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

Translated by Steiner Online Library

[ 1 ] It is a great pleasure to me to be able to give this series of lectures in the Goetheanum, which was founded to promote Spiritual Science. What is here called ‘Spiritual Science’ must not be confused with those things which, more than ever at the moment, appear as Occultism, Mysticism, etc. These schools of thought either refer to ancient spiritual traditions which are no longer properly understood, and which give in a dilettante manner all kinds of imagined knowledge of supersensible worlds, or they ape outwardly the scientific methods which we have to-day without realizing that methods of research which are ideal for the study of the natural world can never lead to supernatural worlds. And what makes its appearance as Mysticism is also either mere renewal of ancient psychic experiences, or muddled, very often fantastic, and deceptive introspection.

[ 2 ] As opposed to this, the attitude of the Goetheanum is one which, in the fullest sense, falls in with the present-day view of natural scientific research, and recognizes what is justified in it. On the other hand, it seeks to gain objective and accurate results on the subject of the supersensible world by means of the strictly controlled training of pure psychic vision. It counts only such results as are obtained through this vision of the soul, by which the psychic-spiritual organization is just as accurately defined as a mathematical problem. The point is that at first this organization is presented in scientifically indisputable vision. If we call it ‘the spiritual eye’, we then say: as the mathematician has his problems before him, so has the researcher into the spirit his ‘spiritual eye’. The scientific method is employed for him on that preparation which is in his ‘spiritual organs’. If his ‘science’ has its being in these organs, he can make use of them, and the supersensible world lies before him. The student of the world of the senses directs his science to outward things, to results; but the student of the spirit pursues science as a preparation of vision. And when vision begins, science must already have fulfilled its mission. If you like to call your vision ‘clairvoyance’ it is at any rate, an ‘exact clairvoyance’. The science of the spirit begins where that? of the senses ends. Above all, the research student of the spirit must have based his whole method of thought for the newer Science on the one he applied to the world of the senses.

[ 3 ] Thus it comes about that the Sciences studied to-day merge into that realm which opens up Spiritual Science in the modern sense. It happens not only in the separate realms of Natural Science and History, but also e.g., in Medicine; and in all provinces of practical life, in Art, in Morals, and in Social life. It happens also in religious experiences.

[ 4 ] In these lectures three of these provinces are to be dealt with, and it is to be shown how they merge into the modern spiritual view. The three are Philosophy, Cosmology and Religion.

[ 5 ] At one time Philosophy was the intermediary for all human knowledge. In its logos man acquired knowledge of the distinct provinces of world-reality. The different Sciences are born of its substance. But what has remained of Philosophy itself? A number of more or less abstract ideas which have to justify their existence in face of the other sciences, whose justification is found in observation through the senses and in experiment. To what do the ideas of Philosophy refer? That has to-day become an important question. We find in these ideas no longer a direct reality, and so we try to find a theoretical basis for this reality.

[ 6 ] And more: Philosophy, and in its very name, love of wisdom shows that it is not merely an affair of the intellect, but of the entire human soul. What one can ‘love’ is such a thing, and there was a time when wisdom was considered something real, which is not the case with ‘ideas’ which engage only Reason and Intellect. Philosophy, from being a matter for all mankind which once was felt in the warmth of the soul, has become dry, cold knowledge: and we no longer feel ourselves in the midst of Reality when we occupy ourselves with philosophizing.

[ 7 ] In mankind itself that has been lost which once made Philosophy a real experience. Natural Science (of the outer world) is conducted by means of the senses, and what Reason thinks concerning the observations made by the senses is a putting-together of the content derived through the senses. This thought has no content of its own; and while man lives in such knowledge he knows himself only as a physical body. But Philosophy was originally a soul-content which was not experienced by the physical body, but by a human organism which cannot be appreciated by the senses. This is the etheric body, forming the basis of the physical body, and this contains the supersensible powers which give shape and life to the physical body. Man can use the organization of this etheric body just as he can that of the physical. This etheric body draws ideas from the supersensible world, just as the physical body does, through the senses, from the sense world. The ancient philosophers developed their ideas through this etheric body, and as the spiritual life of man has lost this etheric body and its knowledge, Philosophy has simultaneously lost its character of reality. We must first of all recover the knowledge of etheric man, and then Philosophy will be able to regain its character of reality. This must mark the first of the steps to be taken by Anthroposophy.

[ 8 ] Cosmology once upon a time showed man how he is a member of the universe. To this end it was necessary that not only his body but also his soul and spirit could be regarded as members of the Cosmos; and this was the case because in the Cosmos things of the soul and things of the spirit were visible. In later times, however, Cosmology has become only a superstructure of Natural Science gained by Mathematics, Observation and Experiment. The results of research in these lines are put together to make a picture of cosmic development, and from this picture one can no doubt understand the human physical body. But the etheric body remains unintelligible, and in a still higher sense that part of man which has to do with the Soul and the Spirit. The etheric body can only be recognized as a member of the Cosmos, if the etheric essence of the Cosmos is clearly perceived. But this etheric part of the Cosmos can, after all, give man no more than an etheric organization, whereas in the Soul is internal life; so we have to take into consideration also the internal life of the Cosmos. This is just what the old Cosmology did, and it was because of this view of it that the soul-essence of man which transcends the etheric was made a part of the Cosmos. Modern spiritual life fails, however, to see the reality of the inner life of the Soul. In modern experience, this contains no guarantee that it has an existence beyond birth and death. All one knows to-day of the soul-life can have its origin in and with the physical body through the life of the embryo and the subsequent unfolding in childhood and can end with death. There was something in the older human wisdom for the soul of man of which modern knowledge is only a reflection; and this was looked upon as the astral being in man. It was not what the soul experiences in its activities of thinking, feeling and volition, but rather something which is reflected in thinking, feeling and volition. One ‘cannot imagine thinking, feeling and volition as having a part in the Cosmos, for these live only in the physical nature of man. On the other hand the astral nature can be comprehended as a member of the Cosmos, for this enters the physical nature at birth and leaves it at death. That element which, during life between birth and death, is concealed behind thought, feeling and volition—namely the astral body—is the cosmic element of man.

[ 9 ] Because modern knowledge has lost this astral element of man, it has also lost a Cosmology which could comprise the whole of man. There remains only a physical Cosmology, and even this contains no more than the origins of physical man. It is necessary once more to found a knowledge of astral man, and then we shall also again have a Cosmology which includes the whole human being.

[ 10 ] So the second step of Anthroposophy is marked out.

[ 11 ] Religion in its original meaning is based on that experience whereby man feels himself independent not only of his physical and etheric nature, the cause of his existence between birth and death, but also of the Cosmos, in so far as this has an influence on such an existence. The content of this experience constitutes the real spirit-men, that being at which our word ‘Ego’ now only hints. This ‘Ego’ once connoted for man something which knew itself to be independent of all corporeality, and independent of the astral nature. Through such an experience man felt himself to be in a world of which the one which gives him body and soul is but an image; he felt a connection with a divine world. Now knowledge of this world remains hidden to observation according to the senses. Knowledge of etheric and astral man leads gradually to a vision of it. In the use of his senses man must feel himself separated from the divine world, to which belongs his inmost being: but through supersensible cognition he puts himself once more in touch with this world. So supersensible cognition merges into Religion.

[ 12 ] In order that this may be the case, we must be able to see the real nature of the ‘Ego’, and this power has been lost to modern knowledge. Even philosophers see in the ‘Ego’ only the synthesis of soul experiences. But the idea which they have thereby of the ‘Ego’, the spiritual man, is contradicted by every sleep; for in sleep the content of this ‘Ego’ is extinguished. A consciousness which knows only such an ‘Ego’ cannot merge into Religion on the strength of its knowledge, for it has nothing to resist the extinction of sleep. However, knowledge of the true ‘Ego’ has been lost to modern spiritual life, and with it the possibility to attain to Religion through knowledge.

[ 13 ] The religion that was once available is now something taken from tradition, to which human knowledge has no longer any approach. Religion in this way becomes the content of a Faith which is to be gained outside the sphere of scientific experience. Knowledge and Faith become two separate kinds of experience of something which once was a unity.

[ 14 ] We must first re-establish a clear cognition and knowledge of the true ‘Ego’, if Religion is to have its proper place in the life of mankind. In modern Science man is understood as a true reality only in respect of his physical nature. He must be recognized further as etheric, astral and spiritual or ‘Ego’ man and then Science will become the basis of religious life.

[ 15 ] So is the third step of Anthroposophy worked out.

[ 16 ] It will now be the task of the subsequent lectures to show the possibility of acquiring knowledge of the etheric part of man, that is to say, of clothing Philosophy with reality; it will be my further business to point out the way to the knowledge of the astral part of man, that is to say, to demonstrate that a Cosmology is possible which embraces humanity; and finally will come the task to lead you to the knowledge of the ‘true Ego’, in order to establish the possibility of a religious life, which rests on the basis of knowledge or cognition.

[ 1 ] Philosophy did not arise in the same way in which it is continued in modern times. In these days it is a connection of ideas which are not experienced in one's inner being, in the soul, in such a manner that a man, conscious of self, feels himself in these ideas as in a reality. Therefore we seek after all possible theoretical means to prove that the philosophic content does refer to a reality. But this way leads only to different philosophic systems, and of these one can say they are right to a certain extent; for mostly the grounds on which they are refuted are of as much value as those on which it is sought to prove them.

[ 2 ] Now with Anthroposophy it is a question not of attaining the reality of the philosophic content by theoretic thought, but by the cultivation of a method which on the one hand is similar to that by which in ancient times Philosophy was won, and on the other, is as consciously exact as the mathematical and natural scientific method of more recent times.

[ 3 ] The ancient method was semi-conscious. Compared with the condition of full consciousness of the modern scientific thinker it had something almost dreamy. It existed not in such dreams as concealed indirectly by their very nature their real content, but in waking dreams, which pointed to reality precisely by means of this content. Nor had such a soul-content the abstract character of the modern presentation, but rather that of picture-making.

[ 4 ] Such a soul-content must be regained, but in full consciousness, according to the modern stage of human evolution; exactly in the same sense of consciousness as we find in scientific thought. Anthroposophical research seeks to attain this in a first stage of supersensible knowledge in the condition of ‘imaginative consciousness’. It is reached through a process of meditation in the soul. This leads the entire force of the soul-life to presentations which are easily visualized and held fast in a state of rest. By this means we finally realize, if such a process is constantly repeated over a sufficient period of time, how the soul in its experience becomes free from the body. We see clearly that the thought of ordinary consciousness is a reflection of a spiritual activity which remains unconscious as such, after having become so by the incorporation of the human physical organism in its course.

All ordinary thinking is dependent on the supersensible spiritual activity which is reproduced in the physical organism. But at the same time we are conscious only of what the physical organism allows us to be conscious of. [ 5 ] The spiritual activity can be separated from the physical organism by meditation, and the soul then experiences the supersensible in a super-sensible way; no longer the physical but the etheric organism is the background of the soul's experience. We have a presentation before our soul's consciousness with the character of a picture. [ 6 ] We have before us in this kind of presentation pictures of the powers which, coming from the supersensible are the basis of the organism as its powers of growth, and also as the very powers which function in the regulation of the processes of nourishment. We gain in these pictures a real vision of the life-forces. This is the stage of ‘imaginative cognition’. This is life in the etheric human organism, and with our own etheric organism we live in the etheric Cosmos. There is between the etheric organism and the etheric Cosmos no such sharp distinction relating to subjective and objective as there is in physical thought about the things of the world.

[ 7 ] This ‘imaginative knowledge’ is the means whereby we can recall the very substantial reality of ancient Philosophy, but we can also conceive a new Philosophy, and a real conception of Philosophy can only come into being by means of this imaginative knowledge. And when this Philosophy is once there it can be grasped and understood by the ordinary consciousness; for it speaks out of ‘imaginative’ experience in a form which springs from spiritual (etheric) reality, and whose reality-content can, through the ordinary consciousness, be recalled in experience.

[ 8 ] A higher activity of knowledge which is forthcoming when meditation is extended, is required for Cosmology. Not only is intensive quietness cultivated on a soul-content or subject matter but also a fully conscious stationary condition of the quiet, content-less soul. This is after the meditative soul-content or subject matter has been banished from the consciousness. The stage ‘is reached where the spiritual content of the Cosmos flows into the empty soul—the stage of ‘inspired cognition’. We have in part of us a spiritual Cosmos, just as we have a physical Cosmos before the senses. We succeed in seeing, in the powers of the spiritual Cosmos, what takes place spiritually between man and the Cosmos in the process of breathing. In this and the other rhythmic processes of man we find the physical reproduction of what exists in the spiritual sphere in human astral organization. We attain to the vision of how this astral organism has its place in the spiritual Cosmos outside the life on earth, and how it takes on the cloak of the physical organism through embryonic life and birth, to lay it down again in death. By means of this knowledge we can distinguish between heredity, which is an earthly phenomenon, and that which man brings with him from the spiritual world.

[ 9 ] In this way, through ‘inspired knowledge’, we attain to a Cosmology which can embrace man in respect of his psychic and spiritual existence. Inspired knowledge is cultivated in the astral organism because we experience an existence outside our bodies in the Cosmos of the Spirit. But the same thing happens in the etheric organism; and we can translate this knowledge into human speech in the images which present themselves in this sphere, and we can harmonize it with the content of Philosophy. So we get a Cosmic Philosophy.

[ 10 ] For Religious Cognition a third thing is necessary. We must dive down into those existences which reveal themselves in picture form as the content of ‘inspired knowledge’; and this is attained when we add ‘Soul-exercises of the Will’ to the kind of meditation which we have till now been describing. For instance, we attempt to present to ourselves events which in the physical world have a definite course, but in reverse order, from the end to the beginning. Doing this we separate the soul-life, through a process of will which is not used in ordinary consciousness from the cosmic externals, and let the soul sink into those Beings which manifest themselves by inspiration. We attain true intuition, a union with beings of a spiritual world. These experiences of intuition are reflected in etheric and also in physical man, and produce in this reflection the subject matter of religious consciousness.

[ 11 ] Through this ‘intuitive cognition’ we gain a vision of the true nature of the Ego, which in reality is sunk into the spiritual world. The Ego which we know in ordinary consciousness is only a quite faint reflection of its true proportions. Intuition provides the possibility of feeling the connection of this faint reflection with the divine primal universe, to which in its true shape it belongs. Moreover, we are enabled to see how spiritual man,, the true Ego, has his place in the spiritual world, when he is sunk in sleep. In this condition the physical and etheric organisms require the rhythmic processes for their own regeneration. In a waking condition the Ego lives in this rhythm and in the metabolic processes that are a part of it; in the condition of sleep, the rhythm and the metabolic processes of man have a life of their own as physical and etheric organisms; and the astral organisms and the Ego then take their place in the spirit world. The translation of man into this world by inspired and intuitive knowledge is conscious; he lives in a spiritual Cosmos, just as by his senses he lives in a physical Cosmos. He can speak of the content of the religious consciousness from knowledge, and he can do this because what he experiences in the spiritual sphere is reflected in the physical and etheric man. Moreover, the reflected pictures can be expressed in speech, and in this form have a meaning which throws religious light on the human disposition of ordinary consciousness.

[ 12 ] Thus we reach the heart of Philosophy by imaginative cognition, of Cosmology by inspiration, and of the religious life through intuition. Besides that already described, the following soul-exercise helps towards attaining intuition. One tries so to grasp the life, which otherwise unconsciously unfolds itself from one human age to another, that one consciously contracts habits which one did not have before, or consciously changes such as one had. The greater the effort that such a change necessitates, the better it is for gaining intuitive knowledge; for these changes bring about a loosening of the will-power from the physical and etheric organism. We bind the will to the astral organism and to the true form of the Ego and consciously immerse both of them into the spirit world.

[ 13 ] What we may call ‘abstract thought’ has been perfected only in the modern spiritual development of mankind. In earlier periods of evolution this kind of thought was unknown to man, though it is necessary to the development of human spiritual activity, because it frees the power of thought from the picture-form. We achieve the possibility of thinking through the physical organism, though such thinking is not rooted in a real world; only in an apparent world where the processes of Nature can be copied without man himself contributing anything to these pictures. We attain a copy of Nature, which, qua copy, can be genuine, because the life in the thought-copy is not in itself reality, but only apparent reality. But the moral impulses can also be taken up into this pseudo-thought, so that they exercise no compulsion on man. The moral impulses are themselves real because they come from the spirit world; the manner in which man experiences them in his apparent world enables him to adapt himself in accordance with them, or not. They themselves exercise no compulsion on him either through his body or his soul.

[ 14 ] So man strides on; thought which was in ancient times completely bound to the unconsciously imagined, inspired and intuitive knowledge, thought in which the subject matter was laid as open as Imagination and Inspiration and Intuition themselves, becomes abstract thought conducted through the physical organism. In this thought, which has a pseudo-life, because it is spirit substance translated into the physical world, man has the possibility of developing an objective nature-knowledge and his own moral freedom.

More details on this subject you will find in my Philosophy of Spirit Activity, my Knowledge of Higher Worlds and how to attain it, Theosophy, Occult Science, etc. What is necessary in order to return to a Philosophy, a Cosmology and a Religion that embrace all man, is to enter upon the province of an exact clairvoyance in Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition; and this consciously—that is in contradistinction to the old dreamlike clairvoyance. Man attains to his full consciousness in the province of a life of abstract presentations. It remains to him, in the further advance of humanity, to bring this full consciousness of the spiritual world to bear on his daily life.

[ 1 ] The inner life of man assumes another form from that of ordinary consciousness when it enters upon imaginative knowledge. His relationship to the world is also changed. This change is brought about by the concentration of all the powers of the soul on a presentation-complex which can easily be seen in its entirety. This last condition is necessary to avoid any kind of unconscious process playing a part in the meditation; for in this everything must come to pass only within the psychic and spiritual spheres. The man who thinks out a mathematical problem can be fairly certain that he is employing only psychic-spiritual forces. Unconscious memories, influenced by feeling or will, will not enter into it. It must be the same with Meditation. If we take for it a thought which is brought up out of memory, we cannot know how much at the same time we introduce into the consciousness from the physical, or instinctive, or unconsciously psychical, and cause it to react in the soul on the presentation during meditation. It is, therefore, best to choose for a subject of meditation something which one knows for certain to be quite new to the soul. If we seek advice on this point from an experienced spiritual investigator, he will lay particular stress on this. He will recommend a subject which is perfectly simple and which quite certainly cannot have occurred to us before. It is of no importance that the subject should even correspond with some known fact taken from the world of the senses. We can take as an idea something pictorial, but not necessarily representing a picture of the outer world, e.g., ‘In Light lives streaming Wisdom’. It depends on the power of reposeful meditation with such an image-presentation. The spiritual and psychic powers are strengthened by such a calm meditation just as the muscles are strengthened by performing a piece of work. The meditation can be short at a time, but it must be repeated over a long period to be successful. With one person success can be attained after a few weeks, with another only after years, according to natural predisposition. The man who wishes to be a true Spiritual Investigator must do such exercises systematically and intensively. The first result of meditation in the way here indicated is that the man who practises it has through his inner life a greater control over the statements of a Spiritual Investigator than the man of ordinary healthy intellect, though the latter, if sufficiently unfettered and unprejudiced, is also quite capable of such control.

[ 2 ] Meditation must call to its aid the exercise in character strengthening, inner truthfulness, calmness of soul, self-possession and deliberation. For only then, when it is thoroughly imbued with these qualities, will the soul gradually imprint on the whole human organization what in meditation appears as a process.

[ 3 ] When success is reached by means of such exercises, we find ourselves in the etheric organism. The thought-experience receives a new form. We experience the thoughts not only in the abstract form as before, but in such a way that one feels the power in them. Thoughts of former experience can only be thoughts, they have no power to stimulate action. Whereas the thoughts we now have, have as much power as the powers of growth which accompany man from childhood to maturity, and just for this reason it is necessary to carry out meditation in the right way. For if unconscious forces intervene in it, if it is not an act of complete and deliberate thoughtfulness, and done in self-possession taking a purely psychic and spiritual course, impulses are developed which step in as do the natural powers of growth in our own human organism. This must in no wise occur. Our own physical and etheric organism must remain completely untouched by meditation. The right kind of meditation enables us to live with the newly-developed power of thought-content quite outside our own physical and etheric organism. We have the etheric experience; and our organism itself attains to a personal experience of a relationship with a relative objectivity. We look at it (our organism) and in the form of thought it radiates back what we experience in the ether. [ 4 ] This experience is healthy if we arrive at the condition in which we can with complete freedom of choice alternate between an existence in the ether and one in our physical body. The condition is not right if there is something which forces us into the etheric existence. We must be able to be in ourselves and outside ourselves in accordance with perfectly free orientation.

[ 5 ] The first experience which we can win through such an inner labour is a review of the course of our own past life on earth. We see it as it has progressed by means of the powers of growth from childhood upwards. We see it in thought-pictures which are condensed into powers of growth. They are not simply remembered scenes of our own life which we have before us. They are pictures of an etheric course of events, which have happened in our own existence, without having been taken into the ordinary consciousness. That which the consciousness and memory hold is only the abstract accompanying appearance of the real course. It is, as it were, a surface wave which is in its shape the result of something deeper.

[ 6 ] In the process of viewing this progress the working of the etheric Cosmos on man is brought out. We can experience this work as the subject-matter of Philosophy. It is wisdom, not in the abstract form of the conception, but rather in the form of the working of the etheric in the Cosmos.

[ 7 ] In ordinary consciousness it is only the young child who has not yet learnt to speak who is in the same relationship to the Cosmos as the man who uses his imagination correctly. The child has not yet separated the powers of thought from the general (etheric) powers of growth. This happens only when he learns to speak. Then the powers of abstract thought are separated from the universal powers of growth which alone were previously present. In the course of his later life man has these powers of abstract thought, but they are part of his physical organism, and are not taken up into his etheric being. He cannot, therefore, bring his relationship to the etheric world into his consciousness. He can learn to do this , through Imagination.

[ 8 ] A quite small child is an unconscious philosopher; the ‘imaginative philosopher’ is again a small child, but wakened to full consciousness.

[ 9 ] Through the exercise of ‘Inspiration’ a new capacity is added to those already developed, namely, the capacity to obliterate from the consciousness pictures which have been dwelt upon in meditation. It must be clearly emphasized that here the capacity must be developed again to obliterate when one likes pictures which have previously been taken up in meditation by one's freewill. It is not enough to obliterate presentations which have not been implanted in the consciousness by free choice. It requires a greater psychic effort to abolish pictures which have been created in meditation than to extinguish those which have entered into the consciousness in another way. And we need this greater effort to advance in supersensible knowledge.

[ 10 ] On such lines we achieve a wakeful, but quite empty soul-life; we remain in conscious wakefulness. If this condition is experienced in full thoughtfulness the soul becomes filled with spiritual facts, as through the senses it is filled with physical. And this is the condition of ‘Inspiration’. We live an inner life in the Cosmos just as we live an inner life in the physical organism. But we are aware that we are experiencing the cosmic life, that the spiritual things and processes of the Cosmos are being revealed to us as our own inner soul-life. Now the possibility must have remained of always momentarily exchanging this inner experience of the Cosmos with the condition of ordinary consciousness. For then we can always relate what we experience in Inspiration to something we experience in ordinary consciousness. We see in the Cosmos that is perceived by the senses a reproduction of what we have spiritually experienced. The process may be compared with that by which one compares a new experience in life with a memory-picture which rises in the consciousness. The spiritual outlook which we have won is like the new experience, and the physical view of the Cosmos like the memory-picture.

[ 11 ] This spiritual outlook, thus attained, differs from the imaginative. In the latter we have general pictures of an etheric occurrence; in the former, pictures appear of spiritual beings who live and move in this etheric occurrence. What we know in the physical world as Sun and Moon, Planets and Fixed Stars, these we find again as Cosmic beings; and our own psychic-spiritual experience appears enclosed in the orbit of these cosmic essences. The physical organism of man now becomes intelligible for the first time, for not only all that his senses take in Contributes to its shape and life, but also the beings who work creatively in the affairs of the sense-world. Everything which is thus experienced through inspiration remains completely shut out from the ordinary consciousness. Man would only be conscious of it if he experienced the process of breathing in the same way as he experienced the process of observation. The cosmic disposition between man and world remains hidden for ordinary consciousness. The Yoga-philosophy seeks the road to a Cosmology whereby the process of breathing is transformed into a process of observation. Modern western man should not imitate that. In the course of human evolution he has entered upon an organization which for him excludes such Yoga-exercises. He would never through them get quite away from his organism, and so would not satisfy the requirement to leave untouched his physical and etheric organism. Such practices corresponded with a period of evolution which has gone by. But what was attained by them had to be gained in the same way as has just been described for inspired knowledge; the method, that is, of experiencing in a state of full consciousness what in past times man had to experience in waking dreams.

[ 12 ] If the Philosopher is a child with fully-developed consciousness, the Cosmologist must become in a fully conscious way a man of past ages, in which the Spirit of the Cosmos could still be seen by means of natural faculties.

[ 13 ] In ‘Intuition’ man is completely translated—through the exercises of the Will described last time—together with his consciousness into the objective world of the cosmic, spiritual beings. He attains a condition of experience which alone on earth the first men had. They were in as close a connection with the inwardness of their cosmic surroundings as they were with the processes of their own bodies. And these processes were not completely unconscious as with modern man. They were reflected in the soul. Man felt in the soul his growth, and the chemical changes of his body, as in waking dream-pictures. And this experience enabled him to feel also the processes of his cosmic circumstances with their spiritual inwardness as in a dream. He had dreamlike intuition of which we find to-day only an echo in some people specially inclined to it. The world around him was, in the consciousness of primitive man, both material and spiritual; and what he experienced then in a semi-dream state was for him religious revelation, a direct continuation of the other aspects of his life. These experiences in the spirit world, of which primitive man was only half conscious, remain completely unknown to modern man. The man with supersensible, intuitive knowledge brings them into his full consciousness, and so in a new way he is transported back to the condition of primitive man, who still derived the religious content from his world-consciousness.

[ 14 ] As the Philosopher resembles the fully-conscious child, and the Cosmologist the fully-conscious man of a past middle human period, so the man with religious cognition in a modern sense resembles primitive man, except that he experiences the spiritual world in his soul, not as in a dream, but with full consciousness.

[ 1 ] We said that for the development of ‘inspired cognition’ one of the basic exercises is to banish from the consciousness pictures which have arisen in it in meditation or in the sequel to the process of meditation. But this exercise is really only a preliminary one to another. By the banishing we get to the point of visualizing the course of our life in the way our last survey demonstrated. We attain also to a view of the spiritual Cosmos in so far as this can express itself in etheric life. We receive a picture of the living etheric Cosmos projected on to the human being. We see how everything which we can call heredity passes on in a continuous process from the physical organisms of the ancestors to the physical organisms of posterity. But we see also how a repeatedly new effect of the etheric cosmos occurs for the facts of the etheric organism. This fresh effect from the etheric cosmos works in opposition to heredity. It is of a kind which affects only the individual man. It is specially important for the teacher to have an insight into these things.

[ 2 ] To progress in supernatural knowledge it is necessary to perfect the exercise of banishing the imaginative pictures more and more. Through it the energy of the soul for this banishing is continually strengthened. For at first we attain only to a review of the course of our life since birth. What we have there before us is indeed something psychic and spiritual, but at the same time it is not something which can be said to have an existence beyond the physical life of man.

[ 3 ] In continuing these exercises of inspiration it becomes clear that the power of obliterating the imaginative pictures grows ever greater, and later becomes so great that the whole picture of one's life's course can be banished from the consciousness. We then have a consciousness that is freed also from the content of our own physical and etheric human nature.

[ 4 ] Into this in a higher sense empty consciousness there then enters through a higher inspiration a picture of the psychic-spiritual nature as it was before man left the psychic-spiritual world for the physical, and there formed union with the body which exists through conception and the development of the embryo. We get a vision of how the astral and Ego-organization covers itself with an etheric organization which comes from the etheric Cosmos, and with a physical one which arises from the sequence of heredity.

[ 5 ] Only in this way do we acquire knowledge of the eternal inner being of man, which during his life on earth exists in the reflection of the soul's imagination, feeling, and Will. But we acquire also through it the idea of the true nature of this imaginative presentation; for in point of fact this is not present in its true shape within the limits of the earth-life.

[ 6 ] Look at a human corpse. It has the shape and the limbs of a man, but life has gone out of it. If we understand the nature of the corpse, we do not regard it as an end in itself, but as the remains of a living physical man. The external forces of Nature, to which the corpse is surrendered, can destroy it well enough; but they cannot construct it. In the same Way, from a higher stage of vision, one recognizes earthly human thought to be the dead remains of that living thought which belonged to man before he was transplanted from his existence in the spiritual, psychic world into his life on earth. The nature of earthly thought is as little comprehensible from itself as the form of the human organism is from the forces which work in the corpse. We must recognize earthly thought as dead thought, if we want to recognize it rightly.

[ 7 ] If we are on the way to such a recognition, we can then also completely see the nature of earthly will. This is recognized in a certain sense as a more recent part of the soul. That which is hidden behind the will stands to thought in the same relationship as, in the physical organism, the baby does to the old man on his deathbed. Only with the soul, babyhood and old age do not develop in sequence after one another, but exist side by side. [ 8 ] We see, however, from what has been explained, certain results for a Philosophy which intends to form its ideas only on the experience of life on earth. It receives as contents only dead, or at least, expiring ideas. Its duty therefore can be only to recognize the dead character of the thought-world and to draw conclusions from what is dead on the basis of something which was once living. Just so far as one keeps to the method of intelligible proof, one can have no other aim. This purely ‘intellectual’ Philosophy therefore, can lead to the true nature of the soul only indirectly. It can examine the nature of human thought and recognize its transitoriness, and so it can indirectly show that something dead points to something living, as the corpse points to a living man.

[ 9 ] Only ‘inspired cognition’ can arrive at a real vision of what is the true soul. The corpse of thought is again animated in a certain sense through exercises for this inspiration. We are not, it is true, transferred back completely into the condition that existed before life on earth began; but we bring to life in us a true picture of this condition, from the nature of which we can realize that it is projected out of a pre-terrestrial existence into a terrestrial one.

[ 10 ] By means of developing intuition by exercises of the Will it comes about that the pre-terrestrial existence which had in thought died out during the earth-life is brought to life again in the subconscious mind. Through these exercises man is brought into a condition by means of which he enters upon the world of the spiritual, apart from his physical and etheric organism. He experiences what existence is after the dissolution from the body; he is given a pre-vision of what really happens after death. He can speak of the continuity of the spiritual part of the soul after going through the gates of death.

[ 11 ] Again the purely intellectual conceptual Philosophy can attain to the recognition of the immortality of the soul only by an indirect way. As it recognizes in thought something that can be compared with a dead body, so in the will it can establish something comparable with a seed. Something that has life in itself, which points beyond the dissolution of the body, because its nature shows itself, even during life on earth, independent of it. So, since we do not stand still at thought, but use all soul-life as experience of self, we can reach an indirect realization of the everlasting nucleus of the human being. Further we must not limit our contemplation to thought, but subject the interchange of thought with the other forces of the soul to philosophical methods of proof. But still with all this we come only to experience the everlasting human nucleus as it is in the earth-life, and not to a vision of the condition of the human spirit and the human soul before and after it. This is the case, for instance, with Bergson's Philosophy, which rests on a comprehensive self-experience of what is evident in the earth-life, but which refuses to step into the region of real supersensible knowledge.

[ 12 ] Every Philosophy which remains within the sphere of the ordinary consciousness can reach only an indirect knowledge of the true nature of the human soul.

Cosmology if it is to be of a kind that the total human being is influenced through it, can be acquired only through the imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge. Within ordinary consciousness it has only the testimony for the human soul-life that dies out and re-awakens like seed. From this fact it can formulate ideas based on unprejudiced observations which point to something Cosmic, and lay it open. Still, these ideas are only that which pours into the inner being of man from the spiritual Cosmos, and moreover reveals itself in a changed form within him. Philosophy indeed had in former times a branch called Cosmology. But the real subject matter of this Cosmology were ideas which had become very abstract, which had by tradition subsisted from old forms of Cosmology. Humanity had developed these ideas at a time when an old dream-like Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition still existed. They were taken out of their tradition and woven into the material of pure intellectual, logical or dialectic demonstration. Men were often quite unconscious of the fact that these ideas were borrowed; they were considered new and original. Gradually it was found that in the inner life of the spirit no real inner connection with these ideas existed. Therefore this ‘rational Cosmology’ fell almost completely into discredit. It had to give place to the physical Cosmology, built up on the nature-knowledge of the physical senses, which, however, to the unprejudiced eye, no longer embraced man in its scope.

A true Cosmology can arise again only when imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge are allowed their place, and their results applied to the knowledge of the universe.

[ 13 ] What has had to be said concerning Cosmology applies still more to knowledge of a religious kind. Here we have to build up knowledge which has its origins in the experience of the spiritual world. To draw conclusions concerning such experience from the subject-matter of ordinary consciousness is impossible. In intellectual concepts the religious content cannot be opened out but only clarified. When one began to seek for proofs of God's existence, the very search was a proof that one had already lost the living connection with the divine world. For this reason also no intellectualistic proof of God's existence can be given in any satisfactory way. Any theory formed from the ordinary consciousness alone is obliged to work into an individual system ideas borrowed from tradition. Formerly, philosophers tried to get also a ‘rational Theology’ from this ordinary consciousness. But this compared with the Theology based on traditional ideas suffered the same fate as ‘rational Cosmology’, only still more so. Whatever came to light as a direct ‘God-experience’ remains in the world of feeling or will, and in fact prevents the transition to any method of conceptual proof. Philosophy itself has fallen into the error of seeing in a purely historical religion religious forms which have existed and still exist. It does this from an incapacity to attain through the ordinary consciousness to ideas on a subject which can be experienced only outside the physical and etheric organism.

[ 14 ] A new basis for the knowledge of the religious life can be won only by a recognition of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive methods, and by the application of their results to this life.

[ 1 ] WE speak to-day of the ‘Unconscious’ of ‘Subconscious’, when we wish to signify that the soul-experiences of ordinary consciousness—observation, representation, realization, volition—are dependent on a state which is not included in this consciousness. That knowledge which would base itself only on these experiences can no doubt, by logical sequence of argument, point to such a ‘subconscious’; but that is all it can do. It can bring no contribution to a definition of the unconscious.

[ 2 ] The imaginative, inspired and intuitive knowledge which has been described in the foregoing considerations, can give such a definition. Now we shall try to do the same for the soul-experiences of man during sleep.

[ 3 ] The sleep-experiences of the soul do not enter upon ordinary consciousness, for this rests on the basis of the physical organization; and during sleep the experience of the soul is outside the body. When in waking the soul begins, with the help of the body, to imagine, to feel, and to will, it joins up in its memory with those experiences which took place before sleep on the basis of the physical organization. The experiences of sleep reveal themselves only to Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition. They do not appear in the guise of memory, but as if in a psychic review of it.

[ 4 ] I shall now have to describe what is revealed in this review. Because it is hid from ordinary consciousness, such a description of this review must, when the consciousness is faced with it unprepared, naturally appear grotesque. But the foregoing explanations have shown that such a description is possible, and how it is to be taken. Although it may even be laughed at from some quarter or another, I shall give it as it emerges from the states of consciousness already described.

[ 5 ] At first, in falling asleep, a man finds himself in an inwardly vague, undifferentiated state of being. He sees there no difference between his own being and that of the universe; nor any between separate objects or people. His state of existence is universal and vague. Taken up into the imaginative consciousness, this experience becomes an ‘Ego-feeling’, in which the ‘universe-feeling’ is included. He has left the sphere of the senses, and has not yet clearly entered upon another world.

[ 6 ] We shall now have to use expressions such as ‘Feeling’, ‘longing’, etc., which also in ordinary life refer to something known; and yet we shall have to use them to denote processes which remain unknown to the ordinary soul-life. But the soul experiences them as facts during sleep. Think, for instance, how in daily life joy is experienced consciously. Physically an enlargement of the small blood vessels takes place, and other things, and this enlargement is a fact; when it takes place, joy is consciously felt. Similarly, the soul goes through real experiences in sleep; and this will be described in terms which refer to corresponding experience of the imaginative, inspired and intuitive consciousness. If, for example, we speak of ‘longing’ we shall mean an actual soul-process which is imaginatively revealed as longing. Thus the unconscious states and experiences of the soul will be described as if they were conscious.

[ 7 ] Simultaneously with the feeling of vagueness arid the absence of differentiation, there arises in the soul a longing for rest in what is spiritual and divine. The human soul evolves this longing as a counterbalance to the feeling of being lost in infinity. Having lost the sphere of the senses, it craves for a state out of the spiritual world that will support it.

[ 8 ] Dreams interweave themselves into the state of soul just described. They traverse the unconscious with half-conscious experiences. The real form of sleep experiences is not made clearer through ordinary dreams, but still less clear. This lack of clearness applies also to the imaginative consciousness if this latter is clouded by dreams arising spontaneously. One perceives the truth on the further side of life both awake and in dream by means of that conception of the soul which is attained by free will through the exercises previously explained.

[ 9 ] The next state through which the soul lives then is like a division or partition of itself into inner happenings which are differentiated from each other. During this period of sleep, the soul feels itself to be not a unity but an inner plurality, and this state is one suffused with anxiety. Were it felt consciously, it would be soul-fear. But the human soul experiences the real counterpart of this anxiety every night, though remaining unconscious of it.

[ 10 ] In the case of modern man there appears at this moment of sleep the soul-saving effect which corresponds in the waking condition to his self surrender to Christ. It was different, of course, before the events of Golgotha. Then men, when awake, received from their religious beliefs the antidote which carried over into the condition of sleep and was the medicine for this fear. For the man who lives after the events of Golgotha are substituted the religious experiences which he has in the contemplation of the life and death and being of Christ. He overcomes his fears through the working of this into his sleep. This fear prevents, as long as it is present, the inner vision of that which should be experienced by the soul in sleep, as the body prevents it in the waking state. The leadership of Christ overcomes the inner division and transforms the plurality into a unity. And the soul comes now to the point of having an inner life different from that of the waking condition. The physical and etheric organisms belong now to its outer world. On the other hand in its present inner self it experiences a reflection of the planetary movements. The soul experiences something cosmic in place of the individual, conditioned by the physical and etheric organisms. The soul lives outside the body; and its inner life is an inner reflection of the planetary motions. This being so, the inspired consciousness is aware of the corresponding inner processes in the manner which has been described in our previous studies. This consciousness perceives also how that which the soul receives through its contact with the planets continues to have an after-effect in the consciousness after waking. This planetary influence continues in awakeness as a stimulant in the rhythm of breathing and blood-circulation. During sleep the physical and etheric organisms are subjected to the effect of the planet-stimulation, which by day influence them, as described, as the after-effect of the previous night.

[ 11 ] There are other experiences side by side with these. In this phase of its sleep-existence, the soul experiences its relation to all human souls with which it had come into contact in earthly life. Considered intuitively this leads to certainty on the subject of repeated earth life; for these earth-lives reveal themselves in their relation to the soul. And the connection with other spirit-beings, which live in the world without ever assuming a human body, is also one of the soul's experiences. [ 12 ] But in this condition of sleep the soul experiences also what point to good and evil tendencies, and good and evil events in the predestined course of earthly life. In fact, what older philosophers have termed ‘Karma’ is now presented to the soul.

[ 13 ] In daily life all these happenings of the soul have so much effect that they help to cause the feelings, the general mood of the soul, of happiness or unhappiness.

[ 14 ] In the further course of sleep another state of the soul is added to the one just described. It goes through a copy or imitation of state of the Twin Stars. As the bodily organs are sensed in waking, so a reconstructing of the fixed constellations is now attempted. The cosmic experience of the soul is widening. It is now a spirit amongst spirits. ‘Intuition’ sees the sun and the other fixed stars as physical projections of spirits, in the manner just described. These adventures of the soul reverberate during daily life as its religious leanings, its religious feeling and willing. It can be said indeed that the religious longing, stirring in the depth of the soul, is in awake life the aftermath of the stellar experience during the state of sleep.

[ 15 ] But it is significant above all that in this state the soul is faced with the facts of life and death. It sees itself as a spirit-being, entering into a physical body through conception and the life of the cell, and unconsciously it sees the event of death as a passing over into a purely spiritual world. That the soul in its waking state cannot believe in the reality of what outwardly represents itself to the senses as the events of birth and death is therefore not only the imaginative picturing of a longing but a vaguely-felt reliving through things presented to the soul in sleep.

If man could recall to his consciousness everything he lives through unconsciously from falling asleep to waking up, he would have a consciousness-content giving the experiences of truth to his philosophical ideas in the first occurrence in which sense-phenomena merge Into a universal inner cosmic life, and in which a kind of pantheistic knowledge of God occurs. If he was conscious of this planet and fixed-star life of sleep he would indeed have a cosmology full of content. And the conclusion could be formed from the experience of star-life, that a human being has a life as spirit among spirits.

From falling asleep, through further states of sleep, man actually becomes an unconscious philosopher, cosmologist, and God-filled being. From the depths of experiences otherwise only possible in sleep, ‘Imagination, Inspiration and Intuition’ lift up that which shows what kind of being man himself really is; how he is part of the Cosmos and how he becomes one with God.

[ 16 ] This last happens to man in the deepest stage of sleep. From there the soul begins to return to the world of the senses. In the impulse leading to this return the intuitive consciousness recognizes the activity of those spirit beings which have their physical counterpart in the moon. The spiritual moon-activities are the ones recalling men in their sleep back to their presence on earth. Naturally these same lunar activities are also present in the New Moon. But the transformation of whatever changes visibly in the moon has its significance concerning the part lunar activities play in man's holding on to his earthly life from birth or conception to death.

[ 17 ] After the deepest state of sleep man returns to his waking state through the same intermediate states. Before awakening he goes once more through experiencing the universal world state, and the longing for God, in which dreams can play their part.

[ 1 ] IN the previous studies it was shown how a view of the eternal psycho-spiritual inner being of man can be attained through inspired and intuitive approach. Attention was drawn to the fact that the inner life of man was filled by reflections of cosmic happenings. In the last survey it was shown how man lives through such cosmic reconstructions during sleep. Man's inner world becomes the external world and vice versa: the spiritual part of the external world becomes an inner world.

[ 2 ] During the state of sleep the physical and etheric organisms of man form an outer world for his psycho-spiritual nature. They remain there in the same way in which, in waking, they can become again the instrument of the psycho-spiritual man. Man carries the longing for these two organisms over into the sleeping state. As shown in the last review, this longing is connected with those spiritual activities of the Cosmos which are reflected physically in the appearances of the moon. Man is only subjected to these lunar activities through his being part of this earth. The contemplation of that state in which man finds himself in the purely spiritual world for a certain time before his turning towards earthly life makes it clear that then he is not subjected to the influences of these lunar activities.

[ 3 ] In this state he does not recognize a physical and etheric human organism as belonging to him, as he does in sleep. But he recognizes them in other ways. He sees them as having their foundations in cosmic worlds, as growing out of the spiritual Cosmos. He contemplates a spiritual Cosmos which is the spiritual part of the cell of the physical organism, which at some future time he will put on. When we talk of a cell in this connection we designate something which in one sense is opposed to what we usually term cell. By ‘Cell’ we usually mean the small physical beginning of a growing organism. The spiritual organism on the other hand which man sees in connection with himself in his pre-earthly spiritual state, is large and contracts continually, as it were, to merge finally with the physical part of the cell.

[ 4 ] In order to represent these relationships clearly we have to make use of expressions ‘Large’ and ‘Small’. But we must remember all the time that the happenings of the spiritual world are spiritual and that for them space, in which physical happenings move, is non-existent. The expressions used therefore are only similes for something spiritual, entirely non-spatial, purely qualitative.

[ 5 ] During his pre-earthly existence man lives in the cosmic creation which is the spiritual germ of his future physical organism, and this spiritual stage is regarded as in unity with the whole of the spiritual cosmos and reveals itself at the same time as the cosmic body of the individual human being. Man feels the spiritual cosmos as his own innate powers. His whole existence consists in his experiencing himself in this cosmos. But he does not experience only himself in it. For this cosmic existence does not separate him from the other life of the cosmos, as does later his physical organism. Over against this existence he is in a kind of Intuition. The existence of other spiritual beings is at the same time his own existence.

[ 6 ] Man has his pre-earthly existence in the active recognition of the spirit-cell of his future physical organism. He himself prepares for this organism by working in the spirit world on the spirit-cell together with other spirits in the world of spirits.

As during his existence on earth he perceives through his senses a physical world round him in which he is active, so in his pre-earthly existence he perceives his physical organism being built in spirit; and his activity consists in helping its construction, just as his activity in the physical world consists in helping to shape the physical things of the outer world.

[ 7 ] In the spirit-cell of the physical human body which the psycho-spiritual man experiences in his pre-earthly existence, a whole universe is present, no less manifold than the physical outer world of the senses. Indeed intuitive knowledge may well say that man, incorporated in his physical body, though unknown to himself, carries a universe of such magnificence that the physical world cannot be remotely compared with it.

[ 8 ] This universe it is which man experiences in a spiritual manner in his pre-earthly state, and in which he is active. He experiences it in its growth, its mobility, but filled with spiritual beings.

[ 9 ] He has a consciousness within this world; with the Powers active in the growth of this Universe his own are bound up. His consciousness is filled with the collaboration of these spiritual cosmic powers with his own power. The state of sleep is in a sense a reconstruction of his activity.

But in its course of sleep the physical organism exists as an exclusive form, or system apart from and independent of the psycho-spiritual man. Here contemplation lacks the active powers representing the content of consciousness in the pre-earthly state. Therefore the state remains unconscious.

[ 10 ] In the further course of pre-earthly existence the conscious recognition of the growth of the future earth-organism becomes fainter. It never disappears completely from view, but it fades by degrees. It is as if man felt his own cosmic world get further and further away, as if he was growing out of it. What is at first a complete fusion with the spiritual beings of the cosmos now becomes only a revelation of these beings. One might say that while at one time man had a true ‘intuition’ of the spiritual world, it is now changed into a real ‘inspiration’, in which his nature acts upon man, revealing itself from the outside. [ 11 ] But with this a new phase begins within the psycho-spiritual man which might be identified with the ‘missing’ and the beginning of the ‘longing for the lost’. Expressions like these are used only to describe conditions of the supernatural world in terms of the natural world.

[ 12 ] In such a state of ‘missing’ and ‘longing’ the soul of man passes a later period of its pre-earthly existence. It no longer has consciousness of the full reality of experience of a spiritual world, but only of a revealed reflection thereof, with, as it were, less intensity of being.

[ 13 ] The human soul is now getting ready to experience the spiritual lunar activities, which up to now were beyond its sphere. It thus obtains a being through which it makes itself independent of the other spirit-beings with whom it lived before. One might say that at first its experience was permeated by spirit, and by God, and that later it feels itself as an independent spiritual being; the cosmos is now felt as an outer world, even though the experiencing of this revelation of the Cosmos is still a very intense one during the first phases, and only develops into a fainter one by degrees.

[ 14 ] In this experience man therefore leaves the existence permeated by spirit, and felt as reality, in order to enter one in which he is faced by a revealed spirit-cosmos. The first phase of this experience is the reality of that which later on appears as religious learning to one's perception. The second is the reality of what, if described, will result in a true Cosmology. For here the physical human organism is viewed also in its cosmic cell-form without which it cannot be comprehended.

[ 15 ] In the later phases man loses the capacity of viewing the spirit cosmos, which becomes less clear to the ‘spiritual eye’. On the other hand the experience of the inner soul which is connected with the spiritual lunar activities grows ever more intense. The human soul gets ready to receive from outside that which before she experienced within herself. The spiritual activity that has furthered the growth of the physical organism which man at first experienced consciously, is dropped by the organs of his soul, but it is transferred into the physical activity which reaches its climax in the reproductive development within the existence on earth. The previous experience of the human soul is transferred into this development as its directing force. Now for some time the human soul has its place in the spiritual world, for she no longer takes part in the shaping of the physical human organism.

[ 16 ] In this phase she becomes ripe to satisfy with the etheric cosmos that which in her is ‘missing’ something or ‘longing’ for it. She attracts the cosmic ether. And according to the faculties remaining to her, from her collaboration in the human Universe she forms her etheric organism. Thus man gets used to his etheric organism before his physical organism receives him on earth. [ 17 ] The events belonging to earthly existence and following an accomplished conception, and separated from the course of the last phases of the pre-earthly life of the soul, have brought the growth of the physical organism to physical cell-formation. With this the human soul which meanwhile has taken over her etheric organism, can unite. She can unite with it through the power of continued ‘longing’ and man thus begins his earthly career.

[ 18 ] The experience of the human soul in taking unto itself the etheric organism, the increase in growth, as it were, of this organism out of the world-ether, is an experience foreign to earth, for it is passed through without the physical organism. It has it, however, as its ‘longed-for’ object. That which happens in the experience of the little child is an unconscious memory of this experience. But it is an active memory, an unconscious working of the physical organism which was once the inner world of the soul and now is the outer case of it. The formative creative work which man unconsciously applies to his own organism during its growth is the visible sign of this active memory. What philosophy is searching for, and what she can only achieve as an inner reality by fully conscious imaginative treatment of the child's earliest experience, lies in this active unconscious memory. This explains in some measure the nature of philosophy which sometimes seems nearer and sometimes further away from the world.

[ 1 ] I attempted to show in my last observations how, in the realm of human evolution, the psycho-spiritual existence is transferred to that of the physical senses. Now it depends on the understanding which man can bring to bear on this transference whether he can gain a relationship, in accordance with modern consciousness, to the event of Golgotha and its reference to man's development on earth.

[ 2 ] If one does not realize in one's own physical nature how something psycho-spiritual has so changed itself from a spiritual form of experience as to become manifest in the physical world of the senses, one will also never know how the Christ spirit coming from spirit worlds was made manifest in the man Jesus on earth.

[ 3 ] But it must be once more emphasized that it is not a case of individual knowledge derived from observation, but rather of understanding with one's whole nature and being what observation has brought to light. Only a few men achieve the former, but the latter is possible to all. The man who realizes the worlds through which the human soul has passed in its pre-earthly existence, learns also to look up to Him who before the event of the mystery of Golgotha had lived as Christ only in those worlds, and who through this mystery and since its occurrence had united His life with mortal humanity.

[ 4 ] Our earthly souls have attained the condition in which they now live only through a gradual development. Ordinary consciousness takes the condition of the soul as it is to-day and constructs a ‘history’, in which things are represented as if man in the grey dawn of time had thought and willed and felt practically as he does now. But that is not so. There have been times in which the soul condition was quite different—times when there was no such sharp distinction between sleeping and waking. Dreams now are the only bridge between the two; and their content has something deceptive and questionable about them. Primitive man knew a stage between full wakefulness and unconscious sleep, which was pictorial and remote from the senses, but revealing something really spiritual, just as the sense-observation reveals something of the actually physical.

[ 5 ] In this life of pictures, and not of thoughts, early man had a dream-like experience of his pre-earthly existence. He felt his pre-earthly soul-nature as an echo of what he had gone through. On the other hand he had not that sense of self which present-day man has. He did not find himself in the same degree as to-day as an ‘Ego’. [ 6 ] This feeling has arisen only in the course of human spiritual evolution, and the decisive epoch of this development is that in which occurred also the event of Golgotha.

[ 7 ] At this time in the ordinary consciousness the psychic experience of an echo from pre-earthly existence grew ever fainter. Man's knowledge of himself became more and more limited to what his physical sense-life on earth told him,

[ 8 ] Moreover from, this moment the perception of death took on a new meaning. Previously man knew, as I have described, of the central point of his being. He knew it through the contemplation of this echo in such case that he was convinced this echo could not be affected by death. At the moment of historical time when the view became limited to the physical nature of man, death became a disturbing problem for the soul.

[ 9 ] The further development of purely inner faculties of knowledge did not suffice to solve this problem. It was solved by the events of Golgotha occurring in the evolution of the earth.

[ 10 ] The Christ came down to earthly existence from those worlds in which man had passed his pre-earthly life. By combining the experience of the ordinary awake consciousness with the contemplation of the acts of Christ, man can find, since Golgotha, what he formerly found through a natural function of his consciousness.

[ 11 ] The ‘Initiates’ of the ancient Mysteries spoke to their followers in such a way that they saw in their considerations of pre-earthly life a gift of grace from that spiritual Sun-Being which has its counterpart in the physical sun.

[ 12 ] The Initiates who at the time of the mystery of Golgotha still continued the ancient initiation-methods, told those who had ears to hear how the Being who had before given to man the echo from spiritual worlds of pre-earthly existence that he could carry into the earthly life, had descended as the Christ upon the physical earth and taken flesh in the person of the man Jesus.

[ 13 ] Those who knew the truth about the mystery of Golgotha always, as in the early days of Christianity, spoke of the Christ-Being as one who had descended from spiritual worlds to an earthly one. The teachers of mankind of that time stressed particularly this aspect of the Christ coming from a higher world down to the earth.

[ 14 ] This view was conditioned by the fact that one still knew enough, from the ancient initiation, about the supernatural worlds, to see in Christ a Being of the spiritual world before his descent to earth.

[ 15 ] The remnants of this knowledge lasted into the Fourth Century, and then faded in man's consciousness. The event of Golgotha thus became an event which was known only through the construction of political history.

The principles of initiation of the old world were lost to the outer world, and took root only in almost unknown places. Only now in the last third of the nineteenth Century has a stage in human evolution been reached again in which the new Initiation, as has been described leads to an aspect of Christ's nature within the spiritual world.

[ 16 ] It was necessary for the complete unfolding of the ego-consciousness, which was to come into being in the development of humanity, that initiate knowledge should disappear for a few centuries, and that man should turn his attention to the outer world of the senses in which the ego-consciousness could be freely cultivated.

[ 17 ] Thus it was only possible for the Christian community to direct the attention of believers to the historical tradition concerning the mystery of Golgotha and to clothe what was once known by spiritual knowledge in ‘Dogmas of Belief’ for the Earth. The content of these Dogmas does not concern us here, but only the manner in which they affect the soul, whether through faith, belief or through knowledge.

[ 18 ] It is again possible to-day to have a direct knowledge of the Christ. The figure of Jesus stood for centuries in front of the ordinary consciousness, and the Christ who lived in him, had become an object of faith. But more and more the inclination to dogmatic faith grew less, precisely among the spiritual leaders of mankind; Jesus was seen more and more only as history made him appear to the ordinary consciousness. The sense of Christ was gradually lost; and so there grew up a modern branch of Theology which concerns itself really only with the man Jesus, and which lacks a living sense of the Christ. But a mere Jesus-Faith is really -no longer Christianity.

[ 19 ] In the consciousness which early man had of his pre-earthly existence, he had also an anchorage for a proper relationship to his existence, after death on earth.

In later times his union with the Christ was to give him in another way what had thus been given him in primæval time by nature, through the sense of his own life-experience concerning the problem of death. The Christ was so to permeate him, in the words of St. Paul, ‘Not I, but the Christ in me’, that He might be his guide through the gate of death. Man now had indeed something in the ordinary consciousness which could develop the complete Ego-sense, but nothing which could give the soul the strength to approach the gates of Death with certain knowledge of its living passage through them. For ordinary consciousness is a result of the physical body, and therefore can give the soul only such strength as must be regarded as extinguished in death.

[ 20 ] To those who could learn all this from their old initiation, the human physical organism appeared out of order, for they had to assume that it could not develop the power to give the soul such a comprehensive consciousness as to enable it to live its full life. Christ appeared as the soul-doctor of the world, as the Healer, the Saviour, and as such in His fundamental relationship to humanity He must be recognized.

[ 21 ] The event of death and its relationship to the Christ is to be the subject of my next study.

[ 22 ] Through the taking-up of the Christ-experience a Philosophy has grown out of what the ancient consciousness, deepened by the saying of the Initiates, had given to man as an experience of eternity, and a philosophy which can include the divine Father principle. The Father in Spirit can be regarded again as the all-pervading Being. Cosmology gains its Christian character through the knowledge of the Christ who, as a Being from outside the earth, assumed mortal shape in the person of Jesus. In the events of human evolution the Christ is recognized as the Being to whose lot has fallen a decisive part in this evolution. And through the re-awakening of the half-forgotten knowledge of the ‘Eternal Man’, the human mind is led out of the purely sense-world in which the ego-consciousness develops, to the spirit, which can be experienced with full understanding by the soul in conjunction with God the Father and the Christ in a renewed perceptive knowledge of Religion.

[ 1 ] In the state of sleep, sense-experience ceases for the ordinary consciousness as does also the psychic activity of thinking, feeling and willing. Thus man loses what he terms as ‘himself’.

[ 2 ] Through the psychic exercises of the soul which have been described in the previous studies, thinking is the first to be seized by the higher consciousness. Without being lost first however, thinking cannot be thus seized. In successful meditation one experiences this loss of thinking. One does actually feel oneself as an independent inner being; there is actually some kind of an inner experience. But one cannot at once experience one's own entity so strongly as to comprehend it through active thought. This only becomes possible by degrees. The inner activity grows and the power of thinking is kindled from a quarter other than ordinary consciousness. In this ordinary consciousness can one only experience oneself in a momentary glimpse. But by the rekindling of thought through the psychic exercises, after passing through not-thinking and arriving at imagining, one experiences the content of the whole cycle of life from birth to the present moment as one's own proper Ego.

The memories of ordinary consciousness are also experiences of the moment, images realized in the present which point to the past only through their content.

[ 3] Such memories are at first lost when image-making begins. The past is then seen as if it was something present. As in sense-perception the senses are led to the things which are side by side in space, so the kindled activity of the soul is led to the different events of one's own life in image-making. The course of events in time is presented as happening at the same time. A process of growth becomes something present at the moment.

[ 4 ] But in higher consciousness there is something else than just the memories of the ordinary consciousness. There you have the activity of the etheric organism previously unknown to this consciousness. The memories of the ordinary consciousness are only images of man's experience through his physical organism of the outer world, whereas the ‘imaginative’ consciousness knows the activity which the etheric organism has effected in the physical organism.

[ 5 ] The rising-up of this experience happens in such a way that one has the feeling of something rising from the depths of the soul which before had indeed lain hidden in one's own nature, but had not surged up into the consciousness. All this must be experienced in full consciousness; and that is the case if the ordinary consciousness continues to be kept side by side with the ‘imaginative’.

The experiences gained in the active exchange between etheric and physical organism must always be capable of being brought into relationship with the corresponding memory-life of the ordinary consciousness. Whoever is not able to do this is not dealing with imagination but with an experience of a visionary kind.

[ 6 ] In visionary experience consciousness is not adding a new content to the old, as in imagination, but it is changed; the old content cannot be recalled at the same time as the new. The man who has ‘imagination’ has his ordinary self next to him, as it were; the visionary has been turned into quite a different being.

[ 7 ] Anybody criticizing Anthroposophy from the outside should take note of this. Imaginative knowledge has often been considered as leading to something visionary. This view has to be strictly rejected by the true researcher into the spirit. He does by no means replace the ordinary consciousness by a visionary one, but he incorporates an imaginative one into it. Ordinary thinking fully controls imaginative experience at every moment. The visionary picturing is a stronger entering of the ego into the physical organism than is the case in the ordinary consciousness. Imagining on the other hand is an actual ‘stepping-out’ from the physical organism, and the ordinary constitution of the soul remains by its side consciously held in the physical organism.

We grow conscious in a part of the soul which before was unconscious, but that part which before was conscious in the physical organism remains in the same psychic condition. The interchange between the experience of imagination and that of ordinary consciousness is just as real a happening to the soul as is the guiding to and fro of soul-activity from one thought to another in the course of ordinary consciousness. If this is kept in mind one cannot mistake imaginative knowledge for something of a visionary nature. It tends, on the contrary, to drive out all inclination to what is visionary. But he who uses ‘imaginative cognition’ is also in a position to realize that visions are not independent of the body but dependent on it in a far higher degree than sense-experiences. For he can compare the character of visions with that of imagination which is really independent of the body. The Visionary is more deeply immersed in his physical functions than the man who perceives the outer world by means of his senses in the ordinary way.

[ 8 ] When Imagination takes place ordinary thinking is recognized as something having no substantial content. Only what is introduced into consciousness by imagination is found to be the substantial content of this ordinary thinking. Ordinary thinking may indeed be compared to a mirrored picture. But while the mirrored picture rises in the ordinary consciousness the imagined picture is alive unconsciously.

We imagine also in our ordinary psychic life, but unconsciously. If we did not imagine we should not think. The conscious thoughts of ordinary psychic life are the reflections of unconscious imagining mirrored by the physical organism. And the substantial part of this imagining is the etheric organism which is manifest in the development of man's earthly life.

[ 9 ] A new element enters the consciousness with inspiration. In order to attain inspiration the individual human life must be abstracted, as has been described in the previous studies. But the power of activity which the soul has won for itself by imagining still remains. Possessing this power the soul can attain pictures of that which in the universe underlies the etheric organism just as this underlies the physical.

[ 10 ] And thus the soul is faced with its own eternal nature. In the ordinary consciousness it happens that the soul can only give its activity a conceptual form by grasping the physical organism. It dives into it and there finds the pictured reflections of that which it experiences with its etheric organism. This latter, however, the soul does not experience in its activity. This etheric organism is itself experienced in imaginative consciousness. But this happens through the soul having gone further back with its experience to the astral organism. As long as the soul merely ‘imagines’ it lives unconsciously in the astral organism, and both the physical and etheric organisms are contemplated; as soon as the soul attains ‘inspired’ knowledge the astral organism is also brought into contemplation; for the soul now lives in the eternal centre of its being, and can contemplate this by means of the continuation of ‘intuitive’ cognition. Through this it lives in the spiritual world, as in ordinary existence it lives in its physical organism.

[ 11 ] The soul learns in this way how the physical, etheric and astral organisms grow out of the spiritual world. But it can also observe the continued activity of the spiritual in the organization of the earthly being—man. It sees how the spiritual centre of man's nature sinks into the physical, etheric and astral organism. This sinking is not really a merging of something spiritual into something physical, so that the former dwells in the latter. But it is a transformation of part of the human soul into the physical and etheric organization. This part of the soul disappears during earthly life by being transformed into the physical and etheric organism. It is this part of the soul which is experienced through thought by the ordinary consciousness in its reflection. But the soul emerges again elsewhere.

This is the case with that part of it which in earthly existence is experienced as volition, which has a different character from thought. Volition even during wakefulness contains a section which is asleep. The soul receives a thought clearly. Actually man when he thinks is fully awake, which is not the case with volition. The will is stimulated by thought. Consciousness extends as far as thought. But then the act of volition sinks into the human organism. If I deliberately raise my hand I have the causal thought in my ordinary consciousness to start with, and the sight of my raised hand with all the accompanying sensations is the result of my act of will. What is between remains unconscious. What happens in the depths of the organism when a man puts his will into action escapes the ordinary consciousness just as do the events of sleep. Man has always a part of himself asleep even when he is awake.

[ 12 ] This is the part in which continues to live during earthly existence as much of the Spirit-Soul as had not been transformed into the physical organism. One perceives this when true intuition has been achieved by the exercises of the will previously described. Then we recognize behind the will the eternal part of the human soul, which is transformed into the head-organization; and disappears in its form-life during earthly existence, rises again on the other side to pass through death and to become ready once more to help in a future physical body and earthly life.

This brings this study to the event of death which is to be further touched upon in the next. For by the views I have put before you to-day we are led only to the continuity of the Will and to a knowledge of that part of the soul from the past, which is transformed into human head-organization. We have not reached the destiny of the ego-consciousness, which can only be treated in conjunction with the Christ-problem. Therefore that study will again lead us back to a consideration of the mysteries of Christianity.

[ 13 ] The customary Philosophy of Ideas consists of thoughts; but they have no life, no substance. The substance comes by leaving behind the physical organism in ‘Imagination’. As I have shown, formerly the ideas of Philosophy were only mirrored pictures. If these are built up into a Philosophy, and if one studies them without prejudice, one must feel their unreality. One feels vaguely the moment here described as the one in which all remembered thought entirely disappears.

Augustine and Descartes have felt this, but have inefficiently explained it to themselves as ‘doubt’. But Philosophy acquires life when the unity of life is substantiated in the soul.

Bergson perceived this, and has expressed it in his idea of ‘Duration’. But he did not proceed beyond this point.

Starting with this as a basis, we shall proceed to consider its bearing upon Cosmology and Religious cognition.