The Rudolf Steiner Archive

In the various recent reflections that have been presented here, I have tried less to convey individual concepts and ideas to you than to characterize a certain way of relating to the world. For it must be borne in mind over and over again that the most important thing in relation to the acquisitions to be made through spiritual science is not the conceptual, the imaginative, but the whole soul disposition, the whole soul mood, which the human being of the future will be able to acquire for our development on earth through spiritual science.

Today, almost all those who engage with spiritual science still have some remnants of old attitudes and old soul moods. And this is especially the case to an even greater extent because a certain soul mood in the modern soul has only been evoked for a relatively short time, for three, four to five centuries, in the search for the unraveling of natural phenomena. This soul mood, which I would like to describe as emanating from the so-called scientific world view, is regarded in the broadest circles today as the only valid one. We know that the permeation of scientific concepts and ideas as the basis of a world view has only taken hold among a small part of the world's population today; after all, modern school education basically ensures that it is not so much science as this scientific attitude that is spreading rapidly. And since this scientific frame of mind has only taken hold for a short time, it is naturally difficult for the spiritual-scientific world-view to become established in that which has only taken hold for a short time and which must first develop in the majority of people as a transitional stage in evolution. This scientific world-view mood necessarily leads gradually to a kind of materialism, because it cannot be otherwise than one-sided. It has been acquired in a one-sided way through what may be called man's head experiences, and it also strives to exclude from the mentioned world-view conceptions everything that does not correspond to this head mood of man, that is not thought up, invented, won through experiment or observation with the help of thinking and inventing. One could say that this world-view sentiment has also really retained its one-sidedness with regard to the view of the human being, and in view of the many impulses that have entered the human soul, we can feel how difficult it will be to unfold through spiritual science the more comprehensive soul mood of the world, which emanates from the whole human being again.

If someone today who is thoroughly steeped in the scientific world view gets hold of a book such as, for example, “The Secret Science in the Outline”, he naturally regards the content of this book as a kind of crazy nonsense, because he cannot derive any special meaning from this book due to his one-sided brain and head mood. Now, something of a radical contrast between the spiritual-scientific world-view mood and the natural-scientific world-view mood is evident from one phenomenon in particular – from many phenomena, of course, but most strikingly from one phenomenon. I would like to emphasize this point first.

When we study the human being from a spiritual scientific perspective, we see that the further we go back into the distant past, as we say, into the lunar evolution of our planetary existence, the more we realize that what appears to be so significant for the human being's development on earth was not actually present in the old lunar evolution. In this ancient lunar development, what was present in today's human being was essentially – I say essentially – that which is more or less connected with the present-day development of the human brain. And what the human being has besides his head, besides what mainly belongs to the skull, to the head, his remaining physicality, that is essentially an earthly product, a product of earthly organization.

Essentially, I say again. One could also say: if one traces man back to the ancient development of the moon, then one gradually sees, the further one goes back, his outer limbs, through which he is an earthly human being today, shrink, and what remains is his head, which has of course been transformed by the development of the earth, but which essentially remains when one goes back to the development of the moon. The other has become inorganic, attached. I once explained this in more detail in the lectures on 'Occult Physiology', which I hope will be published soon, in the Prague cycle that I gave in 1911. So, essentially, we come to the conclusion that the human being has emerged from what is now compressed and concentrated in his skull organization; the other has become attached. We must therefore say that, schematically drawn, we would have man in his lunar development like this, and in his earthly development we would have him like this, with the rest of the organization attached to it.

Take what I have just said and compare it with what the one-sided natural scientific world view has achieved to date. In a one-sided way - of course there is something justified at the basis of all these things - it assumes that man has gradually developed from the lower animal stages to his present perfection. What do we see in the lower animal kingdom? We see in them precisely that which has been added to the development of the brain and head in the course of human evolution; and we see the atrophy in the animals of precisely that which is contained in the human head. In animals we see the limbs, the appendages, particularly developed, and what had already developed particularly in the head in man during the ancient lunar evolution, and what then concentrated, we see in animals still shrivelled up and stunted. But only this is seen by the scientific world view. We can say that the scientific world view actually puts the cart before the horse, because it takes what has only been added in humans as its starting point, and what was present in humans before they even had organs like those that present-day animals have, as something that is supposed to have developed from these forms themselves.

From a logical point of view, this means nothing less than concluding: First you look at a child and then at the father and find that the father is taller than the child. Since you now assume, as a result of a logical conclusion, that the larger, developing thing could only have emerged from the smaller, the father would have to have developed from the child, and not the other way around. That is how one actually concludes. The one-sidedness of the modern scientific way of thinking will one day seem as grotesque as the newer awareness of humanity. It will be known that the one-sidedly conceived Darwinian theory is logically nothing more than the assertion that the child has born its father.

Now you can imagine the efforts that will be necessary before humanity relearns about such things, as they have now been hinted at, and what is needed to truly relearn. They have happily managed to establish a world view that turns the world upside down, and now humanity will be confronted with the necessity of turning the world right side up again. But it has taken hardly three to four centuries to get used to the idea that the “upside down” position is the right one.

It is truly one of our tasks not just to acquire theoretical ideas about this or that in the world, but to acquire feelings and perceptions for the tasks that lie before us within the spiritual-scientific movement. We must be clear about how much what must follow for us from the spiritual-scientific view of the world must really differ from what surrounds us everywhere outside today. Otherwise we shall fall again and again into the error of not noticing the radical differences and of wanting to make compromises thoughtlessly, whereas we must be aware that we cannot but develop something from the earlier world-views by grafting it on, but must develop out of a new original cell of world-view life that which can more and more come to our mind as the right thing out of spiritual science. Only with this consciousness will we succeed in putting our soul into our task, and we must get used to the fact that many questions that arise outside the circle of spiritual science can only be tackled, as I showed with reference to a question yesterday, if we open ourselves to what spiritual science can trigger in our soul.

Let us consider something else that may be close to us in relation to the place where we are now standing, the place where we have built our structure. I have emphasized it often in the past, how art, science and religion are three branches of human spiritual life that spring from one root. If we go back, as I have often said, to the time of the primeval mysteries, we do not find the practices of the primeval mysteries in such a way that we could say they were art or religion or science, but they are all that together. In the primeval mysteries, science, religion and art are one unit, organically connected with each other.

What people today try to visualize with the impotent concepts and ideas I spoke of yesterday, man saw in living representation, in living contemplation in the primeval mysteries. He perceived what he can only think today. We will not approach a work of art in the future as we look at a work of art today. In the future, we will not approach the work of art by looking at it and then believing that we understand it only with our thoughts, but we will understand it by directly looking at it and experiencing it in our soul. Thus, by directly experiencing what he was looking at, the person who was initiated into the mysteries understood what he was meant to consciously grasp. What he was to grasp so consciously, what he was to understand by looking and to look at by understanding, was at the same time something beautiful, appearing in outer forms and colors, speaking in sounds and words: it was art at the same time. They were one, science and art.

Today only art, which has separated itself from what science is supposed to give us, gives us an idea of how one can be united with the object inwardly at the same time as being united with it outwardly in direct contact; and only those who want to introduce the barbarism of symbolism, of symbolizing, into art sin against this direct experiencing understanding of the work of art. For the moment one begins to interpret a work of art, one leaves behind that which one might call the experiential understanding of the work of art. It is, in fact, a real barbarism, let us say, to proceed in this way with “Hamlet”, so that the individual persons are interpreted as the principles of the theosophical view or the like. I would not like to live to see the individual forms of our structure interpreted symbolically in this way, because it is the direct, understanding experience that is at stake here!

Thus, in the primeval mysteries, the scientific experience of the world was at the same time the artistic experience of the world, and at the same time this scientific and artistic experience of the world was the religious feeling of the world. For what was experienced in this way in direct living contemplation, in experiencing understanding and in understanding experience, was at the same time that which could be venerated, to which one could lift one's whole soul with religious fervor. Religion, art and science were one; and it was because of human weakness through original sin that there had to be a separation into science, art and religion. What was originally one had to split, so that a religious current, an artistic current and a scientific current arose. What originally took hold of the whole human soul as an organism, woven from scientific, religious and artistic content, had to be distributed among the individual powers of the soul. For the intellect, for thinking, science was given to man, so that when he experiences the world in thought through science, his will and feeling can sleep, can rest.

Man became weak. One-sidedly, in thinking, he sought to experience the world scientifically, and again one-sidedly he sought to experience it artistically so that the other powers could sleep. Again one-sidedly, he sought to experience the world religiously for the same reason. Man would not be able to shape in such perfection that which he can work out intellectually, as is happening today, if a one-sided scientific trend had not developed; he would not have been able to achieve what has been accomplished artistically if art had not separated itself; and religious fervor would not have reached the heights it was destined to reach if it had not separated itself from the other powers of the soul that are devoted to science and art.

But with regard to this separation, we have indeed reached a crisis, and this crisis is clearly expressed; it is expressed very, very clearly. In what? I would say that especially in the last few centuries, humanity has had to experience more and more how this crisis expresses itself. Science, art and religion have become so divorced that they no longer understand each other, that they can no longer have any relationship with each other. Slowly we see how the “diplomatic relations” between religion, science and art are broken off. We see how such relationships still existed, say, in the heyday of the Italian Renaissance, where an intimate bond was woven between religion and art in the creations of Raphael, Michelangelo and Leonardo da Vinci. But the more we delve into more recent times, the more we find that a mutual lack of understanding has gradually developed between science, art and religion. We see – and unfortunately have to admit – how, in many cases in recent centuries, religion has even become hostile to art; we see how it has thrown out art, how there are religious movements that seek to achieve the height of religious feeling by throwing out sculptures and making churches as sober and artless as possible. We also see how another religious current has come to have sculptures, but mostly those that are no longer works of art, because what we still find in churches in the form of sculptures from past centuries is not intended to awaken the sense of art, the aesthetic sense, but to thoroughly eradicate it. And on the other hand, we see how art has increasingly lost sight of its connection with the conception of the divine-spiritual being, how everything has passed over into naturalism, how more and more people only want to depict what has a model in external nature.

Of course, art must then break off its, if I may say so, “diplomatic relations” with religion if it only wants to be naturalistic art, because that which religion must venerate cannot have a model in external nature. That is quite obvious. And how little science has maintained its relations can be seen from the slow approach of this breaking off of relations. Yes, we can see that it is approaching slowly.

We have an excellent artist in the 16th century who was also active as an anatomist and technician in the most diverse fields: Leonardo da Vinci. Anyone who studies his scientific works can still feel everywhere how these scientific works are imbued with artistic meaning. But one can see how this sense has increasingly evaporated in more recent times, how unartistic it has become, and how today it seems to be believed that the greatness of science consists precisely in being unartistic. It has almost become a dogma for a certain direction of modern times that Goethe is such a visionary physicist because the artistic sense did not allow him to become a proper physicist.

In short, misunderstanding has arisen between the three currents. But this marks the crisis. For when that which comes from one root separates in its mutual relationships in such a way that the life juices no longer come from the common root, the crisis must occur, the one-sided development must lead these currents to wither away. In recent times, we have reached a crisis in our failure to understand what a common organism, a coherent organism in human nature, is and how it separates in the outer evolution. We are in the crises. Such crises can be described in such a way that we can say that human nature demands organic unification of what has had to go separate ways in the outer world for some time. In many areas of life, the person who does not go through the evolution of the world indifferently can perceive such crisis, and such a person will observe much of what cannot remain as it is in today's development in these crises, and he will gain insight into what has to happen in order to overcome the crises.

We have already hinted at one crisis in the fact that science, art and religion no longer understand each other. Another crisis is going through the world, which is noticed only by a few, but which is terrible in its effect, a crisis that stems from the lack of understanding between two currents. The one current is that which was once breathed through the world in the infinitely deep sayings engraved in the human heart: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “You are from below, but I am from above”. Man's root is in the spiritual world.

The second current, which must develop more and more into a crisis-ridden confrontation with what is expressed in the words: “My kingdom is not of this world” and “I am from above, but you are from below,” is the word: “L'état c'est moi! The state is me!” My kingdom, the kingdom of my ego, is completely bound to this world. The right way lies in the synthesis of the two sentences. It lies in a universally conceived Christianity, expressed in the words “Give to Caesar what is Caesar's and to God what is God's.” In correctly understood Christianity there is no false turning away from the world. But there is also not that one-sidedness in it, which can only be lived out in the attachment to the material institutions of world existence.

In speaking of this, we are touching on the very deepest tasks of anthroposophy. For anthroposophy, in the true sense of the word, must not arise one-sidedly from the mood of the head, but from the whole soul of man. And only then will this soul find the transition into anthroposophical life when it is completely seized by spiritual science, not only in its life of ideas, but when it is completely seized by it.

It is a fact that what has become the human head during the moon-life is on the way to becoming the whole human being during the earth-life. During the old moon-evolution there was a being, the ancestor of the present human being. What was then an outer organism has today become the head. The limbs have been added. When the coming Jupiter evolution is complete, this whole organism of today's human being will have become the head. What you are today as a whole human being will become the brain, the head, of the Jupiter human, just as the whole moon human has become the head of the earth human.

The task of true spiritual development consists in truly anticipating the future. Therefore, we must become aware that there is a head culture around us and that it is our responsibility to create a human culture. Our head could not think, could not reflect any ideas or concepts if it behaved like the rest of our organism; it could never truly fulfill its task. Our head reflects the world, which then becomes our world of perception, only because it can forget itself in its perception, can truly forget itself. In its feeling, the human being is - thank God - always headless. If you try to feel your way through and ask yourself: What do I feel least in my organism? - it is really the head that forgets itself most in normal life. And when it does not forget itself, then it hurts, and then it also prefers not to perceive anything, but to be left in peace and without perception. That is where it asserts its egoism. Otherwise, however, it extinguishes itself, and because it extinguishes itself, we can perceive the whole surrounding world. It is organized to extinguish itself.

If you were to forget even the slightest part of the outer periphery of the head, but instead focus on it, then you would no longer be able to perceive the external environment. Imagine that instead of perceiving the external world, you would see your eye; for example, if you were to take a step back with your perception, then you would see the cranial cavity, but with the perception of the external world it would be nothing. To the same extent and at the same moment that a person succeeds in completely switching off their organism – which, as is well known, is achieved through meditation and in initiation – to that same extent and in that same moment, this organism becomes a real mirror of the world, only that we then see not the organism but the cosmos. Just as the head does not see itself either, but what is around it, so the whole human being, when it becomes an organ of perception, sees the cosmos. This is the ideal that we must have in mind: forgetting the organism as it appears to us on the physical plane, and being able to use it instead as a mirroring apparatus for the secrets of the cosmos.

In this way we gradually expand our head-centered view to a whole-humane view of the world, and we must learn to sense, to feel, to perceive something of how truly anthroposophy human being, overcoming this head-centeredness – so I may call it in contrast to the anthroposophical centeredness – the one-sided head-centeredness that comes from modern science and so only takes hold of the head.

If you take something of what I said yesterday, when I described how man can become aware that he is a lamp for the cherubim, a heating apparatus for the seraphim, how he enters into the world of cherubim and seraphim in thinking and willing, how he means something for this world, how his self is not only there for itself, but stands in a living relationship to the weaving and life of the spiritual hierarchies - if you make that an attitude, then you will feel something of how the whole person can truly become brain, how he as a whole person can thus come into communication with his surroundings, as otherwise only the head can. Then you will feel what is actually meant by this: to perceive the world as a whole human being.

But if you perceive the world as a whole human being, then you cannot think, feel and will one-sidedly, but you become immersed in the whole of earthly existence. You immerse yourself in the whole experience of the world, and it arises by itself, I would say, the inner sense of dependence on it, not only in thoughts but also in forms, not only in the formless thoughts but in the beautiful, expressive forms. The urge arises, the need to express things in artistic forms that you understand intellectually.

And again: when a person delves into the entire spiritual life of the world, his life basically becomes prayer, and he no longer has such an urgent need to single out little minutes in which to pray. Rather, he knows: when I think, I am a lampstand for the cherubim; when I act, when I act with will, I am a heating apparatus for the seraphim. Man knows that he lives in the whole spiritual world structure. Thinking becomes a religious conviction for him, and acting becomes a moral prayer.

We see how these three areas, art, religion and science, which had to go their separate ways in the world for a while, are seeking each other out of the whole human being again. At the beginning of the development of the earth, man brought so much with him from extra-terrestrial development that he still had the living, unified feeling, the unified striving, as it expressed itself in the old days in the union of art, religion and science. One could say that in man at that time there still strove his angel, his Angelos. But man would never have become free if it had continued like this. Man had to be emancipated from this old inheritance. But he must find again in the ascending evolution what he has lost in the descending evolution.

Goethe's beautiful words about architecture have been mentioned several times. He called architecture frozen music. Let us dwell on this saying. It is truly possible to call architecture, in its previous development, a kind of frozen music. The forms of architecture are like frozen melodies, like solidified harmonies and rhythms. But we have the task, since we are in the midst of the crisis mentioned, of bringing the frozen back into motion, into liveliness, of making the frozen forms musically alive again, so to speak. When you see our building, you will see our efforts to set the old, rigid forms of construction in motion, to transform them into life, to make them musical again. This is the reason why we do not have a round building, but a single axis of symmetry, along which the motifs move.

Thus we see how the spiritual-scientific worldview, including its artistic aims, is intimately connected with all the tasks and necessary impulses of our time, which we recognize in the crises of our time. Understanding and seeing this is our task, it is of utmost importance for our task. We must gradually bring together all the details of our task from this point of view.

Today, people quickly forget how to use their entire organism like a kind of brain. He has the potential, but as soon as he has developed from a crawling child into an upright human being in the first years of life, he quickly forgets how to relate to his entire organism, just as he will then relate to his brain throughout his entire life; for this straightening up, this bringing-himself-into-the-vertical is in fact a working of the spirit on the whole human being. This is the last remnant of what we bring with us from our spiritual, prenatal life, because in our earthly life we quickly unlearn it. And then we drag the whole organism, which eats and drinks and digests, through life like a burden; we drag it through life and no longer bring it into a respectful relationship with the spiritual world, but far away from the spiritual world.

The child still has the great wisdom to know that man's task lies in the heights far from the world and has the direction towards heights far from the world in its organism. When that is over, the organism becomes a digestive and gastric sac and is separated from the relationship with the outside world.

Not even the relationship to the outside world, of which I spoke yesterday, is maintained. When we, for example, rest our head in our hand in order to express something weighty in the external organism, we hardly notice it. And if someone in their unconsciousness still retains the habit of using the whole organism and not just thinking with the brain, but also placing the hand or the index finger on the forehead or the nose, thus indicating that they are really distinguishing and judging - we do not notice that this is an instinctive effort to use the whole organism like a brain. It does not have to happen in this external way. Of course, spiritual science does not intend to turn human beings into fidgets who think with their whole bodies. But spiritually, of course, the consciousness must expand to include the whole human being in the cosmos, to know that the cosmos can be mirrored by the whole body, just as the cosmos is now only mirrored by the brain.

When consciousness is broadened in this way, when the human being really goes beyond merely dragging his organism through life, so to speak, and learns to use and handle it, then the foundation is laid for what must be laid in our time: a human, a totally human world view, as opposed to a mere cerebral view, must become what anthroposophy has to strive for.

If we try to do this, and if we try to elevate our attitudes in this way, which otherwise remain only ideas, then we will achieve what is intended with this spiritual scientific movement of ours. For we will gradually find our way as human beings, ascending in development, to the real figure of Christ, when we have become more and more familiarized with the all-human conception of the world. That this Christ-figure cannot be found is only the fault of the brain-view. The moment this is overcome, the moment spiritual science has become so strong that man's consciousness is so completely reorganized in the way described, then what has often been said about the Christ-view will really come to pass. But then our human world will be able to achieve what it can only achieve from within and which will lead it beyond many things that have now led to a crisis among the earth's human race, not only inwardly, in terms of world views, but also outwardly, in terms of people and nations.

One would like people to gradually realize, at least a small part of people, that real help is needed. Then one will also realize that the help that humanity needs can only be provided by the souls, only from within, and that everything else cannot even be a surrogate, because surrogates can no longer help against the great crises of our time, only the real and the true. And the genuine and true must be conquered by humanity in the spirit. Christmas celebration

The remembrance of this Christmas Festival will be strongly imprinted on the souls of many, for a sharper mental contrast can scarcely be imagined than that which arises, when we lift our souls to the voices which sounded to the shepherds, presenting an eternal truth for all human progress of the post-Christian times:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

when we raise our souls to the ‘peace upon earth to men’ and then look at the facts of the present day which we find outspread over a great part of the civilised world.

By reason of this contrast, this Christmas Festival will be a permanent token in the memories and hearts of men upon the earth. For certainly, if we preserve that which we must always preserve within the fields of our occult thought, if we preserve our uprightness of heart and our inner sincerity of soul, we cannot celebrate this Christmas Festival with the same feeling with which we have celebrated others; for it must stimulate us to more profound reflection, must stimulate us very specially to that which arises from our occult deepening as ideas for the future of humanity—to that which can lead human hearts to the ages which will be so different from our own.

In the course of years we have registered much within our souls, which can indicate to us the sort of soul-condition which such ages will bring. Let us ask ourselves, what is that, of which we must feel that it is still so much needed at the present time? If we call up before the eyes of our soul that which has frequently formed the centre of our consideration, we shall see that within the depths of the human soul a true knowledge is wanting of that which drew into the world upon the day which we celebrate every year in this wintry Christmas.

The whole significance, the whole profundity, of that which took place in the time which we call to remembrance in this Christmas Festival, is truly not expressed unavailingly, but profoundly and significantly, in the passage which humanity of earth has accepted from affection, one might say, the passage which runs thus:

‘Divine revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill,’

The simplest things are often to the human heart the most difficult of comprehension, and simple as this verse sounds, we do well if we make it ever clearer to ourselves that all the future ages of the earth existence will be able to understand this verse more and more profoundly, to enter more and more deeply into the significance of these important words.

It is not without reason that out of all the secret history of the appearing of Jesus upon the earth, the Festival of Christmas has become the most popular—nothing has become more popular than the entrance of the Jesus-child into earth life. For with this we have the possibility of placing before the souls of men something which is received lovingly even by the heart of a little child, in so far as he is able to receive external sense impressions, even though perhaps not yet from words, and yet at the same time it is something which sinks deeply into the depths of those human souls through which the gentlest and yet at the same time the strongest love flows warmly.

Truly the humanity upon earth is not yet advanced beyond a childish comprehension of the Mysteries of Christ Jesus, and epoch after epoch will still have to elapse ere human souls again acquire those forces, by means of which they will be able to absorb the complete magnitude of the beginning of the Mystery of Golgotha. Thus on this occasion may no Christmas consideration as in other years be brought before your souls, but something which may show us how much we are wanting in that depth which is necessary in order to let the Mystery of Golgotha flash up rightly within our souls.

In the course of the last few years we have often spoken of the fact that on occult grounds we really have to celebrate the birth of not only one Jesus child but of two, and it may be said that because through the observations of Spiritual Science this mystery of the two Jesus children has been revealed, a faint beginning has been made to a new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha.

Only slowly and gradually could this Mystery of Golgotha grip the minds of men. How it has been absorbed into human minds can be brought before our souls when, for example, we glance at the fact that, to a certain extent, that which Christian humanity has gained in the idea of the Christmas child had to struggle through from East to West, by making its way through other versions of a Divine Mediator between the highest Divine-spiritual Beings and the human soul.

We have often considered the fact that, running parallel with the stream of Christian life from East to West, another stream of revelation flowed from the North, over the Black Sea, along the Danube, upwards to the Rhine, to Western Europe. The worship which we know as the worship of Mithras disappeared in the early centimes of the Christian era. But in the first centuries of the Christian era it had gripped as many hearts in Europe as had Christianity itself, and impressed itself deeply and extended in the regions of central and Eastern Europe. To those who followed this worship, Mithras appeared just as sublime and great a Divine Mediator descending from spiritual heights into earth existence, as the Christ appeared to the Christians. In the same way we hear of the entrance of Mithras into earth existence in the Winter Holy-night, the shortest day! In the same way we hear that he was born secretly in a cave, that shepherds were the first to hear his Song of Praise: in the same way was Sunday dedicated to him in contradistinction to the other more ancient feast days. And if we ask what is the characteristic feature in the descent of this Mithras-figure, we must say as follows: Mithras was not represented as was the Christ within Jesus. When an image, a symbolical representation, was formed of him, it was known that it was only a symbolical representation. The true Mithras was only to be seen by those who had the faculty of clairvoyance. Certainly he was represented as a mediator between man and the spiritual Hierarchies, but he was not represented as having been incarnated in a human child. He was represented in such a way that when he descended to the earth, in his true being he was only visible to the Initiates, to those who had clairvoyant vision. The idea did not exist in the Mithras worship that that spiritual Being, who was represented as a mediator between the Spiritual Hierarchies and the souls of men, was incarnated in an earthly body as a child. For the worship of Mithras depended upon the fact that the ancient primitive clairvoyance was still in existence in a large number of human beings.

If we investigate the path of worship of Mithras from East to West, we find that amongst the people who were worshippers of Mithras a large number were those who could see in those intermediate conditions between waking and sleeping, when the soul lives not in dreams, but in spiritual reality. These could see in such intermediate conditions the descent of Mithras from aeon to aeon, from stage to stage, from the spiritual world down to the earth. Many could see and bear witness that such a Mediator had arisen for man, a Mediator in the spiritual worlds.

That which lived as the cult of Mithras was an externalisation of the more or less symbolical representation seen by the seer. What is it really that we meet with in this worship of Mithras? Our whole understanding of the Cosmos makes it impossible to believe that the Christ has only been known since the Mystery of Golgotha. The Initiates and their pupils also knew Him in the pre-Christian times as that Spirit Who was to come. The Initiates always pointed again and again to Him Whom they saw as the Sun-spirit descending from the heights, Who was approaching the earth in order to take up His abode within it. They designated Him as the One Who was to be, the One Who was to come. They knew Him in spirit and saw Him descending.

Then the Mystery of Golgotha took place. We know what it signifies. We know that through this Mystery of Golgotha that Spirit through Whom the earth has gained its meaning drew into a human body. We know that since then this Spirit is connected with the Earth and we know how man is to develop in order, in no very distant future, to see again in spirit the Christ Who through the Mystery of Golgotha united His Own Life with the life of the earth I humanity. We are expressing nothing figurative when we say that That Which the ancient Initiates saw in the various Sanctuaries of the Spiritual is since then to be recognised as pressing through, streaming through, pulsating through, living through the earth-life.

But the clairvoyant perception had to be lost more and more, and with it the power to look up into the spiritual spheres to behold the Christ, Who had now descended to the earth. For now those who could not perceive clairvoyantly could see that He was permeated with divine love, that He was That Which they were always to possess as the highest treasure of the earth-man. Thus men were to feel fully that they had to receive within their earthly habitation the great gift of cosmic Love, the Christ, sent by the God Who is called the Father-God; they were to learn to know Him fully as the Being Who henceforth was to remain connected with the ages as the meaning of the earth evolution; they were to learn to know Him fully in His life, from the first respiration as a Child to the spiritual deed of Christ on Golgotha which can be revealed to the hearts of men.

In the course of later times, it has been possible for us to fill this gap by means of the Fifth Gospel, which has been added to the other Gospels, as in our age it was destined for us to know every step of this Divine Life upon earth yet more minutely. And thus because men were, as it were, to become familiar with Christ Jesus as with a brother, as with One Who from love of man has drawn out of the wide spiritual realms into the narrow valley of earth, because men were to learn to know Him in the most familiar, most intimate knowledge, therefore had the powers of perception and love in the human mind to be gathered together in order to perceive intuitively in a purely human-divine manner, I might say, that which was enacted among men as the beginning of a new age, the Christian age.

For this end the power of man had to be concentrated upon the life of Christ Jesus: for a time it had to be diverted from the vision upwards into the spiritual spheres by means of That Which had drawn into the Child of Bethlehem, Which had descended from cosmic heights. But to-day, we are living in a time in which the vision must again be extended, in which human progress and human evolution must again dominate evolution if the Christ, as descending from divine spiritual heights, is to remain what He is in the life of the earth.

The worship of Mithras was a last powerful remembrance of the Christ Who had not yet reached the earth but was descending. For humanity was destined to receive the Christ ever more into the soul in such a way that even the smallest child could receive Him; in such a way that with it there came a closing of the spiritual vision with regard to the spiritual world, that vision by means of which we know that the Christ is a Cosmic Being, by means of which we know what importance He has for the valley of the earth.

Slowly and gradually the worship of Mithras flowed away, owing to the fact that Christ could appear to man as a Cosmic Being. The worship of Mithras was an echo of the old clairvoyant perception.

Then we see how, with the gradual flowing away, the clairvoyant perception also diminished, how even for those who still had the clairvoyant perception of the old sort, a flowing away of the clairvoyant capacities began, and how, with this flowing away, the possibility also ceased of perceiving the Christ completely in His true nature. He was perceived in His true nature when He was perceived not only in His earthly activity, but in His heavenly glory. The possibility gradually diminished, disappeared, of seeing Him in His heavenly glory beside His earthly existence. We see that it again appeared in a weakened form, in spite of the greatness of the teaching in other respects, in the founder of Manicheism. The Manu pointed to Jesus, but it was not an indication which was suited to simple, primitive, believing minds, because in this spirit which founded Manicheism the ancient clairvoyance still existed.

Yet there was nothing in it which could be counted as an opposition with regard to the comprehension of Christianity. Christ Jesus was for the Manu a Being Who had not taken on earthly corporality but had lived in a phantom body, as it were, in an etheric body upon the earth.

Now we see that with regard to the comprehension of the appearing of Christ Jesus a struggle began. Why was this? There was a striving to look upwards, as it were, to see how the Being of Christ descended. They were not, however, yet capable of seeing how the descending Being actually took up His abode in human flesh. A struggle of soul was inevitable before this complete comprehension was possible.

Again we see the teachings of the Manichees extending from East to West, a teaching which still looked up towards the Divine Spirit Who was descending, looked towards everything which the old conception of the world possessed, looked towards the permeation of the world not merely with the physical Being which presented itself to the human sense existence, but also with the Being which with the movements of the stars pervades the Cosmos.

The linking of human fate, of human life, with cosmic life, this pervaded the soul of the Manichee, this was deeply rooted within him, shunning the evil, which rules in human life in common with the activity of the good God. Deeply, deeply did Manicheism look into the riddle of evil. But this riddle of evil at the same time can only appear before the human soul when we are able to grasp it in connection with the Mystery of Golgotha, when we penetrate the Mystery of Golgotha with the riddle of evil in Manicheism.

Truly those who were called upon to yield their souls in the deepest, most intense manner, to the Mystery of Golgotha, have contended with that which shone into more modern times from the residue of the ancient clairvoyant perception. We need only think of one great leader of the West, St. Augustine. Before he struggled through to the Christianity of Paul he was given up to the teaching of the Manichees. A yet greater impression was made upon him when he was able to perceive how from aeon to aeon the Being of the divine spiritual mediator descended from divine spiritual spheres. This spiritual vision also illumined for Augustine in the first period of his struggle the perception of how the Christ had taken up His abode upon the earth in a fleshly body, and how with Him the riddle of evil was solved.

It is striking to see how Augustine conversed with the celebrated Bishop Faustus of the Manichees, and only because this Bishop was not able to make the requisite impression upon Augustine, he turned away from Manicheism and towards the Christianity of Paul. Here we see the flow and ebb of that which we can call the perception of the super-earthly Christ as He was before the Mystery of Golgotha. And in the main, only with the raising of the new age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch did that completely disappear which was the residue of the old clairvoyant perception.

This old clairvoyant perception knew the heavenly Christ. Even in the beginning of Christianity He could be felt, but to see how He descended was only possible for the old clairvoyant perception. Deeply, deeply, must it affect us when we perceive how in the first age of the spreading of Christianity those who had drawn their perception from the old clairvoyance wished to picture the Christ; how in order to perceive the Christ they looked not merely towards Bethlehem but into the spheres of heaven, in order to see how He descended from thence to bring salvation to men.

We know that besides the worship of Mithras, and besides Manicheism, there existed in the West the Gnosis which wished to connect the old clairvoyant perception of the great Sun-Spirit, Who descended from the divine sphere, with the perception of the course of earthly life of Christ Jesus. And then it is striking to see how the human mind wished to concentrate itself ever more upon the earthly connections of Christ Jesus. It is striking to see how this simple human mind which can find nothing simple enough to represent it, is afraid of the greatness of the feeling which had to be experienced with regard to the lofty conception of the old Gnosis. The early Christians were afraid of these lofty conceptions. Up to our own age the fear strikes those who come into touch with spiritual knowledge that it is easy for the mind to come into confusion if it raises itself into the ages in which it could be seen that Christ descended from the loftiest heights in order to be able to dwell in a human body.

That which the Gnostics were able to say regarding the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ affects us very deeply and I should like to say that our soul-vision of the earthly life of Christ Jesus will in no way be blunted if, through Spiritual Science, it is shown the way to the new clairvoyance in order to find the Christ as He descended from the heights of heaven. Here we have a verse evidently of Gnostic origin:

‘Behold, O Father, how, distant from Thy Breath, this being upon earth
Wanders, the target and victim of all ill.
Lo, ill, perplexed, it flies the deadly chaos—how can it find its way?
Therefore send me, O Father,
Descending, victory to bring,
I traverse all the aeons,
Teaching all sacred knowledge;
Thus may God’s image be manifested,
And thus to you I give
The deeply hidden knowledge of the sacred way:
“Gnosis” it is called for you.’

We feel that the new Spiritual Science must again lead us into these things in order that we, in our conceptions, may be able to weave round the Christ- Event the spiritual Aura which for good reasons, as we have often emphasised and had to mention again to-day, was for a time lost to humanity. We must do it slowly and gradually: we must, to a certain extent, try to express that which Spiritual Science is able to reveal to us in such a way that the human mind, which to-day is far from the science of spiritual knowledge, may be able to grasp it.

And so we have endeavoured to express the whole anthroposophical wisdom concerning the Christ-Event, and especially concerning the Christmas night and its connection with the human mind, in simple words which are here presented to you:

In the eyes of the soul reflected
In the light of the cosmic hope,
In the human heart to the spirit exalted wisdom speaks:
The eternal love of the Father
To the earth has sent His Son
Who, filled with grace, on the human path sheddeth the light of heaven.

It is to be hoped that a time will come for earthly evolution in which more, much more can be expressed, and in far, far clearer words, regarding the Mystery of Golgotha, simple words in which for the whole world can be expressed that which Spiritual Science has to say to humanity regarding the Mystery of Golgotha.

We see how, up to the end of the fourth post-Atlantean period, even up to the beginning of the fifth, the old clairvoyant perception ebbed away in such a maimer that the last remains which were still left to man fell into disrepute. We see this downfall, as I might call it, embodied in that form which appeared in Europe and spread much further than is thought during the ebb of the fourth post-Atlantean period, in the figure of the popular adventurer (for he was an adventurer), who was still able to exhibit the last sign of clairvoyant perception—“Magister Georgius Sabellicus Faustus Junior, Magus Secundus, philosophus philosophorus, fons necromanticorum, chiromanticus, agromanticus, pyromanticus, in hydra arte secundus.” So ran the complete title of that Faust who lived in the sixteenth century as a representative of the moribund clairvoyance, that Faust who still had a vision into the spiritual worlds, even though the vision was chaotic. But it no longer happens in modern times that when the human soul is passive in certain conditions it can see spiritually, as in ancient times. For it can only see what is material and can acquire that which the intellect can combine out of the material. The whole tragedy of the final spiritual vision is brought to expression in the primitive communications regarding Faustus junior. By giving himself such a title we can perceive that he is, as it were, the final offshoot of those who were able to see into the spheres through which the Christ descended. He called himself Faustus junior, in allusion to the Manichee Bishop Faustus.

We know that he knew all about the Bishop Faustus for whom Augustine had longed, for the writings of Augustine were never so widely spread in Europe as at the time in which the writings of Faust junior appeared. And he called himself Magus Secundus, referring to the Magus Primus, the Simon Magus of old, who for those who were yet able to see, represented one whose vision towered up into the spheres of heaven, and of whom they stood in awe who were only desirous of concentrating within themselves the heavenly power.

Faustus alluded to him. And he alluded to yet another of whom we know through our observations of Spiritual Science that his vision unfolded in order to see into spiritual spheres. He called himself Pythagoras Secundus as the successor of that Pythagoras who was called Primus in this art.

We see the last glimmering evening-glow of that which existed as the ancient clairvoyance and we see how incomprehensible this ancient clairvoyance already was to men. Indeed that was actually realised which has been represented so strikingly to us in the legend of Faust, that Augustine longed for Faustus senior and that he became acquainted with the teaching of Faustus senior through an old man, a doctor. In the same way, carried forward into different circumstances, Faustus junior encounters us in the popular legend, and the old man again appears here, warning him: but he had already made his compact. He entrusted to Dr. Wagner his inheritance. When in surveying the ages and that which arose therein as conceptions of a spiritual world we see the age of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch approaching, we have to say: That is the legacy entrusted to Dr. Wagner. The question is how such a legacy can be administered. In the case of Faust, it is still a seeing into the spiritual worlds; in the case of this Dr. Wagner it is what can be described by saying that a man digs greedily for treasure and rejoices if he finds a glow-worm.

Such is the materialistic conception of the world of our modern times. It is no wonder that in this materialistic conception of the world the whole view of the heavenly Christ was lost, so that to-day people are afraid of the expansion of that picture upon which the earth-forces up till the present should have been concentrated. For we also know that the earth-humanity would have to lose, completely lose, all comprehension of this, if through a new spiritual view it were not able to weave a new aura round the touching picture of the Christ-child and His growth through thirty-three earth years. Spiritual Science will be called upon, as those souls who seriously apply themselves to Spiritual Science will perceive, again to quicken the vision of human minds for the heavenly Christ beside the earthly Christ. Then will the Christ be known for all the future earth-ages in such a way that He can never be lost to the progress and the salvation of mankind.

When wisdom shall again press upwards into the heights where, in the divine spheres, the fire of love bums, then will the human soul certainly not lose all that is wonderful, all that presses into the profoundest life-springs of men, all that human knowledge can know regarding Christ Jesus. And infinitely much will be acquired in addition: there will be acquired that which must be acquired if the evolution of humanity is to advance as it should.

The fresh springs of a new spiritual knowledge have already been opened; nevertheless, that which we are able to say to-day is truly such that we celebrate it at this time still in the symbol of the Christmas Festival. Deep, deep humility overcomes him who rightly experiences that which is to-day our occult knowledge. For we can only very dimly sense that which Spiritual Science will become for humanity in future days. For that which we are able to know of it to-day is in the same relation to that which in the days to come, when many, many ages have passed away, will be presented to humanity as that of the little Christmas child to the full-grown Christ Jesus. To-day in our newly-arisen Spiritual Science we have truly still the child. Hence the Christmas Festival is rightly our festival, and we perceive that, with regard to what can hold sway in the evolution of the earth as human light, we are to-day living in the profoundly dark winter night. Also with regard to our present-day knowledge we are actually standing before what is revealed in the profound wintry darkness of the earth evolution, just as once the shepherds stood before the Christ-child which was first revealed to them. With regard to the comprehension of Christ Jesus we can feel to-day exactly as did the shepherds at that time. We can so truly implore the springs of spiritual life which can ever more and more flow to mankind, implore them that indeed they may more and more bring to pass the Divine Revelation in the spiritual heights and through this revelation give to the human minds that peace which is in truth good for them. Then this Christmas Festival appears to us as a token. We still know little of that which the world will have as Spiritual Science in the days to come. We dimly sense what is to come, we dimly sense it in profound humility. But if we allow that little truly to enter our hearts, how does it appear to us then?

Let us cast a glance over present-day Europe—how the peoples think of one another, how each one seeks to lay the guilt of what is taking place upon the others. If the true anthroposophical conception is really impressed on our minds, then we shall understand the guilt which is now sought for by one people in the other, by one nation in the other. Truly, the guilt belongs to someone who is really and truly international, who guides his steps from nation to nation. But he is only spoken of in the circle of those into whose hearts a little Spiritual Science has penetrated. There we speak of Ahriman, the truly international being, who in conjunction with Lucifer is the truly guilty one. We do not find him if we turn our glance always to others, but if we seek the way to knowledge through self-knowledge. There, below in the chaotic depths, he goes; we feel him, this Ahriman. We shall learn to know him rightly and to know him in connection with that which the Mystery of Golgotha can be to us, namely, the proclamation of the revelation of wisdom and of peace in the heights and depths of the valley of the earth. Then only do we perceive what the whole fire of the Love is which can ray forth from the Mystery of Golgotha, which knows none of the limits which are set between the nations of the earth.

Much is contained in that which as Spiritual Science stands before our souls. Yet if we look at that which had already been manifested before this our chaotic present and which has now found an expression so convulsing, so sad and so painful, then we find how very very small is that dwelling, that soul-dwelling, in which to-day must dwell the new comprehension of the Christmas child which is to come to the earth. That Christmas child had to appear to poor shepherds, had to be born in a stable, concealed from those who at that time governed the world. Is it not again the same with regard to the new comprehension of that which is connected with the Mystery of Golgotha? Is not that which appears to us to-day outside in the world far removed from this comprehension? How far removed is the world at the beginning of our age from that which was revealed to the shepherds in the words:

Divine Revelation in the heights and upon earth peace to the men who have goodwill.

Let us celebrate this Christmas Festival of the renewed Christ comprehension in our hearts and in our souls if we wish to celebrate a true Christmas Festival, let us feel, as did the shepherds, far away from that which has now gripped the world. And through that which is revealed to us, as it was to the shepherds, we realise what had to be realised at that time, the promise of a certain future. Let us build within our souls confidence in the fulfilment of this promise, confidence that that which we feel to-day as the child which we must worship (the new Christ-comprehension is this child) will grow, will live, will grow to maturity in the near future, so that in it can be embodied the Christ appearing in the etheric, just as the Christ could be embodied in the fleshly body at the time of the Mystery of Golgotha. Let us fill ourselves with the light which through the confidence in this out-pouring can shine into the deepest inner being of our souls. Let us permeate ourselves with the warmth which can flow through our minds. If we feel thus with regard to the heights in which the light of Spiritual Science appears before our souls, then alone can we be certain that it will some day fill the world.

When we thus think, we celebrate a genuine Christmas Festival even in this grave and painful time, for not only is it the profoundly dark winter night of the time of the year, but there is over the horizon of the nations the result of the Ahrimanic darkness which has been growing up since the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean age. And just as the announcement of the Christ could only come at first to the shepherds but then filled the world ever more and more, so will also the new comprehension of the Mystery of Golgotha fill the world ever more and more, and times will come which as times of light will replace for humanity the time of winter darkness in which we are living to-day.

Thus let us feel as did the shepherds with regard to that which is still a child, with regard to the new Christ-comprehension, and let us feel that in all humility we can permeate with the new meaning the verse which is not only for ever to be preserved within the progress of the evolution of the earth, but is also to become more and more full of meaning. Let us with our minds and with heightened consciousness make ourselves one at this Christmas time with the motto so full of promise:

Divine Revelation in spiritual heights,
Peace ever and yet more peace
To all the souls of men on earth
Who have goodwill.

Dear fellow sufferers!

After the kind words of the pastor, I have to be the interpreter for those hearts that have been lovingly received by the dear one who has passed away from us. First, I would like to address my dear, dear partner, dear father and dear children, and then all of you who are gathered here to accompany the earthly shell of our beloved friend to her final resting place.

It has been a short time since we walked the same path and promised the dear companion of the deceased to share her pain, to share the pain that we did not want to comfort her about, but rather promised her that we would share it.

And today we are in a position to have to try to keep the promise of sharing the increased, the magnified pain with our dear friend and with the others with whom the dear departed was so close. Over time, he has become ever closer and closer to us, drawing on the most profound human strengths, the strengths that we can come closest to with another human being, the best strengths of our spiritual striving.

This time, too, I would like to express nothing more with these words than I did when we stood at the grave of our dear child: that we want to bear, faithfully bear the pain that so justifiably follows the cover to the grave, that will last, but that must be borne bravely and courageously in the knowledge that from the spiritual worlds, where the human soul is received after death, space and time separate us, but that nothing separates us from the spiritual worlds when souls want to be connected to these spiritual worlds through the powers they carry within themselves and through which they can, in faithful connection with these worlds, triumph over space and time. We knew our friend Albert Faiss in such striving. Years ago he came into our midst, tested, severely tested by the outer life. It is fair to say that his lot was work, hard work and laborious striving. But when you got to know his soul, how it lived, how it looked out of those kind, faithful eyes so confidently, you saw that this soul had found support and security in itself, was able to bear heavy, laborious work and worries of life because it knew itself to be firmly on the secure ground of spiritual life.

The one we loved had to travel far away, and even in the far distance he did not find his goal and rest, but in his own heart, in his own soul, he found it. He found it, and we appreciated the strong cohesion of the striving that he developed in his soul, with our own striving. We appreciated what must be so infinitely valuable to us, my dear mourners.

If someone finds the connection with us that our friend Faiss found, it is because this connection is already prefigured in the eternal grounds, because he sought with us only what he always sought in his own soul. This also gave our friend that wonderfully beautiful, unified nature that those who came close to him could observe in him again and again.

He had chosen a profession that brought him into contact with nature. He had managed to make his profession, at least in his mind, into what every profession should be and what can be made of every profession from the security of the intellectual life. He managed to achieve higher aspirations within his profession. When he spoke in this way and wanted to penetrate the forces that the earth develops to produce food in his profession that could best serve humanity, when he inquired which plant was better suited for this or that human need, then one saw how he understood how to develop service to humanity out of his profession. It was a beautiful part of his nature that he never thought of pursuing his profession for personal reasons, but tried to make it into a service to humanity and thus into a form of worship. He tried to imbue human activity with the consciousness of divine activity.

That is our task, and our friend Albert Faiss devoted himself to this task with heartfelt dedication, with all the strength he had at his disposal. That which lived so in his soul, which he knew so lovingly and intimately to penetrate with his whole being, and everything that lived so in him, oh, that brought him the love, the intimate love of those who lived near him. We all know Frau Faiss, we know how she was united with the dear departed in intimate love and common striving, we appreciate the harmonious interaction of these two people, and since we know this, we will also find ways to share with her the pain for which there are hardly any words of comfort.

I can think of no better way to express the wonderful beauty with which the powers expressed in our friend's soul were able to acquire active love than to say a few words about the child who has fallen asleep.

When the father went to war and the mother was alone with the children, the dear departed child – the oldest of them – spoke as she worked faithfully by her mother's side: Now that father is gone, I must work especially hard to be a support to my mother. That is laborious love, such as is acquired by the noble powers of mind that the dear departed possessed. This child will now receive the soul of the departed friend in an appropriate way; they will work together in the spiritual world, and we should unite with them in the spirit that we believe we are grasping.

Strong are the thoughts of the dear ones who send them from the other side to those they have left behind; they expect us to direct our soul's gaze to them. We will often think about how the dead, the so-called dead, can know how the souls here look after them, how the souls here are united with them. So let us cultivate the loving service with the deceased in intimate, loyal friendship with those left behind, knowing that he was united with us in the same striving.

Yes, dear friend, dear soul, you knew how to walk the path of the spirit from your very nature. You did not take a step in your daily life here on earth without knowing that everything your eyesight embraces, your hands grasp, is given by God the Father, the eternal God, in all your earthly work. You knew that you were woven into the eternal of God.

And so was your work, dear friend, dear soul, that it had to seek for the knowledge that was appropriate to it, that it might be imbued with the essence that first gave meaning to the earth, with the essence of Christ. You knew that. And that is what you sought when you took your last earthly steps in this region, when you wanted to unfold your activity in harmony with our spiritual striving near the building through which we want to develop this spiritual striving.

So you sought in your own way to penetrate the eternal in you, already during your life on earth with that power that strives to grasp the meaning of the earth, and you sought to gain that knowledge which strives to gain the meaning of life on earth, which the Christ Jesus has given. In this way you knew that you were connected with your eternal, divine part in Christ Jesus himself, knew that you were interwoven with him. And so you also knew that you would one day die in Christ Jesus, and knew that you would carry the aspiration to live with the spirit, with which we are all united, through the gateway of death.

So you lived with God, lived with Christ, so you died in Christ and so your soul will be united with him and we may look up to you in spirit.

In this consciousness of being united with You, we often direct our thoughts to the realms in which Your soul is now active, for we believe that the dead are alive, alive with us, as they were in earthly life when they were still connected to us in the physical body. And we know that What we now feel for him is also interwoven here on earth with what flows down from the spiritual planes into which the dead have entered. United with Your powers, we know those powers, those soul powers, which are beyond space and time.

We give you this as a promise to stand faithfully by those you have left behind here, with whom we will try to bear their pain, looking up to you, who will receive from the soul of the dear child with whom we are united. In eternal spheres, not only in death, we feel united with you, and we may, full of this consciousness, call out to your soul: farewell, farewell in spirit, and let us, as far as we are able, live with you!

The main intention of these lectures is to build a bridge from spiritual-scientific knowledge to the kind of conception of life which our time demands, and I intend also giving a few indications on this theme in the coming days.

What we call modern life takes living hold of all those people who, through living in towns or in similar circumstances, have been torn away from a direct connection with nature. And we know that since the advent of modern life people have always thought about its significance both for the intellectual as well as the material progress of human civilisation. And now it is time that the impulses we are acquiring from spiritual science should enter into modern life. Gradually we shall have won through to the feeling that with respect to many a thing that meets us in life today we need spiritual science as a kind of compensation for those things in modern life that weaken, we might actually say destroy, something of the general divine-spiritual life forces of man.

People who are able, by means of the first stages of the life of initiation, really to let modern civilisation affect them in all its aspects, will have experiences that give them deeper insight into the significance which modern life has for man's whole existence, than that obtained from an external view of life unsupported by spirituality. People who have taken the first steps in the life of initiation will pass differently through the experience of spending a night in a train or on a steamer, especially if they sleep on the journey. What is different for the person who is in these first stages of initiation and the one who has not had any connection with it is that the experiences become conscious for the former, and he finds out what is actually happening to him when he spends a night travelling on a train or a ship, especially if he goes to sleep. Of course the person who does not acquire initiation knowledge of things also undergoes the effects that an experience of that sort has on the whole human organism. With regard to the whole effect on the human being there is, of course, no difference.

If we want to understand what these indications actually mean we must recall to memory a spiritual scientific truth which you no doubt know, namely, that whilst we are asleep our ego and astral body are outside our physical and etheric body. In fact, because of certain limitations which cosmic laws impose on us in the natural order of things, our ego and astral body are very close to our physical body and etheric body in a case like this, so that if we are asleep on a train journey our ego and astral body are right inside all the rattling, rumbling and braking going on in the wheels and the engine of the train. And it is just the same on a modern steamer. We are inside everything going on around us. We are inside these not exactly musical experiences in our surroundings, and you need only have taken the very first steps in initiation to notice on waking up that when the ego returns with the astral body into the physical body and etheric body they bring with them what they experienced while they were being squeezed through the machinery, for they really were inside the moving machinery right up to the moment of waking.

We bring all this disharmonious squeezing and tearing back into our physical and etheric body, and if you have ever woken up with all the after-effects of what the engines of a steamer or a train have done to your ego and astral body, and bring that into your waking consciousness, you will notice how little it synchronises with what is going on within you in the way of a kind of experience the ego and the astral body have of the inner harmony of the physical and etheric body. You do in fact bring back with you the wildest confusion, the most frightful din of pulling, screeching and rattling and if you are sensitive to it you will feel that the effect on the etheric body really is as though your physical body were being bruised and dismembered—which is, of course, a clumsy expression, but you will not misunderstand. This is an absolutely unavoidable side-effect of modern life, and I want to give a word of warning right at the outset, as the kind of lecture I want to give today can very easily rouse what I would call theosophists' hidden arrogance, which flourishes very well here and there.

I am not making a general allusion, of course, let alone a particular allusion, for when one holds a talk on a matter like this, one immediately provokes judgments. I think that in the case of this theosophists' arrogance, it can easily happen that people imagine they must take great care not to expose themselves to these destructive forces; that they must protect themselves from all the influences of modern life; that they must closet themselves in a room containing the right surroundings, with walls of the colour indicated by theosophy, to make sure that modern life cannot reach them in any way that would be harmful to their bodily organisation.

I really do not want my lectures to have this effect. Everything of the nature of withdrawing and protecting oneself from the influences of all that we necessarily have to encounter as world karma arises out of weakness. But anthroposophy can only strengthen the human soul (Gemüt), and should develop those forces that inwardly strengthen and arm us against these influences. Therefore, never within the compass of our spiritual movement could any kind of recommendation be given to cut oneself off from modern life, or to turn spiritual life into a kind of hothouse culture. This could never apply in the realm of true spiritual culture. Although it is understandable that weaker natures prefer to withdraw from modern life and go into one or another kind of settlement where they are out of reach of it, the fact remains that this arises not from strength but from weakness of soul. Our task, however, consists in strengthening our soul life by permeating ourselves with the impulses of spiritual science and spiritual research so that we are armed against the onslaughts of modern life, and so that our souls can stand any amount of hammering and knocking and are still capable of finding their way into the divine-spiritual realms right through the hammering and knocking of the ahrimanic spirits.

One thing must be taken into account, however, which I have often referred to. We human beings do not only sleep at night. We actually sleep in the daytime as well, only we do not notice our daytime sleep as much as our nighttime sleep. During the night our thought life is dimmed down, and because our soul lives predominantly in our thoughts we are, as a matter of course, more aware of the dimming down of our thought life during nighttime sleep. During the day our life of will is more at rest, yet we are less aware of this because we live less in our will. All the arguing the philosophers have done about the freedom and lack of freedom of the will is due to this. As they have not taken into account that they are investigating the will whilst they are daytime sleepers and therefore cannot arrive at its true nature, they talk a lot of nonsense about free will and unfree will, indeterminism and determinism. In actual fact, whilst we are open to the waking life of day, we are only conscious of our will life to a very small degree; it dips down into the subconscious, into the region that belongs purely to the astral body.

Thus during our waking day, too, we are involved in all that modern life has produced around us in the way of the stress and noise of modern technology. During the night it is more our life of thought and feeling that becomes submerged in the noise and stress, during the day it is more our life of feeling and will.

Now in the course of human evolution what we call modern life has not always existed. It came on the scene essentially at the beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch.⁴ The beginning of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch actually coincides with the beginning of the modern age. What does modern intellectual culture say about the beginning of the modern age? As we know, modern intellectual culture is proud of the achievements of modern life. It is expressed somewhat like this: Throughout antiquity and the Middle Ages people were incapable of developing a real observation of nature such as could have led to natural science. This did not happen until modern times. And when people talk of modern times like this they are speaking of the time which began with the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. That was when people broke away from the old way of observing nature and observed it impartially, solely according to abstract laws. And it was through this knowledge of the laws of nature that natural science came into the position of opening up the possibility of mastering the forces of nature, and mastering them in an unprecedented way, as we so often hear. Yet this is just what modern technology is. And the characteristic nature of modern technology arose as a result of man acquiring knowledge of natural laws and then proceeding to use the material world to fashion his machines according to these natural laws, machines with which he can then work back on nature and life by filling modern life with them and creating his own technological setting; that is, modern life in its essence and function. Thus we see that it is the modern age that has established real natural science and the resultant mastery over nature and its forces.

You often hear people speaking like this. However if we speak like this we are speaking Ahriman's language for this is using the language of Ahriman. But let us see if we can translate this language of Ahriman into the real and true language that we are trying to acquire again by means of spiritual science, a language where words not only acquire the meaning ascribed to them through observation of external nature, but also acquire the meaning ascribed to them when we look at the cosmos in its entirety, that is, both as nature and as spiritual life.

Let us start by looking quite superficially at what happens when we develop modern technology. What is happening in the first place is just work being carried out in two stages. The first stage consists of destroying the interrelationships of nature. We blast out quarries and take the stone away, maltreat the forests and take the wood away, and the list could go on—in short, we get our raw materials in the first instance by smashing and wearing down the interrelationships in nature. And the second stage consists of taking what we have extracted from nature and putting it together again as a machine according to the laws we know as natural laws. These are the two stages, if we look at the matter on the surface.

But what is it like if we look below the surface? Looking at it from inside, the matter is like this: When we take things from nature, mineral nature to begin with, we know from previous lectures that this is linked with a certain feeling of well-being belonging to the elemental spiritual beings that are within it. This, however, does not concern us so much now. What is important here is that we cast out of nature the elemental spirits belonging to the sphere of the regular progressive hierarchies who, in fact, are the very spirits who maintain nature. In all natural existence there are elemental spiritual beings. When we plunder nature we squeeze out the nature spirits into the sphere of the spirit. That is, in fact, what is constantly happening during the first stage. We smash and plunder material nature and thus release the nature spirits, driving them forth from the sphere allotted them by the Jehovah gods into a realm where they can fly about freely and are no longer bound to their allotted dwelling places. Thus we can call the first stage the casting out of the nature spirits. The second stage is the one where we put together what we have plundered from nature, according to our knowledge of natural laws. Now when we construct a machine or a complex of machines out of raw material according to our knowledge of natural laws, we put certain spiritual beings into the things we construct.

The structure we make is by no means without its spiritual beings. In constructing it we make a habitation for other spiritual beings, but these spiritual beings that we conjure into our machines are beings belonging to the ahrimanic hierarchy. Thus at the first stage we encounter nature spirits who are in progressive evolution and cast them out and at the second stage we unite these ahrimanic spirits with our mechanisms or other products of technology. This means that by living in this technological milieu of modern times we create an ahrimanic setting for everything that goes on in us in a sleeping state, by night or day. So it is no wonder that a person at the first stages of initiation, bringing back with him into his waking life all that he has experienced outside in the way of noise and confusion, feels its destructive character when he comes back into his physical and etheric body with this in his ego and his astral body. For he is bringing back into his own organism the results, as it were, of his having been in the company of the ahrimanic elemental spirits. Thus we could say that at the third stage, at the cultural level, we have technology around us, stuffed full of ahrimanic spirits which we have put there. This is what things look like from inside.

Now if we turn our attention away from the occult side of modern life and look back at those times when people slept with only a thin partition dividing them from nature, a partition through which spirit could easily pass, and when their daytime work was within the realm of nature that still harboured regular spirits of the Jehovah hierarchy, we have to admit that in those times people's souls, their egos and astral bodies, brought back into their physical and etheric bodies the kind of nature spirits that had an enlivening effect on their inner life of soul. And the further we go back in the history of mankind's evolution the more we find what is becoming a greater and greater rarity today, namely that people did not fill themselves with the ahrimanic spirits of technology, but with nature spirits that were progressing on a straight path and which the good spirits of the hierarchies, if we may use the expression, have linked to the events and being of nature.

Now man will only attain the kind of connection he needs in order to be truly human if he seeks it in his inner life, if he delves so far down into the depths of his soul that he reaches the forces that connect him with the spirit of the cosmos, out of which he was born and in which he is embedded, but from which he can be separated. A separation has already taken place in his sense perception and intellect, and now again through his being filled with ahrimanic beings in the course of modern life, as we have seen. Only by penetrating into the depths of his own being will man find the connection with divine spiritual beings that he needs for his salvation, the spiritual hierarchies that are progressing on a straight path. This connection with the spiritual hierarchies for which we were actually born, in the spirit, this living connection with them, is made difficult to the highest degree by the saturation of the world by modern technology. Man is being, as it were, torn away from his spiritual-cosmic connections, and the forces which he should be developing within him to maintain his link with the spiritual-soul being of the cosmos are being weakened.

A person who has already taken the first steps in initiation will therefore notice how the mechanical things of modern life penetrate into man's spiritual-soul nature to such an extent that a great deal of it is smothered and destroyed. He will also notice that the destruction of these forces makes it particularly difficult for him really to develop those inner forces which unite the human being with the ‘rightful’ spiritual beings of the hierarchies—please do not misunderstand the word. When a person who has taken the first steps in initiation tries to meditate in a modern railway carriage or on a modern steamer, he makes a great effort, of course, to activate the necessary forces of vision to lift him into the spiritual world, yet he notices the ahrimanic world filling him with the kind of thing that opposes this devotion to the spiritual world, and the struggle is enormous. You could call it an inner struggle experienced in the etheric body, a struggle that wears you out and crushes you. Other people who have not taken the first steps in initiation also go through this struggle of course, and the only difference is that the student of initiation experiences it consciously. Everyone has to go through it; the effects of this are experienced by everyone.

It would be the worst possible mistake to say that we should resist what technology has brought into modern life, that we should protect ourselves from Ahriman by cutting ourselves off from modern life. In a certain sense this would be spiritual cowardice. The real remedy for this is not to let the forces of the modern soul weaken and cut themselves off from modern life, but to make the forces of the soul strong so that they can stand up to modern life. A courageous approach to modern life is necessitated by world karma, and that is why true spiritual science possesses the characteristic of requiring an effort of the soul, a really hard effort.

You so often hear people saying “These books of modern spiritual science are difficult; they make you exert yourself in order to develop your soul forces and really penetrate into spiritual science.” This is why ‘well-meaning’ people—and I am saying this in inverted commas—keep on coming to me and saying that they want to smooth out difficult passages for their fellow men and change what is written in rather a difficult style into something as trivial as can be—and these last words are not said in inverted commas. However, it belongs to the essence of spiritual science that it makes demands on soul activity, that you do not accept spiritual-scientific truths lightly, as it were, for it is not just a matter of taking in what spiritual science says about one thing and another, but of how you take it in. You should take it in by dint of effort and soul activity. To make spiritual science your own you must work at it in the sweat of your soul—please forgive me for not being very polite. That belongs to the business of spiritual science, if you will excuse the mundane expression.

It shows a further misunderstanding of the actual nerve of spiritual science if people shy away from the difficult ideas and conceptual structures of spiritual science. And don't we know how many people shy away from it, how many people would prefer to dream—the Lord gives it to His Own in sleep! They would far rather have things conjured up before them in all kinds of visions of the spiritual world than acquire knowledge through the activity of exerting their inner life of soul. We know how many people there are who prefer having visions rather than sitting down and studying a difficult book of spiritual science, even though it is capable of speaking to the human soul forces that are asleep during ordinary daily life, for spiritual science really does activate the part of man that is otherwise unconscious and transport him into the life of the spiritual world. The right approach is not to receive conscious daily life apathetically and to grope in the dark, but to make an effort out of soul activity to get through what is given for the development of thoughts and ideas. For when you make an effort and have the courage to make yourself at home in this development of thoughts and ideas, this brave and active effort will bring you to the stage where mere theorising on what is given and mere acceptance in thought passes over into seeing and really being in the spiritual world. However, the really modern conception of life that arises for us from these considerations is that, because of our technological surroundings, we descend into a kind of ahrimanic sphere and become filled with ahrimanic spirituality.

The most terrible calamity would have come about in earth evolution if, in earlier ages, provision had not been made for these experiences of ahrimanic spirituality that world karma is bringing to modern mankind. Life always progresses like the swing of a pendulum. It is experienced like a pendulum swinging in one direction or the other. You cannot say “Beware of Ahriman!” for nothing can protect you from him. And if someone longs to shut himself up in a room surrounded by the colour that suits him best, where he has no factories near him or trains passing by if he can possibly help it, but is completely cut off from modern life, there are many, many ways in which ahrimanic spirituality can get into his soul. Even though he withdraws from modern life, modern spirituality will still reach him.

Now something entered into human evolution that, as it were, held off the calamity, and I gave an indication of this a long time ago in a lecture cycle in Munich.³ We must take all these things together, for that is also part of the active experiencing of modern spiritual science. Man has been given art; art, which also takes its raw material from nature by reducing and wearing it down, and at the second stage puts it together again to make something new, with a breath of life in it, although it is only of a pictorial nature. The life of the artistic impulses given us in the past has the capacity, as I said in Munich, to imbue its material with a more luciferic spirituality. Luciferic spirituality, beauty as an illusion, in fact everything that has an effect on man through the medium of art, leads man away from matter into the spirit, yet it does so through the life in the material. Lucifer is the spirit who constantly wants to flee from matter and bear man into the life of the spirit in an unjustified way. That is the other swing of the pendulum. It is only because we have to go through a technological atmosphere in the present incarnation that it is possible for us to come into connection with Ahriman, whereas in earlier incarnations we were more connected with a quality that could be steeped in art. Thus we are countering certain luciferic forces by means of the present-day ahrimanic forces, which together form a balance, whilst the pendulum of life swung one way in the past and swings the other way now.

What spiritual science quite specifically has to want at the present time is that human beings do not sleep and dream through what world karma is imposing on them. Yet people who wish to know nothing about spiritual science do sleep and dream through all the influences of Ahriman and Lucifer. They are exposed to these influences even if they themselves know nothing about them. But ‘life cannot go on like this; life has to be lived consciously from now on, and that is what spiritual science is for, so that people do not go through the world sleeping and dreaming, but understand what is around them. For this to happen, however, we must really get down to the subtleties of our spiritual-scientific business—if you will forgive the word. Such subtleties often go unnoticed, and this is the sort of thing I find when I read through transcripts of lectures I have given. Often what is of essential importance to me does not appear at all in the transcript. Just look at two examples of this. I used a certain sentence a little while ago and did not say that spiritual science wants something, but that spiritual science should want it, or has to want it. That is a particular expression which comes quite naturally to a person who is speaking out of the spirit of spiritual science, for spiritual science leads as a matter of course to a more impersonal grasp of the truths of spiritual life than other sciences do. Speaking in the manner of other sciences we would say “Spiritual science wants something”. But spiritual science says “what it should want or must want” And I say “The way I must express myself” and not “The way express myself”.

A great deal depends on such subtleties; we must not pass them by. On the contrary we must begin to believe that everything depends on spiritual science taking hold of man's innermost soul forces, and that it is capable of transforming them. Therefore it will not do to approach spiritual science with the kind of thinking one is in the habit of using in ordinary life. People are still largely unaware of what I mean by this. This can be seen, actually sensed, so to speak, in certain crude symptoms in the evolution of ordinary science.

Let us take one example out of many. Modern science of religion—irreligious science of religion—is especially proud of the fact that it has found a connection between New Testament utterances and commandments and Old Testament and heathen utterances and commandments. People have followed up the origin of every phrase in the Lord's Prayer, for instance, and said “This particular phrase comes from here and that one from there”. If you hear it like this it can sound credible. Yet the moment you approach the Mystery of Golgotha in a spiritual world-historical light you notice that all these things appear in a new context, and that the important thing is not the discovering that all these expressions were there in earlier times but looking at them in the context which gives them a new shade of meaning. In this respect the Old and the New Testament differ entirely. Subtle things like this convey the essence of the Mystery of Golgotha. The words and even the word connections often stay the same but their shade and colouring is different, and that makes all the difference.

There is something tremendous behind the fact, for instance, that the conception of the ego in the whole evolutionary system of language is quite differently constructed the further back we go in pre-Christian times, than it is later on when we go forwards from the Mystery of Golgotha. The way people spoke about the ‘I’ changed, and this can be seen in the configuration of language. When the ‘I’ becomes part of the word for the verb, as is the case in many languages, it signifies something entirely different from when it is separated from the verb and spoken as a separate word, and so on.

The important thing is to work our way with the help of spiritual science to an approach to life which looks consciously at the things which influence our human organism of spirit, soul and body. The way I have described man's relationship to his technological surroundings is, of course, only in its beginning stages. It was about four centuries ago that things began to get like they are today. Then the nineteenth century that was so proud of itself took a tremendous leap forward in the ahrimanisation of human life. Yet a great deal more will take place in future human evolution in the direction of this ahrimanisation. We have been in it for about four hundred years. It is coming slowly and gradually. It has already reached a certain climax among the vast numbers of our fellowmen who, because of the isolation caused by living in towns, hardly have any connection any more with real nature spirits. I once said, symbolically, that it is important for man's development to be able to distinguish oats from barley. Yet really, how many people are there in a town environment today who cannot tell the difference any more between oats and barley! Perhaps they can distinguish the plants, as that is comparatively easy in the case of oats and barley, but where the grains are concerned they can no longer tell the one from the other. If they have lived in a town or were actually born there, they usually cannot tell the difference.

Now it happens like this in the evolution of mankind, that when human beings have progressed a stage, this progress is always bound up with another experience that is at another stage, as it were, in a parallel stream. And this has happened. Whilst technological life has been drawing modern man closer to Ahriman in the way I have described, he has also been getting closer to him in another way. When a spiritual view of history replaces the crude way of viewing history introduced by materialism, people will understand what spiritual science has to say on this matter.

If we go back to the time that preceded the last four centuries, man not only had a different relationship to his environment than he has today, but he had, above all, an entirely different relationship to something that comes to expression in himself, really comes to expression in himself; he had a different connection with his speech, to the way he spoke. Speech does not only contain what modern materialistic science believes it does; there is something in speech which in many ways is connected with man's not fully-conscious experiences, which often occur in the subconscious realms of his being, and which are therefore interpenetrated by spiritual beings. Spiritual beings live and are active in man's speech, and when man forms words, elemental spiritual beings pour into these words. During human conversations spiritual beings fly about the room on the wings of the words. This is why it is so important that we pay attention to certain subtleties of speech, and do not simply let uncontrolled feelings get the better of us when we speak.

Right into the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries we could say that man still possessed the remnant of a living experience of the elemental spirituality contained in language. The spirituality of language was still active within him, for language is in a certain respect more inspired and spiritual in many ways than an individual human being. It is only occasionally nowadays that we notice a person reverting from a materialistic way of thinking to a feeling for the inspired spirituality of language.

On one occasion⁴ here I gave a very clear if trivial example showing in what way a person's mind can revert from the materialistic role of today. On the whole it still happens to many people, but they are not immediately aware of it. If someone is travelling down the Rhine and he speaks for instance of the ‘old Rhine’, what does he mean? No doubt he feels something. But what is he referring to? When people speak of the ‘old Rhine’ I do not think they mean the riverbed, the hollow in the ground. That would be the only permanent part, of course. But we cannot discover what else the ‘old Rhine’ is supposed to be, for the water is certainly absolutely new; it keeps flowing on, and if you try and find anything old except the hollowed out riverbed, it cannot be done. The old Rhine! Language is more inspired than man, because the language obviously means the River God, even if people are not conscious of it. One is describing the elemental being that belongs to it very suitably when one says the ‘old Rhine’.

That is a rough example. This spirituality, this belief in spirituality exists throughout language. And a feeling, at least, for this connection with spirituality in language still really existed in the disposition of soul of all the peoples of Europe, during the course of the fourth post-Atlantean epoch and right up to modern times as far as the fifteenth and sixteenth century. If you are not aware of this fact you cannot have the right feeling for the beginning of the St. John's Gospel. For the opening words of the St. John's Gospel, “In the beginning was the Word”, arose, in fact, out of a consciousness that the part the word plays within the whole human organism and human life, provides the connection for man, by way of elemental spirituality in the first place, to the whole of the world lying behind the world of the senses.

If, with the means that spiritual science puts at our disposal, we observe the way human life has run its course from the Middle Ages up to modern times, and are able to look right into the soul, we shall in fact find that man's relationship to speech was altogether different in the fourth post-Atlantean epoch, even in the last phase of it that lasted up till the fourteenth and fifteenth century. Whenever they spoke people heard undertones, genuine undertones. People no longer believe this, because nowadays human beings really only live in the material aspect of the sounds of speech. A spiritual element joined with the sound as though it sounded again an octave lower. Thus when people spoke, or heard people speaking, something resounded in the words that was not differentiated according to one or another language, but was of a universal human character. One can really say that when human experience comes to expression, as it were, in the flowering of the separate languages, mankind today experiences the flowering as a vibrating of sounds in the ear, and experiences the sounds as something that have a meaning. Whereas in earlier times they experienced a steeping of the whole element of speech in something that joined with it and was not differentiated into the various languages. The dividing line between the one experience and the other fell in the fifteenth and sixteenth century. Mankind was torn away from the genius of language.

Nobody can understand the actual jolt mankind was given in the fifteenth, sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, unless he studies the special character of this damping down of undertones in the experiencing of speech. Something was lost to mankind, and this comes to light in the happenings of the times, whether they be battles or peacetime creations. Before the point of time mentioned the human soul still experienced it. Whenever people spoke, this resounding of undertones in the experiencing of speech still lived in human souls. That is why the whole of history has an entirely different quality before this turning point, than afterwards. Through spiritual science we must develop a spiritual ear, as I would like to call it, for the completely different tone that events had in the Middle Ages than they have today, as human souls were connected to their experiences in quite a different way in those times.

I will choose the Crusades as an example of a general human soul-experience. They are only conceivable in the way they came about in the Middle Ages if we know of the existence of these spiritual undertones in the experiencing of language. The present-day peoples of Middle and Western Europe would most certainly not be so affected by the words of Clermont's synod:⁵ God wills it—Dieu le vent—as the peoples of the Middle Ages were. The reasons for this, however, can only be recognised if we take into account what has just been said.

An important phenomenon in all modern intellectual life is also connected with this. The whole formation of modern history has to do with this. If you once envisage history with these subtle language undertones in mind, you will understand why, at the point of time I have indicated, the various European nationalities grouped themselves together, those nationalities who before that time had quite different relationships with one another; who were governed by quite different impulses in their relationships to one another. The way the different nationalities group themselves in the various parts of Europe, right up to the present day, has to do with impulses that we interpret quite falsely if we go back from the present to the Middle Ages to look for the origins of nations, without bearing in mind the tremendously important rubicon that had to be crossed in the life of the soul.

I can only give you indications of these themes whereas they would actually require a whole series of lectures. The most important part of all this must be left to your meditation, which will discover what can be found as a result of these indications. What I would hope to have achieved is to have given you a picture of how to build a bridge between spiritual science and knowledge of life, and shown you how spiritual science can lead to a conscious approach to the reality in which we live. Having spoken of the real foundations on which these indications are based, it would appear quite natural that this modern age of ours makes a renewal of many things necessary, compared to the past. Through being placed today by world karma in a setting that functions in an especially ahrimanic way, and through having to make our soul forces strong enough to find our way into spiritual spheres, despite all the hindrances that come to us from ahrimanic spirituality, our souls are in need of different kinds of sustenance than before. For the same reason art must also adopt new paths in all its branches.

Art obviously had to speak differently to the souls that were less exposed to the attacks of Ahriman than we are today. Art has to speak in a new way to souls today, and our Goetheanum building⁶ is meant to be the very first step, really and truly the very first step towards art of this kind, and not anything perfect. It is an attempt actually to create the kind of art that calls on the soul to be active, on the lines of the whole conception of modern life, yet a spiritual conception of modern life. Let us remember the frightfully trivial comparison I made regarding the Goetheanum building a few weeks ago. I asked, “How does the effect our Goetheanum building is intended to have, compare with that of an older building, or an older work of art in general?

A work of art from the past made an impression by means of its forms and colours. Its forms and colours made an impression. If we make a diagram of it and the form is like this, this form had an effect on the eye (he did a drawing). What was in space and what the form was filled out with, was what made the impression. And it is the same with the colours. The colours on the walls made the impression.

I said that our building is not intended to be like that; our building is meant to be—and this is the terribly trivial comparison—like a jelly mould that does not exist for its own sake but for the sake of the jelly. Its function is to give a form to what is put into it, and when it is empty you can see what it is for. What it does to the jelly is the important thing. And the important thing with our building is what a person who goes inside it experiences in the innermost depths of his soul, when he feels the contours of the forms. All that the forms do is set the process going that creates the work of art. The work of art is what the soul experiences when it feels the shape of the forms. The work of art is the jelly. What has been built is the jelly mould, and that is why we had to try and proceed on an entirely new principle.

Likewise what you will find in the way of paintings in our Goetheanum building will not be there for their direct effect, as used to be the case with art in the past, but will be there for the soul to encounter, so that the experience resulting from this encounter will be a work of art. This of course involves a metamorphosis—I can only give indications of all this—the metamorphosis of an old artistic principle into a new one, which we can depict by saying that when the sculptural, the pictorial element is taken a stage further, it is led over into a kind of musical experience. There is also the opposite step, from the musical element back into the sculptural-pictorial.

These are things which are not created arbitrarily by the human soul, but have to do with the innermost impulses we have to go through, because we are in the first third of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch. It has been, as it were, ordained by the spiritual beings that guide this evolution.

A start has to be made in every realm. If people find things about our building that are imperfect they may be assured that the people who are actually engaged in building it will find far more imperfections than the people who criticise it—far, far more. There are faults to be found in it which people who just look at it would not think of. But that is not the point. The point is that a start is being made, for there are so many things that have to happen. The important thing is not the perfection we achieve in what we must will to happen, but that a start is made on what has to come to life here, however imperfect it has to be. For everything new that comes into the world is imperfect compared with old things that have stood the test of time. Things that are old have reached their highest level, whereas new creations are still in their infancy. That is quite obvious.

I will begin tomorrow where we have stopped today, and consider the renewal of an artistic conception of the world and the connection this has with the whole cultural life of today.

• 4. 1413. See Rudolf Steiner's Occult Science, an Outline, chapter on ‘Future Evolution of the World and of Mankind#8217;, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1979.
• 3. Secrets of the Threshold, lecture VI, Anthroposophical Publishing Co., London 1928.
• 4. On 3rd October 1914, towards the end of the first lecture on Occult Reading and Occult Hearing, Rudolf Steiner Press, London 1975.
• 5. convened by Pope Urban II in 1095. Here the decision was taken for the First Crusade.
• 6. Laying of foundation stone 20th September 1913. Burning of the Goetheanum, 31st December 1922.

In the course of the following considerations I shall be speaking to you about the important impulses of transformation present in our era for the artistic evolution of mankind. I would like to connect this with what may occur to you as a result of your own observation of this building, or rather with that of which this building is merely a beginning. But as a basis for these considerations it will be necessary to establish a connection between art and the knowledge we have gained about man and his relationship with the world in general. I will begin today with these seemingly more theoretical considerations and continue tomorrow with our actual theme concerning the impulses of transformation in artistic development.

Though I said that I would begin today with a seemingly more theoretical basis, in actual fact anyone who looks upon spiritual science as something living will find these preliminaries very much alive and not at all theoretical. They will, however, only be quite clear to those for whom the ideas of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on, are not mere designations in a diagram of man's being but the expression of actual experiences in feelings and ideas relating to the spiritual world.

If we consider the different forms of art, it appears that architecture is the one that has become most separated from the human being as a whole. Architecture is separated from the human being, because it is placed at the service of our external impulses, either those of utility, which call for utilitarian structures, or those having idealistic aims, as in the case of religious buildings. We shall see during the course of the lecture how other forms of art have a more intimate connection with the real being of man than has architecture. Architecture is in some way detached from what we describe as the laws of man's inner being. And yet, seen from the point of view of spiritual science, this external character of architecture very largely disappears.

When we begin to look at the human being, the part that first strikes us, because it is the most outward, is the physical body. But this physical body is permeated and penetrated and filled by the etheric body. The physical body might be simply called a space body or described as an organisation in space. But the etheric body, which dwells in the physical body and, as you know, also extends beyond the limits of the physical body and is intimately connected with the whole cosmos, cannot be contemplated without the aid of time. Basically everything in the etheric body is rhythm, a cyclical rhythm of movement or activity, and it has a spatial character only in as far as it inhabits the physical body. For human imaginative perception, it is true, the etheric body also has to be conceived in spatial pictures; but these do not show its essential nature, which is cyclic, rhythmic, moving in time.

Music takes up no space, but is solely present in time. In the same way, what matters with regard to the human etheric body in reality (not in the imaginative picture we draw) is mobility, movement, formative activity in rhythmic or musical sequence, in fact the quality of time. Of course, this is a difficult thing for the human mind to conceive, accustomed as it is to relating everything to space; but in order to gain a clear concept of the etheric body we must try much harder to allow musical ideas rather than spatial ideas to come to our aid.

In order to bring to the fore another characteristic of the etheric body it can be said: Occupying the physical body and extending, as it does, its activity and rhythmical play into this physical body, it is above all a body of forces. It is a flowing-out of forces, a manifestation of forces, and we notice them in a number of phenomena that occur during the course of a man's life. One of these phenomena, to which not much attention is paid by external science or from an outward view of the world, but one which we have often stressed, is the ability of the human being to stand upright. On entering the world at birth we are not yet able to assume this vertical posture, which is the most important of all postures for the human being. We have to acquire the ability. It is true that this is initiated by the astral body, which as it were transfers its power of upward-stretching to the etheric body, but it is the latter which in the course of time sets about raising the physical body into a vertical position. Here we see the living interplay of the astral and etheric bodies in the formation of the physical body.

But this acquisition of the upright posture is only the most striking of these phenomena. Whenever we lift a hand a similar process takes place. In our ego we can only contain the thought of lifting a hand; this thought must at once act upon the astral body, and the astral body transfers its activity, which lives in it as an impulse, to the etheric body. And what happens then? Let us assume that someone is holding his hand in a horizontal position. Now he forms the idea: I want to raise my hand a little bit higher. The idea, which in life is followed by the act of lifting the hand, passes over to the astral body; there an impulse arises and passes over from the astral body to the etheric body. And now the following happens in the etheric body: The hand is at first horizontal; then the etheric body is drawn up higher, then the physical hand moves, following what occurs first as a development of force in the etheric body. The physical hand follows the etheric.

I shall explain the whole process tomorrow. At the moment I simply want to point out that the making of any movement involves a development of force which is followed by a state of equilibrium. In the life of our organism we are continually dealing with a development of force followed by a state of equilibrium. Of course the human being has no conscious knowledge of what is really going on within him; but what takes place is so infinitely wise that human ego cleverness is nothing by comparison. We would be unable to move a hand if we had to depend on our own cleverness and knowledge alone; for the subtle forces developed by the astral body in the etheric body and then passed on to the physical body are quite inaccessible to ordinary human knowledge. And the wisdom developed in this process is millions of times greater than that required by a watch-maker in making a watch.

We do not usually think of this, but this wisdom actually has to be developed. It must be developed and it is developed as a result of our being left to ourselves with our ego. But the moment the ego sends the impulses of its concept into the astral body we need the help of another being; unaided we can do nothing here. We are dependent on help from a being belonging to the hierarchy of the angels. For even the tiniest movement of a finger we need the assistance of such a being, whose wisdom is far in advance of our own. We could do nothing but lie on the earth immobile, making concepts in utter rigidity, if the beings of the higher hierarchies did not constantly surround us with their activity.

Therefore the first step towards initiation is to gain an understanding of how these forces act upon the human being.

I have tried to show here what is involved even in a movement as simple as resting the head in the hand. We learn to know, in the form of a spatial system of lines and forces, the exterior of our being, that which happens to our physical body through the activity of the etheric body. If we carry this spatial system of lines and forces constantly active in us out into the world, and if we organise matter according to this system, then architecture arises. All architecture consists in separating from ourselves this system of forces and placing it outside in space. Thus we may say: Here we have the outer boundary of our physical body, and if we push the inner organisation, which has been impressed by the etheric body on to the physical body, outside this boundary, then architecture arises. All the laws present in the architectural utilisation of matter are to be found also in the human body. When we project the specific organisation of the human body into the space outside it, then we have architecture.

Now we know, in our way of looking at things, that the etheric body is attached to the physical body. Looking once more at any work of architecture, what we can say to ourselves about it? We can say that here, carried into the space outside us, is the interaction between vertical and horizontal and between forces that react together, all of which are otherwise to be found within the human physical body.

In the same way we can carry what streams from the etheric body into the physical body, not outside ourselves this time, but down from the etheric into the physical body. In other words we can bring about something which we do not separate from ourselves by placing it outside us, but which we only push down into ourselves. This is the process by which the laws of the etheric body, which it has received from the astral body, can become physical, just as in architecture the laws of the physical body are projected into the space outside us. Through this process, sculpture arises out of the etheric body, just as architecture arises out of the physical body. In a way we push the laws of the etheric body down one step.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Just as in architecture we push the laws of the physical body into the space outside us, so in sculpture we push the laws of the etheric body one step downwards. We do not separate these laws from ourselves, we push them directly into our own form. Just as we find in architecture the expression of the laws of our own physical body, so we find in sculpture the natural laws of our etheric body; we simply transfer this inner order into our works of sculpture. In architecture we transplant into the space outside ourselves only the laws of the physical body, its spatial lines and interplay of forces, taking nothing of the etheric body, nothing of the astral body, nothing of the ego. In the same way, where sculpture is concerned, we take only the laws of the etheric body and bring them down one step lower, using nothing of the astral body and nothing of the ego except in so far as they send impulses into the etheric body. This is why a work of sculpture appears to be alive. It would actually be alive if it contained also the ego and the astral body. So if we seek the laws of sculpture we must realise that they are in fact the laws of our etheric body, just as the laws of architecture are to be seen in the laws of our physical body.

If we do the same in connection with the astral body, as it were pushing what is in us of an astral nature a step lower down into the etheric body, we are pushing down what lives inwardly in man. Now nothing arises that could truly have a spatial nature, for the astral body, when it moves down into the etheric body, is not entering a spatial element: the etheric body is rhythmic and harmonious, not spatial. Therefore what arises can only be a picture, indeed a real picture, in fact the art of painting. Painting is the form of art which contains the laws of our astral body, just as sculpture contains the laws of our etheric body and architecture those of our physical body.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

If we now take the fourth member of the human being, the ego, and push it with its laws down into the astral body, there allowing it to move and act, then we obtain yet another form of art. This art does not contain what works in the ego as something which can be expressed in language or ordinary ideas; it is something that has moved from the ego down one step towards the subconscious. It is as though the horizon of consciousness were to be moved down by the amount of half a member of the human being; we take half a step downward, our ego descends into the astral body: then music is born.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

So music contains the laws of our ego, though not as they are manifested in ordinary, everyday life, but pressed down into the subconscious, into the astral body; the ego dives, as it were, beneath the surface of the astral body, there to flow and stream within the organisation of the astral body.

If we go on to speak about the higher members of the human being, starting with the spirit-self, we can refer to them only as something which is still outside the human being. For, in this fifth post-Atlantean epoch, we are only just beginning to make this spirit-self one of our inner members. But if we accept it as a gift from a higher sphere and sink it into our ego, if we dive down, like a swimmer into the water, into our ego, taking with us what as yet can only be dimly felt of the spirit-self, then poetry is born.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

Spirit-self

Poetry

And proceeding still further, one can say, though to a limited extent: Round about us, in the environment of soul and spirit which we shall absorb at a later stage, the life-spirit is also present. Therefore one day the life-spirit may come to be lowered into the spirit-self. But of course at the moment this is something that will only reach a certain degree of perfection in the very distant future. For when he tries to lower the life-spirit into the spirit-self, man will have to be living entirely in an element which as yet is absolutely strange to him. So what we can say in this domain is like the babbling of a child when compared with the later perfection of speech. One can foresee for the far distant future that there will be an art of great perfection that will stand out beyond poetry, as poetry stands out beyond music, music beyond painting, painting beyond sculpture, and sculpture beyond architecture (this being a question not of superiority, but of arrangement). You will guess, of course, that I am referring to something of which we know only the most elementary beginnings today: Something of which we can only receive the very first indications: the art of eurythmy.

Eurythmy is indeed something that must appear in human evolution at this time; but there is no call for pride, for at present it can be a mere babbling compared with what it will become in the future.

Physical Body

Architecture

Etheric Body

Sculpture

Astral Body

Painting

Ego

Music

Spirit-self

Poetry

Life-spirit

Eurythmy

We can now begin at any point with a somewhat more extended view. But in order to do so we must realise that the organisation of man's being is not nearly as simple as we would like to imagine in our intellectual indolence.

It is incredibly easy simply to imagine that the human being consists of physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, and so on. If one is able to enumerate these various members and has an approximate conception of them, one may easily consider this rather simple form of knowledge quite satisfactory. But things are not so simple. Physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego are not simply sheaths which fit easily into one another; they are, on the contrary, very complex structures. Take, for instance, the astral body. It is not enough merely to say: This is the astral body and nothing more. Things are much more complicated.

Words here are only an approximation, but we could say that the astral body, for instance, is in itself structured and consists of seven members. Just as the human being can be said to have seven members (physical body, etheric body, astral body, ego, spirit-self, life-spirit, spirit-man), so the astral body has a connection with each of these. There is as it were a ‘thinnest’ part of the astral body which could be described as being especially moulded and fashioned for the physical body. That is to say: there is a living system of laws in the astral body for the physical body, a living system of laws in the astral body for the etheric body, a living system of laws in the astral body for itself, a living system of laws in the astral body for the ego, a living system of laws in the astral body for the spirit-self, for the life-spirit, and for the spirit-man. Thus each member of the human being has in turn seven members. So taking into consideration that the human being consists of seven members which are in turn each structured into seven members, we already find we have a total of forty-nine members. This of course sounds perfectly horrible to modern psychologists, who like to regard the soul as a unity and would prefer to have nothing to do with these things. But for true knowledge, which must gradually arise in the course of the spiritual evolution of mankind, it is certainly not without significance. For when we know that the astral body is sevenfold in its nature and that it is an organism of inner living impulses, then we shall say to ourselves: Within this astral body, with its sevenfold organisation, individual activities must surely take place between the various members. The part of the astral body that corresponds to the physical body must have a certain interplay with the part that corresponds to the etheric body and with the part that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. These are no mere abstract suppositions; it is quite possible in the human organism for a man to feel inwardly—though more subconsciously than consciously—a movement of that part of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body. And then something may produce another movement which will have to start in that member of the astral body that corresponds to the astral body itself, and so on. This is not a mere theory; it really happens.

Now imagine the seven members of the astral body to be interrelated as are the tones of the scale: tonic, second, third, fourth, etc. If you allow the effect of a melody to work upon you, you will find that your human organisation permits this to occur because the various tones of the melody are experienced inwardly in the corresponding member of the astral body. The interval of a third is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself. A fourth is experienced in the part of the astral body which—well, let us now be more specific—corresponds to the intellectual or mind soul. A fifth is experienced in the part of the astral body which corresponds to the consciousness or spiritual soul. And remembering that when we divide the human organism more exactly we find it contains nine members, we must, accordingly, structure the astral body in the same way. Instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the physical body” when enumerating the various members, I could now say “the member experienced in the tonic”. Instead of “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the etheric body”, I could say “the member experienced in the second”. And instead of saying “the member of the astral body which corresponds to the astral body itself” I could say “the member experienced in the third”.

You can now also see that the existence of the major third and the minor third really corresponds to the incorporation of the astral body in our whole human organisation. If you look up the relevant passage in my book Theosophy you will see that there is an overlapping of what we call the sentient soul on the other. Therefore what I described as an interval of a third can correspond either to the astral body or to the sentient soul: in the one case we have the major third and in the other the minor third.

It is a fact that our ability to experience a musical work of art depends upon this inner musical activity of the astral body: only while we listen to the music with our ego we immediately sink the experience into our astral body, into certain realms which are subconscious.

This leads us to a very important fact. Let us look at ourselves as astral beings, as possessors of an astral body: what is our nature in this respect? As astral beings we have been created out of the cosmos according to musical laws. Inasmuch as we are astral beings we are musically connected with the cosmos. We are ourselves an instrument.

Let us now suppose that we do not need to hear the physical sound of tones, but are able to listen to the creative activity of the cosmos that has brought us into existence as astral beings out of the cosmos: in such a state we should hear the universal music, what has always been called the music of the spheres. Let us suppose that we are able to dive down consciously into our astral entity, developing its spiritual strength to such an extent that we can hear the creative activity of the cosmic music; we could then say to ourselves: With the help of our astral body the cosmos is playing our own being. This thought, which I have just expressed to you, was alive in men in ancient times, really alive. And in pointing this out one is also pointing to the way in which right into the fifth post-Atlantean epoch human evolution has become more and more materialistic. For we all know that this thought is not alive in the external human culture of today; humanity knows nothing about the fact that, so far as the astral body is concerned, the human being is a musical instrument. But this was not always the case, and the fact that it was not always the case has been, so to speak, forgotten. For there was a time when men said: A man once lived who was called John, and this John was able to transport himself into a state of spiritual consciousness in which he could hear the music of the heavenly Jerusalem. They said: All earthly music can only be a copy of the heavenly music which began with the creation of mankind. And the more religious part of humanity felt that by passing over into the world of physical desires, man had absorbed impulses which veiled and darkened the celestial music for him. But at the same time they felt that there must exist in human evolution—through purification from external and chaotic life—a road leading to the goal of hearing the spiritual cosmic music, as it were, through and beyond the external music of the physical world.

In the tenth and eleventh centuries, this relation between external, materialistic music, of which the divine origin was pointed out, and its heavenly prototype, was still beautifully expressed: men were required to employ music as a form of sacrificial or religious service and were expected to free themselves of their connection with the purely chaotic and—as it was felt to be—impure outer world when they produced musical sounds. Life in ordinary external speech was felt to be impure. People felt themselves transported to spiritual heights when they lifted themselves up from speech to music, which is the image of celestial music. This feeling was expressed in the following words.

Ut queant laxis
resonare fibris
mira gestorum
famuli tuorum
solve polluti
labii reatum,
S.J. (Sancte Johanne)

To translate this we would have to say: “So that thy servants may sing with liberated vocal cords the wonders of thy works, pardon the sins of the lips which have become earthly—one might say which have become capable of speech—O Saint John.” It was to one who could hear the heavenly Jerusalem that men looked up in this connection. Let us extract certain things that lie hidden in such a verse: Ut (this word was later replaced by do), resonare (re), mira (mi), famuli (fa), solve (sol), labii (la), S.J. (si). So you find that ‘do, re, mi, fa, sol, la, si’, the names of the notes in medieval musical notation, have been carefully hidden in this verse.

In such an instance we can go back to what still lived in human minds right until the eleventh or twelfth centuries through atavistic clairvoyant cognition, and we see how it all disappears in the flood of materialistic views and passes out of the consciousness of men. But now we are living at a time when through spiritual knowledge we must find it again and recreate it. Everything points clearly to the way in which evolution has made a descent so deep that a swamp has formed. The muddy water of this morass is made up of all the ideas originating in a materialistic view of the world. And now we are about to struggle up again out of the swamp of materialism, to ascend and rediscover what mankind has lost in its descent.

I have pointed out that properly speaking we do not sleep by night only but that certain parts of our being also sleep by day. At night it is principally the thinking and feeling parts which sleep, while during the day it is more the willing and feeling parts which sleep. It is in this will sphere that we are submerged when we dive down with the ego into the astral body. And when we hear a musical work, what happens is that we consciously dive down with our ego into the part of us which is otherwise asleep. When you sit and listen to a symphony, the inner process which takes place is a dulling of your ordinary, everyday thought life while you plunge with soul and spirit down into a region which otherwise sleeps during daytime consciousness. This brings about the connection between the effect of music and all the life-giving forces in the human organism, all that streams with living force through the whole human being, letting him grow together as one with the streaming volume of sounds.

And at night we sleep; then our ordinary thought life is dulled in an element which as yet is not present in our normal consciousness. But if we succeed in bringing into ordinary everyday consciousness that which awakens when we sleep; if that in which we live when asleep dives down into our waking experience, then . . . . Just in contrast: I have just said that when we experience music the ego's awareness dives down into a region which sleeps during the day. But when we submerge what we experience at night into the consciousness of daytime, then poetry arises. This is what people like Plato felt when they called poetry a ‘divine dreaming’.

When we thus explore the connection that exists between man and the whole cosmos, which we can do to a certain extent under the guidance of art, we can bring a certain measure of life into what otherwise remains a mere skeleton of ideas. Please do realise that these things are not a mere skeleton! Some people take such pleasure in arranging what I have described in my book Theosophy in the pattern of a diagram; no doubt they thought that it was from pure obstinacy that I deviated from the pattern of earlier theosophical teachings, when I described three threefold organisations¹ that are not separate but interlaced. But if these matters are approached through what one experiences and what is absolutely real, then even the nature of major and minor melodies will show that things are deeply rooted in the whole structure of the cosmos. Only when things are taken as living entities out of the whole structure of the cosmos do they correspond to a true reality.

Of course it was necessary in the beginning to say a number of things, the reasons for which have only appeared by degrees during the course of many years. This naturally involved the risk that people would start to criticise, because they did not know on what certain statements were based, nor how things of necessity present themselves when the whole structure of the cosmos is taken into consideration. This is still the case with many matters. Many things that are said now are open to numerous objections if they are approached with superficial ideas. But in the course of years even decades they will certainly be verified. And the knowledge gained through spiritual science will become fruitful as soon as it is no longer a theory but a living experience.

All depends upon the capacity to surmount the first ideas presented by the words: physical body, etheric body, astral body, etc., so that these ideas can become alive; a real understanding of the universe radiates from this process of bringing to life. Those who are able to do this should now compare the kind of aesthetics that have come to the fore during the last century and a half, with what can be learned from a knowledge of the human being in discovering the origin of the arts. Those who make this comparison will see that, unless there is an understanding of the human organisation, it is impossible to reach a real comprehension of what lives around us and gives us joy.

I want to awaken in you a recognition of the fact that spiritual science is itself an initial impulse that will continue to grow and develop, that we are in a sense called upon to make the very first steps, and that we can imagine what these first steps will lead to, long after we have laid aside our bodies in our present incarnation.

• 1. see diagram p. 49 in Kunst im Lichte der Mysterienweisheit, Dornach 1980.

We can obtain maybe the best survey of what ought to enter into our souls and hearts as a result of our efforts in spiritual science if we turn our attention for a moment to the greater part of what I have dealt with in my book Occult Science, an Outline. Leaving aside the introductory chapters, which are necessary as a preparation for the subject, we can begin with those chapters that introduce us to the being of man, his relation to birth and death, and his life in the spiritual worlds. After this comes a description of the great cosmic relationships, of course only in rough outlines; we are led through the transformations of our earth before it became the earth, through the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions leading up to our present Earth evolution. Then follows a sketch in the form of brief hints giving us a glimpse of the future Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Finally, instead of a more detailed description of the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions we have an account of what must be undergone by the individual who wishes to set in motion within his being those inner soul experiences which must eventually lead him to initiation. These processes have been described in greater detail up to a certain stage in the book Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved?.

It will become apparent that for us spiritual science falls into two parts. In one part we describe cosmic relationships; we describe how what we have before us today as the earth and its beings and as the rest of the cosmos has been coming into existence out of the very, very distant past, and we describe the prospect of how it will develop further. If you review the many observations that we have made, you will see that a large part of them are in a way under the influence of what we take into ourselves concerning the development and coming into being of the cosmos.

The other part of spiritual science is concerned for us with what the soul must do in order to enter the spiritual worlds or, in other words, to reach initiation. It is these inner experiences, conquests, battles, redemptions, and achievements of the soul with which we are always concerned in this second sphere of observation. Our observations always belong essentially to one or other of these two spheres.

Starting now with the first sphere of observations, we see that by describing the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions up to the present Earth evolution, we are placing something in the world which is entirely contrary to both the religious and the scientific world concepts of today; indeed the modern world for the most part considers these descriptions to be absurd. It is quite natural that to our modern minds a description of a world order appropriate, for instance, to the conditions of the Saturn evolution must appear too fantastic; the description of a cosmic order of this kind must appear to our present way of looking at things as absolute nonsense, as something that cannot exist, as the outcome of fantastic speculation. And this is just as true of the other parts of our portrayal.

Now bear in mind a remark that I have made here several times: The human being does not only sleep at night, when his conscious thoughts and ideas are dulled, but a part of his being is also asleep during the day. At night it is more the life of concepts that is asleep; but during the day, in a part of our being, the life of the will is more asleep. The will sleeps in the depths of our bodily being, or at least a large part of the will sleeps thus. This sphere of our will is much more comprehensive than the part which we develop consciously; the latter is only a small part. We may say with complete assurance that in his ordinary daily consciousness, either at work or enjoying leisure, the human being is really for the most part a sleepwalker. A vast number of things take place within him unconsciously; and even a great part of what seems to be done consciously is, in reality, done half or more than half unconsciously.

If we observe the human being exactly in what he does half or more than half unconsciously, then we may see with our spiritual eyes that during sleep he is not nearly so unbelieving as when awake. When awake his modern view of the world prompts him to say: The description of the Saturn evolution in a book like Occult Science is pure and absolute nonsense! Of course he must say this. But as a complete human being he does not speak like this; for he carries within himself something through which he—if I may say so—knows unconsciously that there was once upon a time a Saturn existence. He does something which proves that he in a certain way unconsciously remembers this Saturn existence: he becomes an architect. Architecture would never have come into being if man did not now carry within himself the laws which were imprinted on his physical body during the ancient Saturn period. Yesterday we discussed how these laws in the physical body can be projected into the space outside, where they become the laws of architecture. Man mysteriously projects into the laws of architecture all that he took into his being during the ancient Saturn period. Obviously he has to use such means as are at his disposal today; accordingly the present aspect of architecture is quite different from what we know of ‘Saturn architecture’. But the essential and living elements in our architectural activities stem from what was implanted in us during the ancient Saturn evolution.

Let us enter still deeper into the matter which we thus place before our souls. What does the human being do when he becomes totally absorbed in the creativity of architecture, either as the architect or as the observer or admirer? He lives within the Saturn laws of his physical body; if he immerses himself entirely into the laws of architecture, he forgets all about the life of his etheric body, his astral body and his ego: he becomes once more a Saturn man. All the impressions produced by architecture, its austerity, its chaste proportions, its silence which is yet so eloquent, result from the fact that, abandoning the higher members of his being, he immerses himself in what was given to him by the spirits of the higher hierarchies, the Thrones and Archai, who were active at the beginning of the Saturn period. It was mainly these two groups of higher spirits who were active then, assisted by the other beings belonging to the higher hierarchies.

So when he creates or enjoys architecture (where it is a case of real art of course), the human being really lifts himself not only out of the present Earth existence but also out of the more distant past and places himself once more into the period of Saturn existence.

Let us now pass on to sculpture. Yesterday we saw that the laws of sculpture are the laws of the etheric body which have been pressed down one step into the physical body. Just as that which lives in the physical body, when compelled into the space outside, becomes architecture, so sculpture appears when what lives in the etheric body is made to descend into the physical body. In enjoying sculpture we abandon the astral body, the ego, and all the higher members of our being, living as though we had only the physical body, and in the physical body an expression of the etheric body; in such a condition we are once more participants of the ancient Sun condition. All that the ancient Sun evolution planted in us reappears when we enjoy or create works of sculpture. On the one hand these works appear so congenial to us because they give us back our own very distant past which is still creative within us, our Sun period; and on the other hand they are so smooth and cold in their marble because what rays out to us from them is like light coming to us from the far distances of the cosmos.

Now let us pass on to painting. We know that painting comes about when the inner impulses of the astral body are pressed down into the etheric body; in painting we abandon the ego and live as though we were only in the astral, but were pressing it down into the etheric body. We experience ourselves in all that the ancient Moon evolution has implanted in us, this being our inner astral nature as human being. Painting is, as it were, the outward projection of this inner astral nature of ours. Just as we experience in our astral nature sorrow or joy, things that affect or impress us, whatever fate brings us, so do we experience what the painter conjures upon the canvas for us, which is a reflection of our own inner astral being.

If you try to enter a little into what is described in Occult Science as the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions, you will discover that an architectural mood underlies the description of the Saturn evolution, a sculptural mood underlies the description of the Sun evolution, and a pictorial mood underlies the description of the Moon evolution; an attempt was made to express these moods by choosing suitable words. The presentation of occult events definitely requires more than the current literary equipment of today. It would be an entire misconception of the style of an occult description to believe that it could be achieved by the dreadful literary devices of our time.

We now come to the Earth evolution. Here we are in the immediate present, in the reality appointed for us; what we experience here we do not immediately feel the need to place before ourselves in the form of art. But the need the human being feels of projecting his inner life outward in the form of art is not exhausted by, as it were, recreating his cosmic past in architecture, sculpture, and painting out of the memory implanted in him.

Our need for art progresses further and we can find the spiritual foundation for this if we turn again to the book Occult Science. After the descriptions of the Saturn, Sun, Moon, and Earth evolutions and after the brief outline of the future Jupiter, Venus and Vulcan evolutions, we come to the description of the processes of initiation, which are essentially at first inner human processes. These initiation processes are, in the form in which we encounter them today, the beginning of important changes for the life of human beings on earth and for the whole of future humanity.

Is it not so that our deeper experience of the life of humanity on earth is expressed in the words: Alas, in so far as man is consciously aware during life on earth he appears to be but an orphan in the cosmos, a child abandoned by the cosmos, or even a traveller who has lost his way in the cosmos!

For his everyday waking consciousness man does not know the origin of what lives in him as a result of the Saturn, Sun, and Moon evolutions; nor does he know what will become of him in the Jupiter, Venus, and Vulcan evolutions. Knowing neither his origin nor his future he wanders about at the edge of the abyss that bounds our earthly valley. Sometimes his consciousness may give him a feeling of assurance or he may feel secure as to his future; nevertheless, neither the past nor the future can be determined objectively and competently by man on earth. But something capable of giving him clear guidance in his life will appear before his soul. This will come about when man makes himself acquainted with the guidelines given him in the laws of initiation. Initiation, in ancient times, took the form of a kind of inheritance left to men by the gods, which manifested itself as atavistic clairvoyance; but in the course of our progress towards the future it must take hold of man more and more firmly and actually shape his inner soul life.

The path to initiation has two sides. The one side leads man to discover the secrets, the riddles of life so that he can enter into the spiritual experience of existence. The other side may be called the more subjective side of initiation that takes place more within the soul itself. It is, at the same time, the side from which men shrink the most, because it presents in fact something which does not fit in with the comfortable indolence of experience to which the soul so easily yields or wants to yield. An extremely wide and detailed range of inner experiences awaits the one who is to be gradually led by his inner experience to initiation. Conquest and liberation, hindrance and redemption alternate in manifold ways with inner experience on the way to initiation. One goes through everything the soul experiences when it suddenly feels it has become an entire stranger to itself; as though it had been cast into an abyss where it cannot help feeling that it is eternally lost and can never recover anything which it may have acquired during any lifetime. It may feel an unlimited dismay and grief at the loss of the existence already won. Then the soul may feel itself forced into complete fragmentation, as though it must disintegrate into an endless multiplicity and dissolve into all the beings out of which the cosmos is composed. Further the soul may feel itself wandering through the beings of the cosmos, becoming akin to one of them, then leaving it again and becoming akin to another, in the way I have described it in my book The Threshold of the Spiritual World, in the part dealing with experiences that are always attended by painful privations, painful loneliness as they are passed through one by one. Then comes the experience of the most radical transformation of all, when the soul must decide to undergo what can be expressed with the words: Now you must lose yourself for a while, you must thrust yourself away from yourself; but you must have faith that while you are losing yourself, while you are thrusting yourself away from yourself, beings reposing in the wide expanses of the divine hierarchies will protect you, will cause you to find yourself again after you have lost yourself. This is the passage through births and deaths. This is to be undergone among the inner experiences which lead to initiation.

At last comes the awful passage through all the forces which are not necessary for life on earth, but which are necessary for the life of the extra-terrestrial cosmos and which become the forces of evil when they are brought without justification into the life of the earth by Lucifer or Ahriman. It is the dreadful passage through the forces of evil, together with all the disruptive, devouring, engulfing forces they represent throughout the cosmos. And finally man passes through a stage when he ought to feel himself to be only an instrument, a tool through which the spiritual beings speak; he becomes symbolically what his larynx is as a single organ, he becomes the larynx of the divine spiritual beings, he feels himself to be resting in the all-powerful divine world. And then at last a condition will be reached in the future in which this feeling emerges into sharing the experience of the divine will, working in the cosmos itself.

Only single stages have been described here. But the grades of experience through which the soul passes are infinite. In Knowledge of the Higher Worlds: How is it Achieved? and, more descriptively, in The Threshold of the Spiritual World, you will find set forth as far as is necessary for the present time, how the soul is able to adjust itself to all these states and how, at each stage, it advances one step further into the spiritual world. All that the soul passes through on the path to initiation is consciously undergone and consciously experienced.

This is why this path of knowledge is so beset with pain and yet so full of liberation. But long, long before the human being enters consciously into all that I have described to you as the stages of the path to initiation, he is able to express these experiences in his own way in pictures, and this is done through music! In the last analysis genuine music is essentially a process of life taking its course in tones, which is an external picture of what the soul experiences consciously in initiation.

If he remains in the everyday sphere, the human being cannot at once accomplish what we described yesterday as the submerging of the ego in the astral body. To submerge the ego in the astral body in the right way is to enter into the divine world, and this is the passage through initiation. A picture of this is given to us in the processes we perceive in musical compositions. When he surrenders himself to musical creativity, either as the composer or the listener, the human being abandons his ego, he pushes it back; but at the same time he surrenders it to those divine spiritual powers who are to work upon his astral body when he has ascended to existence on Jupiter.

Please observe how we are entering upon a consideration of the creative art of music which links us with the future of mankind. It is almost, one feels, lacking in modesty to say that musical creativity is called upon to perfect itself more and more in the world, to become continually more profound, and that the musical creativity that has entered into our world so far is still more or less at the experimental stage, even though so much greatness and so much genius has already been involved. So far we have made attempts at what will be infinitely more meaningful in the musical creativity of the future. And this musical art of the future will be most significantly stimulated when human beings begin to engage in learning to know the inner nature of the path of initiation.

When one day what can be described concerning the path of initiation will no longer be experienced by human beings as it is today, but will be experienced in such a way that the description of what the soul must feel will cause human beings to go through bliss and bitter disappointment; when the knowledge that can be gained by reading about the path of initiation has become a complete inner experience: only then will it be possible for human souls to be so deeply moved through their participation in the destinies of all those beings who take part in the events of the cosmos outside the human realm, that they will feel within themselves the shocks, privations and liberation that will impel the soul to express in tonal relationships what is experienced through the description of the path of initiation.

In time to come there will be individuals who will feel what is described as the path of initiation; they will feel that things which are put before us in such an apparently abstract way can be intensely experienced, much more intensely than is the case with our outward physical experience. Then a moment will come when those who are able to experience the truth of what is described as the path of initiation will say to themselves: Now I feel that what I am experiencing does not connect me with the realm of nature that surrounds me on the earth but with all that lives and weaves in the cosmos; not only can I experience all this, but I am able to sing it, to set it to music!

In what can thus be described we have an indication of what spiritual science is to become for human beings. Spiritual science must be a living stimulus for the human soul; it should be more than mere theory, mere understanding, mere knowledge. Spiritual science must live in the soul, taking hold of all its powers, transforming the human being into another being. Or vice versa, the human being must transform himself into another being when he becomes devoted to spiritual science.

In ancient times, even in the case of the Greeks who were Sun men, an atavistic clairsentience led men to abandon their astral and their ego beings completely and only to express the laws of the physical human form created during the Saturn and Sun evolutions. Thus Greek statues were made, those works of sculpture that really stand before our physical eyes as the mankind of the Sun evolution must stand before our spiritual eyes, when we understand that the human being of that period consisted only of the physical human body which contained within it the living etheric forces but not as yet the astral.

Indeed, a work of Greek art such as the Venus of Milo stands before us as the personification of absolute chastity, since unchastity is only possible in the astral body, in all that permeates the astral body as passion and desire. Unchastity is not yet possible in the etheric body. It was a heritage from the gods bestowed upon men which caused them to create such works of art. The human being has lost this ability to feel himself within the etheric and physical bodies alone, without the ego or the astral body.

When he awakes and submerges his ego and his astral body into his etheric and physical bodies, he feels and experiences only what is present in his ego. Even the processes in the astral body are in the subconscious realm, and he has no inner knowledge at all of what takes place in the etheric and physical bodies. The ancient Greeks were still dimly aware of all this. But today, when we seek to bring spiritual knowledge to life once more within ourselves and cause it to embrace not only our abstract and theoretical thoughts but also the whole of our soul life, we gradually penetrate the different members of our being and learn to know what permeates our astral and etheric bodies in rhythmical and harmonious cycles. Then we become able to follow with the soul the etheric forces which pulsate through the body and through space, calling forth forms out of the etheric.

An attempt of this kind was made in the creation of the columns and architraves in our Goetheanum building; it was a diving down into the spheres made accessible to us by spiritual science which have been forgotten by mankind. In this we must indeed take deeply seriously what spiritual science can mean to us. You can glean from all that has so far been said about spiritual science that when we enter consciously into the spiritual world (and one must enter the spiritual world consciously), in other words when with understanding we give form to what lives in the etheric world and in the human etheric body and wish to enjoy what we have thus formed, then we must inevitably make the acquaintance of those beings which are called the luciferic and ahrimanic spirits.

Now consider how much of what we create today has an ahrimanic character. You will remember¹ what I have said with regard to our modern technical environment; and of course we cannot do otherwise than use modern technical methods in our work. If we wished to do without them we would produce the equivalent of hothouse plants. So it afforded me a certain satisfaction that we were able to use concrete, one of the most modern building materials, for part of our building here. For progress consists not in shutting oneself off, as in a hothouse, from the life around one, but in using what is offered by it. By grasping the spiritual nature of the world through spiritual science, we try to use modern materials in such way that what we know through spiritual science finds a living expression in them.

Of course this is only possible up to a certain point, and you will understand why this is so when you perceive all the implications of what has been said about the technical environment. For it is not possible to separate technical methods from ahrimanic forces, for instance, if we wish to create something in architecture or sculpture for ourselves. Thus it was a difficult task to take what of necessity had an ahrimanic nature in our building and, as it were, banish it from the building as something rendered harmless. It really was a difficult task, for we know that the ahrimanic element is inseparable from modern technology. For a while it seemed that Ahriman would easily gain the upper hand. Then we should have been compelled to incorporate into our main building all the technical equipment necessary for running it. As a result, Ahriman would have been permanently installed within the building. We had to think of a way of excluding the ahrimanic forces from the building, and the only possibility was to take the boiler house out and make it a separate unit. This has been done, as you can see for yourselves, and with great success.

It has been possible to create, in the most modern building material, forms that truly express the following: Here, near the building, but outside it, stands the part that must not be included in it, though it must be present outside; and the material out of which it has been formed represents an architectural structure that is truly in keeping with spiritual-scientific knowledge.

It was of immense importance that this should be achieved, particularly as the most modern building materials were employed. For if you look more deeply into what I have written about spiritual science, taking in this case the last chapter of The Portal of Initiation, you will find expressed there the fact that Lucifer and Ahriman are at their most harmful when they are not seen, when they remain invisible. Let us suppose that somebody is tormented by ahrimanic forces; what would be the best remedy? The best remedy would be for him to have some kind of picture made of Ahriman which he could place in his room. The best remedy against an astral being which torments one, is to place it before oneself in a physical form. It is incorrect to suppose that if we have Ahriman before us we will be persecuted by him; the contrary is true. Things must be made visible. But we must not let the matter get on our nerves; we must not develop a condition in which, if we happen to pass by the picture of Ahriman and look at it unconsciously, we then carry the image within ourselves. For this image will then be invisible inside us, thus making us nervous or excited.

You will also see, if you study our ahrimanic chimney along with the whole boiler house, how it is indeed possible to make an architectural structure of what belongs, one might say, to the most blatant elements of ahrimanic civilisation in our time. Certain defects of this civilisation will not vanish until mankind resolves to give architectural form to the things that concern the ahrimanic elements of our civilisation. Apart from all else, apart from our having a building for our own purposes, it is simply important that the first step should be taken in relating our present culture to art and in relating spiritual science to our present culture. Our boiler house is a first small step in this direction, and will lead, it is hoped, to the solution of other problems later. One enormous problem, for instance, would be to find a suitable form for the modern railway station; for the horrors and abominations which perform that function today are a contradiction of all decent human requirements. In its entire form our boiler house is not only suited to its specific purpose but also corresponds to the whole relationship of Ahriman to our building; in the same way the form of a railway station must correspond to what happens through it, with it, and in it within the framework of our modern civilisation.

Such things as these should indicate the way in which spiritual science can provide inspiration for artistic creativity and for many other fields. And we may rest assured, if we enter into the true sense and spirit of what is to develop for us out of spiritual science, that one day, when human beings immerse themselves in the nature of the Saturn condition, then the deeper laws of architecture will reveal themselves; and if people immerse themselves in the nature of the Sun condition, the the deeper laws of sculpture will reveal themselves; and if they immerse themselves in the nature of the Moon condition, then the deeper relationships between form and colour and the nature of chiaroscuro will become apparent, creating inspiration for the art of painting.

And from the description of the path of initiation will spring inspirations and intuitions for the creation of music and yet further for the creation of poetry. Then the time will come when poetic creativity in the true sense of the word will reappear in the world. For poetic creativity has to a certain extent died away. The ‘divine dreams’ incorporated in the work of the true poets were the last vestiges of the ancient heritage from the gods. But a time must come when, out of an understanding of the mysteries of initiation, poets will speak in dramatic or epic or lyric poetry about those intimate processes which take place in the soul when the human being is not alone with himself, but lives together with the gods of the higher hierarchies. In the not too distant future people will be saying: Stop bothering me with your perpetual jingles about men's experiences in the physical world; your daily routine of love and hate and enjoyment is your own affair. It is about what they experience together with the gods when they have found their way outside earthly experience, that men will sing in their music and in their dramas, epics, and lyrical poems. For we know that all men's experiences with the extra-terrestrial world must be brought into these arts through true creativity that is not involved in everyday life.

We have now seen what impulses of transformation lie in the knowledge brought to us by spiritual science, even in the field of artistic appreciation. And we have now seen how, if we enter into spiritual-scientific knowledge, we can dimly perceive the forces which must reign over the spiritual culture of future humanity. Indeed, we may believe that without achieving a profound inner transformation nobody can really make contact with spiritual science; and we may believe that spiritual science is something which can grasp man in a deeply inward way, leading beyond the narrow connections of physical life alone. If we bear in mind this ideal of spiritual science, if we bear in mind that spiritual science can lead out into a sphere that is different from ordinary experience, then it is always an event of immense significance to see somebody within the spiritual-scientific movement, really igniting within himself the spark that leads him out of and beyond the narrow limits of ordinary personal experience. In a way, the only joyful experience which is so far made possible for us through the spiritual-scientific movement is, that as a result of this movement, individuals can appear among us who really find their way out of their personal sphere into those spheres where the personal element ceases to exist.

In our everyday life we must, of course, cultivate the personal element; but in so far as we are together as students of spiritual science, all personal willing and feeling is changed into something impersonal if we take hold of spiritual science in the right way. And every victory over personal feelings and over the weight of personal feelings and over the weight of personal matters in life is of immense significance and value. But on the other hand it is one of the bitterest disappointments if something that is striven for in spiritual science with a will that is purely spiritual, becomes entangled again in the merely personal will and purpose of human beings, and if personal matters begin to play a role within a society whose object it is to unite us in striving for spiritual-scientific knowledge.

I shall not elaborate on these concluding remarks or go into more detail because I believe that there are a good many among you who will perhaps understand much of what is meant by them, who will understand that they were intended as an indication of a number of things that are satisfactory and a number that are disappointing. Today, having tried for a while to walk together along a path of spiritual science, it is good to think about these things for a moment; for there are various reasons why we should reflect and ask ourselves to what extent our own soul is participating in the sincere and honest effort to achieve the spiritual purposes which are nourished by the current of spiritual science. What a superb perspective unfolds before us when we say: Life, science, religion, and also art can receive impulses of transformation from spiritual science when it is truly understood. In the case of the pictorial and plastic arts the impulses come from what we learn in spiritual spheres about the past; and in the case of the arts involving music and speech the impulses come from that which we are striving for inwardly, in order to be able to approach the future. This perspective is so immense and so powerful that we cannot bring enough realisation to bear on it, in order to make it more intensely clear to ourselves. And the more we succeed in making clear to ourselves the inner mood resulting from this vision, the better we shall be as true members of that great organism known to us as spiritual science, an organism which is small today, but which has within it great possibilities. With this today I not only want to appeal to your reason and your understanding, but I also want to sow it as a seed in your souls and in your hearts.

• 1. see lecture ‘Technology and Art’, p. 5 et seq. of this volume.

Translated by Steiner Online Library

We begin this celebration of the end of our year by having Dr. Steiner tell us the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of that Olaf Åsteson who, as Christmas approached, fell into a kind of sleep that lasted thirteen days: the holy thirteen days that we have come to know through various of our reflections. During this sleep he had important experiences, which he was able to relate when he woke up.

We have made various observations that could draw our attention to the fact that, through the spiritual scientific world view, we can regain in a different way old treasures of knowledge for human knowledge that were known in days gone by by people as that which belongs to the spiritual worlds. Again and again we will come across this pre-worldly knowledge of the spiritual worlds through one or other of them, and again and again we are reminded that this knowledge of the past was based on the fact that man, by virtue of his earlier organization, was able to stand in such a connection with the whole universe and its happenings that, as we express ourselves in our language, the human microcosm was immersed in the laws of the macrocosm and that in this immersion in the macrocosm he could have experiences about things that intimately concern his soul life, but which must remain hidden from him as long as he walks on the physical plane as a microcosm and is endowed only with the knowledge given to the senses and to the mind bound to the senses.

We know, of course, how only a materialistic world view of faith can be that man alone is endowed with the ability to know, feel and will within the order of the world; whereas from the point of view of a spiritual world view, it must be acknowledged that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human level of thinking, feeling and willing. Man can familiarize himself with these entities when he immerses himself as a microcosm in the macrocosm. But then we must speak of this macrocosm as if it were not only a spatial macrocosm, but as if time in its course has significance in the life of the macrocosm. Just as man must withdraw from all the impressions that can be exerted on his senses from his surroundings, just as he must create darkness around him by closing his sensory perception in order to light the light of the spirit within when he wants to descend into the depths of his soul, so must the spirit that we can call the earth spirit be closed off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The least degree of influence from the outer cosmos must be exerted on the earth spirit so that the earth spirit itself can concentrate inwardly, contract its abilities inwardly. For then the secrets are discovered that the human being has to go through with this earth spirit because the earth is separated from the cosmos as earth.

One such time when the greatest degree of influence from the external macrocosm is exerted upon the earth is the summer solstice, the time around the summer solstice. Many messages from ancient times remind us of this, which are linked to representations and celebrations of festivals, how such festivals took place in the middle of the summer season, how the soul in the middle of summer, by renouncing the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, is drunk on the impressions of the macrocosm.

Conversely, the legendary or other representations of what could be experienced in prehistoric times remind us that when the slightest measure of impressions from the macrocosm comes to earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences the secrets of earth soul life in the infinite universe, and that man, when he enters into this experience at the time when least light and warmth is sent from the macrocosm to the earth, then also experiences the most sacred secrets. That is why these days around Christmas have always been held in such high regard, because man, when he still had the ability in his organism to witness earthly life at the time when it is most concentrated, could be with the spirit of the earth.

Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the Earth-son, experiences many secrets of the universe in these thirteen shortest days, while he is absorbed in the macrocosm. And the Norse legend, which has been rediscovered in recent times from ancient records, tells us of the experiences that Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year's Day until January 6. And we have good reason, my dear friends, to remember this ancient way of integrating the microcosm into the macrocosm more often; our contemplation will then be able to tie in with such things. But for now, let us hear the legend of Olaf the Earth-son, who in the time in which we now live experienced the secrets of world existence by living with the Earth Spirit. So let us hear about these experiences.

The recitation followed.

My dear friends, we have heard how Olaf Åsteson fell asleep in that sleep that was to become a revelation for him of the secrets of those worlds that are withdrawn from the life of the senses, from ordinary life on the physical plane. In the legend, we have received the knowledge of those ancient realizations, of those ancient insights into the spiritual worlds, which are to be regained through that which we call the spiritual-scientific worldview.

The saying that runs through all the rallies dealing with the entry of the human soul into the spiritual world has often been quoted, and it states that man can only see the spiritual world when he comes to the gate of death with his experiences and then submerges into the elements. So that he does not have the elements of earthly existence around him as they are in the ordinary life of the physical plane, as the earth, the water, the air, the fire, but that he is lifted out above this outside, this sensual outside of the elements, and immersed in what these elements are when you get to know them in their true nature, their next true nature, where beings are present in them that are related to the experience of the human soul.

That Olaf Åsteson experienced something of this immersion in the elements can still be felt where it is first told how Olaf comes to the Gjallarbridge and how he walks over the bridge in the paths of the spiritual world that stretch far and wide. How vividly is the experience with the earth element described to us, how he immerses himself in the earth element. This is brought to such a vividness that it tells us that he feels earth in his mouth like dead people lying in graves. And then it is clearly indicated to us how he experiences the water element and everything that can be experienced in the water element when one experiences this water element at the same time with its moral content. Then again it is indicated how man comes together with the fire element, with the air element.

All this is described and brought together in a wonderfully vivid way in the experience of the human soul's union with the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found later; it was collected where it was still alive on the lips of the people. And there is much in this legend, as it is today, that is no longer as it originally was. Originally, there was undoubtedly only a vivid description of the experiences in the earth region, then of the experiences in the water region. And then the experiences in the air and fire regions were probably much more differentiated than is the case in the faint echoes that were found after centuries and that are presented to us today.

Likewise, the ending was undoubtedly much grander and less sentimental. The ending as it appears today no longer resembles the original's tremendously grandiose language, the superhumanly moving lay in such folk legends, while today's ending is only humanly moving; moving because it is connected with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience. |

In such times as these, in such seasons, if we understand them correctly, there is much reason to remember the fact that humanity - albeit with a different, more dull, more dim realization - was steeped in knowledge in the distant past that has been lost and must be regained. And here the question may arise again before our soul: Since we can already see today how such knowledge must come again for the good of humanity, must we not regard it as one of our most urgent tasks to do everything that such knowledge can bring about, that present-day human culture can permeate with such knowledge?

Various things will be necessary for this just hinted at change to occur in the right way in the whole human, I would now like to say, world-view feeling. Above all, one thing will be necessary; I say one, because it is one among many; but you can only take one at a time. What will be necessary is for human souls to acquire reverence and devotion on the basis of our spiritual-scientific worldview, in the face of what has been known in ancient times in the old way, the great secrets of existence. One must come to the realization of how this reverence and devotion has been neglected in materialistic times, and develop it in the soul.

One must get a sense of how dry and sober this materialistic time is, and how arrogantly humanity in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period stood in the face of the revelations of ancient religions and ancient traditions of knowledge, which truly, if approached with the necessary reverence, give a sense that deep, deep wisdom lies within them. How irreverent we are, in fact, when we approach the Bible today! I will not even speak of that kind of modern abomination research that dishevels and frays the entire Bible. I will speak only of the sober, dry way in which we approach the Bible today, as it were equipped only with sensory knowledge and the ordinary powers of the mind, and how we can no longer muster an appreciation for the tremendous grandeur of human contemplation that confronts us in some passages. I would like to point to a passage from the Book of Exodus, chapter 33, verse 18: And Moses said to God: “Show me the form of your revelation.”

Whereupon Jehovah said: “I will pass by and let all my goodness pass before you, and I will call the name of Jehovah before you and will be gracious to whom I may be gracious, and will show mercy on whom I may show mercy.

But then Jehovah says: “You cannot see my face, for no one who can still live sees me.”

And Yahweh said: “Here is a place by me; stand on the rock. When my glory passes by, I will put you in a crevice of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then I will remove my hand, and you will see my back side, but my face cannot be seen.

When we take into account many things that have entered our souls and hearts over the past years of our spiritual striving and approach this passage, we may have the feeling: Yes, what infinite wisdom speaks from this passage, and how deaf are the human ears of the materialistic age that they can hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that speaks from this passage. At the same time, I would like to take this opportunity to draw your attention to a little book that has been published with the title “Words of Moses” by Bruns' Verlag in Minden in Westphalia, because some of the material in this little book is better translated than in other editions of the Five Books of Moses. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, who is the editor of the “Words of Moses”, has put a lot of effort into the interpretation.

We have often emphasized that, if man wishes to enter the spiritual worlds, he must acquire a completely different way of relating to the world than he does to the sense world. The sense world is around man. He looks at the sensory world, he sees it in its colors and forms, hears its sounds. The sensory world is there; we face it; it affects us; we perceive it, we reflect on it. This is our relationship to the sensory world. We are passive; it works its way into our soul, as it were. We think about the sensory world, we imagine the sensory world.

Our behavior is quite different when we live our way up into the spiritual world. This is one of the difficulties in gaining correct ideas about what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have tried to characterize some of these difficulties in the booklet: “The Threshold of the Spiritual World.” We present the sensory world, we think about the sensory world. When we go through everything that one has to go through who wants to walk the path of initiation, then something occurs that can be characterized as follows: the way the things around us relate to us, that is how we relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies: they present us, they think us. We think the objects outside of us, the minerals, plants and animals: they become our thoughts. We, in turn, are the perceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the angels, archangels, archai and so on. We are absorbed by them, as we ourselves absorb plants, animals and humans. And we must feel secure in knowing that the beings of the higher hierarchies think us, imagine us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls. Yes, we can almost imagine: when that Olaf Åsteson fell asleep in front of the church door, he became an idea of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and while he slept, the beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit experience, which for us is, after all, a plurality. And as Olaf Åsteson sinks back down into the physical world, he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him.

Let us imagine: we are embarking on the path of initiation! How can we relate to the spiritual worlds into which we want to enter as a sum of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies? How can we relate to them? We can address them and say: How do we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us? And then, when we have gained an understanding of the different way in which the human soul relates to the higher worlds, we will, as it were, hear a response from the spiritual worlds: Yes, just as you perceive the world of the senses, that it appears before your eyes, comes before your senses, so you cannot perceive the spiritual world. We have to introduce you to it, and you have to feel yourself in us. You have to feel yourself as the thought you think in the world of the senses would experience itself if it could experience itself in you. You must give yourself up to the spiritual world, then everything that can reveal itself to you of the higher hierarchies will move into you. Then it will flow into your soul and think graciously in the sensory world. If the spiritual world wants to pardon you, then it will permeate you with its love! If it wants to have mercy on you and permeate you with its love.

You must not think that you can place yourself in the position of spiritual beings in the same way as in the world of sense. As Moses had to enter into the cave, so you must enter into the cave of the spiritual world. You must place yourself in it. As the thought lives in you, so you must live yourself into the spiritual beings. You yourself must live in it as a world thought in the macrocosm. You cannot experience what you experience of your own accord during your life on earth between birth and death; you can only do so after death, when you have died. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, but the spiritual world can pass before you, granting you mercy, flooding you with its love. And then, when you develop your earth consciousness afterwards or while you are in this spiritual world, what the spiritual world is shines into your earth consciousness.

What the object is outside and how man faces the object, how the object intrudes into his consciousness and is then in it, so is man with his soul in the hollow of the spiritual world (drawings 1 and 2).

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The spiritual world passes through him. Here man is before things. When man enters into the spiritual world, the entities of the higher hierarchies are behind him. He cannot see their faces, just as thoughts do not see our faces when they are within us. The face is in front; the thoughts are behind, they do not see the face. The whole secret of initiation rests in the words that Yahweh speaks to Moses.

And Moses says to God: “Show me the form of your revelation.”

Whereupon Jehovah said: “I will cause all my goodness to pass before you, and I will proclaim the name of Jehovah before you, and I will show mercy upon whom I shall be merciful, and will shew compassion on whom I shall shew compassion.

But then Jehovah says: “You cannot see my face, for no man can see me and live.”

One comes to the gate of death through initiation.

And Yahweh says: “Here is a place with me. Stand on the rock, and when my glory passes by, I will put you in a hollow of the rock and cover you with my hand until I have passed by. Then, when I remove my hand, you will see my backside, but my face cannot be seen.”

It is the opposite way to perceive the sensory world. One must summon up much of what one acquires through years of spiritual striving in order to stand in the right way in awe and devotion before such a revelation. But then, little by little, this feeling of reverence for these revelations comes into the human soul, and among the many things we need for the change in spiritual human culture to take place, this reverence, this devotion, is one.

The time when the least amount of impressions from the macrocosm come to Earth, the time from Christmas until after the New Year, approximately until January 6, is well suited not only to remember the objectivity of spiritual knowledge, but also the feelings that we must develop within us by absorbing spiritual science. We must truly live our way back into the spirit of the earth, with which we together form a whole, and with which the old clairvoyant knowledge lived, as it is presented to us in this legend by Olaf Åsteson. In the materialistic age, humanity has often forgotten reverence and devotion to spiritual life. Above all, it is necessary to ensure that this reverence and devotion comes again, because only in this way will we be able to develop the right mood that will bring us to the new spiritual science. For the time being, there is still the mood that approaches this spiritual science in the same way as one approaches other, ordinary science. In this respect, however, a fundamental change must take place.

Because humanity has lost its insight into the spiritual world, it has also lost the right relationship of the human being to the whole of humanity, to humanity. The materialistic world view produces chaotic feelings about the existence of the world. These chaotic feelings about the existence of the world and humanity were bound to arise in the age of materialism. Let us take a time – and this time is ours: it is the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period – when people no longer had any real idea that the human being has a threefold nature: the physical, the soul and the spiritual being. For truly, it is so. What must be one of the first elements of spiritual scientific knowledge for us — the threefold nature of the human being in body, soul and spirit — was completely unknown from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period until our own time. Man was simply man, and all talk about a human structure of the kind we have in body, soul and spirit was considered foolish, fantastic talk.

One might think that these things are only significant for knowledge. But they are not. Not only are they significant for knowledge, but they are also significant for the whole way in which man places himself in life. In the third century of modern development, or, as we say in our language, of the development of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural period, three powerful words broke into this time, in which, so to speak, this time understood or at least tried to understand the center of human will in earthly life. These three words are significant, but they acquired their special character through their breaking into humanity at the time when the threefold nature of human nature was not yet known. Humanity heard about freedom, equality and brotherhood.

It was a profound necessity that these words should resound in modern culture at a particular time. We will only truly understand these words when we understand the threefold structure of human nature, because only then will we know what meaning these words can have for human nature in the true sense of the word. As long as one fills these three words with those chaotic feelings, which arise from the thought that man is man and the threefold nature of man is a foolish delusion, one cannot find one's way within the scope of the guideline of these three words. For just as the three words confront us, they cannot be applied directly, one might say, to the same level of human experience. They cannot. Simple considerations, which perhaps because they are so simple do not immediately appear before the eye of the soul in the gravity of what they mean, can suggest to you how, on the same level of life, what these three words mean can come into serious life conflicts.

Let us first take the area in which fraternity comes to us most naturally in the world. Let us take human blood relationship, the family, where we do not need to establish fraternity first, where it is innate in man by nature, and let us consider how it speaks to our feelings when we can see that genuine, true fraternity reigns in a family, that everything is connected fraternally. But now – without having to dampen in the slightest the wonderful feeling we can have of this brotherhood – let us take a look inside to see what can arise within the brotherhood of the family precisely because of the brotherhood of the family. There may be a member in the family who, precisely because of the brotherhood justified within the family, does not feel comfortable, longs to be outside the brotherhood of the family, because he feels that he cannot develop his soul within the brotherhood of the family, because he feels that he has to get out of the family, in which he can live so fraternally, in order to develop his soul freely. We see: freedom, the free development of the soul, can come into conflict with the most well-intentioned brotherhood.

Of course, the superficial person can say that this is not the right kind of brotherhood, that it is incompatible with the freedom of a soul within brotherhood. But you can say anything you can imagine. You can say that everything goes together, there is no doubt about that. I recently came across a dissertation. Among the theses to be defended, the thesis was put forward that A triangle is a quadrilateral. Of course, one can also defend that – yes, one can even rigorously prove that a triangle is a quadrilateral! In this way, one can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the issue; rather, the issue is how, for the sake of freedom, some areas must and will abandon fraternity. We could cite many other examples.

If one wanted to list the discrepancies between fraternity and equality, one would have to talk for a very long time about it. Of course, in abstracto one can again imagine: everyone can be equal, and one can show that fraternity and equality go together. But we are not dealing with abstractions, but with the observation of reality, if we take life seriously and honestly. The moment we know that the human being consists of the physical, which lives out on the physical plane, the soul, which actually lives out in the soul world, and the spiritual, which lives out in the spiritual world, At this moment the correct perspective for the context of the three powerful words that we have mentioned also opens up. Brotherhood is the most important ideal for the physical world. Freedom for the soul world, and - insofar as the human being is in the soul world, one should speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of a social condition that fully guarantees the freedom of the soul. And when we consider that each of us must strive from our individual point of view for spiritual knowledge, for the development of our spirit, in order to stand with the spirit in the realm of spirits, it will very soon become clear to us where we would end up with our conception of the spirit if each of us sought only in his own way and each of us came to a completely different spiritual content.

We can only find ourselves as human beings in life if we can seek the spirit — each for himself — and ultimately arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. Of brotherhood on the physical plane and in relation to everything that is connected with the laws of the physical plane and lives into the human soul from the physical plane. Freedom in relation to everything that lives into the human soul as laws of the soul world; equality in relation to everything that lives into the human soul from the laws of the spirit world.

You see, a world new year must come in which a sun will grow in terms of its warming and illuminating power: that sun, which must give its illuminating warmth to much that lives in the time of darkness, but lives misunderstood. That is precisely the peculiar thing about our time: that much is striven for, much is said, without being understood.

But this too can lead us to reverence and devotion to the spiritual world. For when we consider that many in the third century of the fifth post-Atlantic period strove for and spoke the words brotherhood, freedom and equality without them being fundamentally understood, then we already have the opportunity to understand and find an answer to the question: where did these words come from? The order of the spiritual world, which is divine, has implanted them in advance in the soul of man, which does not yet understand, so that it may cling to such guiding words and so attain a true understanding of the world. Even in such facts we can observe the wise guidance in the evolution of the world. We can observe this guidance everywhere in times that are more or less distant or near; we can observe how we often only realize afterwards that what we did before was actually more full of wisdom than we could have done with the wisdom of the time that we had mastered. I drew attention to this right at the beginning of my writing on “The Spiritual Guidance of Man and Humanity”.

But if you take something like the fact that in the development of the world, in the development of man, there are words of direction that can only be understood little by little, then you will probably become aware of a picture that can be used to characterize this elapsed period of the fifth post-Atlantic cultural epoch. In fact, in relation to certain things, it can be compared to the time of Advent, when the hours of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now, in our time, in which we can again know something of the revelations of the spiritual world, development is entering a phase in which we can gain the idea that the times of light are becoming longer and longer, and we can speak of the fact that this course of time can really appear analogous to the thirteen days and the re-entry into the days that are growing again.

But the matter goes even deeper. It is not right, not at all right, for us to have only negative things to say about the materialistic age of the last four centuries. This new era arose from the fact that great discoveries and inventions were made, as they are called “great” in the materialistic age, for example, that the earth was circumnavigated, countries were discovered that were previously unknown, and that colonization of the earth began. That was the beginning of material culture. And then, little by little, the time drew near when people were almost suffocated by material culture. The time came when everything that was available in the way of spiritual powers was applied to understanding and grasping material life. More and more, as we have seen, was forgotten that which was available in insights and visions into the spiritual world from ancient knowledge. |

But it is not right to have only bad words for the materialistic age. Rather, another thing is right; it is right to consider that this human soul thought materialistically in its waking part, was materialistically minded, that it founded science and culture materialistically, but that this human soul is a whole. One could say: the one part of the human soul founded materialistic culture. In the past this part was inactive, people knew nothing of external science, knew nothing of the outward material life; then the spiritual part was more awake. (It was drawn.) In the last four hundred years it was just that part that was awake and founded materialistic culture; but the other part slept. And truly, the forces that we are now developing in humanity in order to work our way up to spirituality again were laid down in the time of materialistic culture in the parts of the soul that slept below. Humanity was truly in relation to spiritual knowledge in those times: Olaf Åsteson. It really was. It is just that humanity has not yet awakened! Spiritual science must awaken it.

The time must come when young and old alike will hear words spoken from that part of the human soul that has been asleep during the dark ages. This human soul has been asleep for a very long time, but the world spirits will approach this human soul and call out to it: Awake now, O Olaf Åsteson! — We must prepare ourselves in the right way so that we are not called: Awake now, O Olaf Åsteson! — and do not have ears to hear. We are pursuing spiritual science so that we have ears when the call for spiritual awakening in human development will sound.

It is good for human beings to remember from time to time that they are microcosms and that many an experience can be had when they are absorbed in the macrocosm. And we have seen that the time and season are favorable for us now. Let us try to let this New Year's Night be the symbol for the New Year's Night necessary for the development of humanity on earth, in which the new epoch of time will approach, in which the light, the soul light, the seeing, the recognition of that which lives in the spiritual and from which the human soul can be imbued and flooded with the spiritual will grow and grow more and more. If we bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's night into connection with the macrocosm of human experience across the earth, then we will be able to experience what we are meant to experience in terms of feelings, because we can sense something of the dawn of the new great world day in the fifth post-Atlantic period, the dawn of which we are standing at, whose midnight we want to experience worthily.

Our end-of-year festival will begin with Frau Dr. Steiner giving us a recitation of the beautiful Norwegian legend of Olaf Åsteson, of whom we are told that at the approach to Christmas he fell into a kind of sleep which lasted for thirteen days; the thirteen holy days that we have explored in various ways. In the course of this sleep he had significant experiences, that he was able to narrate when he awoke.

During these past days we have examined various things that make us aware that the spiritual-scientific outlook gives us a new approach to an understanding of gems of wisdom which, in past times, people realised belonged to spiritual worlds. Time and again we shall encounter this prehistoric knowledge of the spiritual worlds in one instance or another, and we shall continually be reminded that what was known in former ages, was due to the fact that the human being was so organised at that time that he had the kind of relationship with the whole of the cosmos and its happenings that we would now call being immersed with his human microcosm in the laws or the activities of the macrocosm, and that in this process of immersion in the macrocosm he was able to experience things that deeply concern the life of his soul, but which are hidden from him as long as he lives as microcosm on the physical plane and is equipped only with a knowledge given him by his senses and an intellect bound to the senses.

We know that only a materialistic outlook can believe that man is the only being in the world order equipped with thinking, feeling and willing, whereas a spiritual point of view must acknowledge that just as there are beings below the human level, there are also beings above the human stage of thinking, feeling and willing. The human being can live his way into these beings when, as microcosm, he immerses himself in the macrocosm. However, in this case we should have to speak of the macrocosm not only as a macrocosm of space, but as if the course of time were of significance in cosmic life. Just as in order to kindle the light of the spirit within him when he wants to descend into the depths of his own soul, man has to shut himself off from all the impressions his environment can make on his senses and has, as it were, to create darkness round him by closing off his sense perception, likewise the spirit we can call the spirit of the earth has to be shut off from the impressions of the rest of the cosmos. The outer cosmos has to have least effect on the earth spirit if the earth spirit is to be able to concentrate its forces within. For then the secrets will be discovered that man has to discover in conjunction with the earth spirit, because the earth has been separated as earth from the cosmos.

The time when the outer macrocosm exercises the greatest effect on the earth is the time of the summer solstice, midsummer. And many accounts of olden times connected with festive presentations and rituals remind us that festivals like these take place at the height of summer; that in the midst of summer, the soul, in letting go the ego and merging with the life of the macrocosm, surrenders in a state of intoxication to the impressions from the macrocosm.

On the other hand, the legendary or other kind of presentations of that which could be experienced in olden times remind us that when impressions from the macrocosm have least effect on the earth, the earth spirit, concentrated within itself, experiences within the eternal All, the secrets of the earth's life of soul, and that if man enters into this experience at the point of time when the macrocosm sends least light and warmth to the earth, he learns the most holy secrets. This is why the days around Christmas were always kept so sacred, because whilst man's organism was still capable of sharing in the experience of the earth, man could meet the spirit of the earth during the point of time when it was most concentrated.

Olaf Åsteson, Olaf the son of earth, experiences various secrets of the cosmic All whilst he is transported into the macrocosm during the thirteen shortest days. And the nordic legend which has recently been extricated from old accounts, tells of these experiences Olaf Åsteson had between Christmas and New Year up till the 6th January. We often have reason to remember this former manner in which the microcosm took part in the macrocosm, and we can then take these things further. First of all, however, let us hear the legend of Olaf Åsteson, the earth son, who during the time in which we are now, experienced the secrets of cosmic existence in his meeting with the earth spirit. Let us listen to these experiences.

The Dream Song

I

Come listen to my song!
The song of a nimble youth.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

II

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could he awaken
Until the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

He laid him down on Christmas Eve
And he slept long indeed!
He could not awaken
Until the bird was on the wing
Upon the thirteenth day.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Olaf could not awaken
Until the sun shone o'er the peaks
Upon the thirteenth day.
Then saddled he his nimble horse
And rode in haste to the church.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

The priest was at the altar
Reading holy mass
When Olaf alighted at the gate
To tell the many dreams
That had passed through his soul
When he did sleep so long.

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

Then old and young they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams

Of Olaf Åsteson will I sing,
Who lay and slept so long.

III

‘I laid me down on Christmas Eve
And soon lay deeply sleeping.
Nor could I awaken
Before the people went to church
Upon the thirteenth day.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Thrown down to the ocean's depths,
And whosoever will follow after
Good cheer he will not find.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I was borne up into the clouds
Then hurled into murky swamps,
And I saw the horrors of hell
And also heaven's light.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to go through deep, dark clefts
Where heaven's rivers rushed and roared.
The power to see them was not mine
Yet I could hear their roaring.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

My coal-black horse he did not neigh,
Nor did my good hounds bark,
The bird of morning did not sing
For a wonder lay on all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had to travel in spiritland
Through stretch on stretch of thorny heath,
My scarlet mantle was torn to shreds
The nails of my feet likewise.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

Then I came to the Gjallar Bridge
Suspended in the windblown heights,
Studded it is with rich red gold
And the nails thereon have sharp points.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The spirit snake he struck at me
The spirit hound bit me,
And lo! the bull did bar the way.
These are the three beasts of the bridge,
Most wicked are they all.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

The hound he is a snappish beast
The serpent waits to strike,
The bull is ready to attack!
And no one may pass o'er the bridge
Who will not honour truth!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
On dizzy heights and narrow.
I who had waded in the swamps . . . .
Behind me now they lie!

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

I had waded in the swamps
There seemed no foothold I could find
As I passed o'er the Gjallar Bridge
Earth did I feel within my mouth
As the dead who lie in their graves.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

To the waters then I came,
’Twas where the icy masses gleamed
Like unto flames of blue. . . .
And God did guide me in my steps
That I did not come close.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

So I went on the wintry way
And saw on my right hand:
Like unto paradise it was,
Light shining far and wide.

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

God's Holy Mother then I saw
Amidst most wondrous glory!
‘Now take thy way to Brooksvalin,
the place where souls are judged!’

The moon shone bright
And all the paths led far away.

IV

In other worlds I tarried then
Through many nights and long;
And God alone can know
The suffering I saw there—

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

I could see a young man
Who in life had killed a child.
Now he must carry him always
And stand in mud to his knee

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Also I saw an old man
Wearing a cloak of lead;
Thus was he punished,
The miser on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And men appeared before me
Wearing apparel of fire;
So does their dishonesty
Weigh on their poor souls

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Children I also saw,
Glowing coals beneath their feet,
In life they did their parents ill,
Now must their spirits feel it

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

And to a house I had to go
Where witches toiled in blood;
This was the blood of those
Who had enraged them whilst on earth,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Now there came riding from the North
Wild hordes of evil spooks,
Led by the Prince of Hell,

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

This horde riding from the North
Was the wickedest ever seen;
And the Prince of Hell rode out in front,
And he rode on his coal-black steed

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Yet now came a host from the South
Bringing holy calm,
And at their head rode Saint Michael
At the side of Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

The souls weighed down by sin
Had to tremble in anguish and fear!
Their tears ran down in streams
To hear of their wicked deeds

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

Michael stood in majesty
And weighed the souls of men
Upon his heavenly scales,
And near him, judging, stood
The Lord of Judgment, Jesu Christ

In Brooksvalin, where souls
World judgment undergo.

V

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gives shoes unto the poor;
He does not need, with naked feet,
To walk on the heath of thorn.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gave bread!
For nothing of harm can come to him
From the hounds of spiritland.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Gave corn unto the poor!
The horns of the bull are no threat to him
When he crosses the Gjallar Bridge.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

Blessed is he who in earthly life
Unto the poor gives clothes!
He need not fear the freezing wastes
Of ice in Brooksvalin.

Thus speaks the Balance,
And World truth
Sounds forth in spirit heights.

VI

And young and old they all gave heed,
To Olaf's words they harkened
That told them of his dreams.
You have slept long indeed. . . .
Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!

My dear friends, we have just heard how Olaf Åsteson fell into a sleep that was to reveal to him the secrets of worlds that are hidden from the world of the senses and ordinary life on the physical plane. This legend brings us tidings of ancient knowledge and insight into the spiritual worlds, which we shall regain once more through what We call the spiritual-scientific world outlook.

You have often heard the words that are included in all proclamations concerning the human soul's entry into the spiritual world, namely, that man beholds the spiritual world only when he experiences the gates of death and then enters into the elements. This means that the elements of earth existence do not surround him in the way they do in ordinary life on the physical plane, in the form of earth, water, air and fire, but that he is lifted above this sensory exterior of the elements and enters into what these elements really are when you know their true nature, where beings exist that have a relationship with man's soul experience.

We could feel that Olaf Asteson experienced something of this descent into the elements when we come to the part where Olaf reaches the Gjallar Bridge and crosses over it on to the paths of the spiritual world that all led far away. What a vivid description we are given of his experience as he descends into the element of earth. It is described in such detail that he tells us he himself feels earth in his mouth like the dead who lie in their graves. And then there is a clear indication of his going through the element of water, and of all that can be experienced in the watery element when one also experiences its moral quality. Then he also indicates how man meets with the elements of fire and of air.

All this is described in a wonderfully graphic way and centred in the experience of the human soul meeting the secrets of the spiritual world. The legend was found at a later date; it was collected at the place where it lived orally among the people. Parts of the legend in their present form are no longer the same as in the original. No doubt the graphic description of the experiences in the earth realm originally came first and then the experiences in the realm of water. And the experiences in the realms of air and of fire were no doubt far more differentiated than they are in the feeble after-echo that we have today, and which was found centuries later.

The conclusion was undoubtedly also much more impressive and less sentimental, for in its present form it does not in the least remind us of the sublime language of olden times, nor of the capacity to raise one on to a superhuman plane that used to exist in folk legends. The present conclusion merely moves on on a human level, and the reason why it is moving is purely because of its connection with such deep secrets of the macrocosm and of human experience.

If we rightly understand the season of the year in which we now are, we have a strong urge to remember the fact that humanity used to possess a knowledge—even if it was less defined and clear-cut—that has been lost and which has to be regained. And the question can arise in us, that as we surely recognise today that that particular kind of knowledge has to return if mankind is to be made whole, then should we not consider it one of our most urgent tasks to do everything we can to bring knowledge like that into the culture of the present?

Many things will have to happen in order for this change to come about in the right way, in what I would like to call the feeling content of man's world conception. One thing will be particularly necessary—I say one, for it is one among many, but you can only take one at a time—it will be essential for human souls to acquire on the basis of our spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream, reverence and devotion for what was known in ancient times in the old manner about the deep secrets of existence. People must arrive at the feeling that during the materialistic age they have neglected the development of this reverence and devotion.

We must get the feeling of how dried-out and empty this materialistic age is, and how proud of our intellectual knowledge mankind was in the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, in face of the revelations of ancient religion and knowledge handed down from former times, which, when approached with the necessary reverence, truly give us the feeling that they contain the most profound wisdom. Fundamentally speaking we have no reverence for the Bible nowadays, either! Disregarding the kind of atrocious modern research that tears the whole Bible to shreds, we have merely to look at the dry and empty way we approach the Bible today armed, as it were, only with the knowledge of the senses and ordinary intellectual powers, and at the way we can no longer muster a feeling for the tremendous greatness of human perception that comes to meet us in some of its passages. I would like to refer to a passage from the second Book of Moses, chapter 33, verse 18:

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face: for there shall no man see me, and live.’

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a clift of the rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

If you gather together various things we have taken up in our hearts and souls during the years we have been working with spiritual science and then approach this passage, you can have the feeling that infinite wisdom is speaking to us there and how, in the materialistic age, human ears are so deaf that they hear nothing of the infinitely deep wisdom that comes to us from this passage. I would like to take this opportunity to refer you to a booklet that has been published under the title Worte Mosis by Bruns Publishing Co. in Minden, Westphalia, because certain things out of the five Books of Moses have been translated better in this booklet than in other editions. Dr. Hugo Bergmann, the publisher of Worte Mosis, has taken a lot of trouble over the interpretation.

The fact that man, if he wants to penetrate to the spiritual world, has to acquire a totally different relation to the world than that which he has to the sense world, has often been stressed. Man has the sense world all about him. He looks at the sense world and sees it in its colours and forms and hears its sounds. The sense world is there, and we are in the midst of it, feeling its influence, perceiving it and thinking about it. That is how we relate to the sense world. We are passive and the sense world, as it were, works its way into our souls. We think about the sense world and make mental images of it.

Our relationship is quite different when we penetrate into the spiritual world. One of the difficulties consists in getting the right idea of what a person experiences when he enters the spiritual world. I have attempted to characterise some of these difficulties in my booklet Die Schwelle der geistigen Welt (‘The Threshold of the Spiritual World’). We make mental images of the sense world and we think about it. If we go through all a person has to go through if he wants to follow the path of initiation, something occurs that can be described like this: We ourselves relate to the beings of the higher hierarchies in the same way as the things around us relate to us; they make a mental image of us, they think us. We think the objects around us, the minerals, plants and animals; they become our thoughts, whereas we are the conceptions, thoughts and perceptions of the spirits of the higher hierarchies. We become the thoughts of the Angeloi, Archangeloi, Archai and so on. They take us in, in the same way as we take in the plants, animals and human beings. And we must feel their sheltering protection when we say, ‘The beings of the higher hierarchies think us, they make mental images of us. These beings of the higher hierarchies take hold of us with their souls’. In fact we can actually picture that when Olaf Asteson fell asleep he became a mental image of the spirits of the higher hierarchies, and in the course of his sleep these beings of the higher hierarchies experienced what the beings of the earth spirit were experiencing (these are, of course, a plurality for us). And when Olaf Asteson sinks back into the physical world he remembers what the spirits of the higher hierarchies experienced in him.

Let us imagine for a moment that we are setting out on the path of initiation. How can we relate to the spiritual world, which is a host of spiritual beings of the higher hierarchies, into which we wish to enter? How can we relate to them? We can appeal to them and say ‘How can we enter into you, how do you reveal yourselves to us?’ And then, when we have acquired an understanding of the different kind of relationship the human soul has to the higher worlds, there will sound forth to us, as it were from the spiritual worlds, ‘You cannot perceive the spiritual world the same way as you perceive the sense world, the way the sense world appears before you and impinges on your senses. We must think you, and you must feel yourself in us. You must feel the kind of experience in you which a thought you think in the sense world would have if it could experience itself within you. You must surrender yourself to the spiritual world, then the beings of the higher hierarchies who can reveal themselves to you will enter into you. This will stream into your soul and live within it, bringing grace, in the same way as you live in your thoughts when you think about the sense world. If the spiritual world wishes to favour you and have compassion on you, it will fill you with its love!’

But you must not imagine that you can approach spiritual beings in the same way as you approach the sense world. Just as Moses had to creep into the cave, you must go into the cave of the spiritual world. You have to put yourself there. Like a thought lives in you, you must be taken up into the life of the spiritual beings. You yourself must live as a universal thought in the macrocosm. To have experiences there of your own accord is not possible during earthly life between birth and death, but only after you have passed through death. No one can experience the spiritual world in this way before he has died, yet the spiritual world can come close to you, bless you and fill you with its love. And if after, or whilst you are within the spiritual world, you develop your earthly consciousness, the spiritual world will shine into this consciousness.

Just as when an object is outside us we confront it, and when it enters our consciousness it is inside us, the soul of man is within the cave of the spiritual world. The spiritual world passes through him. Here, man confronts things. When man enters the spiritual world the beings of the higher hierarchies are behind him. There, he cannot see their face, just as a thought cannot see our face when it is within us. Our face is in front and the thoughts are behind, so they cannot see our face. The whole secret of initiation is concealed in the words Jehovah speaks to Moses.

And Moses said to God, ‘I beseech thee, shew me thy glory.’

And the Lord said, ‘I will make all my goodness pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee; and will be gracious to whom I will be gracious, and will shew mercy on whom I will shew mercy.’

But then the Lord said, ‘Thou canst not see my face; for there shall no man see me, and live.’—Initiation does indeed bring you to the Gate of Death.

And the Lord said, ‘Behold, there is a place by me, and thou shalt stand upon a rock:

And it shall come to pass, while my glory passeth by, that I shall put thee in a cleft of rock, and will cover thee with my hand while I pass by:

And I will take away mine hand, and thou shalt see my back parts: but my face shall not be seen.’

It is the opposite of the way we perceive the sense world. You must muster a lot of the spiritual-scientific effort you have developed over the years, in order to encounter a revelation like this with the right kind of reverence and devotion. Then human souls will gradually acquire more and more of this feeling of reverence towards these revelations; and this reverence, this devotion, is among the many things we need in order that the change we have been speaking of can come about in mankind's spiritual culture.

The time when the macrocosm sends down least influence to the earth, the days from Christmas over New Year until roughly the 6th of January, can be a suitable time not only for remembering the facts of spiritual knowledge, but also for remembering the feelings we have to develop as we take up spiritual science. We are really and truly taken up again into the life of the spirit of the earth, together with whom we form a whole, and in which ancient clairvoyant knowledge lived, as this legend of Olaf Åsteson shows us. Humanity in the materialistic age has in many ways lost this reverence and devotion for spiritual life. It is most essential to see to it that this reverence and devotion come back, for without them we shall not develop the mood to approach spiritual science in the right way. Unfortunately the mood with which spiritual science is spproached to start with is still the same mood we have for ordinary science. A thorough change will have to come about in this respect.

Having lost the understanding for the spiritual world, mankind has also lost the proper relation to the being of man, to humanity. The materialistic world conception produces chaotic feelings about universal existence. These chaotic feelings about the world and humanity were bound to come in the age of materialism. Think of a time—and this is our time, the first centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch—when people no longer had any real awareness that the being of man is threefold: a bodily nature, soul and spirit. For it really is like that. The threefold nature of man, which, to us, is one of the basic elements of spiritual science, was something that people did not have the slightest notion of from the first four centuries of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch right into our time. Man was just man, and any talk of membering his being in the way we do into body, soul and spirit was considered complete nonsense.

You might imagine that these things are valuable only in the sphere of knowledge, but that is not so. They are important not only as knowledge, but for the whole manner in which man faces life. In the fourth century of modern times, or, as we say in our language, during the fifth post-Atlantean cultural period, three great words came to the fore in which people saw, or at least endeavoured to see, the essence of human striving on earth. Important though these words are, what made them significant was the fact that they appeared at a time when mankind knew nothing of the threefold nature of man. Everyone heard of liberty, equality and fraternity.

It was a profound necessity that these words were heard at a certain time in modern civilisation. People will only really understand these words when the threefold membering of the human being is understood, because until then they will not realise the significance these words can have with regard to man's real being. Whilst these words are being approached with the sort of chaotic feelings that are engendered by the thought that man is man, and the threefold membering of man is nonsense, human beings will find no guidance in these three words. For the three words, as they stand, cannot be directly applied to one and the same level of human experience. They cannot be. Simple considerations which do not perhaps occur to you because they seem too simple for such weighty matters, can go to show that if they are taken on the same level, what these three words mean can come into serious conflict.

Let us start by looking at the realm where we find fraternity in its most natural form. Take human blood relationship, the family, where there is no need to instil brotherly love because it is inborn, and just think how it warms the heart to see real genuine brotherhood among a family, to see everyone united in a brotherly way. And yet—without losing any of the wonderful feeling we can have about this brotherly love—let us have a look at what can happen to a family fraternity just because of this brotherliness. Brotherliness is justified within a family, yet a member of a family can be made unhappy by it, and can long to get away from it because he feels he cannot develop his own soul within the family fraternity and must leave it in order to develop in freedom. So we see that freedom, the unfolding in freedom of the life of the soul, can come into conflict with even the best-meant brotherliness.

Obviously a superficial person could maintain that it is not proper brotherliness if it does not agree with a person's freedom. But people can say anything they like. No doubt they can say that everything agrees with everything else. I recently saw a thesis in which one of the articles that had to be proved was that a triangle is a quadrangle. You can of course plead for a thing like that, you can even prove exactly that a triangle is a quadrangle! And you can also fully prove that fraternity and freedom are compatible. But that is not the point. The point is that for the sake of freedom many a realm of brotherliness has to be—and in fact is—forsaken. We could give further examples of this.

If we wanted to count up the discrepancies between fraternity and equality it would take us a long time. Obviously we can say in abstracto that everyone can be equal, and can show that fraternity and equality are compatible. But if we take life seriously it is not a question of abstractions but of looking at reality. The moment we realise that the human being has a bodily nature that lives on the physical plane, a soul nature that actually lives in the soul world, and a spiritual nature that lives in the spiritual world, we have the right perspective for the connection between these profound words. Brotherliness is the most important ideal for the physical world, freedom is for the soul world, and insofar as man enters into the realm of the soul we ought to speak of the freedom of the soul, that is, of the kind of social conditions that fully guarantee the soul its freedom. If we bear in mind that in order to develop the spirit and enter spirit land we, that is, each one of us, has to strive for spirit knowledge from our own point of view, we shall soon see where we would get with our spiritual conceptions if each one of us only went his own way and we all filled ourselves with a different content.

As human beings we can only find one another in life if we seek the spirit, each one for himself, yet can arrive at the same spiritual content. We can speak of the equality of spiritual life. We can speak of fraternity on the physical plane and with regard to everything that has to do with the laws of the physical plane and which affects the human soul from the physical plane; liberty with regard to all that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the soul world; equality with regard to everything that comes to expression in the soul in the way of laws of the spirit land.

So you see, a Cosmic New Year must come about, where there will be a sun that will increase in power to give warmth and to radiate light: a sun that must bring light-filled warmth to many a thing that lived on during the age of darkness, yet was not understood. It is characteristic of our time that many a thing is striven for and expressed in words, yet is not understood.

This, too, can bring us to feel reverence and devotion for the spiritual world. For if we ponder on the fact that many people strove for fraternity, liberty and equality in the fourth century of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch and uttered these words without understanding them properly, it is possible for us to see an answer to the question, ‘Where did these words come from?’ The divine-spiritual universal order implanted them into the human soul at a time when we did not understand them, in order that key words of this kind might lead us on to true universal understanding. We can notice the wise guidance in world evolution even in things like this. We can observe this guidance everywhere, whether in past ages or in more recent times, observing that often we do not notice until afterwards that something we did previously was actually wiser than the wisdom we had at our command at the time. I drew attention to this at the very beginning of my book, The Spiritual Guidance of Man.

However, if you look, for instance, at the fact that in world evolution, in the evolution of man, a part is played by directional words that can only gradually be understood, you might be reminded of an image we can use when we want to characterise this period of the fifth post-Atlantean cultural epoch that is drawing to a close. In many respects it can really be compared with the season of Advent where the periods of daylight grow shorter and shorter. And now in our time, when we can begin to have knowledge of revelations of the spiritual worlds again, evolution is entering the phase that we can picture as the days growing longer and longer, and we can speak of this season really being comparable to the thirteen days and to the time of increasing daylight.

But it goes deeper than this. It would be absolutely wrong if we were only to find bad things to say of the materialistic age of the past four centuries. Modern times were ushered in by the great discoveries and inventions that are called ‘great’ in the materialistic age, sailing round the world, for instance, discovering lands that were not previously known and starting to colonise the earth. That was the beginning of materialistic civilisation. And then the time gradually came when people were almost stifled by materialistic civilisation. The time arrived when all our spiritual forces were applied to understanding and grasping material life. Insights, understanding and visions of the spiritual world existing in ancient knowledge were forgotten more and more, as we have seen.

Yet it is wrong to have nothing but bad things to say about this age. It would be far better to put it this way: ‘The human soul has been thinking materialistically and founding a materialistic science and culture in the part of it that is awake, but this human soul is a totality.’ If I wanted to put it schematically I could say that one part of the human soul founded materialistic civilisation. This part was inactive before that, and people knew nothing about external science and outer material life; at that time the spiritual part was more awake. (He did a drawing.) During the past four centuries the part of the soul was awake that founded materialistic civilisation, and the other part was asleep. And, in truth, during the age of materialistic culture, the seeds were being sown in the sleeping parts of the soul for the forces we can now develop in humanity to bring us to spirituality again. During these centuries mankind was really an Olaf Asteson as far as spiritual knowledge was concerned. That really was so. And humanity has not yet woken up! Spiritual science must awaken it. A time must come when both old and young must hear the words that are being spoken by the part of the human soul that was asleep in the age of darkness.

The human soul has slept long indeed, but world spirits will approach and call to it, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Asteson!’—Only we have to prepare ourselves in the right way, so that it does not happen that we are faced with the call, ‘Awaken now, O Olaf Åsteson!’ and have not the ears to hear it. That is why we are engaged in spiritual science, so that we shall have the ears to hear, when the call to be spiritually awake sounds in human evolution.

It is a good thing if man remembers sometimes that he is a microcosm and that he can be receptive to certain experiences if he opens himself to the macrocosm. As we have seen, the present season is a good one. Let us try to make this New Year's Eve a symbol for the New Year's Eve that has to come to mankind in earth evolution, a New Year's Eve that will herald a new era bringing ever more light, soul light, vision, knowledge of what lives in the spirit and which can stream and flow into the human soul from out of the spirit. If we can bring the microcosm of our experience on this New Year's Eve into connection with the macrocosm of human experience over the whole earth, we shall then have the kind of feelings we ought to experience, sensing as we do the dawning of the great new Cosmic Day of the fifth post-Atlantean epoch, at whose beginning we stand, and the midnight of which we want to understand worthily.

The Dream Song: Draumkvaedet, see collection Norske Folkeviser, edited by Thorwald Lammers, Kristiania 1910, by Aschehoug & Co.

Rudolf Steiner spoke about the Norwegian Dream Song of Olaf Asteson on 1st January 1912, 7th January 1913 and 31st December 1914, and his talks were always accompanied by Marie Steiner-von Sivers reciting the Dream Song. These three lectures or addresses were put together as a volume and published in 1958 as an enlarged new edition of the lecture ‘Cosmic New Year’. Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm, the Norwegian poetess (1878–1964), drew Rudolf Steiner's attention to the old legend, and it is largely due to her initiative that this extraordinary folk epic has acquired such an important place in the anthroposophical movement. Through her help we are in a position to include in this edition the notes she made of her conversation with Rudolf Steiner. We have also included in the references, several points from a lecture Ingeborg Möller-Lindholm gave on the Dream Song of Olaf Asteson, which she kindly put at our disposal in translation, and which we have attributed accordingly.

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Notes on the Dream Song by IngeborgMöller-Lindholm of Lillehammer

In June 1910 Dr Steiner held a cycle of lectures in Oslo entitled The Mission of the Individual Folk Souls in Relation to Teutonic Mythology. As I lived in Oslo and had a large room at my disposal, I invited to tea about forty anthroposophical friends who had come to Oslo for this occasion. Dr Steiner and Frau Marie Steiner had also agreed to come. I asked Dr Steiner the previous day whether he could tell us something about the unusual Norwegian folk epic, ‘The Dream Song of Olaf Åsteson’. Rudolf Steiner smiled amiably and said he would first have to have read or heard it. I saw the point of this. Then he himself made the suggestion that he should arrive the next day an hour before the other guests, so that I could read the song to him and make a rough translation. And that is what happened.

While I read it to him, Dr Steiner sat with his eyes closed and listened intently. He was obviously deeply affected by the unusual content of the song. After tea the Dream Song was read out in Norwegian by a member of the Society, whereupon Dr Steiner gave a short but moving lecture on the song. In particular he dwelt on the fact that these events took place during the time of the twelve holy nights when extraterrestrial influences are at their strongest. He also gave special mention to the name of Olaf Asteson. Olaf or Olcifr means the ‘one left behind’ after his predecessors have gone. He is the one who passes on the blood of the father of the generations. Ast means love; so he is ‘the Son of Love’.

Dr Steiner asked me to translate the song into German. He himself did not know Norwegian, let alone the old dialect in which the Dream Song had been written down, and which was difficult even for modern Norwegians. To begin with I made the excuse that I did not have a sufficient command of the German language to convey the wonderful musical rhythm. Dr Steiner said that did not matter, I should just translate the song literally word for word, so that he could get an exact picture of the content. I did this in the course of the autumn and sent him the translation, which was very prosaic and in many respects extremely inadequate. Later on Rudolf Steiner put the song into its own characteristic rhythms and gave several lectures on it. It was also used for eurythmic presentation, especially at Christmas time.

Dr Steiner told me in 1913 that I should not think that Olaf the Saint was the original Olaf Åsteson. (St. Olaf, a Norwegian king, died in 1035 at the battle of Stiklestad, championing the cause of Christendom.) There had been several people with the name of ‘Olaf Åsteson’, said Dr Steiner. It was a kind of mystery title.

Dr Steiner was in Norway again after the First World War, in 1921 and 1923. On these occasions he stayed with engineer Ingero. Mrs Ragnhild Ingero, who died a few years ago, told me that Dr Steiner had talked to her about the Dream Song. He had meanwhile gone into it further and discovered new things. One of these was that the song was much older than people believed. It originated about 400 AD. At that time there was a great Christian initiate in this country. He founded a mystery school in Southern Norway; the place was not mentioned. His mystery name was Olaf Asteson, and the song describes his initiation. Originally, so Dr Steiner says, the song was much longer and had twelve sections, one for each sign of the zodiac. The song describes Olaf Asteson's journey through the whole zodiac and what he saw and experienced there. Today we only have fragments of the original song. The aforesaid mystery school continued into the early Middle Ages. The leader was always called Olaf Åsteson

Dr Steiner said that in course of time he would publish these facts and other important things connected with the song. However he did not want to do this until he had found certain external proofs of his findings. He thought he would be able to find these . But the burning of the Goetheanum, excessive work and finally illness and death prevented this intention being realised. Now these indications are all we have.

I have given much thought to these findings of Dr Steiner's and have come to the conclusion that this mystery school was possibly in Skiringssal. This place is or rather was in Vestfold, a region in south-western Norway. In old legends it has always been described as a holy place. Vikings who died on foreign soil wished to be buried in Skiringssal. There was also a kaupang there (market). Archaeologists are excavating things at present which they assume to be remains of this market. Up to now, though, nobody has been able to prove conclusively where Skiringssal is. At the time of the mystery school it lay on the coast; however loam deposits have now ‘pushed’ the place further inland. Skiringssal means ‘The Hall of Purification’. Skim means baptism or purification (old Norwegian)

Where did the first Olaf Asteson come from? It has been historically proved that Irish-Scottish monks were in this country long before Christianity was officially introduced. According to legend, Joseph of Arimathea came to the British Isles as early as the first century AD, and began his missionary work there. There have been mystery centres in Ireland since very early times. The tribes on the neighbouring islands were heathen. The Irish-Scottish Church, also called the Culdee Church, arose as a result of the confluence of the work of the Christian missionaries and ancient Druid wisdom. It flourished in many places as early as 300 to 400 AD. There were churches, schools and monasteries, despite the fact that these were always under attack from powerful heathen tribes of the neighbourhood. Many priests and monks died a martyr's death. This Culdee Church was based in particular on the Gospel of St. John and the preaching of the apostle John. It was like the first communities of Christians and contrasted strongly with the Petrine or Roman Catholic Church. But the latter was victorious. The Culdee Church was destroyed and dissolved in the year 664 AD. It sent a lot of missionaries to various European countries both before and after being externally destroyed. This Church was definitely of an esoteric nature. Many things suggest that the first Olaf Asteson was a representative of this spiritual stream.

‘Among these Norwegian people, who still possess many things in their popular tongue that approach very closely the threshold of occult secrets, possibilities existed for souls to remain connected longer with everything living and working behind outer material phenomena,’ said Rudolf Steiner in his lecture on Olaf Asteson in Berlin on 7th January 1913, in Der Zusammenhang des Menschen mit der elementarischen Welt (Man's Connection with the Elemental World), GA 158, 1970.

Everything in the world, each event and every act of human conduct has two sides, which are, as it were, polar opposites.

Yesterday it was my task to point out to you that through a feeling understanding of our spiritual-scientific world outlook, the human soul should acquire reverence and devotion for the spiritual worlds. The opposite pole to this devotional attitude is energetic work on our inner life, an energetic taking-in-hand of the evolutionary factors of our own soul, making a point of always using our experiences for the purpose of learning something from them and making progress with regard to our inner forces, so that—whatever meets us in life and whatever takes place around us, whether it is easy to understand or not—we shall always avoid the danger of losing ourselves. May we always have the chance of keeping hold of ourselves and of finding within ourselves the strength to develop an understanding for what can encounter us in an often incomprehensible way, and may the kind of devotion for things we were talking about yesterday make such an impact on the development of our souls, that we acquire a proper understanding of universal existence; this, my dear friends, is the New Year greeting I wanted to give you today at the start of the year. We have just been remembering devotion, and I would like to follow that with a reminder of the energetic work on our inner life. The full moon shining down on us out of the cosmos on New Year's Eve is a symbol for the sequence in which we are remembering these things. If it had been the other way round, and the year had started with the new moon, I should have done the right thing in bringing these reminders to you in the opposite order. I should then have closed the year with a reminder of the power of inner development and should have had to leave the thoughts on reverence until today.

We must attach more and more importance to really noticing a symbol like this that shines on us out of the macrocosm. And in our quiet moments this year let this indication work on us in such a way that it can have a special significance, to think first about the transformation the power of reverence can bring about in us, then to follow this with thinking about the transformation that the power of inner preservation, the maintaining of inner soul energy, should bring about in us.

The sequence of these thoughts has been set for the coming year by the writing of the stars, and the world will gradually come to realise again that reading the star script really has a meaning for man. So let us try even in details like this to pay heed to the great law of human existence and to strive for harmony between the macrocosm and the microcosm. The macrocosm is speaking to us over these days in the most obvious way and we shall find how to keep our microcosm in harmony with the macrocosm, if we conduct ourselves in line with it, in the course of this year that has begun amidst such painful events.

If you try and notice what has been the prevailing mood of our talks in the last few days you will discover that, regarding the facts that spiritual science has made significant for us, we live in a time of change, in a time of hope, as it were, for we should now be getting an inkling of the direction the further course of human cultural development should take; of the change that has to come about from a purely materialistic world conception to a spiritual one. What is meant here, however, cannot really fully take place unless it enters every sphere of life and particularly takes hold of the spiritual cultural areas to a marked degree.

We have already had various indications showing that an understanding of the spiritual-scientific outlook, which has taken hold of our feelings and is not merely rational, is bound to bring a change into both artistic creativity and artistic appreciation, because the forces we gain from this can give us an artistic conception of the world. And in our Goetheanum building we have just made the attempt to show at least a small part of what can take an artistic form, from out of spiritual-scientific impulses.

We can see a time coming when we shall be able to enter fully into the feelings that can arise from the spiritual-scientific world conception, a time when the way to artistic creation will in many respects be different from the past; it will be much more alive and the medium of artistic creation will be experienced much more intensely in the human soul; the soul will be capable of experiencing colour and sound far more inwardly, in a kind of moral-spiritual way, and in artists' creations we shall meet, as it were, traces of the artists' experiences in the cosmos.

In essentials, the attitude of artistic creation and artistic appreciation in this past epoch was a kind of external observation, an appeal to something that affects the artist from outside . The need to refer to nature and to a model for external observation has become greater and greater. Not that in the art of the future there is to be any one-sided rejection of nature and outer reality. Far from it, for there will be a much more intimate union with the external world; so strong a union that it will cover not merely the external impression of colour and sound and form, but that which one can experience behind the sound and colour and form; what is revealed in them.

Human beings will make important discoveries in the future in this respect. They will actually unite their moralspiritual nature with the results of sense perception. An infinite deepening of the human soul can be foreseen in this domain. Let us pick a particular example to start from. We will simply imagine that we are looking at a surface shining all over with the same shade of strong vermilion, and let us assume we succeed in forgetting everything else around us and concentrate entirely on experiencing this colour, so that we have the colour in front of us, not merely as something that works upon us but as something with which we ourselves are united, that we are within. You will then be able to feel as though you were in the world, and in this world the whole of you has become colour, the whole of your innermost soul, and wherever your soul goes in the world you will be a soul filled with red, living in, with and out of red. Yet you will not be able to experience this intensely in the soul unless the corresponding feeling is transformed into moral experience, real moral experience.

If we float through the world as though we were red, had identified ourselves with red, and our very soul and the whole world were entirely red, we shall not be able to help feeling that this whole red world is filling us with the substance of divine wrath, coming towards us from all sides in response to all the possibilities of evil and sin in us. In this infinite red space we shall be able to feel as though we were before the judgment of God, and our moral feeling will become the kind of moral experience our souls can have in infinite space. And when the reaction comes, when something emerges in our soul as we are having this experience in infinite red or, I could also say in the one and only red, I can only describe it by saying we learn to pray. If you can experience the raying and glowing of divine wrath, together with all the possibilities of evil in the human soul, and if you can experience in the red how one learns to pray, the experience of red is enormously deepened. We can also experience the form red takes on when it enters space.

We can then understand how we can experience a being that radiates goodness and is full of divine kindness and mercy, a being that we want to feel in the realm of space. Then we shall feel the need of expressing this divine mercy and goodness in a form which arises out of the colour itself. We shall feel the need to let space be pushed aside so that goodness and mercy may shine forth. Before space was there it was all concentrated at the centre, and now goodness and mercy enter space and, just as clouds are driven apart, space is rent asunder and recedes to make way for mercy, and we have the feeling that what is being scattered must be drawn in red. Here in the centre (a drawing was done) we shall have to indicate faintly a kind of magenta shining into the scattering red.

We shall then be present with our whole soul as the colour takes on form. And with our whole soul we shall feel an echo of how the beings who belong especially to our earth process felt, when they had ascended to the Elohim stage and learnt to fashion the world of forms out of colours. We shall learn to experience something of the creative activity of the Spirits of Form who are the Elohim, and we shall then understand how colour can create forms, as indicated in our first Mystery Play. We shall also understand something of how the surface nature of the colour becomes something that has to be overcome, as it were, because we accompany colour into the cosmos. If strong desire is also present, a feeling can arise like Strader has when he sees the portrait of Capesius, and says he would like to pierce the canvas.

You will see that an attempt has been made in these Mystery Plays really to show in artistic form what it is like for the soul, when it attempts to expand in the cosmic forces and to feel what the spirits of the cosmos are feeling. That was, in fact, the beginning of all art. But the materialistic age had to come, and ancient art, with its divine quality of differentiation, in which spirit was revealed in matter, had to change into secondary, materialistic ‘after’-art, which the art of the materialistic age is, in essence; the kind of art which cannot create but only imitate. The sign of all secondary art, all after-art, is that it needs objects to imitate, and that it does not produce the form primarily out of the material.

Let us take another example. Let us imagine we do the same thing with a more orange coloured surface that we did with the red surface. We shall experience something quite different this time. If we submerge ourselves in it and unite with it, then instead of feeling divine wrath bearing down upon us, we shall have the feeling that what comes to meet us here has much less of the serious side of wrath about it and does not only want to punish us, but wants to impart itself to us and arm us with inner strength.

When we enter the world and unite with the orange surface we move in such a way that with every step we take, we feel that by experiencing orange, by living in the forces of orange, we are becoming stronger and stronger, and that what comes to us out of orange does not come merely to punish us and break us with its judgment, but is a source of strength. This is how we go into the world in orange. We then feel the longing to understand the inner nature of things and to unite it with ourselves. By living in red we learn to pray, by living in orange we experience the desire for knowledge of the inner nature of things.

If we do the same thing with a yellow surface we feel as though we were transported back to the beginning of our cycle of time. We feel that we are then living in the forces out of which we were created when we entered upon our first earthly incarnation. You feel an affinity between what you are throughout the whole of earth existence, and what comes to meet you from the world into which you take the yellow with which you are united.

And if you identify yourself with green and accompany green into the world—which can be done very easily by gazing at a green meadow, shutting out everything else and concentrating completely on it, and then trying to immerse yourself in the green meadow as if the green were the surface of a coloured sea—you experience an inner increase in strength in what your are in that particular incarnation. You feel yourself becoming inwardly healthy, yet at the same time becoming inwardly more egoistic, you feel a stimulus of the egoistic forces within you.

If you did the same with a blue surface, you would go through the world with the desire to accompany the blue forever and to overcome your egoism, become macrocosmic, as it were, and develop devotion. And you would find it a blessing if you could remain like this for your meeting with divine mercy. You would feel blessed by divine mercy if you could go through the world like this.

Thus we learn to know the inner nature of colour and, as I said before, we can foresee a time when an artist's preparation will mean a moral experience in colour of this kind, when the experience preparatory to artistic creation will be much more inward and intuitive than it ever was in past ages. For these are only a few indications I am giving you, and they will be developed much further in the future. They will take hold of men's souls and enliven them with a tremendous sense for artistic creativity, whereas the materialistic culture that has entered our modern age has dried up the soul and made it passive. Souls must be stimulated again by a power from within; they must be taken hold of by the inner forces of things. As a specific example I have taken the colours that flood the world.

The world of sound will deepen and enliven the life of soul in a very similar way. During the period that is now drawing to a close, the essential thing was that a person experienced a tone as such, and the relationship of one tone to another. In the future people will be able to experience what is behind the tone. They will regard the tone as a kind of window through which they enter the spiritual world, and then it will not depend on vague feeling of how one tone is added to another, to form melodies for instance, but by going through the tone the soul will also experience a moral-spiritual quality behind the separate tones. The soul will enter the spiritual world as though through a window. The secrets of the individual tones will be discovered in this experience behind the tones.

We are still a long way away from this feeling of being able to go from the sense world to the spiritual world through the window of each tone. But this will come. We shall experience the tone as an opening made by the gods from the spiritual world yonder to this physical-material world, and we shall climb through the tone out of the physical-material world into the spiritual world. Through the tonic, for example, which we experience as absolute and not in reference to previous tones of the scale, we experience danger as we pass from the sense world into the spiritual world. We are threatened on entry with being taken captive; the tonic wants to suck us in most horribly through the window of the tone and make us completely disappear in the spiritual world. Assuming that we experience the tonic as absolute, we shall feel that we are still too weak in a spiritual sense in the physical world, and that we are sucked up by the spiritual world when we climb through this window. This is the moral experience to be had on entering the spiritual world through the tonic. I am over-simplifying it now, though; we shall have a very differentiated experience which contains an infinite variety of detail.

When we climb out of the physical world into the spiritual world through the window of the second, we shall have the impression of powers in the spiritual world yonder that, as it were, take pity on our weakness and say, ‘Well! so you were weak in the physical sense world! if you only climb into the spiritual world through the tonic I must dissolve you, suck you up and break you to pieces. But, if you enter through the second, I will offer you something from the spiritual world and remind you of something that is there.’ The peculiar thing is that when we climb from the physical to the spiritual world through the second, it is as though a number of tones rang out to receive us. We enter a totally silent world if we enter the spiritual world through the absolute tonic. If we enter through the second we come to a world where, if we listen, various quiet high-pitched tones ring out wanting to comfort us in our weakness. Yet we must go through the window in a way we most certainly could not do in a physical-material house, for the owner would give us a strange look if we were to walk in through the window and take the whole window with us. But in the spiritual world that is what you have to do, take the tones with you and, in union with them, live over there in the beyond, the other side of the thin partition that separates us from the physical-material world, and in which we have to imagine the tones as windows.

If you enter the spiritual world through the third, you will have the feeling of an even greater weakness. If you enter the spiritual world this way, you will feel that you were really very weak in the physical-material world, where its spiritual content is concerned. But with regard to the third—and remember that you have become sound; you yourself have become a third—you will feel that there are friends over there who, although they themselves are not thirds, approach you according to the kind of disposition you had in the physical-material world. If you enter through the second, it is like a gentle sounding of many tones, with whom you share life in general when you enter through them, whilst tones that are, as it were, friends with one another, come to meet you through the third. People who want to become composers will have to enter especially through the third, for that is where the tone sequences, the tone compositions are, that will stimulate their artistic creativity. You will not always be met by the same tone friends, for which ones you meet will depend on your mood and your feeling and your temperament—in fact how you are disposed to life at the time when you go through the third into spiritual life. This results in an infinite variety of possibilities.

If you penetrate through the fourth into the spiritual world, you will have a strange experience. Although no new tones appear from any direction, those that have come before, when you were experiencing the third, will live lightly in the soul as memories. And you will find that in continuing to live with these tone memories they perpetually take on a fresh colouring; at one time they become as bright and cheerful as can be, at other times they descend to the utmost sadness; now they are as bright as day, now they sink down to the silence of the grave. The modulating of the voice, the way the sound ascends and descends; in short, the whole mood of a tonal creation will have its origin along this path, from these sound memories.

The fifth will produce experiences that are more subjective, that work to stimulate and enrich the life of the soul. It is like a magic wand that conjures up the secrets of the sound world yonder, out of unfathomable depths.

Experiences of this kind will come to one when one no longer just looks at the things and phenomena in the world, or just listens to them, but experiences them from within. These are the kind of experiences mankind must have, particularly through colour and sound, but also through form; in fact, altogether through the realm of art, in order to get away from the purely external relationship to things and their functioning—which is characteristic of the materialistic age—and to penetrate into the inner secrets at the heart of things.

Then something tremendously significant will happen to man, and he will be filled with the awareness of his connection with the divine spiritual powers, which are sub-conscious when his awarenesss is confined to the material realm, and which guide and lead him through the world. And then, above all, he will have inner experiences, such as experiencing the forces which guide man from one incarnation to the next.

If we omit to heat a locomotive, it cannot pull a train. The forces which make things happen in the world have to be continually stimulated. The forces which drive mankind forward also need to be stimulated. And this does happen. However, man has to learn that he is connected with these forces.

I once had the following remarkable experience. There was a lawyer, a famous advocate, in the town where I lived for a while, an extraordinarily famous advocate, whom the people absolutely flocked to, because they believed he was bound to win the most difficult lawsuits. And this was often the case. His legal dialectic was extraordinary, and people who knew him had the deepest respect for it. Now he was once entrusted with the difficult case of a rich man. The rich man would have to suffer a severe penalty if the lawsuit resulted in his being sentenced. The advocate used his greatest dialectic and the most wonderful of his legal skills. He made a long speech, and the people who heard him were convinced that if the jury were not to acquit the accused, nothing further could be done about it. Everyone who heard the advocate's amazing skill were absolutely convinced the jury would now withdraw and acquit the accused.

But in the law court there was not only a skilful counsel but also a skilful judge, and although the hour was not yet so advanced that a judgment could no longer be given, the judge said, ‘Let us close the session for today and continue tomorrow.’ So the jury's session was to take place the following morning, and this gave them time to think the matter over again during the night. The following day came. This ‘overnight delay’ as he called it, had already proved very irksome for the advocate. The session began, the jury withdrew, and everyone awaited their return with tense expectation, most of all our advocate. The jury came back after only a quarter of an hour, and when the advocate heard them coming back from the conference room so soon, he fainted. Yes, he fainted. He did recover again, and a friend helped him up. The accused really had been sentenced, but the advocate only heard this after he had recovered from fainting.

Now what could be said about the course of events looked at from the point of view of external perception? One could say that the advocate was a very ambitious man, for he cared so much about winning this lawsuit that he lost consciousness before the verdict was pronounced. As soon as he saw that the jury had only conferred for a short time he was sure the accused had been sentenced, for if they had acquitted him they would, of course, have taken much longer.
But that was not how the matter stood; it only appeared to be so from an external point of view. There was a kind of second layer of events behind what I have just told you. This other layer, or story, is like this: Before this lawsuit took place this advocate had become addicted to what one can call the demon of gambling—I knew him well, of course. He used the sums of money entrusted to him, as deposit to gamble with. It was an absolute passion with him, and not long before this lawsuit began he had reached the point where he had gambled away large sums of money entrusted to his care. But he had been promised that if he should win this suit, he would be paid so much that he could more or less balance the difference.

So he did not faint only out of wounded ambition; he fainited when the jury returned with the verdict after only a quarter of an hour, because his existence had in fact been destroyed. For he had no hope any more of replacing the deposit money he had lost. Therefore his whole existence had depended on the outcome of the lawsuit. He fainted as symbolic indication that he was now completely ruined for this incarnation. He had to escape to America after that, and had to endure a not very enviable existence there for the rest of his life.

An example of this sort shows us that judgment can very often be wrong, for some people might never have had the chance to hear anything about what went on behind the lawsuit. If these people had only heard the clever advocate during the lawsuit and seen him fainting, they could very well have concluded that some people are so ambitious that they lose consciousness if a speech of theirs misfires. And they could have left it at that.

To be able to judge correctly you would therefore have to know a further layer of facts. In many instances you would even have to know several more layers, otherwise you could be correct with regard to the layer you can see and yet make a wrong judgment. That is the external aspect. But the matter has more behind it. The fellow also had to find a way of getting from this incarnation to the next one. And here we have an example of how wise world guidance puts into the soul the forces it needs to lead it from one incarnation to the next. The man was in such inner conflict that it had destroyed his existence. He was in a terrible position. A situation had been created in which there were no forces left to carry him over to his next incarnation. Also, a situation had been created in which forces of that nature could not be brought to his conscious mind. So his consciousness had to be extinguished for a moment. During short breaks in consciousness all kinds of other spirituality can enter the human soul. And in that moment he received forces capable of restoring his impulse to go forward into the next incarnation. Of course an impulse like this can be given in many different ways. What I have described here was one particular case.

These impulses are always there. But I just wanted to show you that man's conscious life is linked with an ongoing process in the unconscious, and that in man's conscious life there are really points where the consciousness is suppressed so that something can enter out of the unconscious. Sometimes these unconscious moments need not be long; they can be short spells similar to fainting. Yet a tremendous amount of spiritual life forces can stream into the human being at such moments, both good and bad, and capable of good and evil.

What I want to show you with this example is that, in observing the world, mankind must try to notice links of this kind, which are of no significance to a materialistic outlook.

You will gradually reach the point of becoming so perceptive for living links that you will recognise the moments in which the spirit comes near to each human being. In the future the world will no longer be explained so unequivocably as it is now, on the basis of material causes, but matter will be relegated to its right place, and at the same time people will realise that the material phenomenon is not the only thing, for spirit shines through
it.

We have seen that colours and sound are windows through which we can ascend spiritually into the spirit world, and life also brings to us windows through which the spiritual world enters our physical world. The advocate's fainting fit was this kind of window. If we interpret this phenomenon correctly we have to say that spiritual life streams down to us through this window. It is clear to us that these forces flowing into us cannot be explained on a purely material level. So there are windows in the tones through which we ascend from the physical-material world into the spiritual world; and there are also windows through which, if we remain in the physical-material world, the spirit can descend to us.

If we do not perceive the fact that spirit descends to us through such windows, it is like someone opening a beautiful book who cannot read. He has the same thing in front of him as someone who can read, but if he cannot read he sees unintelligible scribble on the white pages which, at the most, he can just describe. Only a person who can read is capable of following a biography, perhaps, or a piece of information that has been laid down in these strange signs. A person who cannot read world phenomena is like a cosmic illiterate where these phenomena are concerned. A person who can read, however, reads the ongoing process of the spiritual world in them. It is characteristic of the present materialistic age that materialism has made people illiterate with regard to the cosmos, almost a hundred per cent so. At a time when people are so proud of having reduced the percentage of illiteracy in civilised countries to such a great extent, they are enthusiastically heading towards illiteracy where the cosmos is concerned.

It is the task of spiritual science to eliminate this cosmic illiteracy. Few people nowadays are illiterate in the ordinary sense. In the time of ancient clairvoyance human beings were far less illiterate in the spirit. But this must not make us conceited. It is a fact that when we acquire an inkling of our task in the spiritual-scientific stream, we ought to change from being illiterate to becoming people who can read the cosmos. Yet we should remain humble, for the times are such that we are still very much in need of the elementary level of education. We can hardly read yet, but only spell out the letters. Yet we can be gripped by the impulse to change, an impulse which is breaking in upon mankind through these things. And if we are gripped by them we shall have the right attitude to what the signs of the times are demanding of us, and we shall enter into them as people who rightly belong to the spiritual-scientific world conceptual stream.