, with the weapons that we ourselves must take from it as its members. And this defense will truly become more and more necessary. What good does it do that the German soul, having also become part of external culture, has already been understood! That which separates it from those who have become its enemies will speak ever louder if it is not defended by the German essence itself. And what we hear today, one will have to be convinced, as [what we have heard] is in some respects only a beginning, especially with regard to the deeper currents of human life.

I would like to give another example. Shortly before the outbreak of this war, an Englishwoman wrote a book about Germany. Yes, you see, an Englishwoman who differs from many of her compatriots in that she really got to know the German character. Because she was in Germany for eight years. She got to know universities, clinics, hospitals, educational institutions, all kinds of places. But she also got to know the German character, which, as an emanation of the German soul, must after all be present in every soul, even if it masks and hides itself in ordinary life. The book was written shortly before the war. As I said, not in Berlin, not in Cologne or Leipzig, but in England and in English, the following was said about Germany:

We read a great deal [...] about the new Germany and its new spirit. But there is no new Germany and no new spirit. What exists is the mature work of generations, which has always been. Blinded by the sudden splendor of Germany's prosperity, we are inclined to forget that, except for prosperity, it has rarely occupied a place other than one of the very top among nations. In religion and philosophy, Germany has shone at a time when everything around it was dark; in literature, it has made an epoch-making impact; in music, it has always dominated. [...]

German literature, German religion, German philosophy are books with seven seals for us. What we do know is how many dreadnaughts Germany has and how much its trade has increased. What is really important is not the dreadnaught, but the brain of its builder, the courage and talent of its commander. What is really important is not the increase in sales, but the human qualities that prompted it.

Forty years ago, Germany was fighting for its existence, and it is still fighting for it today. It is completely wrong to believe that Germany is already at its peak. It is fighting a quiet but determined battle against powerful rivals whose power and experience was gained generations ago.

At every border and across the water, the opponents sit, commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, so that they can pounce on her and overwhelm her. Germany knows this very well.

It would be good if those who are now reflecting on the cause of the war were also listened to, if those who say what the mood within Germany should be towards those who lurked in the period leading up to this war were also listened to.

And if we ask, my dear attendees: How do you understand German culture when you would like to destroy this German culture with more or less pride or from other points of view? A few more characteristics on this point at the end. There is, for example, a true Russian intellectual of the present day. If one picks up his latest book, one can get the impression, from the last words he says about Goethe, that he counts Goethe among the greatest in the development of humanity. We know how Goethe is connected with what must be called the rejuvenating forces of the German national soul. We know that his Faust, if not in an artistic sense, then at least in terms of the power of its characterization of humanity, rises above all other works of world literature. We know how nonsensical it would be to characterize Goethe without first seeing the great spirit of modern times that reigns in Goethe and from which his Faust could emerge. Mereschkowski, the Russian intellectual who certainly knows Faust and German culture as well as he can know it, judges Goethe from what I have just called the characteristic arrogance of the Russian intellectual. He judges the same Goethe about whom Emerson speaks as I read earlier, daring to say the following words:

When Goethe speaks of the French Revolution, he suddenly bends to the earth, as a giant might be crushed by an evil spell and shrink to the size of a dwarf; from a Hellenic demigod he becomes a German bourgeois and – may the shadow of the Olympian have mercy on me – a German philistine, a “Herr von Goethe”, a privy councillor of the Duke of Weimar and a decent son of the decent Frankfurt shopkeeper.

With certain people, it does not matter that such words may be correct, if one is a pedant, but it does matter whether the person who finds it appropriate to speak such words about Goethe understands the greatness of Goethe at all. Sometimes it does not matter what one says, but whether one is at all capable of saying something specific about a particular object or a particular person.

I said: One must seek the Russian national spirit as if floating above the Russian individual soul. But this means that this individual Russian soul, let us say, can easily live as if “down there” without being touched by its national spirit, without also having that confidence and security that arises from the way of dealing with the national spirit, as we were able to characterize it with the German national soul. Therefore, permeated by poetic values, but nevertheless like a worldview, what Mereschkowski calls the “barfoot worldview” as a newest kind of Russian worldview could arise. Now, we know how this barefoot worldview basically arises from the mood that must come when one feels so completely grounded and cannot find the connection with the folk soul, to see within the spirit, so to speak, to that which man is outside of the spiritual. Materialism has not yet taken this completely seriously, but it is characteristic that this Russian individual spirit has taken it seriously in his world view. And so he denies everything spiritual and comes to what an important Russian poet addresses as a characteristic of man. I would truly not mention this if it only occurred here and there. But it is something that the spirit of the East comes to, which characterizes the impulses that live there.

Yes, what is he to you, this human being? Do you understand? He takes you by the collar and crushes you under the nail like a flea! Then you may feel sorry for him! ... Yes! Then you may reveal all your foolishness to him. He will put you on seven different forms of torture for your pity. He will wrap your intestines around his hand and pull all the veins out of your body, one inch per hour. ... Oh you... Pity! Pray to God that you will be beaten without any mercy, and that's it! ... Pity! ... Ugh!

And Maxim Gorky says that these words are spoken entirely from his soul, because this is how he perceives what a person can find as his value when he looks at himself for what he actually is.

One must put such things together with the many things that have come from the East, the arrogance and the arrogance of Russian intellectualism in the course of the last few years, the outgrowth of which is the mood that speaks today of blood and death.

Among the Russian intellectuals I mentioned earlier, we must also mention Yushakov, who has written books that have not found a large audience but which nevertheless show what has been in the minds of many intellectuals in Russia. Yushakov has the following ideas about the course of world culture. I would like to briefly present these ideas to you. He says: This West, everything that this West of Europe has achieved in culture, is over. If you look over to the East, you find that there is actually still something in it of rejuvenation, of germs from which something can develop. But the West cannot develop this. This West has always shown [...] a gap in the text].

[In contrast, at the end of the nineteenth century, Yushakov writes about the Russian-English question in Asia: As far as Russia's mission in Asia is concerned, what the English are doing there is rotten through and through. What Russia is doing there is infinitely more spiritual.

The English – Yushakov says – have behaved towards Asia as if they believed that the Asian peoples existed only to “clothe themselves in English fabrics, fight each other with English weapons, work with English tools, eat from English vessels and play with English baubles”.

Russia alone, Yushakov believes, is capable of feeling an affinity with this Asia, which is now lying prostrate, groaning under the rape of Europe, because it cannot yet grasp the inner human being, which has been made sick and aged by the ego, like the European West.

It is an interesting book, published in 1885, about the relations between England and Russia. It highlights the superiority and arrogance of Russian over Englishness. In 1885, Yushakov has the following idea:

This West, it is over for him. If you look to the East, there is still something that can be developed, the West, especially England, have caused the darkening of India, Persia.

What have the English done in Asia? They have arrogated to themselves everything that was once established in Asia by the power of Ahriman. They have crept in where Ormuzd was at work. They have sat down everywhere where there was light to enjoy the fruits of that light. But what have the Russians done? The Russians have gone everywhere where Asia has been impoverished, where Asia was threatened and impoverished, where people had come down, where people were oppressed and oppressed, where people were plunged into poverty and darkness. Russia has taken care of these people. That is why Russia has its mission in Asia. Therefore, the world struggle between Russia and England must break out in Asia. Russia must be reinstated in the rights of Ormuzd against Ahriman, after it has behaved in this way, while the English have only interfered in what has been established in Asia in terms of fertility, greatness and beauty, and have exploited it.

This is how this Russian speaks about England. And he says: England exploits millions of Hindus. Its greatness and power depend on the people there. I do not wish anything similar for my fatherland. I can only rejoice that it is sufficiently far removed from this sad state of affairs.

Could one not actually wish that the Russians of today, who admire the English, would take a little time to study this book by Yushakov, which was only published in 1885 and deals with relations between Russia and England? It could be interesting at all sometimes if people would get to know something of the driving forces that have worked and will continue to work on the forces that have led to what is now around us, that reaches our souls.

I believe, my dear audience, that what I have said, based on the spiritual-scientific foundations of the nature of the German being, can be substantiated, even if it is illustrated by this or that. And I could cite similar evidence to support what I have said for a long, long time. One could cite such things for so long that no one in the room would be listening.

All of this, however, would illuminate the one truth that is so important now, when we first have to forge the weapons to defend what is also being attacked spiritually and what will be increasingly surrounded, all of this would lead us to the one great truth with which one must come to terms, the truth that the German, by virtue of his immediate national character, could see the direct relationship, the experienced relationship of the individual soul with the national spirit.

And when we see how this German idealism always worked in the whole mood of the German people and its great representatives, especially in the time that we can call the great epoch of the German spirit, how there are seeds, and when we see what is all that is contained in these germs, then we may say to ourselves: We can also trust in the inner strength of the German character, just as we trust in the germs that must unfold into blossoms and fruits in nature; we may have confidence in the German spiritual life. And we know that in many respects it still contains the germs, and that it contains the power of perpetual rejuvenation, that this power is its own. And we know from this what those who, at great sacrifice in the east and in the west, have to defend that which is enclosed as in a large fortress in Central Europe.

But there is also a way to direct the soul's eye to the inner forces of the spiritual world. Then one does not look at this German people as it may be looked at today by the enemies of the German spirit, but rather in such a way that one says to oneself: the German spirit has not yet been fully realized. It has powers within it that are only germinal powers, that must first fully develop in the future. Therefore, from such considerations, however imperfectly they may be presented, as they could only be presented in a lecture in such a short time, nevertheless that which can be summarized in certain feelings emerges, feelings that give the German soul confidence and courage and hope, precisely from the depths of this being.

On the one hand, we are completely convinced today that we have no need to give courage and confidence to those who have to suffer and bleed for the great events of the time based on certain, genuine knowledge and insight – the whole course of events within the realm of the German being, the Central European being, shows that this is not necessary. European being, shows how the Germans went to war, how they knew how to wage this war. No, not to talk about it, but to talk about what reigns and works in the innermost being of the German soul, so that it gives us [and those in the field] certainty about the future and fills us with hope. It is to point this out that today's reflections were made. And that is why I would like to summarize, because the feelings are the most important thing, the feelings that underlie the individual words of this evening. I would like to summarize some of the feelings that, as I believe, can arise for German feeling and sentiment precisely from the contemplation of the German essence and its connection with the German national spirit:

The German spirit has not yet been fulfilled,
What it should bring to the world.
It lives hopefully in future concerns,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerful
Hidden things that must still mature.
How can a wish for his end, without understanding,

At our Düsseldorf branch consideration the day before yesterday we looked a little at that which one calls the passage through the gate of death by the human being. It is that which matters that the Western mental development is penetrated with a knowledge which overcomes death, as it were, through knowledge, overcomes it because it recognises death as a transformation of life.

It is a matter of course that just in our time, penetrated with materialistic views, death must appear more and more like a border of the world which the human being experiences. We can easily imagine that this was substantially different in ancient times; because, as we know, the human beings had leftovers of an old dreamy clairvoyance in these times. This dreamy clairvoyance was connected with an existence in the spiritual worlds. Because in those times in which our souls were embodied in such bodies in which still a clairvoyant existence was possible in the spiritual worlds, our souls were connected with the spiritual world. Death was to them at that time not a significant, not a final phenomenon as it is in our times. But this would become stronger and stronger if that knowledge did not come bit by bit into our time which should be opened by spiritual science. Hence, do not believe that this spiritual science which we acquire does not have the greatest significance already as spiritual science itself for the whole experience of the human being.

Indeed, many of us will say: we strive for two things on our way through the spiritual-scientific movement. First: to penetrate that reasonably which spiritual science gives us. Secondly: because we apply to our souls the spiritual-scientific methods, as they are outlined to us, for example, in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds?, we strive for getting the perception of the spiritual world already during our physical incarnation. But some will say: definitely only to some, only to few it is allotted by their karma to reach the spiritual world consciously in this incarnation. Indeed, everybody would and does come into the spiritual world in certain sense who only applies these rules; but noticing that he is in it; taking notice on it is more difficult than entering it. Some people are prevented from being aware in which way they are in the spiritual world even if they are really in it. Because they are unable to apply that fine, intimate attention on their experience. One would like to say, everybody who applies the instructions given in the book How Does One Attain Knowledge of the Higher Worlds? enters the spiritual world with his self after a relatively short time, but—he does not notice it. Just concerning such a consideration I have to stress repeatedly that the reasonable understanding of that which is given in spiritual science does not depend at all whether anybody himself beholds in the spiritual world.

We have often said: the spiritual-scientific view is necessary, of course, to get the facts of the spiritual world. If, however, the facts are given, everybody can understand them if he uses his unbiased healthy reason not clouded by prejudices of the external materialistic world. We have to realise that it does not suffice if we intend or persuade ourselves that we are beyond the prejudices which the materialistic age gives. Indeed, concerning our will, concerning our longing we are beyond these prejudices of the materialistic time if we devote us seriously to the spiritual-scientific movement. Since basically nobody will confess honestly and sincerely to this spiritual-scientific movement who is not penetrated in the deepest inside by the longing for overcoming the materialistic prejudices. But they stick in our ways of thinking firmly, and that sticks especially firmly which is not directly a materialistic prejudice but which is connected with the materialistic prejudice. It is connected with the materialistic prejudice, with the whole materialistic world view that the human being cannot develop a comprehensive power of thinking in a certain way. Our time strives for intelligence and logic, but those who want to be at the head of the scientific or cultural efforts of our time do not possess a lot of keen mind and logic.

One does not aim at the whole clearness of thinking in our time at all. If one fully aimed at the clearness of thinking, one would also be able to understand spiritual science completely. Who thinks clearly cannot argue anything against that which spiritual science has to bring forward—of course on the whole; since the spiritual scientist can be mistaken as the human being can generally be mistaken. Countless examples could be given which show us that just our time is little inclined to apply clear, keen thinking.

I would like to give you an example only of our days. One could read it always as a very common judgment of a really great man,¹ a very significant person. This judgment has been repeated, and one of the German commentators on politics showed off particularly presenting this judgment time and again. A great man said once that war is nothing but a continuation of political intercourse with the admixture of different means. This appears to some thinkers, who think just in the sense of our time, to be infinitely logic: war is a continuation of politics with different means. Of course, nothing should be argued against the significance of the man who said this. He means with it that the peoples have political intercourse with each other in a certain way, thereby they order their problems together; if this politics has arrived at a point where it cannot be continued, then—well, what then?—Then just war continues politics. In this sense, the judgment of all human beings can be justified and accepted immediately.

But if one thinks a little, one finds out how one-sided such a judgment is in most cases. Since this judgment is the same as one says, for example: there are two human beings who are friends or are in another relationship who always have got on well, maybe, have loved each other endlessly, and start then quarrelling. You could also say: quarrel is the continuation of love. The quarrel is externally considered the continuation of love. But about the nature of the quarrel one will have said nothing particular if one knows that this quarrel is the continuation of love. One has achieved nothing with it; of course, one has not stated the least about war if one looks at it, so that one says: war is the continuation of politics. It is really that way that judgments which are, nevertheless, rather one-sided judgments can appear tremendously significant in this time.

Today a judgment is appreciated that expresses nothing particular about the nature of the matter in question. However, such a judgment not always needs to be futile. It can even be very fruitful. But those who bear witness of our world view should penetrate the veil of maya a little also concerning the external life. Of course, one should not argue anyhow against the judgment which one reads in every third newspaper column, because it is a fruitful judgment. However, one would experience something peculiar with the correctness of the judgment if one wanted to examine it with a clear thinking. This also holds true if one can read almost in every newspaper column: we shall be victorious, because we must be victorious.—One can argue nothing against the justification of this judgment, against the fertility and the value of this judgment; but if anybody who stands before a river and has to cross over it says: I shall swim, because I must swim,—the correctness of the judgment depends whether he is able to swim. You can testify the correctness of the judgment of a non-swimmer in this case with a clear thinking: I want to swim, because I must swim. Which value does such a judgment have? It has a high value, because there are forces, there is courage and confidence, they penetrate the will. It is a judgment motivating the will. It is not a judgment which recognises anything, but it strengthens the will. That is why the judgment is significant and important. Do not misunderstand such matters. They are stated to show that a clear thinking understanding the matters is something different than that which is asserted so often. In our time, the materialistic ways of thinking are exceptionally developed.

However, our judgment is mostly obscured if we have to examine what the spiritual scientist says. It is true that everything can be seen that the spiritual scientist says, even if one has never looked into the spiritual world, if one applies a really healthy, correct thinking. There is nobody who, also without being clairvoyant, if he only had a healthy judgment, would have to be an adversary of spiritual science. There are other reasons in the nature of the human being, in the soul of the human being to be an adversary of spiritual science. One of these reasons is the following above all.

If the human being perceives in the physical world, his physical percipience is always supported by his physical, etheric, and astral bodies. These human members were created in the course of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, and were added to the human being through the forces of the divine hierarchies. Today, they are that which they have become in the past. The human being is put in that which was prepared for him for long times, when he enters his physical existence. All that supports him when he perceives in the physical world. Whenever we perceive, whenever we form a mental picture, an impression is made in our physical body. We know nothing about it, but this impression does take place in the physical body. That is why we have a memory during the physical life. You have to imagine this matter only correctly. If we put the question: why do we have a memory in the physical life?—We must say: whenever we form a mental picture, an impression on the physical body is made.

This impression is even more or less humanlike. Any mental picture which we form makes not only—like the materialist-fantastically thinking human being means—an impression here or there in the brain, but any mental picture makes an impression on the whole human being. Any mental picture which we form really delivers an impression reproducing a kind of the human head and upper parts of the chest. It is really true: if I now speak hundred syllables per minute to you, you have formed about fifty human beings within yourselves in these minutes, however, you have got rid of fifty human pictures quickly, and it alternates quickly between these two processes. You can imagine how many such human pictures you have formed in yourselves when the hour of this consideration is over. These human pictures are more or less identical in their external figure, but incomparable on the other hand; no picture is completely identical to the other. Any picture is different from the other, even if just a little. It is a childish idea if anybody believes if he has an impression of his outside world and remembers it tomorrow that this impression has sat in any form in him. It has not sat at all in him, but a picture which is humanlike has remained in the human being. Really, a humanlike picture remains of every impression of the outside world.

If you remember the impression again tomorrow, you transport your soul into this human picture which is in you. The reason why you see not this human picture, but remember the impression, is that you read in your astral body. It is really a reading activity, a subconscious reading activity. Exactly the same way as if you want to write down something and read it later, you describe not the letters, but that which the letters mean tomorrow if you remember the experiences of today. You do not look at the picture which originated in you, the human phantom which lives there in you, but you interpret it. You transport yourself into this human phantom in your soul, and your soul experiences something different than this human phantom. It experiences that which it experienced yesterday once again.

The human being needs not to be very surprised about that, because if you read Goethe's Faust—what do you deal with it? With a lot of paper and printer's ink of any shape. This is materially the complete Faust. You would never have the Goethean Faust if your soul were not able to work anything on that you have in paper and printer's ink before yourself. If you were not able to decipher this, it would just be paper and printer's ink. With regard to the external world the materialists debate perpetually that that does not exist which the spiritual scientist speaks about. But these materialists are as clever as a human being would be clever who says: what do you tell about the Goethean Faust, it does not exist at all, and there is only paper and printer's ink!—This judgment about Faust is completely identical to the judgment which today the materialists pronounce on the world. But that applies also to our memories. Tomorrow, nothing of an impression of today is there in our human being but the phantom, the image, and the soul has to cope with all the remaining matters working on this phantom. As well as from the paper and the printer's ink in our soul the whole Goethean Faust appears, something appears from that which has remained as a phantom in us. It is like a reanimation of the today's impression if we remember it tomorrow.

But this activity which must be carried out, so that we can remember, is carried out for us by means of our wonderfully formed physical body and our etheric body which were prepared through the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions. They arrange that, they act for us. The materialistically thinking human being feels that. Now take into consideration that the spiritual truth, which is gained, is gained without this help, that the help of the external physical body is not enlisted. The forces which work, otherwise, in the external body must come from the inside of the soul; there must be worked from the soul. If one has a spiritual view which is not managed by the external world, we cannot transport ourselves into an internal phantom which has remained if we want to remember it; for this is in the body. There we must work for the whole matter with a much bigger strength, without this support. This is nothing especially miraculous. Imagine only how the difference, which I mean, mirrors the matter in small details. Let us assume that today somebody reads a poem, and he keeps this poem till tomorrow, which he has read today. Then he can read it tomorrow again, the day after tomorrow again. However, we suppose that he does not keep it, and then he must say it by heart. You see the difference: once we do something, as it were, that has nothing to do with us; the external paper carries what we would have to do, otherwise, from one time to the other; the paper is a support to us. We must exert ourselves more if we reconstruct the poem by heart. Thus somebody who lives in the spiritual world has to exert his will more than somebody who relies on the support of his body. However, this is connected with the fact that everything that is gained in the spiritual-scientific field, even what should be only understood generally, demands big mental efforts. A materialist may be much more sluggish, lazier than a spiritual scientist. This is the reason or at least one of the reasons why the human beings are materialists. They are not materialists, because they are forced by means of a logic, but they are materialists from fear, but also from sluggishness, because they want that anything that takes place in the soul does not come into being by the internal forces of the soul, but that it happens by that which is imprinted in their bodies, which is recorded there.

These are matters which we have to consider if we want to see the reasons why many people are adversaries of spiritual science. Above all, however, it is difficult to manage with the thinking completely if anything is to be reached that the human being must still reach if he goes through the gate of death.

The day before yesterday, I have already pointed to that which is essential if one goes through the gate of death crossing: this is self-knowledge. Of course, this self-knowledge is not anything easy at all. Some of you have already heard as I have spoken about that that with regard to the external figures the human beings make the biggest mistakes very often. There is an often mentioned philosopher, who lived in Vienna; I do not mean the Hamburg Maack who grumbles about theosophy, but Ernst Mach, the philosopher to be taken seriously. He wrote an Analysis of Sensations. Therein he tells the following very naively: I walked once in the street; suddenly I had to stop, because a person met me, and I thought: this is a person with a very unpleasant face, even with an intolerable face. Lo and behold, I found out that I had passed a mirror, and the mirror was hanging in such a way that I had seen myself. There I took notice how little I was familiar with my own figure.—When he saw himself, he took himself for a disagreeable human being with an intolerable face. This is a philosophy professor, a famous professor of the present. And to confirm that which he had experienced he adds something else. When he was a professor already for a long time, one day he went by train, arrived very tired at a city and got in a bus. There he saw a man on the other side getting in, and he thought: what a down-and-out school master gets in!—Then, however, he saw on the opposite side a mirror hanging, and he found out that he had called himself a down-and-out school master. He draws attention to the fact that he, as he says, knew the type more exactly than his special figure.

It is already hard to recognise oneself concerning the appearance of the human being—with ladies it is perhaps easier, because they more often look in the mirror,—but it is still completely different if it matters the soul. There is almost no other possibility of self-knowledge in our time than to sharpen the knowledge forces we can take up from spiritual science. The concepts, the mental pictures we take up from spiritual science are suitable just in the best sense to sharpen our self-knowledge. Everything is founded on self-cognition generally speaking that we take up from the book Occult Science in Outline. Any mental picture we take up from this book means, actually, to recognise ourselves, to know what the human being is real. While we study how the human physical, etheric and astral bodies were gradually created during the Saturn, Sun and Moon evolutions, we get to know what is in us. While we get to know what is in us, our powers of imagination are sharpened to recognise ourselves much better than it is possible otherwise.

To which extent does this self-knowledge have significance for the moment of death? As long as we stay here in the physical body, self-knowledge is just knowledge. If we go, however, through the gate of death, everything changes to willpower that we have learnt as self-knowledge. The better we recognise ourselves, the stronger a kind of willpower comes into being just when we have taken off the physical body. Let us suppose for example, that we have realised here that we were, we say, a choleric person concerning certain things. You know that it is hard to transform us completely in the physical life to take off the violence even if we understand it. But at the moment when we take off the physical body when we only know: you were choleric—that becomes will. This will is directed to eliminate the violence from our being. Any knowledge judgment becomes, while we go through the gate of death, a will judgment; it becomes willpower. Then something very significant takes place that we can call—in certain sense—the reversal of something that is experienced before the birth of the human being that is forgotten, however, because the human being cannot look back to the times which he went through before his birth.

Let us imagine, however, the human being would already be able to do that which he develops in the Jupiter existence: if he were about to gradually return from the spiritual world to an incarnation, he would experience something in extremely strange way like looking at his future figure, his future life. He would also behold something of his physical figure. But he would never penetrate that in this physical figure which would appear to him in it like two points. Imagine that we would have our physical figure like in a fog when we walk to birth. We would see it as light, but there we would see impenetrable, dark points, dark balls, still some other things, but just these dark balls. Long before his physical birth, the human being sees—in time, not in space—before himself: you become this. He already sees how his physical constitution is formed out of the nature of the spirits of form. This appears to him as a light figure more or less, but in it two dark balls are floating. When the human being lives toward the physical life—he does this partially already in the body of his mother—there he absorbs certain forces from these surroundings which the mother forms then. He feels being gradually linked with this light figure, and then he senses, as if he were in these two balls inparticular. They have appeared to him as impenetrable before, now he himself is in it and feels the forces which come to him from all sides, they flow into him. Then he pierces these two balls, the space of the balls; the space loses its impenetrability.

These are the places where later the eyes are. If one approaches the physical-earthly incarnation that way, it is the eyes we cannot see but we can see by means of the eyes. They are like impenetrable balls toward which we live. Then one penetrates them in the last phase, before one enters the physical world. If anybody consciously lived through this, that would be, actually, a miraculous phenomenon. Imagine that the human being says to himself, leaving the spiritual world and entering the physical world: now you go with your soul toward this physical figure. You find two dark balls there. You cannot see through them with your present soul; this is full of spiritual substance.—Then one gets the strength to make transparent what was spiritually non-transparent first. If one “sees first the light of day” as one says, these spaces which were non-transparent are just the reason why one sees. You yourselves cannot see the eyes; if you saw them, you would not see the world.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, the sight of death is such a miraculous phenomenon in the spiritual human life after death, because he experiences something similar that took place here with his eyes. Only that the whole human being experiences it consciously. He has to get the feeling after death: there you left behind the world. Up to now he had the physical world in the eye as a physical experience, even that which the etheric body still shows as a tableau at the end. Now he goes through the gate of death with his self-knowledge, which then becomes willpower.—Imagine now that the dead would be here. He leaves behind his physical experiences. He radiates his willpower, which he has acquired from his self-knowledge. This radiating willpower which is acquired through self-knowledge gets rid of that which prevents us from looking into the spiritual environment.

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(Aetherleib = etheric body, toter Mensch = dead soul, Willenskraft = willpower)

As well as we get rid of the clouding of the eye while going into birth, so to speak, we get rid of that which prevents us from looking into the spiritual world by means of this willpower. We make ourselves transparent after death. This is the significant event.

If the human being goes through the gate of death, he has an overview of his whole life like of a great tableau, as long as he has the etheric body in himself. This stands before him. But now he also gets the feeling: you see yourself. You are that while you lived between birth and death, you yourself are everything.—Now the complete strength of self-knowledge stirs in him, which he has gained to himself, and pierces it as I have described; the etheric body thereby leaves. Then it is, as if a veil fell, and the spiritual world behind it comes to the fore. It is this tremendous experience to go through the gate of death and to have the complete last life before oneself, because the etheric body has become free. Then the soul gets the feeling: this last life is a veil which covers a tremendous world to you which you could not see during life. Now the willpower, coming from self-knowledge, fights against this veil and removes it. While the veil tears, the spiritual world behind it comes to the fore.

One does not need to be anxious, because somebody could say to himself: in our present time many people have done nothing at all to get some self-knowledge. According to the judgment of many people one can hardly be cleverer and more intelligent than a present university professor of philosophy; this is the ideal of the present intelligence. However, somebody can be predisposed to such a small self-knowledge like that famous man, even a philosopher, who is really a significant person. Somebody could become faint-hearted and say: self-knowledge is in a bad way.—Of course, if the matters were that way that the human beings depend whether they only have that willpower from self-knowledge which results from the life of present time, then the human beings would be in a rather bad way. In certain respects, the human beings of the present are rightly very proud of the tremendous progress of knowledge, which has been achieved. Think only how a doctor of present time who knows any current trend of medicine proudly looks down on those who were doctors not yet long ago. These all were fools, he thinks, of course. With regard to the external knowledge, people have achieved a lot of things in the course of the last centuries and found out about the external world how the external phenomena are connected and so on. Big progress has been done. But with regard to self-knowledge, the ancient times which we have gone through in former incarnations were far ahead; so far ahead, actually, that the present human being if he thinks materialistically has no idea what he should do with that which comes from ancient times. Since everything that the human beings today regard as old prejudices was basically self-knowledge, while the souls of ancient times experienced it. Only the last left-overs of self-knowledge are reported.

The human being living on earth knows nothing of his former incarnations with the usual external consciousness. Indeed, we know that there are people among the theosophists who after a relatively short time know a lot of their former incarnations. Once I got to know a group of people in a European city where Seneca,² Frederic II of Prussia,³ the German Emperor Joseph II,⁴ the Duke of Reichstadt,⁵ Madame Pompadour,⁶ Marie-Antoinette⁷ and still some other people were sitting together at a coffee table. But apart from those who know so much about their former incarnation, after they have learnt a little theosophy, people do not know a lot, as everybody knows, or nothing at all about their former incarnations with their everyday external knowledge. Since, as true as it is that the human being knows nothing of his previous incarnations by that which just the present human cycle gives him, it is true that he has everything for his will development after death that remained to him from previous lives. There it is different between death and a new birth. Whereas people know nothing about their previous incarnations between birth and death here, they have all the forces of their previous incarnations in themselves in the life between death and a new birth, but also that which has always been experienced between death and a new birth.

When the human being goes through the gate of death, so he has not only that willpower which comes from self-knowledge that the human beings mostly do not have today, but all the willpower which do not come from the self-knowledge of this life but from the self-knowledge, which he got in former times. So that the human being when he goes through the gate of death just is not lacking willpower which gets rid of this veil that is woven by the own life. However, if the human being wanted to gain new willpower in the course of the next millennia, this self-knowledge of ancient times would be more and more appreciated in the present era. That is why spiritual science had to appear for the further human development. Since it is the course of humankind that the human willpower still suffices today that, however, now also the time begins when during the earth development this willpower can be invigorated while the human being familiarises himself with the spiritual world.

The earth development of humankind would be exposed to a risk if the human beings resisted up to the end of the earth development from now on in every respect to take up anything of spiritual science. Then, however, the human being would be less and less able to perceive anything of the spiritual matters and events over there in the spiritual world. He would be able to do this less and less. He would be less and less able to penetrate the veil of which I spoke. Thus you see which significance self-knowledge transformed to willpower has. Here this knowledge is a self-observation; over there it is self-will which is pulling off the veil from the spiritual world. Just in those who go through the gate of death one perceives how important it is for them that they themselves invigorate their willpower as I have explained now, the willpower that comes from self-knowledge. That is why it is rather significant that the human being, while he goes through the gate of death, through these different stages, occupies himself with that which is in him what is in his self what he was during his earth-life.

If anybody has community with a dead, then it is of big significance to make this community especially fruitful that one helps the dead to strengthen and fulfill his self-consciousness. This is definitely meant that way: suppose that anybody, who was here in the physical life with us, would go through the gate of death. While we have lived with him, we know how he was; we know what he has especially liked to do. When he has gone through the gate of death, he is in urgent need to summon up strong internal forces for everything that he wills. These must flow out of his retrospect. We can help him if we think of him how he appeared to us in life; if we pay attention to that, if we send thoughts to him which characterise him. Beside the different things which have already been said about our occupation with the dead who have passed from us, we can also help the dead showing them, as it were, the image of their nature. Thus we take a certain strain away from them developing that willpower which has to tear up the characterised veil.

That is why it happened to me that the other phenomenon has resulted of which I have already spoken to you the day before yesterday. It has resulted to me when I had to speak at the funeral of friends before short time that I felt it necessary to express that which lives in the friends as their nature, just at the funeral. There I spoke not out of memory, but I spoke while my soul was transported completely into the other soul, after this had already gone through the gate of death.

If you deal with a soul which has already gone through the gate of death, then it is about that you transport yourself into this soul. Here in the physical world, the object is there, you look at it from without. In the spiritual world, you are with your whole being in this psycho-spiritual element. In the individual case of which I spoke the day before yesterday, it was just possible to put myself in the soul of this person who had gone through the gate of death and was characterised by me as a person who for long years before her death occupied herself with our world view who lived completely in it, so that she was able to put into words her own contents, her nature, living in spiritual science and taking up certain forces, as long as she was in her etheric body. I managed to catch this from the dead and I had to speak this at the funeral.

It was different in another case. When I had to speak at the funeral of our dear Fritz Mitscher who is especially dear to the members of our branch here, I felt the necessity also to transport myself in this soul who had gone through the gate of death. But now the necessity arose to put into words that which this soul was during life for his friends and fellowmen, who were also members of our anthroposophical movement, to think this together with this soul after death and to experience together what motivates and increases that will which results from self-knowledge. I had to say some things just at this funeral which harmonise with that which our dear friend Fritz Mitscher experienced in the times of his development, after he had come to our spiritual-scientific movement, what he had learnt, how his internal karma had driven him. The words which I had to speak there are not my words, as I have said, they came from the forces of his own soul, but formed so that they expressed the essential part of the years which preceded his death.

I had to say that—not: I wanted to say what I had to say there. Of course, these words were not his own words directly; the concerning soul would never have said this from himself in life. It is that which the other soul felt, nevertheless, who is connected with the soul of the deceased, as well as one can feel only with a soul who is already disembodied. I want to inform you of these words which I had to speak at the funeral:

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

Your longing was bound from the beginning
To pure truth-loving being;
To create out of spirit-light
Was the earnest life goal
For which you strove without rest.

You nurtured your beautiful gifts
To tread with steady steps
Bright paths of spirit-knowledge
As truth's true servant
Unperturbed by worldly contradiction

You trained your spirit-organs
That, with courage and persistence,
On both sides of the path
Repelled error for you
And made a space for truth for you.

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched your soul,
For knowledge seemed to you to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to your life's true value.

A hope, filling us with happiness:
You entered the field
Where, through the power of soul being,
Earth's spirit blossoms
Reveal themselves to investigation.

A loss that pains us deeply,
You disappeared from the field
Where the Spirit's earthly kernels
In the womb of soul being
Ripened your senses for the spheres.

Feel how we lovingly gaze
Into the heights that now
Call you to other works.
Give to the friends left behind
Your power from spirit-realms,

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

A hope, filling us with happiness,
A loss that pains us deeply:
Allow us to hope, that you, far-near,
Unlost, light our life
As a soul-star in spirit-realm.

If these words must not be taken so that they are spoken by the soul, however, they were spoken in such a community with the soul that after relatively short time this soul revealed something that came now only from the soul; not at all from my soul, but only from the soul who had gone through the gate of death. Then this sounded in that way, and since that time these words sound to me always:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within me
Was my life's concern and joy.

Other cares, other joys
Barely touched my soul,
For knowledge seemed to me to be
The light that gives existence meaning,
Seemed to my life's true value.

When I heard these words for the first time—since that time it has happened several times—from this deceased soul, there I got on only—for that which I read out there, is so written really word by word as it was heard in connection with the other soul—there I only got on that a dialog could come into being. At the cremation I had said:

For you, to form your Self
For the revelation of pure light
So the soul's sun-power
Might shine mightily within you
Was your life's concern and joy.

“You” and “yours” appear in these stanzas. But it was not done by me anyhow. I noticed only, when the words came back from the deceased soul that these words were so formed that one may quote them just also in the first person:

For me, to form my Self
For the revelation of pure light

You see a dialog reaching beyond the grave, a kind of communication.

With respect to this I would like to speak about something that is often mentioned in our spiritual-scientific movement which one cannot repeat enough. In the stanzas, which have been spoken to a deceased soul, you find something that reminds you of that which is expressed most significantly where it is said:

Hear our souls' entreaties
Sent to you in confidence and trust:
For our earthly work here we need
Strong forces from spirit-lands,
For which we thank dead friends.

Take such a thing not as bare words. This speaks of something that is connected in the deepest sense significantly with the whole being of our spiritual-scientific movement.

If a soul has so striven like that about whom I speak here, so that he wanted to penetrate that which he could learn of knowledge, of experiences with the spiritual-scientific impulses, and goes so early through the gate of death, then such a soul can remain a loyal co-worker. Thus it was a little bit like an entreaty when I called these words to this soul that he may help us in our efforts for the future of earth. For you can consider this as something sure: the abyss between the living and the dead human beings must be bridged vividly through our spiritual science in the course of the earth development. We have to learn, just as we are together with human beings living in physical bodies, to look at the dead human beings not as dead, but as living among us, as living and creating. Those who are the so-called dead are working with us with forces available to them.

We have to seize that vividly and not theoretically which impulses spiritual science has to create and convert in us into the vivid life which we want to insert to the cultural development out of spirit. I have to say: concerning our external civilisation one needs the assistance of those in future who are in the spiritual worlds up there. Those who get entrance for the spiritual-scientific movement here on earth need the dead souls. That is why I said that we need the strength for our work on earth from spiritual realms for which we thank the dead friends. We make an entreaty, as it were, to the souls to work with us on earth. I mean such souls who go on working with the forces which are strengthened by that which they took up here and penetrated themselves with that which they have taken up in the spiritual worlds.

Sometimes it appears so symptomatically which difficulties and obstacles our anthroposophical earth work does find. Among various things you can observe time and again, I want to emphasise one thing only. In a South German magazine, an article appeared some years ago which caused a sensation, because it was rumoured that a very significant philosopher had written it. The editor of the magazine is called Karl Muth. That Karl Muth has accepted an article of many pages in those days. When my Occult Science in Outline was published, he has brought this article, just resuming this book Occult Science. It would not have been so especially difficult to me to eradicate the worst things of the article, the most foolish assertions. Since with the truth of that great philosopher it is as follows: many people regard him really as a great philosopher. But he appears to some whom he approached in life—he does not need to have approached them especially near, to have sat opposite to them only once,—clinging to them like a limpet. He appeared to me that way, and I had to fight off him. But after he had written postcard after postcard, letter after letter to me, he also sent me this article as a manuscript. I could not resolve to read the article, because it began already too foolishly. There the author said, for example: Steiner calls that occult science which he wrote there in his book. But there cannot be an occult science at all, because this is the nature of science that it is not secret, but is public.—So, an occult science is contradictory to the nature of science itself. Thus it started. Where one turned over a few pages, one got on such impertinent follies that it was fatal to me to read on, to read the manuscript. It still lies there somewhere. It is a folly, because one needs only to be able to speak German to feel this folly. This is just, as if anybody says: there are no natural sciences. However, there are natural sciences. There is not a secret science, of course, but there is an occult science. It was too foolish, but the editor of the magazine thought that it was an especially significant article. Many people read the article, and regarded it as something very clever that was written about spiritual science where it was criticised thoroughly.

Now the war came. That philosopher is no German, but now he counts himself to the worst enemies of Germany. Now he writes a number of letters to the same Karl Muth who in those days—you forgive the trivial expression—licked his fingers that he got the article of the famous philosopher. A lot of venom has already been emptied over Germany and the German nation, but anything more toxic, more dreadful has not been written, actually, than that which this famous philosopher wrote in letters to Karl Muth. The most horrible judgments and reviews about Germanness and German nature are found there. Now the following can be considered still as a good sign. The philosopher concerned wrote, after he had spit venom, unfortunately not with “occult science,” because the censorship did not stop it crossing the border, so that it arrived even in Munich, and Muth (Muth = courage) found the courage to print this venom again; now, however, not to print the “significant article of a significant man” but—after years the same Karl Muth prints this writing about the Germans and writes: of course, a man who writes that way should be in the lunatic asylum!—You see, Karl Muth needed this writing about the German nature to get on that the man is a fool. Some years ago, however, he let the same fool loose on our spiritual science. A reasonable person could know this already in those days, but fools are often regarded also as famous philosophers; it does not depend on it. But you see which unfavourable conditions spiritual science is exposed to. If the war had not come and Karl Muth had not been taught that, actually, the dear man, this professor Wincenty Lutoslawski, is a fool, he would have again accepted an article annihilating spiritual science from the feather of this “famous philosopher” at the next opportunity.

You also see that in our time human beings are not often inclined to get on with their judgment which point of view they have to take concerning spiritual science. I give this example only to show—one could give many such examples—which obstacles our spiritual-scientific movement is exposed to, that even those who must be regarded later as fools are let loose on it. Then the judgment may also be justified that some other things which are said against this spiritual science are not cleverer. Since where it could be proved once rather strikingly, there it has been proved.

We have to realise that we also need the forces of those who went through the gate of death, and who, before they went through this gate, took up that which is contained in the light of spiritual science. We need them to enliven the spiritual-scientific impulses. The abyss between the living and the dead must be cleared away first on our spiritual-scientific field above all. This is why something like an admonition must appear time and again: We want to keep the consciousness that we had souls being closer to us, as long as they walked in their physical bodies among us, as it was before, only just according to their other condition of life. We want to keep this, even if the souls concerned have gone through the gate of death. For it belongs to the nicest, to the most significant what we can gain from spiritual science if we can look at those who went through the gate of death as human beings living among us, meeting us; as those meet us who live in their physical bodies. This becomes an essential support, because now so many souls go through the gate of death as young people on the fields where something new prepares itself out of blood and death, and deliver their unused etheric bodies to the spiritual world.

The human etheric body is prepared in such a way that it can supply the human being with vital forces up to the highest age. If the human being goes now through the gate of death in his youth, the forces remain unused which could still have been used here if the human being grew up to a higher age. Now we can look up to the spiritual etheric world where the human being still stays some time after he has left the physical plane. There are just many youthful etheric bodies of those available who were killed in action and went through the gate of death. These etheric bodies do not dissolve immediately but keep holding together and containing the forces which could have supplied life for a long time.

These etheric bodies will be there, they will be forces which can help the human beings when these look up longing with the consciousness of spiritual science where that is contained in unused etheric bodies. From above these forces join with those who join consciously with these forces of the spiritual-scientific consciousness. Feeling and sensing that, we should turn to them. We have to lively bear witness to the spiritual world. We should be able to say to ourselves: there have to be human beings just in future, in the time which follows this war, here on our earth who carry souls in themselves which can look up at the spiritual world, so that these unused etheric bodies are realities to them; that it becomes reality to them through their knowledge of the spiritual world. Then spiritual science will be up to that which is not only knowledge, but real life; real life also because of the destiny-burdened events of our time. Then somebody can say: there are souls in the world who look up to the etheric bodies above there which develop their unused forces, and that is why they are able to take up these forces and to work even stronger. These unused forces of the etheric bodies of those who sacrificed themselves on the fields of blood and death are fruitful for the souls on earth in future.

For this reason, we also want to think again of that cooperation which can come into being between the human beings who are inspired and spiritualised with spiritual-scientific knowledge and look at that which remains of the etheric bodies from this war, what can come into being from this internal interaction of souls. We also want to write those words in our souls again which I would like to speak now at the end of our branch considerations, out of the whole interrelation of the events:

From the courage of the fighters,
From the blood of the battles,
From the grief of the bereaved,
From the nation's sacrifices
Will grow up the fruits of spirit
If souls aware of spirit turn
Their senses to the spirit-land.

• 1. the Prussian general Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) in his unfinished work On War (1832)
• 2. Seneca (~1–65 A. D.), Roman philosopher
• 3. Frederic II of Prussia (1712–1786)
• 4. German Emperor Joseph II (1741–1790)
• 5. Duke of Reichstadt (1811–1831), Napoleon Franz Bonaparte von Reichstadt, son of Napoleon I.
• 6. Madame Pompadour (Jeanne-Antoinette Poisson) (1721–1764)
• 7. Marie-Antoinette, Queen of France (1755–1793)

Dear attendees! Anthroposophy is still accepted by many people today who are only able to look at it from the outside as a more or less fantastic attempt to penetrate into areas of the world through knowledge that a serious scientist should not concern himself with. And it is true that anthroposophy, by developing special powers of knowledge, wants to penetrate into areas of life that are important to people above all else, and to which science, with its great triumphs, which are fully recognized by anthroposophy, has no access. Above all, it must be said that there are already scientists today who take their work very seriously and who are concerned with all kinds of abnormal human soul-body forces. These scientists point out how human beings can develop effects that show that they are rooted in the world in other ways than mere natural science can determine. But it is precisely such serious scientists who find the path taken by anthroposophy fantastic. They see it as being open to enthusiasm or perhaps even superstition. In any case, they do not see it as a path that can be taken seriously scientifically.

Now it really must be said that those people who are prone to enthusiasm, to nebulous mysticism, and who are of the kind that today, as is so common, easily run to anything that somehow calls itself occult or the like, will by no means find any lasting satisfaction in anthroposophy. For this anthroposophy aims to work with the seriousness, the conscientiousness, and the methodology that is absolutely in line with the direction of more recent scientific development. And above all, the healthy, harmonious, human thinking must be applied in this anthroposophy. And so it is that the enthusiasts and the superstitious people soon give it a wide berth. Of course, this does not prevent those people who want to reject everything that is unfamiliar to them with a slight wave of the hand from saying: Only neurasthenics or hysterical people have an interest in anthroposophical research.

Now, my dear audience, it is difficult to explain the nature of anthroposophy in a short evening lecture in the face of this. But I will try to show the paths of this anthroposophy and at least hint at the results that this anthroposophy can arrive at, in order to characterize how this anthroposophy can be, although it is not for dreamers or superstitious people; but how it can be a soul food for all those who, with a healthy common sense in practical life, but who, precisely because of this, need support, security and direction for their soul life, in keeping with the spiritual development of our time, and also certain forces that can only be truly effective in the outer practical, social life if they are drawn from a spiritual, from a supersensible world and carry the human soul out of such a world.

Now, no spiritual research could possibly make any impression or exert any fruitful influence in the long term if it were to contradict the significant developments that have taken place over the last three to four centuries, and particularly in the nineteenth century, through natural science and its practical results. But that is certainly not what anthroposophy wants. It seeks to follow into the spiritual world the very paths that have led to significant results in natural science. It must therefore side with those natural scientists, the level-headed natural scientists, who, after thoroughly pursuing the paths of natural science, speak of the limitations of natural science. These limits soon become apparent when one considers that natural science can only observe the external sense world, can only combine the facts of the external sense world that arise from observation or experiment through the intellect, through the mind, and then can combine certain natural laws from these observations, from these experiments; natural laws in which, however, the human being with his physical corporeality is also harnessed. But the attempts made to go beyond the limits set by the sensory world by mere reason alone — as one also says, by philosophical thinking — always leave the unbiased person unsatisfied. The unbiased person feels: as soon as scientific thinking, as we are accustomed to it today, leaves the paths of sensory experience, experiment and observation, thinking left to its own devices enters into uncertainty. The dispute between philosophical systems testifies to the extent to which thinking left to its own devices enters into uncertainty. Anthroposophical research in particular makes it clear how this thinking, which we have in ordinary life and in ordinary, recognized science, not only binds itself to the sensory experience of the level-headed natural scientist out of habit or arbitrariness, but how it itself is dependent step by step on this sensory experience, so that it only has certainty when this external experience, this sensory experience, guides it.

In short, my dear audience, just when one cannot think in a lay and dilettante scientific way, one sees the inadequacy of this kind of thinking left to its own devices, which somehow wants to philosophically penetrate into the supersensible. Many people in our time therefore do not think much of satisfying their soul needs, their longings for the eternal in the human soul, through such self-abandoned thinking. And in our time, when the old traditions of religious life, of faith, as such are becoming increasingly shaky and shaky, people do need such new supports. Therefore, many deeper minds are found in our time, which understand: a philosophy of life that relies on reason alone cannot give the soul the necessary support and security. That is why such deeply-disposed natures today turn to certain mystical directions.

Particularly when one speaks seriously of what anthroposophy can be for today's human being, one must characterize these two pitfalls that one must avoid in one's research. The one pitfall is the purely intellectual world view that wants to go beyond the supersensible through thinking left to its own devices; the other is certain mystical directions. These seek to penetrate into deeper shafts of the human soul life by means of man, as it were, immersing himself in his own inner being. They seek to bring up from these deeper shafts that which is not present in ordinary life and which connects the eternal in the soul with the eternal world-ruling powers. Anthroposophy must draw attention to these two pitfalls because it must show that it is absolutely serious about not carelessly stopping at either side, when it cannot provide a sure basis for knowledge. Anyone who can observe the inner life of the human soul with an open mind – esteemed attendees – can no more remain with a more or less nebulous mysticism than he can go beyond the limits of knowledge of nature through self-abandoned thinking. We usually do not know how that which lives in the depths of the soul is connected with external sensory impressions. We usually do not know how the human memory works. Decades ago, someone may have unconsciously or subconsciously, without fully realizing it, received some impression from the outside world. It has descended into the soul life; there it has been transformed. He may have connected with human emotional life; connected with human sympathies and antipathies, with impulses of the will. He has become something quite different, but he is still only a transformed external impression. And then, as one says, it is brought up out of the soul through inner contemplation and is thought to come from eternal depths, not from some external world through an external impression. In this way, illusions upon illusions can arise in nebulous mysticism. That is why anthroposophy cannot stop at this mystical immersion in the human interior. If the human inner life is taken as it appears in ordinary life and as it is also used for research in ordinary science.

Precisely because Anthroposophy is fully aware that one cannot penetrate to anything that is not is not already present in some form in this ordinary life, anthroposophy must look for cognitive powers that have yet to be developed, that lie dormant in the human soul – one could also say, if one wants to use a scientific term – that lie latent in it and can be brought forth.

That there are such forces slumbering in the human soul, that they can be awakened, that they can become higher powers of knowledge than those of ordinary life and ordinary science, can only be proved by practice, which I want to talk to you about this evening. But to even arrive at seeking such powers of knowledge through one's own soul development requires something I would call intellectual modesty. At some point in life, this intellectual modesty must say to us: You were once a child with dream-like soul powers, soul powers that were without any orientation towards the outer world, with a soul state that was dull compared to the one you have today. External education and life have brought out of the soul what lay dormant in it. They have developed those powers of perception that are generally recognized today in a person who has had a corresponding education, whether in life or in some other field. Now, for once in your life, you have to say to yourself, with intellectual modesty: from the point of view that you have gained in this way through ordinary education, through ordinary life, you can now take your self-development into your own hands and get further than you were, you can bring further forces out of the soul that lie dormant in it. And it is with such forces, slumbering in the soul of every human being, and which in their development represent nothing other than a continuation of the normal human soul forces, that Anthroposophy seeks to do research. Research into that which lies behind the world of the senses, research into that which is hidden in the human soul as something eternal, and which is connected with the most important longings and life riddles of this human soul. I will not, however, speak to you about external measures that might be taken to develop such forces lying dormant in the soul. I must first speak to you of the intimate exercises of the human soul if I am to characterize the paths that Anthroposophy takes into the supersensible world.

In my book “How to Know Higher Worlds” and in the second part of my “Occult Science” and in other books, I have pointed out in detail everything that must be gone through in energetic and persistent soul exercises so that man can come to such supersensible knowledge. I will have to characterize the essence of what is written there in detail.

The first thing that is involved is the development of the soul in terms of [the powers of] presentation and thought. Just as you can strengthen a muscle by using it in work, so you can indeed strengthen the powers of thought of the human soul by using them in a certain way, using them again and again, indeed using them again and again in rhythmic succession, so that they become something quite different from what they initially are. To do this, it is necessary to bring a clearly defined idea or a clearly defined complex of ideas into the center of consciousness, and then to withdraw one's attention from everything else by strong inner volition and to concentrate the entire life of the human soul on this one idea or this one complex of ideas. In order to achieve what is necessary, however, this complex of ideas must be such that it is not taken from our ordinary memory life. I have already indicated how what we bring up from ordinary memory life can put us in illusion, it brings up reminiscences that lie dormant in the unconscious. One cannot know what will come up from the soul if one were to take an idea or a complex of ideas from one's ordinary memory life and make it the focus of one's soul life, and then concentrate on it. Therefore, one should take something that one finds, let us say – this is just an example – in some book by someone else, a saying, a sentence. What matters is not the content, but the fact that one is strengthening one's thinking by working with thoughts, and that one is taking some material that was previously unknown to one, that is newly entering one's soul life. We will see in a moment why. Or else, one can have some experienced person in this field compose such a spell. Because what matters is that what enters into the center of the soul life, and on which one then concentrates the whole soul life, on which one focuses all attention, that it approaches the human being as otherwise only any external sense impression, such as a color or a sound or any other external sense impression. What Anthroposophy strives for in this path of research is quite definitely the outer sensory perception. This outer sensory perception presents itself to us from the outside, compelling us to accept its content. Just as the human being faces external perception as something foreign, and is thus particularly alert to it, so too should the soul life face what I have been talking about here, which should be brought to the center of experience. For the human being should be as alert in their thinking as they are when they are facing an external sensory impression.

In this way, I am already drawing your attention, dear attendees, to the fact that what anthroposophy strives for as a path of knowledge must not be confused, as unfortunately still often happens today, with everything that tends towards the pathological, the diseased side of the soul life. For anyone who can look at human mental life with an open mind, it is clear that even ordinary memory – admittedly, it lies in the realm of the healthy, of course – is connected to the human physical organism, and that when the normal connection between the human soul and the physical organism develops in the direction of the abnormal in the process of remembering , when the soul life becomes more bound, more intimately bound to the physical organism, those pathological conditions arise which express themselves in hallucinations, in visions, in illusions, in easy suggestibility, and so on, and which lie at just the opposite pole from that to which anthroposophical paths of knowledge lead. Everything that presents itself to us pathologically leads the soul life deeper down into the bodily functions, deeper down than the ability to remember lies. What is developed through the described strengthening of thinking makes human thinking more and more similar to the behavior of the human soul when taking in an external sensory impression. Just as the human being is much more alive when absorbing an external sensory impression than in ordinary, more passive thinking, so too should thinking be energized so that it becomes as alive and intense as the experience of an external sensory impression would otherwise be. It is precisely in this coming to life of the world of thought that one notices more and more that one is penetrating into a soul life that is not the ordinary one. You know, my esteemed audience, how pale, rightly called pale, the ordinary thought life is compared to the life in sensual impressions and in external processes in general. Just as one usually lives in sensual impressions and external processes, so should the whole thought life become for those times when one wants to devote oneself to supersensible knowledge.

Now, in order to avoid being misunderstood, I must point out another difference between the abnormal states of mind I have just mentioned: the person who seeks anthroposophical knowledge develops such strength of thought while the ordinary personality continues to exist in its full, healthy state of mind. A second personality develops, so to speak. And the first, the personality with common sense, with healthy criticism, remains controlling next to the developed personality, the personality with the higher cognitive ability. When someone falls into hallucinations, visions, illusions, when they become a medium, when they are exposed to suggestions, then their entire ordinary, healthy personality enters into the state of hallucinating, of illusions, and so on. The radical difference of the thoroughly healthy anthroposophical path is that the ordinary personality always remains as healthy as it is in life, controlling, criticizing, alongside the developed other personality. On this condition, it may be said that – it takes years for some people, depending on their disposition, but only months for others; some can achieve it in a few weeks through meditation and by concentrating on a specific thought content, that is what I call it – it may be said that it can be achieved that a person feels similarly to how they feel during ordinary thinking. In ordinary thinking, he needs the physical organism. In this respect, one could say, anthroposophical spiritual science fully recognizes the validity of materialism.

In order to develop his soul abilities at all in ordinary life and in ordinary science, man needs the physical body. And he only becomes free of the physical body by strengthening his thinking, making it more intense, more alive. Thought becomes free from the physical body to the same degree that external sensory phenomena are free from the physical body. Consider how independent the physical apparatus of the eye is from the rest of the human organism. I cannot characterize it further now, I would just like to hint at it. What happens in the eye under the influence of the outside world is what, to a certain extent, makes man subject to an objective world in the sensory perceptions of the eye. By linking his thinking with this objective world, thinking itself is also introduced into an objective world. Through sensory perception, man comes out of himself in a certain way.

This is not the place for deep epistemological considerations, but what I am saying can be understood by any simple human mind. Man comes out of himself when he does meditation and concentration exercises as I have described them. But then man realizes how he is only now gradually learning to develop the soul life as such independently of the body. However grotesque and paradoxical it may still sound to a modern person, one learns through experience, through the practice of life, what it means to have thoughts outside of the human physical organism. These thoughts are, however, different from the usual pale thoughts, and also from those that deal with natural laws. These developed and strengthened thoughts are as pictorial as the outer sensory impressions themselves. What is fully clear to the anthroposophical researcher must not be missing at this stage of knowledge. In the writings mentioned and elsewhere, I have called this stage of knowledge the imaginative stage. Imaginative not because one imagines something, but because thinking passes completely from the abstract form into the pictorial, into the living, into the intensified form. But what is absolutely necessary for anyone embarking on anthroposophical research to be aware of within this imaginative thinking is that they know: you are now only carrying something with you in your thoughts that lives within your own human being.

You see how carefully the anthroposophical path of knowledge must be described. It must be emphasized that this first stage allows one to experience one's own inner being more intensely, but that one must realize that one is not yet experiencing an external world, but only this human inner being. But we do achieve a first result when we explore the inner being through such a more intensive, pictorial, imaginative process of imagining. For we gradually learn to have before our soul, as in a comprehensive tableau of life, everything that has formed us, that has affected us inwardly, spiritually, from birth to the present moment. We normally carry what we have in our soul only in the form of ordinary memory. The stream from which memories of this or that experience arise, whether voluntarily or involuntarily, essentially runs subconsciously. We know how abstract it is, how shadowy it is compared to the real experiences when we are immersed in these memory images. These memory images should not be confused with what now occurs before imaginative knowledge. It is not mere memories that arise, but rather something that suggests how one has become. Yes, right back to the first years of childhood, one sees the inner forces that have developed the ordinary abilities of life in one. One sees how the moral and intellectual faculties have developed, how they have been integrated into the forces of growth and nutrition. One really looks into the human interior.

You learn to recognize what I have called the formative forces of the human being. You really learn to recognize a second body. But if you want to characterize it precisely, you have to say: it is a temporal body. It is something that is constantly developing in a mobile way. You cannot draw it without realizing that you are drawing or painting it like a flash of lightning. That which is mobile in time can only be captured in a moment, and so it is with this human formative forces body. In truth, it is a unified organization in time, and it must be understood in that way. There have always been older intuitions for such higher insights, and what I call the formative forces body has also been called the etheric or life body. If one learns to recognize it in the suggested way, not through logical conclusions or otherwise, but through direct inner vision with the imaginative knowledge that has been acquired, then one knows once and for all: what is human organization is not only played out by the fact that there is a sum of chemical and physical forces constitute the human physical body, but because a spiritual soul has entered the physical organization at birth or conception, and that a second, a spiritual-soul, a supersensible body, which is not only spatial, which is temporal, which is always mobile, works in us. And one learns to recognize the inner relationship that exists between thinking, imagining and the forces of growth. As long as one only looks at the human being from a physiological and biological point of view, one finds the forces of growth on the one hand and, on the other, through inner observation, for example, the abstract powers of thinking. Through the imaginative contemplation of which I have just spoken, one learns to recognize how a gradual transition takes place between the ordinary forces of growth and the forces of thinking, how, by strengthening itself, imagining itself leads to that which at the same time brings about growth, the development of the inner organic power from stage to stage in the growing human being. Thus imaginative knowledge becomes a first result of anthroposophical inner research.

Now it is not enough to merely concentrate one's soul life on some idea or on a complex of ideas. Although everything I have described and what is explained in the books mentioned aims to enable the person to carry out such exercises in full arbitrariness, with complete inner composure, as one would otherwise only have in ordinary life , and also comes to such concentration, such directing of attention to a certain idea, it is nevertheless the case that one gradually feels surrendered to such ideas, feels too strongly surrendered, if other soul exercises are not undertaken in a different direction. Therefore, one must, just as faithfully as one concentrates on certain ideas, again do exercises so that these ideas in consciousness, whenever one wants, extinguish, are in turn put out of consciousness. Then one comes to establish what one can call the consciousness. Otherwise, empty consciousness is only present in people during the time from falling asleep to waking up. And if one has not gone through any school of practice, then there is a great temptation to fall into a kind of sleep when consciousness becomes empty of external impressions – or even when it is so strongly taken in by external impressions that it no longer distinguishes them. The ability to achieve an empty consciousness is essential for further progress in anthroposophical research. This does not mean that the person enters into some kind of sleep or dream state, but that they can remain fully conscious without introducing anything through their own inner strength, as they would otherwise do with external impressions or with a strongly developed life of thought or feeling or will. And then, when the life of thought has been strengthened in the way described, so strongly strengthened that one is, as it were, inwardly grasped in the direct experience of this memory tableau of which I have spoken, when one's entire previous life on earth stands before one's eyes like a huge tableau, if one's imaginative life is strong enough, then one can also manage, while being completely awake, to dampen, throw out of consciousness, and create an empty consciousness, the individual idea that one has brought to the center of consciousness in this way, or that has placed itself there. Once one has practiced this for a while (again, it varies from person to person depending on their disposition) one can determine whether it takes longer or shorter. I can only say that anthroposophical research is no easier than research in an observatory, laboratory or clinic; one must persistently and diligently undergo such exercises as I am describing now for a long time.

Once you have managed to expel individual ideas from your consciousness after they have been there, and to create an empty consciousness, then you can also remove from your consciousness that which has presented itself to the soul as a tableau of memories, which has appeared to you as a body of formative forces, as a temporal organism. It takes a strong inner soul power to do this. One must first acquire it by attenuating other images until one's consciousness is empty. But in the end one attains this power to attenuate the entire formative body so that it penetrates into the deeper layers of consciousness. Then the moment may come when imaginative knowledge first enters the second stage of supersensible knowledge for the comprehension of human self-life, the second stage of knowledge, inspired knowledge.

Do not be put off by the expression; one must have expressions everywhere. They do not mean anything traditional or superstitious in this case, but only what I am characterizing here. So, after one has first strengthened one's thinking, after one has strengthened one's soul to such an extent that an empty consciousness can be established, then the objective spiritual world can penetrate into this empty consciousness, just as breathing air penetrates into the lungs as something objective.

And now, through direct perception, the human being experiences what he has gone through spiritually and soulfully before he connected with the physical human body as a spiritual and soulful being. In this moment of inner soul-searching, the great and powerful occurs: the spiritual and soulful in itself, in its own essence, appears before the soul's vision; one sees the soul as it was in a purely spiritual-soul world before it united with the physical-bodily substances and forces through birth or conception, which are given to it through the hereditary powers of parents and ancestors.

The essence of anthroposophical research is that it advances to the perception of the real soul-spiritual not through mere thinking, not through mystical contemplation, but through the development of soul forces that otherwise lie dormant within people. Of course, when one hears something like this, it would be easy to say: Well, then only those who advance to such insights can speak with such conviction of the immortality of the human soul – or rather, when I speak of what I have spoken of so far – of the unborn nature of the human soul. Now, firstly, it is possible through books such as I have mentioned for every person to take the first steps towards such supersensory knowledge as I have described. And even if today they are still unusual paths for the soul, anyone who has entered them knows that they will increasingly become the paths of human development. Because they are only now entering the spiritual development of humanity for the first time, they may seem paradoxical to many. But just as little as one needs to be a painter to be enchanted with a good painting with full inner soul, to see through it in its essence, in what the painter wanted, just as little does one need to be an anthroposophical researcher to recognize as true what the anthroposophical researcher asserts. Common sense is quite sufficient, just as ordinary perception of an artistic achievement is sufficient to appreciate it. For there is an original disposition in the human soul for the perception of truth. Therefore, it cannot be said that only those who are spiritual researchers in the way described can recognize the results of spiritual research. It is only that over many centuries of human development, people have become accustomed to not accepting such things at all, which has gradually caused prejudices for the mind, for the intellect, which today still do not allow what characterizes anthroposophical research as its paths and its results to appear as reasonable for the common sense of a healthy person.

I have now described how the human being can come to his or her own immortality by developing in one direction, looking beyond birth or conception through imaginative and inspired knowledge. However, the paths of anthroposophical research must go further. Not only should the power of imagination and the power of thought be developed, but also the human willpower should be developed to a higher level. I will again state the principles of this. Admittedly, that which is the most intimate part of the human soul, human feeling, the content of the human mind, lies right in the middle between thinking and willing. But that which lies at the center of the soul as our emotional life develops into the higher worlds when, on the one hand, the life of thinking develops, as indicated, and on the other hand, the life of will develops.

If, on the one hand, a kind of ideal for anthroposophy is the experience of the soul in outer perception, then, on the other hand, for the development of the will forces slumbering in the soul, the ideal becomes that which takes place in the moral life, above all in the devoted life of love, in the human soul. I know, honored attendees, that when we speak of devoted love, we are mentioning something that many people want to keep far away from all real powers of knowledge. However, it is not the case that love, as it exists and is justified in ordinary life, should be considered any kind of power of knowledge. But just as thinking is developed on the one hand, so too is the ability to love devotedly developed on the other hand, in order to thereby free the will from the physical organism just as much as the life of thought can be freed from the physical organism in the way indicated. Apparently it is not at all exercises of the soul in the ability to love that come into question here. Nevertheless, they lead to an increased ability to love, to the point of insight. Again, I will only hint at the principle. The following exercise develops the will in particular and develops such an ability: Imagine something that you are accustomed to imagining only in a certain way from the earlier to the later, from the beginning to the end, now in reverse order. For example, one imagines a drama backwards from the last event of the fifth act to the first event of the first act. Or one imagines a melody backwards. Or one imagines only the evening after the usual daytime life backwards. But one must go into as much detail as possible, one must imagine in small portions backwards.

What is the point of this? Dear attendees, in our ordinary lives we develop our thinking through the external sequence of events. Thinking is passively devoted to the external sequence of events. In doing so, it also makes itself dependent on the laws of the physical human organism. The physical human organism is devoted to the external sequence of events through the physical senses. Thinking is dependent on this sequence of events. And by bringing up experiences in a pictorial way through memory, it nevertheless remains dependent on the external sequence of facts. Of course, one can object: with logical thinking, man makes himself independent of this sequence of facts. But what does he ultimately aim for when he makes himself independent? Precisely to recognize the external sequence of facts even better. We think logically so that we can see through the spatial and temporal sequence of facts even better. We are lifted out of this dependence on the external world of facts, but also out of the dependence of thinking, by developing thinking in this way, by thinking from back to front, thus in reverse order to the sequence of external facts. But in this way we now develop the will. In the life of the soul, thoughts, feelings and will interact. In abstract thinking we can separate the three; in the life of the soul, the will is present in every thought, connecting and separating the thoughts; and thoughts are active in the will, even if the connection between thoughts is as unclear to the ordinary consciousness as the state of consciousness during sleep at night. But it is precisely the will, when given over to thinking, that develops freely and independently of the world of facts and also of the human body through such reverse thinking.

If one adds to these exercises others that I would describe as intensified human introspection – all of which must be done with absolute inner composure and complete arbitrariness – one performs such introspection in such a way that one observes what one does, what one thinks and feels, the whole way , how if one were to stand beside oneself as another, as a second person, one becomes pensive with regard to the will, then the will gradually breaks away from the physical, if the exercises are only carried out long and energetically, especially if one also actively engages in one's own development. Just consider how people are helped in ordinary life by what life itself provides. Certainly, everyone today is different from what they were ten or twenty years ago in terms of certain finer nuances of the soul life. Life has done that. But if you take your self-development into your own hands, you set yourself the goal: you should incorporate this or that quality; if you work towards incorporating such qualities, you work particularly energetically towards getting rid of certain habits, then you develop that which tears the will away from physical corporeality. And now one arrives at having the will living in the soul, so to speak, only to the extent that it is completely permeated by thoughts everywhere; it is torn away from the body, it has become transparent. Consider how little transparent the will is when we form the thought, let us say, to raise our arm, to raise our hand. The thought, the intention, is clear, and afterwards, when the hand is raised, we see from the sense impression what has happened. The unfolding of the will that lies in between is as hidden from human consciousness as the processes of falling asleep themselves. But now we experience a will in which we are completely immersed, as we are otherwise only in thoughts, a will free of the body, which submits to the imaginative and inspired ideas, free of the body, that we have received before.

And now, honored attendees, as we experience how our will can become body-free, as we can, in a sense, step out of our bodies with our will, we are now experiencing the essence of human immortality on the other side. This stepping out of the body is nothing other than an image of the knowledge that occurs when a person steps through the gate of death. While man is outside of his body, he becomes aware of what he experiences through this strengthened will, through this will that has become deliberate, which I call the stage of intuitive knowledge. While he is outside of his body, it is immediately clear through his qualities as an image of what enters the spiritual-soul world as a spiritual-soul being when man leaves his physical body in physical corporeality. In this intuitive knowledge, one learns to recognize the other side of human eternity, which extends beyond death.

You see, dear attendees, the eternal part of the human soul does not come to light through anthroposophical research, but is pieced together from the prenatal and, if I may say so, the post-mortal existence, from unbornness and immortality. And by getting to know what is eternal, what is immortal in the human soul, one also learns to recognize the worlds that surround this human soul when it is in its pure spiritual-soul nature, by looking at what the soul was before birth or before conception. Of course, there is still another objection possible, the objection: Yes, how do you know that what you are looking at in your consciousness really lies in the time before birth or before conception? Now, just as with ordinary memory, when you remember an experience you had ten years ago, the memory itself contains the time, as you cannot believe that you have something in your consciousness that is only there in the present , just as the content of consciousness itself points to the time in which the experience took place, so that which we experience as spiritual and mental carries within it the time before birth or before conception. But we also become aware of the worlds that are not the sensual ones, because we only perceive them through the human senses between birth and death. But the worlds that we perceive through the soul senses, if I may use the expression, before birth and after death, they are now unlocked. We get to know them as concrete, essential worlds. And by getting to know these worlds, we also get to know the spiritual-supernatural world that always surrounds us, which we cannot penetrate through mere philosophical speculation. We can penetrate it only by developing more and more imaginative, inspired, intuitive knowledge.

This intuitive knowledge, which in a certain respect is the highest level of knowledge for looking at the external spiritual world, already comes to us in ordinary life, albeit in a different form. And I had to point this out as early as the beginning of the nineties — if I may make this personal remark — from my own soul development in my “Philosophy of Freedom” how the moral impulses of the human being — and the moral life gives the human being his actual value and his actual dignity — are drawn from a world that I also called an intuitive world back then, a world of spiritual substance. And I already said in this “Philosophy of Freedom”: The true moral impulses are drawn from a spiritual, supersensible world through pure, sensuality-free thinking. I established freedom in human life by pointing out that the question is usually asked wrongly. One asks: Is man free or unfree? He is just as free as he is unfree. Unfree in relation to everything that are the ordinary actions of life, which are bound to the physical organism, where they are impulsed by instincts, drives. But man develops more and more to freedom by coming to get his impulses for the moral, the ethical life from a spiritual world through pure thinking, even in ordinary life, even if more or less unconsciously. And man is free to the extent that his moral impulses come to him from a spiritual world. Therefore, what man grasps as moral intuitions becomes the model for what must now be asserted in anthroposophical research as the highest level of knowledge, as the intuitive level.

One might be tempted to say: we can learn in our moral life what the cognitive life must also achieve. However, in our ordinary consciousness we are given the opportunity to have such intuitions in our moral life. They are contained in what our conscience offers us. With regard to the knowledge of the supersensible world, to which the human soul with its supersensible part belongs, intuitive knowledge must first be sought after one has gone through imaginative and inspired knowledge. Inspired knowledge first offers the objective, the entry into an alien world. Intuitive knowledge is the complete surrender to the objective spiritual world. One only gets to know the latter objectivity sufficiently when one first admits that imaginative knowledge only leads into one's own subjective world. And when one gets to know a spiritual world in this way, then everything that is there as a sensual world is also revealed in the form of the spiritual. That is to say, one remains completely on the ground of natural science for the field of nature. One does not speak or fantasize about all kinds of spiritual, nebulous entities in nature. One ascends through real knowledge to that which is seen as spiritual entities when the objectively observed sensual things and entities metamorphose before the spiritual gaze in the way that I can only hint at for you today in a few cases.

You see, in the sensory view and in ordinary science, the sun is given with sensory contours. We see it that way for ordinary consciousness. It is given with sensory contours in space. Ordinary science calculates its correct, indisputable position through astronomy and astrophysics in relation to this sun. For the spiritual view that I have described to you, the sun changes. That is, of course, for the one personality, which remains fully intact, as it sees it. Otherwise one would become a hallucinator and not a spiritual researcher. But that which remains so fully intact shows itself at the same time in its supersensible essence. One learns to recognize that the sun is not only the being that stands spatially out there in space, but that a solar element, which is only consolidated and concentrated in the physical space of the sun, fills the entire space of the universe that is accessible to us, permeating all beings in the nature kingdoms and also permeating the human being himself. One gets to know the spiritual, supersensible power of the solar element.

And just as one becomes aware in one's ordinary consciousness that external facts live on in the human being as feelings, as thoughts, as triggers of will impulses, so one comes to recognize that in the depths of human nature the external spiritual-supernatural sun-like quality finds its continuation. One gets to know the sun-like quality in one's own human nature. One would like to say: everything transforms from a sharply contoured form into a becoming, into an ongoing life. And the human being's own internal organs metamorphose before the supersensible eye in such a way that they appear in the process of becoming. While the heart, lungs, brain and other human organs are sharply defined for the ordinary sensory view, so to speak representing things, it happens for the supersensible view that we can only speak of a heart process, a stomach process, a brain process, a lung process. Everything merges into life, comes to life. And as the sun-like essence pours itself into this life, we perceive, at a higher level, everything that is emerging life, that is connected with that which makes us young and keeps us young, what growing, sprouting, sprouting forces are in the human being, but also the sprouting, sprouting forces out there in the realms of nature, in the plant kingdom, in the animal kingdom and also in the mineral kingdom. One now learns to see through the realms of nature and one's own inner human being spiritually and soulfully. The peculiar thing is that otherwise the human being is faced as a whole; his individual organs are individual parts. Now one learns to recognize how the individual organs are assigned to the different areas, the different forces of the cosmos. One learns, for example, to recognize how the brain forces are assigned to the solar forces, in that they are in the first half of life, as other organs, namely the heart, are assigned to the solar forces.

But one also learns how to recognize the solar on the one hand, for example, the lunar on the other. Again, the moon is only sensually seen as a clearly defined cosmic body. A lunar quality flows through the whole of outer space, all the outer realms of nature and the human being itself. This includes all the forces of decline, all the forces of retrogressive development, all the forces through which we age, through which our organs become dulled, become dulled, somehow merge into descending development. One now gets to know this mechanism of the human organism and the external mechanism of nature from a new perspective, by being able to see the solar and the lunar together.

And in the same way, in relation to other celestial bodies, we learn about the force-giving, the sustaining, the process-sustaining, and the becoming. One learns to recognize it in its continued effect within the human being, in its effect outside in nature. But in doing so, one enters a field where it can be shown how anthroposophy can be thoroughly fruitful for other sciences, to which it does not stand in opposition, but which it would like to further develop by fully recognizing what they themselves can achieve, how spiritual science can have a fruitful effect on other areas of life.

By learning to see in this way, the becoming, the process of the human inner organism, one learns to recognize in a more intimate way the health of the human being, the illness of the human being. One gets to know the breakdown of some organic processes, as it occurs in disease processes. One also learns to recognize how one can contribute to recovery through opposing processes. Above all, one gets to know the connection between the outer nature and the human inner being. For example, one learns to recognize how certain degenerative, destructive forces of one organ or another can be balanced by the sun-like, constructive forces, say, in the plant or mineral kingdom. One gets to know the healing powers by following the supersensible in nature and in man. And that can emerge from anthroposophy that has already emerged precisely in relation to medicine.

Physicians have taken up the suggestions that can arise from this kind of anthroposophical research, and medical-therapeutic institutes have been established in Dornach near Basel and in Stuttgart, which are in the process of developing, in a thoroughly exact way, those healing methods and remedies that arise from the suggestions of anthroposophy. This is an example of the kind of cross-fertilization that anthroposophical research can provide for the individual sciences and practical areas of life. What can otherwise only be tried empirically, and only after trying can one say how it works in this or that direction in the human organism, can be understood because the natural process according to the sun and moon and according to the other cosmic processes, and the inner human natural process and soul process and spirit process can be understood. Rational medicine, a medicine of inner insight into the pathological and healing processes, can be substituted for the mere trial-and-error medicine. Similarly, a physics and a biology institute are being established in Stuttgart. That is all I want to mention. The individual sciences can certainly be fertilized by anthroposophy.

But what Anthroposophy provides in this way, by pointing to our own immortality in connection with the spiritualizing of the supersensible in the universe, can also have a fruitful effect on life in other ways. This should be shown by a particular example, the Dornach building, the Goetheanum, the School of Spiritual Science in Dornach near Basel. Anthroposophy has been practised for a long time now, and the time has come when a number of friends of Anthroposophy have given rise to the building of a home for Anthroposophy. The circumstances, which I do not have to describe here, brought this home for Anthroposophy, this Goetheanum, close to Basel.

If the necessity of building a spiritual movement its own home had been felt in any other field, then contact would have been made with this or that architect. Perhaps a Romanesque, Gothic or Renaissance building would have been constructed or something similar. Anthroposophy could not do that. No matter how much one may dispute the artistic side of what has been created, what some claim it is not in any case. But if one is imbued with what anthroposophy can give as an attitude of the soul, then one is a strict critic oneself and initially describes what one has to describe only as a beginning. The Goetheanum should also be described from this point of view. Because Anthroposophy does not strive for one-sidedness, but because it springs from the whole, full humanity, and in turn wants to place the whole, full human being in the world, it could not be a matter of building a randomly stylized building as a home.

I would like to use a trivial comparison: just as the individual forms of a nutshell are built according to exactly the same laws as the nut kernel – as you can see, the same forces act in the shell in their position and in their mutual relationship as they do inside the nut kernel – so, if anthroposophy is is to be understood not as a theory, not as a collection of dull ideas, but as real life appearing in ideas, then what appears as its framework, so to speak its structural shell, must be made of exactly the same spirit as the ideas in which the supersensible life is presented. Therefore, everything that has been realized in Dornach, whether architecturally, pictorially, sculpturally or in any other artistic way, must come from the same spirit as that which is spoken as the Word on the podium. This appearance of ideas and thought-forms cannot be other than the kernel of the nut to the shell, to that which speaks out of forms that are not straw-like allegories or symbols; there everything has flowed into the truly artistic. And yet, even if the whole is only a beginning, one may still refer with a certain certainty to Goethe and in particular to Goethe's view of art. One need only think of how Goethe put it: “When nature reveals her manifest secret to someone, that person feels a deep longing for her most worthy interpreter, art.” In another saying, Goethe expresses the same sentiment: “Art is a manifestation of secret natural laws that would never be revealed without it.

In that anthroposophy, in the way it has been characterized, really wants to penetrate into the deepest laws of nature, into the laws of the supersensible spiritual world, it also feels inspired for the artistic and knows how to incorporate the living, not the symbolic, into the material. She has just the right feeling for the material, so that she does not feel comfortable in some artistic, symbolizing cloud cuckoo land, but in the most eminent sense, she lets what is her spiritual life be revealed through the art form. In this way, without anything didactic occurring, what goes beyond all theory into the knowledge of the supersensible can at the same time be fruitful for the artistic field.

I can only give isolated examples of the practical effects of anthroposophy. Thirdly, I would like to mention the Waldorf School in Stuttgart, which has already found a certain following here too. This Waldorf School was founded by Emil Molt and is run by me. It is run in such a way that it is not intended to oppose the great achievements of pedagogy and didactics of the nineteenth and the beginning of the twentieth century. It is mindful of the great pedagogical maxims that are there. But precisely those aspects that are often expressed today in the field of education as a longing for reform show that something is needed to implement the well-intentioned maxims of the great educators in practice in the individual. Anthroposophy does not want to replace old maxims with new theoretical ones in this field, but to serve their practical implementation. That is why the Waldorf School in Stuttgart is definitely not a school where Anthroposophy is to be grafted into children; that is far from our minds. We have therefore quietly entrusted Catholic religious education to the Catholic pastor and Protestant religious education to the Protestant pastor. Only for those children who would otherwise be dissidents have we provided a free religious education. The religious aspect of the world view is not what gives the Waldorf School its specific character. What it seeks to achieve is that anthroposophical knowledge teaches us to recognize the human being in terms of body, soul and spirit, to recognize this in the child; that, based on our knowledge of the human being, we can read the curriculum for each school year, for each month, for each week from the child; that it is only through a true knowledge of the human being that we can truly establish the art of education and the art of teaching. In the practical side of education and teaching, in the “how” of how to carry it out, we should let what anthroposophy can give have its effect. And if people were not so opposed to anthroposophy, purely out of misunderstanding, as they are, then far more consideration would be given to such things as occurred this summer during the anthroposophical congress in Stuttgart.

For example, a teacher at this Waldorf school showed how one-sided everything is that is supposed to be made fruitful for teaching through experimental pedagogy and experimental psychology, especially in recent times. Anthroposophy does not go against what is being done in these experiments either, but it can show that what is learned about the human being in this way can only bear fruit in the right way if one also enters into the soul through inner contemplation into the soul; when the lessons are not based merely on experimental results about memory, the development of the powers of mind and will, about fatigue and so on, which have been obtained externally, where one can stand far from the human soul. Rather, what can be gained from the soul itself will only bear fruit when one also gains the ability to look intimately into the human soul, into this wonderful, enigmatic human soul that develops from the first childlike day, from week to week, from month to month. Only when we have the right sense of insight are we capable of educating. And anthroposophy, because it does not just go to the surface but learns to recognize the whole, the full human being in body, soul and spirit, can create such a higher, inspired, spiritualized art of education.

The art of education is what anthroposophy seeks to practise in the Waldorf school. It is not some kind of world view that is imposed on the children. Now a teacher at the Waldorf school has discussed in a particularly intimate way – the lecture has now been published as a brochure – the significance of experimental psychology and what it could become through deepening. In my opinion, Dr. von Heydebrand has presented something extraordinarily significant here, with regard to the appreciation of a one-sided current of development in the present time. This would undoubtedly have been discussed much more in pedagogical circles if it had not grown precisely on the much-disliked soil of anthroposophy.

And anthroposophy can also have a living effect on the outer social life. Here too is an example, even if it is only a small beginning. Emil Leinhas also gave a lecture at the Stuttgart Anthroposophical Congress, which has also already been printed, and in it he gave a spirited critique of contemporary economics. The title is 'The Bankruptcy of National Economy'. Emil Leinhas shows how this national economy must remain unfruitful for real social life if it is only understood in the pattern of outer, natural scientific thinking, and not supplemented by the knowledge of spiritual, supersensible forces at work especially in human life.

We see, especially in the social sphere, the devastating effect of a way of thinking that would like to apply the one-sided natural science approach to social life as well. Let us look at the terrible devastation that is growing ever greater and greater and that ultimately poses a threat to the whole of Europe, indeed to the whole of the civilized Western world. Let us look at what is happening in the social sphere in Eastern Europe and become aware that the underlying reasons for the emergence of these destructive forces are nevertheless that we have not been able to permeate social life with what arises from a spirit-perceiving consciousness. If we look at people only as the economics teachers of the nineteenth and early twentieth century did, uninspired by spiritual-scientific knowledge, then destructive social forces must ultimately emerge, as they have in Eastern Europe, and must become a threat to the whole educated world in a much higher sense if a spiritual element is not introduced into our social order.

Now, dear ladies and gentlemen, I have only touched on a few areas in which anthroposophy can be fruitful, in scientific and other areas of practical life. Only at the end would I like to suggest something that must be mentioned last, although it is not the last: By leading to the direct beholding of the eternal in the human soul, by leading to the direct knowledge of that which lies beyond birth and death, to the unborn, to the immortal in the human soul, by leading to those worlds in which the human soul lives when it is not clothed with an external physical body. By becoming acquainted with these two worlds, it also becomes acquainted with what is in human nature, deeper than physical human nature, more comprehensive, more intense than that which the soul experiences when it is in the spiritual world before birth or after death. What is found in the human soul is not exhausted in the contemplation of the natural or supersensible world.

After getting to know the two worlds, which of course only appear to be two worlds and in truth interact according to the whole meaning of the presentation, so that one cannot speak of dualism versus monism in anthroposophy; when one learns to recognize something in the human soul which reveals itself as a synthesis of these two worlds, that is the innermost, human, eternal core of being, which goes through repeated earthly lives, so that human life is made up of such pieces that lie between birth and death and between death and a new birth. And by learning to recognize the outer cosmos in terms of its spiritual significance, one also learns to look in a different way at times when man was still more akin to the outer cosmic existence. There were no repeated lives on earth then. And in the future, when man will have found a more intimate union with the cosmos again, the repeated lives on earth will also cease. But for a long period of time we have to observe, through the same powers that I have described, what can be called the contemplation of repeated earthly lives. Through this one is led in a cognitive way to the spiritual world.

As I have already indicated, human feeling and perception are taken along by the development of the powers of thought and will. This human feeling, insofar as it lives and wants to live out in religious devotion, can only deepen when the human soul is also presented with knowledge of that which is eternal in the soul, which is spiritual and supersensible in the cosmos. Anthroposophy certainly does not want to found some kind of sect in the world. It does not want to found a new religion. Take the whole meaning of what I have tried to explain today: it is something that wants to strive scientifically, but which, due to its special kind of scientific striving, can never become a mere specialty because it concerns every human being. Therefore, one cannot say: Anthroposophy is something like botany or zoology or geometry, which in their higher parts can only be recognized by individual specialists. Anthroposophy is something that concerns every human being. And the development of the spirit will bring it about that it will concern more and more people. And every person, through what is in them in body, soul and spirit, can understand and receive what Anthroposophy, albeit as the result of arduous research, has to present to the world, provided they are open to it. But the fact that the supersensible world emerges as a result of research does not in fact take away a person's religious life, but deepens it. Religions have every reason to look to anthroposophy as something that can offer them help, that can give people exactly what they need to come to religious devotion again, after modern life has taken away much of this religious devotion, especially in the modern intellectual life. It is therefore a complete misunderstanding to believe that true, genuine religious devotion, true, genuine religious experience could somehow be endangered by anthroposophy. This is another area in which anthroposophy can be thoroughly fruitful.

Those who see through what is actually at stake may say that anthroposophy in particular accommodates the deepest human longings of the more active minds of modern humanity.

And if I am to briefly summarize in a few words what I have tried to describe as the essence of anthroposophy – although this can only be done insufficiently in a short lecture – I would like to say: the human being stands before us with his physical body. We look at him. His soul and spirit speak from the depths of his being. It speaks from his face, from each of his movements. We do not have the whole person before us if we do not see this spiritual-soul in the natural-physical. Natural science has brought it to a high level of perfection over the last three to four centuries, especially in the nineteenth century. Anthroposophy does not want to rely on laymanship or dilettantism, although it is for everyone. The anthroposophical researcher wants to exclude any laymanship or dilettantism in the field of natural science. He wants to see genuine science and genuine methodology developed in the field of natural science. But in doing so, he is particularly aware of how external natural science, which has rightly celebrated such triumphs and has made such a significant impact on practical life, how this natural science represents something external that can be compared to the physical body of the human being.

Wherever we look with the unprejudiced eyes of a whole human being, equipped with the insights of natural science, we encounter something like the way the soul and spirit appear in human physiognomy and human movements; we encounter something as science, as knowledge of the soul and spirit in the knowledge of nature. I would like to say: through its physiognomy, through the way it develops, the knowledge of nature can point to this spiritual-soul aspect of a particular knowledge. Just as the natural human being reveals the spirit and the soul in the way his body is formed, so true scientific knowledge reveals a higher, supersensible knowledge that goes to the spiritual-soul. What the human soul and human spirit are in the human body, that, ladies and gentlemen, is what the soul and spirit are in knowledge. For a true natural science, the anthroposophical paths and results are what the soul and spirit are in knowledge.