The Rudolf Steiner Archive

Dear attendees! After yesterday's lecture, which I was allowed to give here, some of the listeners may perhaps be astonished that one can speak of spiritual science or theosophy as a way of life. For what I tried to explain yesterday, as the fundamental, the basic principle of the study of the spiritual worlds, presupposes a vigorous, patient, long-lasting exercise of the human soul. Only through this can what was spoken of yesterday be achieved: that the soul becomes so strong and powerful within itself that it can feel itself to be a spiritual being and actually leave the physical body, thus living in such a way that, in the true sense of the word, the soul itself becomes a spiritual being among other spiritual beings in its experience, that it enters a new world in this spiritual world.

That was the purpose of yesterday's paths. If we allow ourselves to be guided very briefly once more by the soul, what has emerged is that the human soul is capable of doing spiritual chemistry; that it is capable of extracting itself as a spiritual-soul being from the context in which it stands in everyday life with the body, just as one is capable of extracting hydrogen from water. And we have seen that by vigorously continuing the exercises we characterized yesterday, the soul really does come to know its physical body first as something external, like the other things, but to know itself as being lifted out and transferred into a spiritual world. And in the further progress of the soul's practice, it turns out that the soul also leaves what it experiences in a soul-like way in everyday life – which only brings back the memory of its life to the point where our ordinary memory, as at a point in our childhood, emerged before our self-awareness – but that then this inner content of the soul changes and that what comes out can be called the spiritual core of the human being , which, when it is experienced, contains the eternal part of the human being, which passes through the gate of death and of which one can then know from real knowledge that he [the human being] goes through repeated earthly lives, that he leads a life alternating between a life on earth that runs between birth and death, and a life in the spiritual world that runs between death and a new birth.

Now it could be said: Is it not in the nature of things that this leaving of the physical body, this experiencing oneself as a spiritual-soul being in a completely different world, which can only be achieved after great efforts, that it is perhaps suitable for few people in the present, [that] therefore not everyone can become a soul researcher? Is it therefore not unnecessary to make that which only a few can really do, that which only a few can know, into common knowledge? One could object: How can someone who does not become a spiritual researcher themselves have any understanding of the messages that are given to them by the spiritual researcher about processes, conditions and entities in the spiritual world? For individuals, for a few people, one might say, the attainment of spiritual science may be a life asset; but for those who do not want to go this way, who do not reach a certain point on the path described yesterday, for them spiritual science cannot be a life asset. And yet! Even to the abstract thought it must appear as if that which can be attained in the indicated way must be a real inner good.

In today's lecture, the term “theosophy” is used. One could say that spiritual science is a theosophical world view. For this has always been understood to mean a world view that gives the human soul certainty and knowledge that the deepest, innermost core of our being can be reached, and thus it turns out that in its essence we experience that as the root of our existence, is connected with the root of all existence in the world, with the divine-spiritual existence of the world. Through our essential core, we ourselves are rooted in the divine-spiritual. This is what is meant by the term theosophy. And a theosophical world view does not just want to say that one can sense and believe that the human being is connected in his nature to the divine spiritual world, but it wants to say that the human being can also recognize this connection, that he can penetrate to this point within himself where he is connected to the divine spiritual that permeates and interweaves the world. And from the consciousness of this cognizable connection, a theosophical world view wants to create strength and hope for life.

Thus, a theosophical world view should actually be a true asset in life. But even if someone has gained the conviction through the path of the soul described yesterday that one can recognize how our soul is connected to its source, it might still seem as if only those who are able to undertake such research of the soul themselves can have a real awareness, a consciousness of this connection. But it is not so. This must be emphasized again and again: the conditions, processes and beings of the spiritual world can only be investigated by the method described yesterday. Only by going out of our physical body ourselves through the application of the described method and being among spirits, can we recognize the spiritual foundations of the world. But once they have been recognized by the spiritual researcher, the person to whom they are communicated need not be a spiritual researcher himself to find them understandable and comprehensible, to apply them in the fullest sense in life, to permeate life with them.

To be able to research something in the spiritual world, one must be a spiritual researcher, just as one must be a painter to be able to paint a picture. But once the picture is there, it would be sad if only the painter could understand it. And so it is with what can be found through spiritual research. If it is presented in the right way, then the human soul is attuned to truth and not to error. And just as we can understand the picture that the painter, who can paint, has painted, so we can understand and grasp everything that the spiritual researcher has to say and put it at the service of life, without being a spiritual researcher ourselves.

However, in our present time, it is still a long way before this can be achieved for a wider circle of people. For there is much that stands in the way of the modern soul if it wants to understand what the spiritual researcher has to say to the world. Today, people come from an admirable scientific culture. It has equipped him with habits of thought directed towards the external. Today, man is not accustomed to living in the very different concepts that the spiritual researcher brings out of the realm of the spiritual world.

But this will change when people's habits of thought have recognized that what stands in the way of spiritual research is prejudice. Then people will find that the descriptions of spiritual science can be understood by everyone. Just as chemistry, physics and any other science cannot be used to benefit life, even though not everyone can become a chemist, physicist or whatever, and people use what comes from chemistry and physics without being chemists and physicists, it is certainly true that what the spiritual researcher has to say can be put into the service of life, can become part of our soul, can penetrate the soul.

But then the concepts and ideas that the spiritual researcher has to give directly from the spiritual world have a different effect on the soul than the external concepts and ideas. And only when one has considered what spiritual research can be as a theosophical world view does one come to realize what a valuable asset this spiritual science is. Of course, one might say: When the spiritual researcher speaks of a vital good, this spiritual science cannot give bread and external goods at first. But what it has, it gives; and what it gives is food for the soul, but such food for the soul as it gives is more and more needed by souls due to the particular configuration that our life has taken on in our time.

Now, in order to understand the essence of spiritual science, we must first think of one thing. That is, spiritual research differs from ordinary research in the sensory world in that the human being allows himself to be passively impressed by the truth through the other sciences; that the human being must devote himself and the world transmits the truth to him from the outside. In spiritual research, however, the soul must be active from the very beginning, developing inner energy.

We have seen how the soul must ascend in three ways to the purely supersensible states, processes and entities. By placing itself in these states, it develops an inner facial expression, a purely spiritual mimicry. One cannot merely let what the states of the spiritual world are shine in from the outside. One must unite with it; one must become so one with it that one expresses it in oneself, but expresses it in one's soul, emancipated from the body. Thus, as a spiritual researcher, one enters the spiritual world. As long as one remains passive, it says nothing. Only when one expresses what it has to communicate, when the inner spiritual expression is an expression of what one experiences, only then does it speak. And the gesture, the movement of the soul, it enters into the spiritual world, but again actively, not by living into it as in the outer science, by speculating, but by letting thoughts live within you, you grasp the processes of the spiritual world. Only by imitating them with your own spiritual being can you become aware of them. And the third way was that the human being penetrates through spiritual physiognomy by immersing himself in the spiritual being and raising up the forces in himself from his depths that make him similar in his spiritual and mental state to the moments when he wants to immerse himself in a spiritual being, this spiritual being.

Thus the spiritual researcher enters the spiritual world in three ways: through spiritual facial expressions, through spiritual gestures and postures, and through spiritual physiognomy, but always actively, always in activity. And what he brings forth from the spiritual world must be formulated in concepts. And here we arrive at the point where it turns out that it is actually more difficult to communicate the insights of the spiritual world than it is to communicate the insights of the physical world. A person in our time claims that spiritual science also expresses itself externally in exactly the same way as external science expresses itself. Now, external science expresses itself in such a way that it presupposes the object it wants to recognize. And only afterwards does it want to give the concepts about it. And it does right from its point of view. The spiritual researcher actively immerses himself in the spiritual world and he must himself become an expression of what he experiences in the threefold way as described; and his concepts are formed in such a way that they arise within him vividly, and testify to their truth not as an image, but through their content and their power. The external researcher communicates what he has seen, what he has observed. The spiritual researcher is different: He gives conceptual expression to that which he has experienced, that which has become a part of himself, that which he has struggled to understand; these concepts must be fluid and must illuminate each other so that the concepts are like living beings. But they are such that they arise out of what the deepest essence itself is.

When the spiritual researcher forms his concepts and presents them to the public, these concepts contain information that he can only experience by bringing together the depths of the human soul with the foundations of the world, insofar as they are accessible to us, with the spiritual foundations of the world, so that his concepts are drawn from the depths of the soul. And these depths of the soul are present in every human soul. The spiritual researcher speaks of something that is present in every human soul. When he has researched it and expresses it, he expresses it in such a way that he lets a sound ring out with which the strings of the soul can resonate, to which it can bring full understanding because it is precisely the sound of one's own being.

But these concepts, these ideas, these feelings, in which the spiritual researcher must clothe what he experiences, have the effect of impressing the innermost part of our soul so that it feels drawn to them, because the concepts are active and lead to activity. One cannot understand spiritual science with a casual mind that does not want to be alive within itself. It can only be understood by trying to follow it with the living life and activity of the concepts. Thus spiritual research arises from the activity of the soul and at the same time challenges it to be understood, the activity of the soul.

From this we see that when we respond to spiritual research, we awaken the active power of the soul. It appeals to everything in our soul that wants to be active. The centuries-old scientific education of people has, however, pushed this active power of the soul into the background. But when a force is stretched to its highest degree, the counterforce asserts itself. And anyone who can look into the depths of today's souls knows that the souls long to get out of mere looking and observing, to do what calls for the innermost activity. In this way, the human being learns to feel and experience that he is in the midst of the spiritual world, but not as an understanding being that participates in its life.

Thus, the concepts and ideas and feelings of spiritual science are themselves the educators of the soul, which they seek to guide to participate in the reasons for existence in which we are rooted. First of all, this is realized in the fact that our thinking is oriented – and we can truly speak of an inner soul-good that permeates us through the understanding we bring to the ideas of spiritual research – that our thinking habits, our way of understanding, our soul mood is seized. And while it is otherwise possible to experience that in our presence, especially with well-meaning thinkers, there is something about the orientation of thinking that leaves much to be desired, spiritual science, the messages of spiritual research, can really bring people to orient his thinking in such a way that he imbues this thinking with habits that have a certain natural tendency towards truthfulness; that have a tendency not to get involved in the contradictions of life; to notice how thinking must penetrate into external things. The education of our thinking, the sharpening of our thinking, is what will emerge first when spiritual science enters into our cultural life.

I would like to give an example that can really show what the sharpness of thinking is like in our time. Let us assume that a very important thinker of the present day, who is regarded in the broadest circles today as an astute mind, has done many things that are noticed by those who have trained their thinking in what thinking must not do. There is a recent book by a thinker in which two assertions are found, separated by thirty or forty pages. The thinker in question wants to explain in what sense people today can still be Christians. And one approaches the soul of today's free-thinking people in a pleasing way when one says – and he says it –: Today we must go beyond the demon stories told in the Bible. All right, he may be of that opinion. Thirty pages later, however, one reads the remarkable sentence in the same book: When the spiritual and the physical touch in the soul, then demonic powers arise. You tell that to someone, and he can say: Well, the second time he didn't mean it like that, then he meant it figuratively. Yes, my dear audience, that is precisely the point: people are allowed to use such phrases and are not aware of the grotesque way in which they contradict all orderly thinking.

But people do not notice this today. And we are only on the way to our thinking being corrupted by mere passivity in this direction. This is how it is for those who can see through and observe things. In another famous book, you can read today - there is talk of combating a certain philosophical school of thought - that an author uses the image: This philosophy moves like a clown who pulls up the ladder he has climbed up to him and falls down. The book is quite witty, but I would like to ask you how the clown is supposed to pull the ladder up to him. You only think and write something like that when your thinking is disoriented. But today we are only at the beginning; such books are full of impossible thinking.

But since external culture is, as it were, the imprint of what people think, our culture must gradually be permeated by disordered thinking, unless this thinking is educated in such a way that it can respond with a fine feeling for what can and cannot be said. What can be said must be felt as connected with the essence and weaving of reality. Through orientated thinking, we can become familiar with reality, and this will be the fruit of spiritual science. Everyone will notice that this fruit of spiritual science harmonizes our lives; that it pours something into the soul that is able to bring this life into harmony with reality. In this way, spiritual science already has an educational and training effect on our thinking, making it inwardly active and alive.

And something else results from this. Those who gradually absorb what educated thinking in spiritual science can form in them will feel within themselves the independence of their inner being, the wisdom, the spirituality of their actual core. And there would be no materialism and no monism if one were to really engage in truly trained, energetic, inwardly self-gathering thinking. The strengthening and invigoration of our soul is the fruit of what we have for our thinking from spiritual science.

But spiritual science also brings forth as a second fruit of life that which belongs to the field of self-knowledge. Just as a diseased organism sometimes cannot endure the freshest air, but it can be seen from this that the organism is not healthy, so it can also be seen by some people in relation to spiritual science that they cannot tolerate it, that it makes an impression on them, this spiritual science, that it is fantasy, illusion. One will gradually come to realize that this is a form of self-knowledge; that from it one can see how one should struggle upwards in the soul in order to be able to understand what the spiritual researcher can obtain from the depths of the world.

How far you are from self-knowledge can be recognized by measuring yourself against the demands that the spiritual researcher places on the soul. Therefore, no one should be deterred if they notice that, through spiritual science, their thinking is at first somewhat numbed, disturbed, or their memory no longer seems as coherent to them as it used to. All these are transitional phenomena. We must recognize ourselves in this and say to ourselves: We must struggle to bear the stronger demands in the soul. But then this spiritual science will communicate its healthy spiritual life to us all the more.

And if we go further, we may find that perhaps even today spiritual science is not universally respected as a valuable possession because its value is not so immediately apparent. Nowadays, material goods are of course valued much more than spiritual goods because people do not really understand how material goods depend on spiritual goods. But if many a person could really ask himself out of a certain realization of things – and we can hear this question in our time from many souls who do not quite know how to begin with this or that, who lack a healthy direction in life, who lack the ability to give themselves direction and strength out of a powerful inner being – if many a person could ask himself: Where does all this come from?

These things affect even our physical well-being. Today more than ever, we have to speak of the nervousness of our age, of how unbalanced people are, how they lack balance. Where does this lack of balance come from? Ultimately, it is rooted in the soul. An example of this: that which can most lead to an external feeling of unease, to all possible symptoms of nervousness, to everything else that makes our social life so difficult, what can lead to this is spiritual barrenness, emptiness of the soul, a non-connection of the soul with what spiritual research wants to give, what spiritual research wants to fill the soul with.

Of course, there are some people today who say they have no need for the concepts of spiritual science. That is certainly true. But that is only in their conscious mind. In the depths of the soul there is always a longing for the sources of existence. And what we do not give to the soul asserts itself in it as emptiness, desolation, doubt. And, not overnight, but over decades, what is missing in the soul, what is present as chaos in the soul, pours out into the physical organization. We are no longer up to life. We can no longer pour the soul's strength into the physical because the soul is empty. Because people have become accustomed to paying attention to outward appearances in a natural way over the centuries, they have become estranged from that which can permeate the soul with spiritual content. A great many unhealthy symptoms, which go as far as the physical body and make people unable to cope with life, stem from this. And it will get worse and worse if spiritual science does not intervene and give the soul what it craves without knowing it with the higher consciousness.

Have we not seen that in our time – I do not want to say that there is pessimism in general, but that it has been examined in a peculiar way? If one speaks of pessimism in general, one would have to mention all sorts of misunderstandings. One could mention that some older religions also contain pessimism. But that is not the point, but rather the way in which one tries to support pessimism in our time. This support shows something very peculiar. Perhaps some of you will see what I am about to say as a curiosity. In our time, Kant has found followers. And one of these followers has written Studies in a Psychology of Pessimism. He undertook a strange investigation that takes a completely objective, passive scientific approach to the human being and seeks to examine whether life contains more suffering, more unpleasantness than pleasure, happiness, etc. This professor [Kowalewski] first tried to determine whether this is really the case by asking schoolchildren. He had the children write down what they call happiness in life and what they call suffering in life. They wrote down the following as suffering: illness, death, flooding. As for pleasure, they wrote down: ice cream, playing, gifts. We should not be surprised at the quality of this zest for life. But for the positive researcher, it depends on numerical relationships, and Kowalewski did indeed not just come up with ordinary numbers, but difficult integral terms. His reasoning about pessimism is therefore not easy to read. He was able to determine that in 39 cases suffering was emphasized, in 25 to 27 cases pleasure. So one can conclude from the children's minds that life offers more of the painful than of the pleasurable. And he thought: That doesn't quite go into the positive, you have to do it differently. He also used the diary of a well-known contemporary philosopher. He always wrote down when he felt pleasure and when he felt suffering. And when Professor Kowalewski looked through this diary, he found that suffering outweighed pleasure. So he had the second piece of evidence. But he went further, he was looking for something more certain. He observed people who walk quickly and people who walk slowly. When you are sad, he says, you walk slowly; when you are happy, you walk quickly. That is the professor's premise. And lo and behold, it turns out that there is a far greater number of sad, slow walkers. And so a book has been written in which these numerical relationships have been expressed in mathematical integral forms, and one can say, so to speak, equipped with these: Well, if you examine the external life, the pessimistic world view turns out to be justified, because the external life contains much more of the fatal, the sorrowful, than of the beneficial, the pleasurable. Science has now proved that!

Now there is no need to smile at such ideas. I am not going to talk about the value of such research, in what way it characterizes certain sciences. I just want to ask: What is actually being looked at here? Well, it is what touches man from the external world, what makes an impression on man, for nothing else can be investigated with such methods. No attention is paid to what man is capable of opposing to the impressions from outside, in the way of the unity and self-contained nature of his inner being.

I would like to quote something else that Mechnikov said in his 'Contributions to Optimism'. He talks about someone who was a friend of his, a person who was very nervous, who experienced the disinclination of life in the deepest sense. He could no longer hear a carriage rattle. He could not hear that someone was ringing his bell. He could not see that many people were coming to meet him. And many other things as well. You can imagine what was unbearable for this person. In the end, he knew of no other way to save himself than through morphine, in order to have a sense of stability within himself. Often he was close to taking such a large morphine dose that he could find death. He was also close to death more often, but was saved again and again. Then Mechnikov continued: So that was the man, but it got better and better with his pessimism. And actually Mechnikov says quite rightly why this is so: his external perception, so to speak, became more and more dulled; the outside world no longer made such a strong impression on him as it had done before.

Now we ask ourselves: What led to a greater balance of the soul in this person? That he became duller to the impressions of the outside world, that he was able to close himself off to these impressions. But throughout his life, his inner being was weak. But it can never be a matter of weakening us for everything beautiful and sublime that may come from the world, not to become nervous, but only for what I would like to express as follows: Could not man have had the same earlier, if a strong inner being, permeated with soul substance, had opposed the perceptions of the outer world? But that is precisely what spiritual science strives for: to make man strong within himself against the changing impressions of the outside world; so that we need not become dull to the world, and yet stand securely in the world.

Then it will no longer be necessary to examine the questions of a better or worse life according to purely external things. Kowalewski has done an even more precise experiment and a careful analysis has shown that we have every reason to approach the outside world when we are confronted with it as being much richer in suffering than in pleasure. He did the following. He says: Let us assume that we are examining the sense of taste. Now he has established – in external science you need concepts; where the spirit is absent, you need concepts and words – he called what makes a taste impression in us in the smallest amount of any substance the 'gustie'; and so he established what the gustie is of quinine, which makes an unpleasant impression; sugar makes a pleasant impression. And so he had a number of people take quinine and sugar together to see how much of each was needed to balance it out. And lo and behold, he found that almost twice as much sugar gusti had to be used than quinine gusti if the sugar gusti was to balance the quinine gusti. That means that, in terms of taste, we have to double the pleasant if we want to eliminate the unpleasant.

What I am reflecting on is that we cannot measure something that has an impact on our lives. And the mistake is that one does not take into account that one is actually not at all suited to assess the sugar level in the right way in relation to one's outer life. We take it for granted, but we estimate the quinine level quite strongly. As is well known, we are very much affected by the disease, but we rarely feel the full extent of our desire for health. And this is connected with the mistakes that are made in such investigations.

But we can also fill our health, which must gradually become boring to us when the soul emptiness remains, with what comes to us from the spiritual world, and we can hold out, so to speak, what flows in from the spiritual world to us, which can always hold and carry us, against the obviousness of the disaffection of the outer world. One should not treat a pessimistic mood by asking: Is the world good or bad? but in such a way that one says to oneself: The person who does not find the strength to stand securely in the world has not drawn enough from the spiritual world. What the person of whom Mechnikov speaks acquires through the deadening of his outer organization flows into our soul as a true asset of life when we take up spiritual-scientific concepts and ideas. Just as the most important things for the development of the soul of the spiritual researcher himself flow from the soul's harmony, so the soul's harmony and balance flow out again as a vital asset from the communications of spiritual research.

And we can cite another thing. We have now spoken of the influences of spiritual science on our thinking and imagining, on our minds. We can also speak of an influence on our will, on the initiative of our actions. The fact that we receive such concepts from the spiritual researcher, which are brought down from the spiritual worlds, means that these concepts also penetrate into our soul in such a way that they are suitable for pointing our soul to what is independent in it from the external sense world.

But now, how much arises in our will as a result of external stimulation? I see something that stimulates me. Perhaps I see a flower, I pick it; I am stimulated by it. I do something in life in one way or another. Once the educators taught me something; as a result, the skill arose in me for this or that. If we examine our will, we find external stimuli everywhere. This is precisely what characterizes the will in everyday life: it is stimulated from the outside to a greater extent than is usually believed. Even people who believe themselves to be the freest are dependent on this or that stimulus. They believe they act freely, but they only act according to what has been exerted as a stimulus from the outside world. In particular, we can often see that when people resist this or that in the name of the freedom of their soul, they are in fact resisting because of their stubbornness, their lack of freedom, and not because of the freedom of their mind. In short, the will is rooted everywhere, so to speak, in the external world.

When we take in spiritual science, what flows from its insights has a strengthening and invigorating effect on this will in particular. It works in such a way that this will in the soul becomes independent. But when it does that, we feel it as a force in the soul, as something that can only receive stimulation from within. We are enriched in our soul when we strengthen our will in this way. The external causes no longer affect that part of our inner being that we have acquired through our own will. We withdraw from external causes with our will. When someone becomes more and more deeply involved in spiritual science, they feel their will growing stronger. They can say: “I can now want more than I could before.” But this can only be achieved through devotion to spiritual science.

But if there is no external stimulus for the will, where must impulses come from? Again, what arises as new will not remain in rest, in inactivity, if it receives impetus from within. There is only one thing that no longer compels: what we call love in the broadest sense. This means that the motives of our will must be warmed through by love through the influence of spiritual science. We learn to recognize more and more the deep meaning of the word:

[duty]: where one loves what one commands oneself,

where that which leads us to action leads us entirely through our love for the task at hand, and we strive to accomplish it with the strength of soul with which we strive to accomplish everything that arises from love. With this, we have gained a beautiful fruit of spiritual science as a treasure for life. We have achieved the transformation of our will into the will to love. The treasure of the will to love grows ever greater when spiritual science becomes our life's treasure. Again, it is not something that provides us with material goods. But this will to love is a strengthening, valuable good for our external security in life, which we will see grow and grow as we properly penetrate into spiritual science through the concepts and ideas of spiritual science.

And again, a piece of self-knowledge can be linked to it. We often hear that people think highly of themselves when it comes to their will to love. But this is not the case. For when people, in wise self-observation, become aware of how the ideas and concepts of spiritual science make them aware of the selfishness and lack of love that still exists in them, spiritual science is once again the beautiful corrective, the genuine guide to self-knowledge. On the one hand, it gives us the will to love; on the other hand, it makes us aware of how much we still lack of this will to love. Thus, spiritual science is also the highest form of life, which can be described by the word self-education.

And further, spiritual science leads us beyond what the concepts borrowed from the external world can give us. It leads us to what the spiritual researcher finds by going out of his body with his soul and connecting with the roots of the world from which he, spirit from spirit, is taken. It thus leads us to what is deepest in our soul.

More and more one will see, as I also tried to explain yesterday - through the parable at the end - that science, which is built according to the pattern of external science, must stop at a certain point if it wants to become a worldview. I could explain this for many ideas that are important life ideas. I will explain it for only one idea now. Let us suppose that some philosopher, who at first wants nothing to do with spiritual science, Lotze, a man of spirit - I will stick to my habit of quoting those whom I consider worthy of opposition, those whom I regard as authorities - Lotze, who has written a book, 'Microcosm', which contains many significant works on philosophy, has also tried to present a philosophy of religion. But he arrives only at a conception of truth, at a recognition of such a conception of truth, which is won according to the pattern of those conceptions and ideas that are far removed from outer reality, that are won passively. Lotze therefore attempts to win a philosophy of religion by building it up in the sense of outer science. And, lo and behold, Lotze goes as far as is humanly possible. From his presuppositions he arrives at the assumption of a spiritual being, a divine being, that permeates and pervades the world, that is creatively active. He arrives at being able to conceive of the laws of nature as shaped and spiritualized by a unified divine essence. But every time a religious philosophy of this kind seeks to show how that which is shaped according to the pattern of external truth, like a natural law, is connected with the moral commandments, with that which, as inner impulses, inspires us in life, then it must come up against a duality for which it knows no connection. On the one hand, there are laws that operate with rigid, cold necessity. Where, in this whole system of natural laws, does that which lives in us as our moral impulses arise, as that which drives us to be noble in our human existence, that which permeates us with morality? Where does it spring from out there? If philosophy is to become a way of looking at life, then this question becomes relevant. It takes on significance. If philosophy is to become a regulator of our view of life, pointing out that on the one hand there is the world of necessity, and on the other the world of moral commandments, which, however, lives in us as if cut off from the world - how is it rooted in the world? As long as we remain with the passive concept of truth, we will never be able to bridge this gap, because there is a relationship between necessary truth and its legitimacy and moral truth and its legitimacy that cannot be seen in the external world, that cannot be passively grasped. The relationship between the natural order and the moral order cannot be grasped any more than the relationship between a mother and her child can be grasped through natural laws alone. The father could be there without the child being there. If the child is there, the child emerges from the father, but the father could be without a child. There is no necessity in the father, yet the father leads to the child. Perhaps one of the most significant conceptions and ideas of Christianity is that the relationship of the one God to the God who is to permeate our innermost being is presented in our morality as the relationship of the Father to the Son, the Christ. Theosophy or spiritual science shows us that there is a relationship between the moral world order and the natural-law necessity and world order, such as that of the Son to the Father.

But this relationship can only be understood by going beyond what can be given in passive terms to what can be grasped in the spiritual world; which stands before us in such a way that Goethe can coin the words - he looked to Kant, who tried to set limits to human knowledge, who wanted to regard as mere belief that which is moral world order ; he called it an “adventure of reason” that should not be undertaken. Goethe, who had to reject the kind of world view that Kant represents; he said that if one could truly rise to the upper regions through virtue and faith in the moral order, then one should bravely endure the adventure of reason and also go up with the whole soul to a higher world.

Then, at the same time, something is poured into the natural order as well as into the moral order that is as communal as that which exists between father and son, because nature, if we look at it as it is, could exist without morality, like the father without a son. Only when we look at what has really happened do we find the right relationship between father and son.

So we have to go to what has really happened in the world, and there we come to the very core of Christianity.

I wanted to give you an example of how religious concepts, which the human mind needs to feel its connection with what pulses through the world as divine-spiritual, how the human being can be strengthened in his religious life through spiritual science. For spiritual science shows him that one can really still grasp and understand that which, according to a great philosopher such as Kant, one should only assume and only be able to believe.

Our time, however, is living into an epoch in which it is once again quite clear to the spiritual researcher how souls are increasingly longing not only to accept religious deepening based on the authority of faith, but also to be able to recognize as we recognize nature, that which binds people together with the Divine-Spiritual in the cosmos outside.

Another asset for life will be that the newly awakening religious needs - for they will awaken, the religious needs appropriate to our time - will give these spiritual scientific concepts of inner support, of being set within, again.

The spiritual researcher himself is familiar with all the objections that can be made. If someone wants to say, for example: Now you have presented spiritual science as a special bringer of love. Doesn't Christianity do that for itself? — Yes, of course. The person who says that is fully convinced of it, and perhaps from his point of view he is quite right. But one could give him an answer, which I once had to give to a clergyman who said to me: Yes, what spiritual science says about Christianity, at least in many respects one can certainly go along with that. But one thing strikes me. The way you speak, you only speak to a few educated people who fulfill certain conditions. But we speak to all people. And that must be a true teaching that speaks to all people. I replied, “Pastor, have you found that all people go to church with you?” He could not say that. You see, I said, I want to speak to those who do not go to church with you, because they also have a living yearning for an understanding of Christianity. The fact shows that you are not speaking for them. So you are not speaking correctly for all people. And we do not have the right to say: something is right because we like it; we have to observe the facts. You may think you can dress your teaching in words that will appeal to everyone, but what we think is not always right, the facts must speak. For those who do not go to church but still long for an understanding of Christianity, we must also speak.

Of course, Christianity also speaks of love, but the point is not just to talk about the way to love; the point is to find the way that is the right way for a particular time. You must not be so selfish as to say: I want nothing to do with such a way to love, because the old way is good enough for me. That is egoism, which does not want to pay attention to the longings and tendencies of the souls that are touched by what will touch more and more souls in the future. But it is these souls that need the new paths, and the number of these souls will grow. The spiritual-scientific worldview wants to inspire them. It wants to give life goods of the kind that have been discussed here.

I could speak about many other life goods that can flow from spiritual science, but the principle is how spiritual science creates life goods, how spiritual science brings forth that which is immortal in us. But through this, what consciousness evokes in us is awakened and activated: You are an independent being; within you is a source through which spiritual life can bubble, which empowers you, which can give you strength, which can give you everything you need for your life.

Spiritual science is indeed gradually transformed into feelings and sensations. We not only experience immortality theoretically. From the whole structure of my lecture, you could see that the concepts of spiritual science bring to life and resonate within us what the spiritual researcher explores. This is particularly the case with one of the most important questions in life, the question of immortality.

If you delve deeper into spiritual science, you will receive a spiritual doctrine of immortality, a teaching about the core of the human being that can be clothed in concepts and ideas so that we not only know about immortality, but feel within us what is immortal in us. We become like a plant that could feel how the germ grows within it into a new plant. We feel what passes through the gate of death; we learn to experience it. And the time will come when principles such as those set forth in my book 'The Education of the Child from the Point of View of Spiritual Science' will be applied to the education of the child, when the soul will be so stimulated that it will live on in us, that we will have acquired a feeling through the concepts we have absorbed, that we will know: by living towards death, you develop more and more what your eternal part is. In the second half of life, when we see wrinkles forming on our skin and our hair turning gray, we will feel how all this is like the fading blossoms of plants, but how there is something in us that is emerging ever stronger, overcoming what fades away in us. And as we live towards a new life, we will feel that life. Old age will not be filled with an empty hope, but with the experience of what is felt within as a reality, which will be carried through death into the realm of the spiritual. This, however, will give certainty in life. It will dispel all superficiality, all incoherence of the spirit, all chaos in life. Thus, in addition to the other possessions of life, there will be a particularly intimate possession for our soul.

Just as I have pointed out that with the insights of spiritual science from the depths of human inner and outer perception, one can feel in harmony with all those who, in the right sense, have sensed the significance of human soul life and its relationship to the whole spiritual world through the whole development of humanity, so I would like to conclude by speaking of a thinker who is often forgotten today; a sincere, courageous thinker who, in a small booklet, which is really what is written on its title page, a “Dietetics of the Soul” - I would like to remind you of this dear connoisseur of the human soul, of Feuchtersleben.

The human soul cannot deny that ultimately its happiness consists only in the expansion of its innermost being and possessions.

Yes, the soul's true happiness and, we may add, the soul's true spiritual possessions consist in the expansion of the soul's inner being and possessions. And if spiritual science is what I tried to present yesterday and today, then it is indeed entirely that which, with all its impulses, strives for the expansion of the soul's inner being and possessions. And truly, with what spiritual science gives, one feels oneself standing within what the best minds of humanity have longed and thirsted for, because the soul needs it for its inner spiritual nourishment. Therefore, one is in harmony with such a fine, delicate soul as Feuchtersleben, one that nevertheless thinks and feels on a grand scale. And to sum up, if one wants to collect together in a general feeling what spiritual science can give as its best, one may say: spiritual science gives life's goods; it promotes the genuine, true happiness of the soul. It is held in the sense in which Feuchtersleben's saying is meant:

The human soul cannot hide the fact that its happiness ultimately consists only in the expansion of its innermost being and possession.

Question & Answer: Question: Can you slap children on the hand?

Rudolf Steiner: That is not so easy to answer. Such questions take on a new significance and importance in our time. There is not always a simple answer to a simple question. Simplicity is convenient, but even a clock is not simple. The universe is even less simple, with less power in it than in a clock. Spiritual science does not make things more comfortable, but through it one sees into areas that are indispensable for shaping life. Then one finds that simple things are complicated. Spiritual science gets one used to taking things more precisely, taking things more seriously. Farm children are quite properly tapped on the knuckles, with proper taps, decorated with an iron ring, but they have not become nervous. City children, who have never been tapped on the knuckles, are often nervous. Life is complicated. What is achieved in one nature through something is not always achieved in the other nature through it.

Goethe is right when he says, “One thing is not suitable for all”; we must take people as individuals and not judge abstractions. We cannot say that one thing or another is generally harmful or useful. Spiritual science will lead us from the abstract to the concrete, to an immediate understanding of immediate, concrete life. Then one will find that the question of nervousness will not have much to do with it; but much more important is the question of education from the spiritual-scientific point of view. Then one can completely dispense with what is indicated here. But this education requires much more of the activity of the soul of the educator, who is able to find his way into every soul.

Beating is usually required by the nature of the educator, not the person being educated. In general, it can be said that corporal punishment is not particularly recommended as a means of education, regardless of whether it is on the fingers or elsewhere.

Question: Is clairvoyance possible while awake? [...]

Rudolf Steiner: As a rule, one cannot see the physical-sensory world and the spiritual world at the same time. The physical world is then like a sinking, and simultaneous seeing is usually caused by bringing something like a having [raising?] of the soul into the spiritual vision. What matters is not the state, but the fact that one is so present in the spiritual vision with one's ego, with one's consciousness, that one does not experience it as if in a trance, but consciously. Only then can one seek the connection between the two worlds. It is said that matter does not appear to be present when this state occurs. Yes, it was said yesterday that one has a picture in front of oneself and that one must first learn to read these pictures. You cannot relate them to reality as in the physical world, but must first learn to read them.

Question: Is the concept of God actually set aside in Theosophy, or at least not emphasized as it is in the Christian religion?

Rudolf Steiner: That is a strange question, because theosophy is named after the concept of “God” or “Theos”. It is as if one speaks of Selters water, from which the watery, liquid part has been completely removed. Such objections can only be made if one has not studied the subject. We do not have the immodesty to constrict God into a limited concept; in him we live and move and have our being, and so do our concepts. One can only gradually become familiar with the divine. Most of the time, such a question only wants to say: I do not want any other Christianity than I have always understood. Question: Should flawlessness be achieved?

Rudolf Steiner: That is an abstraction. Questions are often asked about the beginning and end of the world and so on, but the human being can only gradually ascend to understanding. The concepts that are usually brought up are usually as unsuitable as possible. Spiritual science places us in life and keeps us from abstract speculation. Through theosophy, morality is also led into the concrete.

Question: Is there not a danger for the theosophist of being withdrawn from his fellow human beings by the cult of the ego?

Rudolf Steiner: Where there is strong light, there is also strong shadow. There must be a transformation into the will to love, so that the ego is sought much more outside than inside.

Question: Christ's suffering and death is only an archetype for us, since we have to atone for our mistakes later anyway.

Rudolf Steiner: I first have to familiarize myself with this question. It is based on a misunderstanding of the idea of karma. One then says: Why should I help a person who is in need and misery? One should help him first, that is written on his karmic account and has a further effect. How I can help one person, I can help two, three, five, fifty, a hundred, a thousand, and a mighty being like the Christ can help all people in karma.

Question: How can I be released from a sin of thought that I cannot make amends for because the person concerned has since died?

Rudolf Steiner: This must be balanced out in the further course of life. One must not judge this from a merely earthly point of view. We are not dissatisfied with our fate from a higher point of view. Between death and birth, we would be very dissatisfied if we did not have the suffering that flows from our deeds; we do not feel it as suffering at all, but as a relief to be able to balance it out; we strive to balance it out. There is a completely different state between birth and death than between death and a new birth.

Question: What influence does anesthesia have on the finer bodies?

Rudolf Steiner: Wherever it is possible to avoid anesthesia, it should be avoided. Normally, the soul and spirit leave the body during sleep; with anesthesia, they are forced out, that is, they are subjected to force. If it is necessary, it should be used, of course. Question: Does a stillborn child have an ego?

Rudolf Steiner: No more than a corpse. It may have been an attempt at incarnation of the ego before it died in the mother's body.

Question: We have often heard about the effects of karma. What about the cruel punishments in the Middle Ages?

Rudolf Steiner: It is like an account book. The punishment is, so to speak, on the debit side and balances with the other side. There is no need for an absolute balance to be there immediately when a punishment occurs. The soul would not even be satisfied with that after death, because it wants to balance.

Question: Some of the Theosophists look unusual in their hairstyles and clothing. A stranger can feel uncomfortably touched!

Rudolf Steiner: This is certainly not a result of the spiritual current! One must be tolerant of the tastes of others; this is perhaps one of the assets of Theosophy. If you want to wear what you like, why shouldn't others be allowed to do the same? Hopefully it doesn't happen too often that Theosophists become Theosophists through hairstyles and clothing. And, ladies, wearing what you like is something that other women do too, and the Theosophists don't say anything, even if they don't always like it.

Question: [Is there a] sense of self after death?

Rudolf Steiner: Self-awareness is rooted in what remains after death. Only after death we have other tools for perception. Eyes and ears fall off. The soul produces other tools. [The] sense of self is preserved, indeed with a much more intense character. Other theosophists are said to have stated that after death there is only consciousness but no self-awareness? This may be stated in some books, but it has nothing to do with the spiritual science referred to here.

Question: On the other hand, the seer of Prevorst: the people she speaks of still show remorse.

Rudolf Steiner: This does not exclude self-awareness.

The other questions are not of a nature that would be suitable for answering here.

Dear attendees! For many years now, I have been able to give spiritual science lectures in this city every winter. Even in these fateful times, our friends in the spiritual science movement have asked me to give this lecture today. Now it will seem understandable that in this time, in which such tremendous but also such painful things are happening, in which something so immeasurably significant for European and world history is preparing, that in this time I want to tie such considerations to what moves us all, to that which those who stand in the East and West and who have to stand up for what the great duty of the time demands through blood and death. In such a time, words also want to be directed where feelings and emotions take them, where blood and death defend the great goods of Central Europe, where tremendous decisions must be made. And so today my words are dedicated to the contemplation of that which is being defended in our present time, which is being attacked, defamed and reviled from all sides in this our time. I would like to begin by touching on what I would call the basic principle and aspiration of spiritual science, and then show how this basic aspiration, this innermost impulse of spiritual science – which wants to be a motive that penetrates into the spiritual cultural movement of the present and into the future – how these spiritual scientific impulses are firmly anchored in the supporting forces of the German spirit. And then some highlights will be thrown on the way in which Germany's enemies today disparage, misunderstand and more of this kind this German spirit, this German nature, this Germanness in the east and the West.

I have often had the opportunity to explain here how spiritual science wants to be the true successor of the scientific world view, but that it is in turn the opposite pole of this scientific world view in that it wants to approach the worlds of spiritual life with a truly scientific character. For the spiritual-scientific world view, spirit is not just something that can be grasped in terms, ideas, or abstract concepts. Rather, for spiritual science, spirit is that which reigns in a world that is behind our sensory world, that contains the reasons and driving forces for everything that our sensory world and life, including historical development, offer us, and that takes place within the sensory world. As I said, I can only touch on this today and must refer you to the reading.

Spiritual science prepares the human soul, if he wants to prepare himself for it, so that a realization, a real experience of this soul takes place, which is not bound to the forces of the body, is not bound to the senses, not bound, like the ordinary mind, to the brain, but spiritual science prepares the soul for a body-free cognition through what has been mentioned here more often: meditation, concentration of the life of thought. You can find a more detailed description in my books “How to Know Higher Worlds?” or in the second part of the book “The Secret Science” or in the book “Theosophy”. These books describe the paths that lead people, through inner activity and inner experience, to free the soul-spiritual from its bondage to the body, so that it can dwell in the life and activity, in the reign and work of the spiritual world. What still appears to many people today as fantasy, as absurdity, is to be introduced into today's culture precisely through spiritual science. It is understandable that people say: spiritual science contradicts everything that the five senses comprehend.

It is understandable that people who speak in this way regard spiritual science as a form of dreaming or fantasizing. But people once also regarded the Copernican worldview as a form of dreaming and fantasizing, which, it was said, should also contradict the five senses and their statements. Just as people's thinking habits have become accustomed to accepting the Copernican worldview, so people's thinking habits will also find it increasingly more and more soul-satisfying, a necessary soul experience, a necessary soul harmony to accept spiritual science , which shows how the soul can truly penetrate into a spiritual world in a body-free knowledge, a spiritual world that is not merely a sum of concepts and ideas, but something very concrete, a real spiritual world, a living spiritual world. Thus, as a spiritual researcher, one looks at something that must come, as Copernicanism once entered into human development.

When we take a good look at this view of the living spirit and the relationship of the human soul to it, and then look at what has been prepared over many centuries in the development of the German people and the German character, we may say that all the forces that the German character has applied over the course of many centuries are ultimately aimed at leading to this spiritual science. There is nothing that spiritual science could not find as a germ of itself in what the German spirit has striven for over the centuries. Let me first present you with a characteristic example from more recent times.

The German essence, which for example in the second half of the eighteenth century, when Lessing, when Herder entered the horizon of this German essence, could not be satisfied with a spirit that is only an abstraction, only a sum of ideas. Herder, the great pioneer of the German intellectual world, once called out to Voltaire: “Ideas can only [bring forth ideas].”

For Herder, it was about man finding a way in his soul to experience a truly living, vibrant and vital spiritual world through inner development, just as he lives in the world of the senses through his eyes and ears. And history was not to be understood in such a way that one could speak of history being dominated by ideas, but for Herder history was such that real spiritual beings are active within historical activity, to whom man can look up as to beings of a supersensible world, just as he looks down into the realms below him to the sensual beings of the three natural kingdoms. And so convinced was Herder, the great predecessor, indeed one can say, the teacher of Goethe, that true science of the spirit comes to a real spirit and that humanity is aiming to find such a spiritual science, that he himself, Herder, expresses with beautiful words: [“The human race will not pass away until everything has happened! Until the genius of enlightenment has traversed the earth!”]

By enlightenment he means that knowledge which the German mind has always sought, not through the outer senses and the intellect, but through the inner experience of the soul, which, however, takes one further than happens in everyday life. In his way, Herder took up again what we encounter centuries earlier in the German mystic who stood at the dawn of modern times. In the moment when Angelus Silesius speaks in his images, in which he gives instructions for the path of the soul into a spiritual world. He expresses in one of his images: “It is not I who live and die, but the God-spirituality reigns in me, it is born in me, it lives and dies in me.

The German soul has always sought such a connection with the living spirit. And so the soul's intimate search for this connection with the active spirit was so intense that even the idea of immortality for Angelus Silesius follows directly from the spiritual inner knowledge, the spiritual inner life. For in that he was conscious that the eternal God reigns in me, he also knew that this eternal God is in my soul at the moment of death, where the eternal God cannot die. Since that which lives in the soul is at the same time experienced by God, the idea of immortality is experienced from the spiritual. The idea of immortality, of merging into a spiritual world, is an experience for Angelus Silesius.

As the soul becomes aware of the God within it, it knows that this God cannot die, that death leads into the spiritual world.

And let us think of the great mystic at the beginning of the modern era of German intellectual life, Jakob Böhme. Not to preach a false allegorical activism, but to point out that the life of the senses is only understood when man comprehends that which is not only alive between birth and death, but which passes through the gate of death, I would like to quote Jakob Böhme. He realized that man must penetrate the secrets of death during life. That his powers are kindled when he knows what calls him to a new life in dying, that these powers must already be recognized in this life. That is what the wonderful saying of Jakob Böhme means:

He who does not die before he dies;

He perishes when he dies.

When such words resound from the German spiritual life, one feels how the best souls of German development are permeated by the living supporting forces of the spirit. For it is the supporting power of the German spirit through which the soul, in its highest striving, knows itself to be inwardly and vitally connected with the spirit, so that it experiences that what it can do as the highest, the spirit itself does in it. The soul feels carried by the concrete spirit, not merely by ideas and concepts, which are an abstraction of the human mind and reason and which do not vividly represent the spirit that truly prevails in life. This spirit therefore develops its carrying capacity for the whole of German intellectual life.

And when we look at our best intellectuals, one can see how this sustaining power of the German spirit works in their hearts and souls, how they demonstrate it everywhere in their lives and in their intellectual endeavors.

Truly not to evoke sentimental feelings in you, esteemed attendees, but to show how the sustaining power of the German spirit works in the best German minds right down to the most immediate life, two great minds are taken as the starting point for today's reflection. And these two great minds, let them be considered at the moment of death, Schiller is the first.

We can look into the last days of our Schiller, right into his death chamber, through a friend, the son of the translator of Homer, Voß, the so-called younger Voß. There you see how this Schiller, as his last weeks approach, one could say, already walks around as if he were almost dead, but still participates in all that can be called intellectual interests in his Weimar residence. You can literally see how the strong cohesive forces within him carry him through his last weeks and days with intellectual life. Then we are led into the death chamber. We experience with the description of the young Voß, how Schiller can hardly look out of his eyes, which always looked so benevolent, so loving, so spirited. He has his youngest child brought to him. Voß describes how his eyes, from which on one side death, but also still the mighty soul of fire, how his eyes look at the child. And we can believe that Voß is right when he says in his description that something like the thought spoke from these eyes: “You, my child, I have to leave you so small, I should have been a father to you in so many ways.” Then the dying Schiller handed the child back and turned away, towards the wall.

In reliving these moments, we as a German nation feel as if we could relate to Schiller as this child did. We feel that the sustaining power of the German spirit, which Schiller carried into death, lives on in the German people. But looking up at such great minds, we have to say: Not only much that is great, much that is powerful has been achieved by them, but also much that is embryonic and has yet to be developed. Schiller's thoughts also apply to the German people, that he could still have given them much. But how was Schiller also connected to what can be called the fundamental power of the German spirit? We have a remarkable document that was only found long, long after Schiller's death. In this document, Schiller expresses the following beautiful words about the spirit that the one who gets to know it feels as its supporting force.

He who forms and rules the mind
must ultimately become master, because
finally, at the goal of time, if the
world has a plan, if human
life has any meaning at all, finally
must custom and reason triumph,
the brute force of form succumb
and the slowest people will catch up with all the
fast, fleeting ones.
[...]
Him

– the German –

is destined for the highest,
and just as he is in the middle of
Europe's nations,
he is the core of humanity,
they are the flower and the leaf.
He is chosen by the world spirit, during
the struggle of time
to work on the eternal construction of human education
, to preserve what time brings,
therefore he has appropriated what was previously foreign
and preserved it within himself.
Everything that was estimable in other times
and peoples, that arose, developed and faded with the times,
he has preserved;
the treasures of
centuries are not lost to him.
Not to shine in the moment and
to play his role, but to win the great
process of time. Every nation
has its day in history, but
the day of the Germans is the harvest of
all that time.

Thus Schiller felt connected to what can be called the driving force of the German spirit.

And if we now turn our gaze to another great mind, to a mind that, so to speak, has summarized all the power of the German mind, a philosopher who, out of a strong humanitarian character, has created a philosophy of dramatic clarity, we turn to the speaker of the “Speeches to the German Nation,” we turn to Johann Gottlieb Fichte.

Let us also look to him for the driving force of German intellectual life, with which Fichte felt so connected that he knew how to inspire German hearts in a rare way through his speeches during one of Germany's most difficult times. Let us see how the driving force of the mind had an effect on his immediate, everyday life. When Germany took up its great struggles against Western foreign domination, Fichte consulted with himself as to whether he was called to help in any way, and in the end he knew that he could achieve the most through intellectual activity. His wife, however, devoted herself to nursing. She was the one who brought the fever home from the military hospitals, but she recovered. But Fichte was infected by his wife's illness. And as he lay there sick, it was remarkable how, in the last days, his philosophical thoughts, which are among the strongest of this kind in the development of mankind, among the most luminous, how they merged into the feverish fantasies of the dying man. And strangely, Fichte, the clear-thinking, diamond-bright philosopher, he guided in his soul, which was completely occupied with the spirit that reigns through the German being, his philosophical thoughts in such a way that he believed himself outside on the battlefields, in the midst of the armies, as Blücher's Rhine crossing took place.

Thus we see a confluence of the highest intellectual development even in the feverish fantasies of a dying German. His son brought him a medicine. Fichte felt as if he were connected to the power of the German spirit, which he firmly believed would lead the German people to victory. He pushed the medicine away and said, “I do not need medicine, for I feel that I shall recover.” Then he died. These were, so to speak, his last moments. This is the Fichte from whose soul the sustaining power of the German spirit speaks in such a way that one sees how, in his case, knowledge is directly grasped by the will that rules in his soul, so that one can say: In every word of Fichte we feel this power of the German spirit penetrating through, which cannot but confess that the spirit is not an abstraction, but something that permeates and flows through the world and works in it, and in which the soul knows itself, can experience itself. How beautifully Fichte expresses something like this when he says:

There is no doubt about it, it is the most certain thing there is, [indeed the basis of all other certainties, the only absolutely valid objective, that there is a moral world order, that every rational individual is assigned his or her specific place in this order and counted on for his or her work.

That is the confession of the spiritual world made by the sustaining power of the German spirit. And so closely does Fichte feel connected with this spiritual world that he once said the following to his students in words that are as much thoughts as they are the will welling up from the whole soul: “You stars that walk above me, you mountains all, ... if you all collapse at once, when lightning strikes you, when the elemental forces crush you so that not a speck of dust remains of you, you tell me nothing about the nature of my own soul. This defies your power, this is not eternal, as you are not eternal.” Thus Fichte spoke out of the direct power of connection with the spiritual world in his own soul. This is not mere philosophical speculation, these are not just thoughts, but this is inner soul life, a confluence of the soul with the spirit. This is the result of the sustaining forces of the German spirit.

And as a spiritual scientist today, one can truly refer to Fichte. One example among many that can prove how one can refer to Fichte today with today's spiritual science: It is written in the “Addresses to the German Nation”, and many may perhaps overlook it, but it is important for those who do not want to grasp Fichte merely on the surface of his words, but want to penetrate into the depths of his views. Fichte held the “Addresses to the German Nation” before his people, for his people, through which he wanted to stir up the German spirit in the German hearts, so that the German essence would triumph in Europe. And the means he recommended at the time was a completely new kind of education. Regardless of one's opinion of his plan today, one must admit that it was a grand and bold idea, an idea that truly contained something of the fundamental strength of the German spirit. But Fichte knew that by expressing this before an audience that was indeed willing to receive the word dedicated to the service of humanity, by expressing what characterized his plan, he was saying something that had to permeate all ideas about the education and development of the human being. In doing so, he demanded something completely new of people. And so he made a comparison between what he thought of as something new for previous habits of thought and what they had already grasped as a /Lücke im Text>.

And now we ask ourselves: How could spiritual science, which is a science of the spiritual life, how could it use a comparison if it wanted to characterize what it wants, what it strives for? After all, spiritual science wants to lead to a real inner enlightenment, so that the soul outside the body looks at the body with its physical experiences in the same way as one looks at an external object. In this way the spiritual researcher gains knowledge of how this soul behaves after death, how the soul looks at the body with spiritual eyes, how it surveys it like an external element. And so today, by standing firmly on the ground of this spiritual science, the spiritual scientist comes to say: this new thing behaves like a soul that leaves the body and looks back at the body. One would take a symbol that today, however, people still see as a reverie. But let us ask what symbol Fichte himself chose when he wanted to characterize the new of his education system in relation to the old.

[Time seems to me like a shadow that stands over its corpse, from which an army of diseases has just driven it, and laments and cannot tear its gaze away from the once so beloved shell and desperately tries all means to get back into the dwelling of the plague. The invigorating breezes of the other world, into which the departed has entered, have already taken her in and surround her with a warm breath of love; the secret voices of her sisters already greet her joyfully and welcome her; she is already stirring and expanding within all directions, in order to develop the more magnificent form into which it is to grow; but as yet it has no feeling for these breezes or hearing for these voices, or, if it had, it is absorbed in pain over its loss, with which it believes itself to have been lost at the same time.

That is the living Fichte! Must we not say that what today's spiritual science wants to unfold and recognize out of a real knowledge of the spirit, we encounter it where Fichte abandons himself to the deep intentions of his spirit and chooses a comparison that is deeply rooted in the supporting forces of the German people. It is the confession of the real, living, flowing and weaving spirit. And so it is rooted in the best of this German intellectual life.

And do we not see how these supporting forces of the German spirit also work in Goethe? Is it not already apparent from the fact that Goethe, even in his youth, had to declare himself unsatisfied with everything that can only enter the human soul as concepts and ideas through speculation of the intellect, as a reflection of the external world of the senses, that he felt something like the Faustian urge not only to indulge in abstract concepts and sensual perceptions, but to unite with the innermost powers of the soul with the spirit that rules the world. And it was out of this urge, which then sought to express itself artistically, that Goethe created what he presented in his Faust; in that Faust, which in its entirety represents a work of art that no other nation can have. For everything that man can strive for through the deepest powers of his soul on the path to the spiritual world is to be seen in this Faust. Do we not see how Faust, after feeling unsatisfied in the outer world of the senses, wants to reach the sources of life? How he passes through error and overcoming, through temptation and seduction, and how he first stands and recognizes in the spirit that seizes him in his innermost self, at the same time, what surges and weaves as spirit through the world. Thus, in the first part of the drama, Faust comes to recognize this spirit that reigns not only in nature but also in the human soul. He feels a connection to this spirit, which he perceives as a living entity truly rooted in German intellectual life, in the following words, which could be quoted again and again:

[Exalted Spirit, thou gavest me, gave me everything,
why I asked. Thou didst not in vain
turn thy face to me in fire.
Gavest me the glorious nature for a kingdom,
the power to feel and enjoy it. Not
only dost thou allow cold-eyed visitors,
allow me to look into her deep chest,
as into the bosom of a friend.
You lead the line of the living
past me, and teach me my brothers
in the silent bush, in air and water.
And when the storm roars and creaks in the forest,
The giant spruce toppling neighbor branches
And neighbor trunks squashing down
And the hill muffled hollow thundering,
Then you lead me to the safe cave, show
Then myself, and my own chest
Secret deep wonders open up.]

How these sublime words express how man, when he has found the sustaining powers within himself, also wants to find them in all that is sensual. And how Faust is then led back, after he has thus recognized the spirit, to the rule of the spirit in his own breast.

Then You lead me to the secure cave, and then You show me myself, and in my own breast deep, secret wonders are revealed.

We can call this: the weaving of the spirit in the spirituality of the world, in which beings are of a supersensible nature, as in the sense world there are beings of the mineral kingdom, the plant kingdom, the animal kingdom. And so we see how this spirit reigns and works in our greatest and sustains them.

But we also see how, in German spiritual culture, efforts are being made to truly unite with this spirit, to penetrate with it in a living way, to marry with it. One could point to hundreds of important historical events to show how in German intellectual life the longing arises to unite with the spirit that has carried the German essence through the centuries; to seek how it works not only in the present, but how it has worked through all the times of development. And wherever a German can find something, wherever the spirit confronts him as a figure, wherever he has encountered it, there you can see how fervently the German is able to grasp the German spirit that can carry him. I would like to give an example, an event during Goethe's lifetime.

A world view of German intellectual life emerged, the so-called Romanticism; a view that wanted to go back to an earlier stage of German intellectual life, because something occurred, so to speak, in which the German spirit appeared before the German soul in a form in which it wanted to grasp the German spirit with religious fervor. That was the case when, after the republican masters of the West, of that West that claims today that it had to fight against the German “barbarians”, when these masters, just as the masters of the West today - of course, they did it in their opinion back then and they also do it today for the freedom and for the rights of the people - went to war. These gentlemen invaded the Lower Rhine region and the Dutch territories. We can see these gentlemen ravaging palaces, churches, monasteries, and everything in their path. As in those days, the devastation was immense and incalculable, and the finest works of art in these regions were scattered and looted all over the world. Of course, the gentlemen said at the time that they were fighting for freedom, justice and humanity. And then you could see how the remains of these devastated works of art turned up again, of course only sparse remains, fragments in the Rhenish cities. The broken, the devastated, then came into the hands of a number of people, including the brothers Boisserée, who professed the worldview of the young Romantic school. And at that time something emerged in this school that can be called /gap in the text]. Something emerged for these younger German Romantics that they perceived as the divine rule of the German spirit itself, which they tried to introduce into life. And if we were to study the development of art in Central Europe in the nineteenth century, we would find how that which emerged from the devastated ruins, from the sustaining forces of the German spirit, continued to work in poetry and in the best works of art. We would find it everywhere.

But not only did this power impress itself on the soul of what was already there, the souls were also prepared for such a seizure. And even if he does not belong to the younger, but to the older Romanticism, one of those German poets is - one may believe it, more and more he will be appreciated in his wonderful way of thinking - I mean Novalis. He is one of those in whom the sustaining power of the German spirit reveals itself so clearly that in much of what he has left us, in part fragmentarily, we see something that emerges from the unconscious of his soul, but which only needs to be developed in order to lead to what humanity will one day have to grasp as spiritual science.

And one can say: the world has already grasped to some extent what Novalis developed out of the sustaining power of the German spirit. This is even being grasped not only by the “barbaric Germans,” as the enemy nations are now expressing themselves, but even by some French writers who understand something of the nature, even among those who today so revile the German essence and decry it as “barbaric.” We know, of course, how not long after the outbreak of the war Maurice Maeterlinck could not find enough words to revile and insult German “barbarism”.

Now one would like to point out to Maeterlinck another, perhaps a different French spirit, who has delved into what Novalis can give of himself, who has written about what Novalis has inspired in his soul. And this French poet, philosopher and artist, what did he find in Novalis, in the now so despised, let us say in Maurice Maeterlinck, so despised German “barbarism”? He felt compelled to say: Yes, what Sophocles, even Schiller and other poets have produced, what the figures of the poets do, Hamlet and so on have to do with each other and with their surroundings, these are certainly feelings and sensations that interest earthly souls. But, as this French writer says, one must assume that if beings were to gaze down from the cosmos, they could not be interested in what Schiller, Sophocles and others created, and what these figures have to do with each other. But Novalis would be a person – so this French poet-philosopher believes – who has something to say from his soul about things that could not only interest earth people, but that must interest even spirits who visit the earth from heavenly spheres.

He speaks such words in connection with Novalis, in reference to what he experienced with Novalis. We must call these words literally before our soul:

But if he needed other evidence, it would lead him among those whose works almost touch silence. She would open the gate of the kingdom where some loved her for her own sake, without worrying about the small gestures of her body. They would climb together to the lonely plateaus where consciousness rises [by one step] and where all those who are restless about themselves [feel] attentively survey the immense ring that connects the world of appearances to our higher worlds. She would go with him to the boundaries of humanity; for at the point where man seems to end, he probably only begins, and his most essential and inexhaustible parts are [only] in the invisible, where he must be constantly on his guard.

He is always talking about Novalis. He wants to turn to areas where Novalis dwells, to worlds for which human words are no longer sufficient to characterize them. That is why he says “their works almost border on silence”. He then continues:

On these heights alone are thoughts that the soul can approve of, and images that resemble her and are as commanding as she is. There, humanity has ruled for a moment, and these dimly lit peaks are perhaps the only lights that announce the earth in the spiritual realm. Their reflection truly has the color of our soul. We feel that the passions of the mind and body would resemble the tolling of bells in the eyes of a [strange] reason; but [the people I am talking about have] come out of the small village of passions in their works and said things that are also of value to those who do not belong to the earthly community.

So this French poet-philosopher on Novalis, on that which Novalis has inspired in him. This Novalis, who is borne entirely out of the primal power and destiny of the German genius. Would this poet-philosopher not hurl at Maurice Maeterlinck when he comes and speaks of “barbarism”: Look to Novalis, whose works are so sublime that they “almost touch silence”.

One might think that these words, coming from the philosophical poet, would be hurled at Maurice Maeterlinck. But the fact of the matter is that these words I just read were actually written by Maurice Maeterlinck himself! Admittedly, by the Maurice Maeterlinck who lived years ago and allowed the German spirit to influence him; not by the Maurice Maeterlinck who now calls the Germans a “barbarian people”.

Such are the experiences of Germanness in European culture today, besieged as it is in a great fortress. It may be said that this Germanness, so misunderstood today, has truly not always been misunderstood in this way in the world. The world has felt the sustaining power of the German spirit. And one can present evidence of how this German spirit has been regarded in the world. It is somewhat uncomfortable to express certain sympathetic, I would even say emotional judgments about the German spirit in German. So then another way must be chosen. Let us first consider what a leading English thinker of the nineteenth century in America had to say about the German essence. Emerson, a great and characteristic personality, once brought the German character before his soul. And to show how the sustaining power of the German spirit has been felt and sensed, Emerson says, speaking of Goethe – and we shall see from the words themselves how he sees in Goethe almost the representative of the newer German spirit – Emerson says:

One [quality] in particular, which Goethe shares with his entire nation, makes him stand out in the eyes of both the French and English public: that everything in his work is based solely on inner truth. In England and America

— please, it is not in German, but written by an American, an American Englishman in English —

in England and America, talent is respected, but one is only satisfied when it is working for or against a party of one's convictions. In France, one is already delighted when one sees brilliant thoughts, no matter where they want to go.

And it was not a German who said this; it was said by an English American to characterize the Germans, the German character!

In all these countries, however, talented men write to the extent of their gifts. If what they present stimulates the discerning reader and contains nothing that offends against good manners, it is considered sufficient. So many columns, so many pleasantly and usefully spent hours. The German mind has neither the French vivacity nor the Englishman's understanding, honed by practicality, nor, finally, the American spirit of adventure. But what it does have is a certain probity that never stops at the outward appearance of things, but always comes back to the main question: “Where is this going?”

One might think that it was said by a German, it would be vainly oriented.

The German public demands of a writer that he stand above things and simply express himself about them. Intellectual agility is present, well and good: what does it stand for? What is the man's opinion? Where does he get all these thoughts from?

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

The Germans think for Europe.

Consider, not a German is saying this!

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

Now, of course, one could say that Emerson has been dead for a long time, and that this is a characteristic that was already given about the German character a decade ago. After all, such minds as the one who is regarded as the most important French philosopher today [gap in the text], after the speech he gave in which he portrayed the Germans of today as devoid of everything that lived in them during their great era. One also finds in him, in this French philosopher with the name that sounds so beautifully French, at least before the war, one also finds in him an emphasis on how these Germans have become so different in recent times.

And so it is that we also look again at what is being said on the German side, but instead listen to an English voice. And now we will even choose critical voices that were uttered not long ago, barely two years before the war; voices characterizing the German essence. Lectures were held in Manchester under the title “Germany in the Nineteenth Century.”

The preface emphasizes why these lectures on the German character were given in Manchester. It is said that the newspaper people in England should learn something about the German character. Perhaps two things can be seen from this introduction, this preface: that at the time, those who gave these lectures as learned Englishmen considered the newspaper people to be in need of such an education. But the other thing can also be seen; I can leave it to your judgment whether what was said to the newspaper people was of much use, based on today's experience. But what was said to the English newspaper people back then? As I said, the lectures were not given in German in Leipzig or Berlin or Hamburg, but in English for the English foreigners. There it was said:

The highly favored elite among Descartes' and Newton's countrymen knew the spirit of science unquestioningly; but the passionate urge for knowledge was taught to modern Europe, if at all, mainly by thousands of German researchers.

As I said, not spoken in Berlin or Leipzig, but in Manchester!

Imagination, feeling, and will asserted their right to be heard alongside or beyond reason, and under their transformative pressure the universe became deeper, wider, and more wonderful. The irrational was recognized as a source of enlightenment; wisdom was sought from children and flowers; science, philosophy, and poetry came close together.

This was how the German essence was characterized in Manchester.

Over here in England, this revival of the imagination gave birth to noble poetry, but left the sciences and philosophy almost untouched. One of the keys to understanding the whole period is the fact that, while in England and France the poetic, philosophical and scientific movements flowed mostly in separate channels, in Germany they touched or merged completely. Wordsworth sang and Bentham calculated; but Hegel caught the genius of poetry in the net of his logic; and the thought that discovers and explains, and the imagination that creates, worked together in fruitful harmony in the genius of Goethe.

In Faust, at the end of his eventful life, we see a portrayal of present-day Germany, a Germany of restless, daring will and action, and we can understand all the better why the great citizen of the world, in whose eyes state and nationality were subordinate and sometimes harmful ideals, nevertheless claims his unassailable position as the highest poet of the German Empire alongside Bismarck, his creator.

Thus, the German character was characterized by English scholars in Manchester.

You will have come across a name that, after the outbreak of war, could not find enough words to describe the high morality that guided the British government in declaring war on the German Reich: Haldane. He wrote the preface to the lectures that were collected and in which you can find what I have just read. And that Lord Haldane wrote the following in the preface, although it was some time before the war:

The source of the stream of

— Germany's —

spiritual and political life lies in the Reformation. But at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, a current unique in world history began to flow in a way that has been as continuous as it has been characteristic since that time. Since the days of ancient Greece, the world has not seen such a spectacle of the closest fusion of the life of the statesman with that of the thinker. The spirit of Germany today is to a great extent practical and concrete. [...] Only the influence of true knowledge can dispel the clouds of mistrust and free us from the burden of arming ourselves against attacks that in reality none of us has in mind.

Thus spoke this leading English intellectual. You know how he spoke after the outbreak of the war. The same scholar who spoke the words that were read out spoke even more words back then in Manchester to enlighten the newspaper people. He said:

On the whole, there is no question that the establishment of the German Reich has been beneficial to world peace.

Spoken in Manchester.

This explanation will seem strange to those who know nothing but the events of the present and for whom history is nothing more than an ever-changing, dazzling cinematograph. But history should be something more. It is for history to shed light on the tangled web of the present, and in that higher light, things that seem hurtful will take on a natural appearance. For if we look to the past, we find that our ancestors looked at France with far greater fear than the wildest rabble-rousers today fear Germany. And our ancestors had good reason to fear them. [...]

To sum up, it can be shown that the founding of the German Empire was an asset for Europe and therefore also for Great Britain. For the events of the years 1866-1871 put an end once and for all to the possibility of waging predatory wars against the previously unprotected center of Europe, and thus removed a temptation to war that had so often often tempted into the wrong channels; they put the German people in a position to develop their hitherto stunted political abilities, and they helped to establish on a firm basis a new European system that has preserved the peace for forty years. This blessing resulted from the fact that German unity achieved in one fell swoop what Great Britain, despite all her expenditure of blood and money, had never been able to accomplish, namely, to secure the balance of power in such a decisive way that a great war became the most dangerous of all ventures.

It is fair to say that these words were spoken in praise of the sustaining power of the German spirit, indeed, one might even say of the soul-sustaining power of the German spirit for Europe. Can one say more than this Englishman said in Manchester to the newspaper people, with whom it then had such a good impact!

And right up to the most recent days, we can follow such phenomena. We have seen how Emerson expressly emphasized how little the English can actually understand of what is the fundamental force of the German character. But once they have really got to their feet and got to know this German spirit, they have learned to think differently about it. Just a few words should be mentioned, which an Englishwoman wrote down shortly before the outbreak of the war, after spending eight years in Germany. She did not get to know it in the way that most English people get to know Germany, but she was in schools, clinics, she got to know philosophy and other lecture halls. I could now quote many words that are deeply characteristic, but I will just read one passage that was written by an English expert on the German character. Miss Wylie writes the following words:

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

At every border and across the water, opponents sit, both commercially and politically, eagerly awaiting the moment when Germany slackens just a little, so that they can pounce on her and bring her down.

There is truly no need to boast about the sustaining power of the German spirit; one need only listen to what people have to say when they are speaking out of consciousness, and not out of unconsciousness, if that is said by the countries whose objectivity has been proven. If you look around, you will find many judgments similar to these about the German character and its sustaining power. This sustaining power of the German spirit is demonstrated precisely by the fact that this German spirit, in every soul of the German being that seeks the path to the spirit, has an illuminating effect on these souls, so that it can indeed be said: In what emerged as German idealism at the turn of the eighteenth to nineteenth century lie the seeds for an ever-more-vibrant and vibrant spiritual experience. And so it came about that not only in the course of the nineteenth century, through spirits who in later times would play a great role, Troxler and Gotthilf Heinrich von Schubert, great beginnings of today's spiritual science can be found; of that which we ourselves can bring out of the spiritual world again. These fundamental forces of the German spirit can be found in the entire development of German intellectual life. And here again is a case in point, the case of one of the best, the deepest, the most German of Germans from the second half of the nineteenth century: Herman Grimm.

Herman Grimm is an extraordinary art historian who has written about many artists and works of art with inner experience. One often has the feeling: where does Herman Grimm get what he has to say about art and works of art not from ordinary evidence but from direct experience of aesthetic judgment? Then one must go to the artistic and poetic works that he has produced. There one finds in his novellas that the sustaining power of the German spirit is also evident in them, which is transferred there, albeit not as spiritual science, but into the artistic. Of course, one cannot cite artistic products as evidence for the results of spiritual science. But if the spiritual scientist can say that the sayings in the work of art are almost expertly correct for the described spiritual experiences, then it is permissible to point to such an occurrence, as is to be done today.

Herman Grimm always wants to point out that one can only understand the world if one is able to look not only at what [gap in the text], but also at what protrudes from the supersensible into the sensual. He then presents spiritual processes that show how he strives to show that the world is more than just the sensual world. There he wrote a novella: 'The Songstress'. He describes the fate of a somewhat flirtatious songstress who is nevertheless endowed with a deep soul. There is a man who loves the songstress, but she rejects him. The novella continues in an extremely meaningful way until the songstress's death. A friend leads the singer straight to the house where her lover, whom she rejected, committed suicide. The suicide occurs the moment she enters. She is consumed by guilt and is unable to sleep from that hour on. The friend, the owner of the house, has to watch over her. Now Herman Grimm describes how the singer sees the spirit of the deceased rising up in bed and approaching her. And Herman Grimm presents this in such a way that it is clear from this description that he does not want to reflect on an imagination; rather, in a spiritual experience that the guilt-ridden singer has, he wants to show how forces are effective beyond death, and wants to point to the fate that works beyond death. The singer dies after her beloved; she is, as it were, taken. Spiritual science would say: what can be announced as the next phenomenon to appear to a person after they have passed through the gate of death is presented to the soul of the singer: the appearance of the etheric body, which has to bear the fate that is to be borne beyond death.

But this is not the only case with Herman Grimm. He has written a cultural-historical novel: “Unüberwindliche Mächte” (Insurmountable Forces).

The most important thing is: the young heroine Emmy is portrayed. Emmy is also brought to the point where the fate of the beloved dead man affects the living, not only through the inner forces of the soul, but in such a way that this effect is meant by the soul - after passing through the gate of death - still having a real effect on life. Herman Grimm describes how Emmy, as it were, dies after her beloved. And we find a wonderful scene at the end of the novel 'Unüberwindliche Mächte' (Insurmountable Forces). Emmy dies, and Herman Grimm describes how a figure rises out of the dying Emmy, out of the physical body, a figure with arms similar to the physical arms, with a face similar to Emmy's face, which disappears over and into the spiritual world. Herman Grimm is able to grasp the moment of death artistically, just as spiritual science can grasp it in a living vision.

One can see that the sustaining power of the German spirit also works in this poet's soul, which comes from German idealism to grasp the living spirit life. The fact that Herman Grimm can present the matter in a novelistic way, but in the fullest reality, that he is capable of doing so, is the power of spiritual life that prevails through the German spirit. Herman Grimm felt - he had, after all, grown up entirely in what had entered into German intellectual life from Goethe's intellectual life - he felt with all his soul in the stream of German intellectual life. He knew this German spiritual life because every phase of this German spiritual life was a phase of his own life. And how did Herman Grimm characterize this mood of the German being in 1895, shortly before his death? Anyone who knows German life knows that this description is true; what I am about to read from Herman Grimm is true as words that are intended to represent the mood of the German being. He wants to express – he who has so often pointed out how dear to him repeated lives on earth are – he wants to express how German spiritual life aims to recognize the spiritual world, but not to develop a nationality in a one-sided way, but to absorb the most general human element. The words are beautiful, but also deeply significant for the characterization of German intellectual life, which Herman Grimm spoke in 1895.

The solidarity of the moral convictions of all people today is the church that unites us all. We are seeking more passionately than ever for a visible expression of this community. All truly serious endeavors of the masses have only this one goal. The separation of nations no longer exists here. We feel that no national distinction applies to the ethical worldview.

Then he continues:

We would all sacrifice ourselves for our fatherland; but we are far from longing for or bringing about the moment when this could happen through war. The assurance that keeping the peace is our [all] most sacred wish is not a lie. “Peace on earth and goodwill towards men” permeates us.

This is how Herman Grimm describes the mood in Central Europe. But then he shows that he is not a dreamer, but that he can judge the situation well. For he continues:

Recognizing people as a totality, they see themselves as subject to an invisible court enthroned in the clouds, before which they consider it a misfortune not to be allowed to exist, and whose judicial proceedings they seek to adapt to their internal disputes. With anxious eagerness they seek their right here. How the French today are trying to present the war against Germany, which they are planning, as a moral imperative, demanding recognition of it from other nations, even from the Germans themselves.

Anyone who is familiar with the mood in Central Europe will know that Herman Grimm spoke the truth at the time. And they will then be able to judge what is actually meant when those who today want to assert this truth from Central Europe are repeatedly called out from left and right, from west and east: “Who wanted the war?” One must say that this “who wanted the war” comes across as if a number of people with threatening gestures are standing around a house and the master of the house sees that they want to attack the house, and he then goes out and can't help but beat them up. And then the question would be: “Who wanted this beating?” It is the same logic. Yes, one can even say many things about this logic that prevails in the world today. One can even say: this logic is - one is almost embarrassed to say it, because it is so flimsy when it is said: “We did not want the war, but in Central Europe it was wanted.” it is the same logic as when it is said: “Yes, we could not wage war if the Germans had not invented gunpowder, because then there would be no war; so who wanted the war?” It would be the same logic if the people in Central Europe wanted to blame us for using printing ink to accuse the German people of being “barbarians”. The Germans, after all, invented the process of printing with printing ink on paper. But with this intention it does indeed look strange to those who not only look at what has happened in the last few months before the war, but look at what has been preparing for decades as the driving impulses. Those who have really been able to look with open eyes at what is going on in Europe, who have wanted to see it, have already seen how this war, so to speak, in its basic impulses, was preparing itself from the East. And the one who would correctly ask the question today: Who could have prevented the war? will of course have to point to Russia. But those who saw clearly knew that. We see this in the words that were spoken long before the war.

As for me, I am in no doubt for a moment that a conflict between the Germanic and Slavic world is imminent, that it will ignite either through the Orient, specifically Turkey, or through the nationality dispute in Austria, perhaps both, and that Russia will take the lead in it on one side. This power is already preparing for the eventuality; the Russian national press is spewing fire and brimstone against Germany. [...] The German press is already sounding its warning cries. It has been a long time since Russia gathered itself after the Crimean War, and it seems that it is now considered expedient in [St. Petersburg] to take up the Oriental question once again. If the Mediterranean Sea was once to become a “French Sea”, according to the expression that was more pompous than true, Russia has the even more positive intention of making a Russian lake out of the Black Sea and a Russian pond out of the Sea of Marmara. It is an established goal of Russian policy that Constantinople must become a Russian city and Greece a direct vassal state of Russia, which finds its lever of support in the common religion and in Pan-Slavism. The Danube would then be closed at the Iron Gate by the Russian turnpike.

But this was not said recently, but in 1870 during the Franco-Prussian War; and it was said by those who were not speaking off the top of their heads, but who knew how forces were gradually gathering from the east , how the Austrian soul was permeated with distorted Slavophilism, in order to finally lead to what led to the war today and which the Western powers fell for.

I would like to read you one more passage that can show you how the connection with the active forces and impulses presents itself to those who really want to see them. When looking at what happened in the summer of 1914 and what then led to the war from the eastern side, could one not use the following words - I will read out words that could be coined for the time in the first half of 1914:

[...] a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, [...] I was personally suspected in my intentions. These attacks increased during the following year, 1879, to strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily attack Austrian law. I could not lend my support to this, because if we alienated Austria, we would necessarily become dependent on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had previously believed it could be, telling myself: We have no conflicting interests; there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who explained such things to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain period) to the Russian one would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

What has happened, however, shows that the European center can save itself from such an attack. The words I have read to you could be a characteristic of the forces that played in 1914. But I have in fact only changed a few words that were not written or spoken in 1914, but were said by Bismarck in the German Reichstag on February 6, 1888. And I will now read them to you in their true form. You will see how they correspond to what I read to you as being appropriate for the spring of 1914. Bismarck said these words when he spoke out against the military bill in the Reichstag:

[...] a kind of press campaign gradually began in St. Petersburg, attacking German politics and personally suspecting me of ulterior motives. These attacks intensified during the following year, until in 1879 there were strong demands for pressure to be exerted on Austria in matters where we could not readily challenge Austrian law. I could not lend my hand to this; for if we estranged ourselves from Austria, we would necessarily fall into dependence on Russia if we did not want to be completely isolated in Europe. Would such dependence have been tolerable? I had believed earlier that it could be, saying to myself: We have no conflicting interests, there is no reason why Russia should ever break off friendship with us. At least I had not directly contradicted my Russian colleagues who had explained this to me. The incident at the Congress disappointed me, and showed me that even the complete subordination of our policy (for a certain period) to the Russian one would not protect us from coming into conflict with Russia against our will and against our aspirations.

So one can say: The balance of power between the European East and the Center had to be characterized in 1888 in exactly the same way as for the year 1914. One dares to say again that people were living in Central Europe in 1914 who brought about this war. Anyone with a healthy sense of fact will not be able to make such an assertion. One must, however, have a healthy sense of facts. How was the mood prepared in this European East, which then led to the fact that this firebrand, through the connection of the East with the West, finally led to the present-day siege of the European center - what was prepared there in the European East?

We saw, among other things, the mood of Slavophilism emerge in the nineteenth century. Among these Slavophiles there were idealists, but there were also people who later transformed the Slavophile sentiment into complete absorption and idolization of what is now present in Russia; they did not see Russia's mission in pursuing the inner soul forces of the Russian people, but in the power and might that now prevails there. And those who are the best among these Slavophiles have worked in such a way that the conviction has spread widely that the culture of Western Europe, and especially of Germany, is a culture of decline and that a rebirth of European life must come from the East. This has become a dogma. And this dogma has slowly and gradually become established in what can be called Russian life. Certain perceptions of this Russian life are completely imbued with it. The best minds, by being interwoven with Russian life, are also interwoven with this idea of Slavophilism.

Even the great Soloviev had a time in his life when he was a Slavophile, when he believed, albeit in a different way than [Aksakov, Katkov and Danilevsky], that something could already be in Russian life that had the mission to cover all of Europe, so to speak, with a new culture. But then he became more and more familiar with what had become of Slavophilism in present-day Russia. He learned to consider how what had become of Slavophilism in present-day Russia would have to affect the European center, the European West. And there it was, at the time when he said the following to himself – these are Soloviev's, the Russian philosopher's, own words; he says that Slavophilism had become a “commodity of the fair trade” that “filled all the dirty streets, squares and alleys of Russian life with wild, animalistic shouting”. These are Solowjow's own words. At the time when Solowjow was faced with the question of conscience that it is important to ask yourself from time to time; that question of conscience that goes like this: “Why doesn't Europe love us?”

He actually wanted to raise the question: What must Europe see when it looks at us? And Solowjow, the great philosopher of the second half of the nineteenth century, answers this question from the Russian spirit:

Europe [...] looks at us with apprehension and with displeasure, [since the elemental power of the Russian people is dark and mysterious, its spiritual and cultural powers inferior, but its demands] clear, definite and great.

These are not the words of a German, but of a Russian, about the forces that have been at work for decades and that have now been expressed with the firebrand. Solowjow continues:

[The clamor of our nationalism can be heard loudly in Europe, which wants to destroy Turkey and Austria, beat the Germans, conquer Constantinople and, if it succeeds, India as well. But if we are asked what we will do for humanity after taking and destroying all of that, we can only remain silent or babble senseless phrases.

"Thus [...] the most essential, indeed the only important question that an honest and reasonable patriotism should address is not Russia's power and mission, but Russia's sins.]

Thus the great Russian on Russian character. Must not then the question be put from the center of Europe to the east: “What do you want?” If you could somehow get the center of Europe in your hands, what do you want?” The best, the most significant, the most beneficial Russian of the nineteenth century answers:

If we are asked [what we will do to benefit humanity after conquering and destroying everything, we can only remain silent or spout meaningless phrases.

Then we see what it is that needs to be defended, what the forces that have taken up the defense of the German character to the left and to the right have to defend in reality.

Now, ladies and gentlemen, it is no wonder that this German essence, this fundamental force of the German spirit, is misunderstood everywhere. It arises, one might say, from the intimate association of the individual German with the German spirit, which the individual German must feel to be a living one. And from this arise those misunderstandings that we encounter everywhere when we ask people who are not as enlightened as we have come to know them today among other nations. We sometimes hear that what Herman Grimm, who also knew Goethe well, said about the German character with reference to Lewes' biography of Goethe is true; what Herman Grimm said about this book is true: Lewes wrote a book about Goethe, that is, he wrote a book about a man who was born in Frankfurt, to whom he attributes Goethe's works, and who he claims died in 1832. But the way he describes him, what he presents as the soul of the man in the book, bears no resemblance to the feelings of anyone who feels connected to Goethe in German intellectual life.

And so, wherever we try to find a relationship to the German spirit, we only find misunderstandings. Finally, I would like to mention something that may be a more or less inconsequential but perhaps interesting episode.

The movement to which we belong had some connection with the movement that started from Adyar. [Our friends could no longer go along with it because of their lack of involvement in German intellectual life and its supporting forces] when English materialism, masquerading as Theosophy, went so far that the absurdity was believed by some that the spirit of Christ had revealed itself in a little Hindu boy. We know under what guises all this was practiced. It was then that the German sense of truth arose and the German mind had to turn away from those activities calling themselves theosophical. Now, however, the president of that movement has the following to say, inspired by the English spirit, about the connection between the separation of the German spiritual-scientific movement, which is united in the Anthroposophical Society. The following was truly written in England. Please excuse me for bringing my insignificant person into the whole context, but this was written months after the war had broken out.

Now, looking back in the light of German methods as revealed to us by the war, I realize that the long-standing efforts to capture the Theosophical Society and place a German at its head, the anger against me when I frustrated these efforts, the complaint that I had spoken of the late King Edward VII as the protector of European peace instead of giving the honor to the Kaiser - that all this was part of the widespread campaign against England, and that the missionaries were tools, cleverly used by the German agents here to carry out their plans. If they could have turned the Theosophical Society in India, with its large number of officials, into a weapon against the British government and got them to look up to Germany as their spiritual leader, instead of standing up, as it has always done, for the equal alliance of two free nations, then it could gradually have become a channel for poison in India. To achieve this, it was first necessary to overthrow her president, who, as is well known, has stood for the alliance of the two peoples for the last twenty years.

So, we are supposed to have been annoyed that she did not present the German Kaiser, but Edward VII, as a stronghold of peace, and therefore broke away from her, while the break occurred because we could not go along with what was said on that side about the Christ presence. But then she gives us far too much honor by mentioning all that the German spiritual science movement is said to have done to initiate the present war; that is, those who spoke on the other side about our spiritual science movement. Now we are learning about their plans from an English point of view. It is remarkable what we are said to have done, what we are said to have intended. One can see how this is viewed from this side, which necessarily had to happen for the sake of the German sense of truth, the German sense of truth, for the sake of what feels like being within the supporting power of the German spirit. Then one must say: When one sees how this German spirit with its supporting power has worked in hundreds and thousands, how it has brought German idealism, which contains the seeds for grasping and experiencing the living spirit , then one must say that Goethe's words, which Friedrich Lienhard also cites in his pamphlet 'Germany's European Mission', are deeply true. Goethe spoke these words in 1813 in a conversation with Luden:

The destiny of the Germans is not yet fulfilled. If they had had no other task than to break up the Roman Empire and create and organize a new world, they would have perished long ago. But since they have continued to exist, and in such strength and efficiency, I believe that they must still have a great destiny.

This conversation of Goethe's is still valid today. And if we now live in these fateful times, we, dear attendees, feel that everything that has to do with the great historical development of the German character, which stands before us as a living organism. If we look at what has lived in the German spirit, what has lived in a Wolfram von Eschenbach, in Herder, Lessing, Goethe, Schiller, Fichte, and in Herman Grimm, we see what has been achieved by the German spirit in terms of spiritual and intellectual power, as if from a single source. This is the driving force of the German spirit.

Now the German spirit has another task. It must flow into the sacrificial deeds that must be accomplished through death and blood in defense of what we wanted to contemplate with these admittedly insufficient words today. But what this shows us is that the German spirit, as it has emerged, has not yet fulfilled its task in the world, that it is to be defended, because it has a mission for the world that it must still fulfill in order to fully grasp the living spiritual life. And so, when we consider the fundamental strength of the German spirit, we can draw hope and confidence for the future of Germany. But all of this also speaks to our feelings and emotions, which on the one hand make us look wistfully, but also consolingly, but also with the greatest admiration, at what Germany has to do now in this fateful time. Our feelings and sentiments are with all those who bleed and suffer, but who also accomplish great deeds in the East and the West, when we see in all this only another expression of the German character. And those who, as mothers and fathers, as brothers and sisters, lose a dear relative, they know that they lose him for that which must be worked out as German spirit, as German future, as the whole German essence that still has something to do in the world, to which one must look as to an essence that has not yet been completed.

And so let us summarize, in terms of feeling and sentiment, the impulses that arise from this contemplation, in the words: Yes, this German essence, we see it growing, and only a lack of understanding can speak of a decline of this German essence. Rather, something else is true. What is true is what I, in summary, would like to express the thoughts of this evening in words that express how what can be observed in the German character ultimately comes together in our minds in a hope, a confidence, a certainty of the further development of the German character:

The German spirit has not yet accomplished
What it is to bring to the world.
It lives in hopes for the future,
It hopes for future deeds full of life; —
In the depths of its being, it feels powerful
Hidden things that must still mature.
How can a wish for his end arise in the power of the enemy without understanding, so long as life reveals itself to him, which holds him in the roots of his being?

Two prejudices exist against Theosophy. Firstly, it is accused of being unscientific – I will deal with this later in my lecture on “Haeckel's World Riddle and Theosophy” – and secondly, it is accused of turning people away from their religion, namely Christianity.

What is the theosophical position on Christ? The way in which the Christian religion has been taught so far arose from childish prejudices. But the striving person is not satisfied with that; he must go beyond it. Many of them have rediscovered their Christianity through Theosophy. Through Theosophy they learned to find the core of wisdom in it; for Theosophy and Christianity are completely compatible. All of our Western culture, the work of our great thinkers, and all artists as well, have been shaped by Christianity and are permeated by the source of Christianity. Theosophy has to unfold the core of truth in it.

That this is its purpose was also stated by the important Indian brahmins Chakravarti at the 1904 congress in Chicago: materialism has taken hold of all circles, including the Indian people; Theosophy has given us the opportunity to return to the old ideal of truth; she has a world vocation, so she has a mission to all religions, including Christianity. Once we accepted the faith of our ancestors with faith and simplicity. Through science, many have become doubters. If the faithful turn to Theosophy, something completely new will open up for them, the doubters or unbelievers will return to Christianity and recognize the infinite greatness of it. All religions have the same truth; only Christianity has expressed the ancient wisdom in its best form.

What is this truth? Let us first look at the Gospel of John in the New Testament. Christianity is based on the truth that there is a lower and a higher human being in us. This higher human being can be born out of the soul through immersion, contemplation, and integration. The everyday person strives to follow his desires, his inclinations, while the other seeks to ennoble himself, endeavors to make something visible of this higher human being. The divine nature in us can be awakened in two ways: lower way: by awakening the moral inclinations; higher way: in an ever higher aspiration for the divine nature in us.

Higher nature is only just beginning to be noticeable in us; we divide the lower nature into: firstly, the physical body, secondly, the etheric body, thirdly, the astral body.

We divide the higher nature into: manas, budhi, atma. What is manas? Translated literally, it means “spiritual self”. Everyone reflects and seeks to understand the world around them, in their own way. I don't just mean the scholars, but everyone; the farmer behind the plough has his ideas and mental images. But if there were no original world thoughts, man would have no thoughts; they arise in him only as thought-images.

To develop the spirit itself, cooling and warming are necessary, and here we come to the second element, to Budhi, that is love. We have to compare the things of the spiritual world with the things outside. A comparison in the sensual realm is, for example, the warmth radiating from the brooding bird to call new life into existence. That is a form of sensuality. We can also speak of spiritual lust in the elaboration of thoughts. The birth of thoughts, that is the element of spiritual love. Any artist can express it to you. Anyone who sends original thoughts out into the world can feel it. The great leaders of mankind all knew it.

Take the greatest of them all: Christ Jesus. He was permeated by this spiritual sun-glow, by this love. It is this that transforms thoughts into forces. This is called Budhi or Chrestos; or the Christ principle. That, then, is Budhi! The third element is Atma, the Father. This only comes to expression in man gradually; and through work everyone can bring about the manifestation of these three within him. The most significant event in world history was the appearance of this Christ Jesus; through him, the principle of truth was brought to our realization.

In the past, there were schools of initiation — among the Egyptians, the Asian peoples, the Greeks — with different levels leading to knowledge, to the new birth.

First stage: Man must gain the knowledge to distinguish between higher and lower in the world; for example, the plant needs the mineral soil for its nutrition, thus the kingdom below it; the animals need the plant kingdom. They could say to the plant kingdom: We owe our existence to you. And man? All kingdoms are subservient to him; and he must be grateful to them, these kingdoms. So we see: one must perform the lower services in order to serve the higher. Thus man must develop a feeling of gratitude towards everything that is below him, that serves him. And he who wants to be great must be a servant. This first step of initiation is symbolically expressed in the washing of the feet. This is a stooping down to be a servant to all in a free way.

The second step is to develop strength within oneself, to become insensitive to all the hostility we face from the outside world. This means enduring blows to the cheeks, scourging, and bearing everything so that we stand firm in the face of it all.

The third step is to remain inwardly calm in the face of all the contempt and scorn that the world brings us. This is symbolized by the crown of thorns.

The fourth stage is reached when one becomes indifferent to one's own body as if it were a foreign body. Then the soul is ready to lead its independent life; then it no longer lives in the body, but takes it upon its shoulders like a burden: the carrying of the cross.

Fifth stage: Everything becomes objective for man; he dies to all ordinary life. He suffers the mystical death, and there he grows together with the whole earth; and this is the sixth stage or the sixth act: the burial.

The seventh stage is resurrection and ascension.

The initiate must experience all of this; only then has he resurrected the higher man within himself. This took place in the mystery centres; first in the temple and then through years of association with initiates. But it took place only in the astral body. Now it should also take place in the ether body, that is, the ether body must also be freed from the physical body with the astral body. A state of sleep was needed for this.

When a person sleeps, only the astral body is released. But in lethargic sleep, the etheric body could be freed. Such a state of sleep lasted three days; then the sleeper was awakened; he was now also freed from the etheric body and the Chrestos had awakened in him.

During such sleep he entered into the supersensible life. The supersensible had now conquered the sensual.

Who was it that could know this? Those who had seen it! They had become blessed, they had penetrated the spirit with the soul. That was the pre-Christian state. But now something new was coming; all this took place as a historical event in Palestine. Now the physical body of the earth experienced all this. The symbol became a reality, a truth. In this personality, this Christ Jesus, they who believed could experience it even if they did not see. In the past, only those who had seen it in the mysteries could become blessed; now the physical eye could experience it through faith in the manifestation.

The wisdom teachings are the same everywhere; but Christ Jesus brought the inner experience to external view. And therefore he could say:

Logos used to be a teaching; he made Logos come to life. The Christian mystics of the Middle Ages recognized this. Master Eckhart put it this way:

Most people look at Christ as one loves a cow. One must first let him live in oneself so that one can recognize him in the outside world.

For Tauler, the life of Christ was not a theory; for him, these facts were real. In order to understand these facts, one must first have experienced the inner Christ. Angelus Silesius expressed this most beautifully. He says:

The body must come to life in the soul, but the soul must come to life in God if you want to live in bliss. And elsewhere:

If Christ were born a hundred times in Bethlehem and it were not born in you, you would be lost forever.

Why did this faith without vision take the place of the old initiation? Because it had become a necessity for the outer man. At the time when the pyramids and other structures that appear to us as miracles were built, the world forces had developed within man. Now the spirit had to develop in the physical world; the spiritual eye had to be opened. But what has become of the world forces, the physical forces of man? They have receded, regressed, as an eye regresses when it is not kept active – for example, in the animals in the Kentucky cave.

In the first 2000 years of Christianity, the doctrine of karma receded. On Mount Tabor (“mountain” is synonymous with solitude, seclusion from people), Jesus explained something to his disciples, his most intimate students, Peter, James and John, and led them into the sanctuary. He showed them something they could only see outside their bodies, Elijah and Moses. His testament spoke to them of reincarnation and karma, of his return: “until I return to you” (Mk 9,9). What is this return? The awakening of the Christ in the soul of man. As long as people were to live in the world of the senses, it was enough for them to satisfy their spiritual needs by observing historical events. Thus Theosophy is not hostile or opposed to Christianity, but seeks to be a servant of Christianity.

Only those who view mythologies superficially can overlook the profound wisdom that is expressed in them, and only they can fail to recognize that something much deeper is hidden there than mere poetic fantasy, popular fantasy. Real spiritual research knows that there have always been select personalities who stood higher than other people. Such superior personalities were, for example, Buddha, Pythagoras, Moses and the greatest initiate, Christ Jesus. These are individuals who are far ahead of other people; it is such individuals who know the higher worlds from their own experience, who have knowledge of what lies hidden behind the physical world. They know the spiritual world themselves. They have brought a part of the truth to the nations to which they came. The wisdom is the same at all times. But it must be brought differently to different peoples at different times. That which is true is preserved by the great leaders, the initiates of humanity, and they clothe it in those concepts that any people can understand at a particular time. The various religions are the one truth, adapted to different peoples according to their aptitude and their character.

The collective wisdom, which we also call the secret doctrine, expresses itself in the most diverse religious beliefs. To understand why one people have these ideas and another people have different ideas, we must get to know the nature of the people. We must examine the nature of the ancient Germans and the Indian peoples.

First, we will give a brief sketch of the secret doctrine, which is preserved by the initiated leaders of humanity. The basic tenet of the common secret doctrine of all these different peoples is that man is a dual being, that he consists of a spiritual-soul part and a physical-corporeal part, and that the spiritual-soul part is called upon to uplift, ennoble, purify and bless the physical-corporeal part. Schiller speaks of the purification of the lower parts of man in the letters on the aesthetic education of the human race. There he speaks of how the whole development of man consists in purifying and refining the lower nature. The whole development of man consists in his ascending to ever higher and higher levels in this purification. This view connects the Secret Doctrine with a very specific idea about the relationship between man and the world. All mysticism calls man the microcosm in comparison to the macrocosm, to the great world. If you now go through the natural kingdoms and then examine the powers, abilities and qualities of man, it turns out that man is a confluence of all the powers that are out there in the world. Paracelsus said: “When you look out into nature, you see the letters everywhere, and man is the word that is composed of these letters.” Schiller wrote to Goethe about his conception of man: “I see how you take all of nature to explain man. You look for the parts everywhere to explain man from the totality of appearances.” All the essences of the individual forces of nature have merged in the essence of man; this is how the Secret Doctrine presents man.

Man's foundation is also an image of that cosmos. The battle between the lower and higher nature in man is an image of the great cosmos. Man is a battleground of the spiritual against the physical. This is also the case in nature. But man is still in the middle of the battle. He looks back to a time when he was still in the midst of the battle and to a future when he will have overcome the struggle. The spiritual, the physically invisible forces, are fighting against the physically visible world. This struggle is presented in various ways to the most diverse peoples in the Secret Doctrine. The story of the battle of spiritual forces of nature can be found among all peoples. Out in the world, the battle has already been decided. There the lower nature kingdoms have been left behind. When man in the future has cast off his lower nature, he will have achieved what the gods have already achieved. The nature kingdoms are the traces left behind by the gods. Man looks up to the divine beings, who give a picture of what man will one day be. The gods are the elder brothers of man. Man is on the way to becoming a god. Outside in the world, man also sees the conquest of the lower nature by a higher one. This is expressed in the old legends and myths in some images common to them. In ancient India we find the god Dhyans, in new India the god Indra. He conquers the serpent. In Germanic mythology we find the god Dhin or Dhinz. It is said that he overcame a dragon in ancient times. The gods Wotan, Wille and Weh overcame the giant Ymir and formed the microcosm out of him. The old gods Wotan, Wille and Weh emerged from what remained in nature. Another concept of the Secret Doctrine is that man is the younger brother of the gods and that he who is an initiate comes closer to the gods. He has passed through certain stages to become divine. The various mythologies have regarded nature as the traces left behind by the gods. This secret doctrine found different expressions depending on the different dispositions of the peoples. The Germanic peoples had a very special expression for it.

To understand how the ancient Germans arrived at their ideas, one must delve deeper into their way of thinking. The ancient Germans did not simply make up their sagas as scholars have believed. German scholarship could have provided a good basis for a correct understanding. There is a work that presents a thorough study of legends: Das Rätsel der Sphinx (The Riddle of the Sphinx) by Ludwig Laistner. He used to take the same view as the old German scholars of legends that people have symbolized natural phenomena. In his work, Die Rätsel der Sphinx, he has succeeded in getting to the bottom of the legends that still live in the people today. There is a widespread legend, the legend of the Noon-Day Woman. If a farmer stays out in the fields instead of going home at noon, the Noon-Day Woman appears and asks him three questions. Those who cannot answer these questions will be killed by the Noon-Day Woman. In some areas, it is said that you can only ward her off by reciting the Lord's Prayer. Ludwig Laistner has shown that this legend is nothing more than a reflection of what a person actually encounters when they stay out in the fields at midday. They fall asleep and enter a state in which they perceive their surroundings as the symbol of the witch of noon.

Dreams are symbolic. The ticking of the clock next to our bed is perhaps symbolized as the clatter of horses. Dreams are symbolic, even when they are about external sensory events. That is the peculiarity of dream experiences: they are symbolic.

Everything in the world has developed, including consciousness. The present day consciousness has developed from a kind of somnambulistic consciousness. Everything has gradually come into being. Thus, from a certain clairvoyant consciousness, today's consciousness has emerged. Some organs that used to serve a purpose are now only present as rudiments. The dream is also a rudimentary state. It is the last remnant of an earlier so-called astral consciousness. In the clairvoyant, out of the dream consciousness, the clairvoyant consciousness is developed. He attains a consciousness that is not only the physical consciousness, but also a spiritual consciousness. The somnambulists seek to tune down the ordinary physical consciousness in order to induce the so-called trance consciousness. With the advent of the day consciousness, people have lost the astral trance consciousness. In the past, people needed a somnambulistic, clairvoyant consciousness. In the future, the earlier clairvoyant consciousness will return and will be developed alongside the daytime consciousness. People who have less developed intellect often still have traces of the old clairvoyant consciousness. It is not uncommon for people in the countryside to have a clairvoyant consciousness.

If we go back in time, we would find people who use their senses very little but still have the old Atlantean clairvoyant consciousness. They knew that the gods are nothing more than creations of the old astral consciousness. The soul of the people has retained remnants of the astral consciousness. Germanic mythology is an expression of spiritual experiences. Our ancestors still had spiritual consciousness. The ancient Germans preserved their astral experiences in their mythology. The ancient German saw the gods fighting with the lower forces of nature in the astral world. The whole of Germanic mythology comprises tales of experiences within the astral world. The sagas describe how ancient clairvoyant humanity moved downwards. Baldur once dreamt that he would soon die. All creatures swore an oath not to harm him. But Loki used mistletoe, which had been forgotten, to make Hödur, the blind Hödur, kill Baldur. Humanity, which has become blind to the spiritual world, is Hödur. His ancestor with the old somnambulistic consciousness is Baldur. Only that which belongs to him can kill him: mistletoe, which dates back to an earlier epoch of development. At that time there was a mineral kingdom on earth that was half plant-like; plants grew in it as if in a living being. Mistletoe is a remnant of that plant kingdom that can only grow on another living plant.

The ancient Germans realized that the spiritual world is also a world of light, but that humans cannot perceive it. Baldur is a man of light from this spiritual world. He can perceive the astral world. Hödur, however, is the new man who does not see the astral world. Germanic mythology also expresses that man is a younger brother of the gods. In Germanic mythology, we are told how Wotan hung on the gallows of the cross for nine days and nine nights and that Mimir gave him a drink. This is reminiscent of Christ Jesus. Here, too, the crucifixion is presented as a symbol. Wotan is portrayed here as an initiate. It is then said that Wotan crawls through the crevices of the earth as a snake and that he reaches Gunnlöd, the Valkyrie. He stays there for three days and three nights. She hands him the potion of wisdom. The initiate remained in the cave in lethargy for three days and three nights. There he was to unite with his higher soul. The higher consciousness of man has always been represented as something feminine. The feminine is the higher consciousness that man attains when he enters the realms of the spiritual world.

The story of Wotan is adapted to the abilities of the human race at that time, which is told by all initiates. Gunnlöd is the Valkyrie. She is the higher consciousness. This is also referred to as the Valkyrie in other Germanic legends. Siegfried also reaches the Valkyrie when he attains his higher consciousness. — This portrayal of the Valkyrie Gunnlöd takes us deep into Germanic mythology. The Germanic peoples were a warlike people who placed the greatest value on bravery. A warrior who fell on the battlefield was led to Valhalla by the Valkyrie. Those who fell on the battlefield reached their higher soul part. This came to meet him as the Valkyrie. The human being who passed through the gate of death had to unite with the Valkyrie. That is why Wotan stayed with Gunnlöd. In Germanic mythology, every initiate was thought of as being connected to the Valkyrie.

Siegfried is said to have worn the magic hood of invisibility. The initiate is hidden in a certain way. People do not recognize the initiate. The hood of invisibility hides him from people. Siegfried is an initiate; he unites with the Valkyrie Brunhild. He becomes invulnerable like all initiates. He remains vulnerable only where he carries the cross, between the shoulder blades. A greater initiate is promised, who will also be invulnerable there. Because the ancient Germans had retained their astral beliefs for a long time, the secret teachers were able to give them the teachings in the astral consciousness.

Almost all Asian peoples are descended from the ancient Atlanteans. Their ancestors came from Atlantis. The ancestors of the ancient Germans had also come from Atlantis. They had remained in Europe, while another part had continued to migrate as far as Asia. Those who had advanced further had first developed sensory consciousness and intellectual consciousness. They were already living with advanced spiritual ideas. Hence the urge arose in India to take an artificial path to penetrate into the other worlds. For this, the Indian needed an artificial path. This is what is called yoga, a certain training that leads from the sensual world to the spiritual world. A yogi is a person who seeks to find his way back to the spiritual world. In India, the intellect found expressions for the artificial clairvoyance that was developed through the practice of yoga. The ancient Germans also had astral vision. In India, on the one hand, artificial clairvoyance developed, and on the other hand, intellectual philosophy. Those who no longer have astral vision need external symbols and rituals, as found in Indian symbolism. These are sensual expressions for the spiritual worlds. In India, what had now developed in its most glorious form was also in Christianity. Germania had also been pointed to Christianity. In Siegfried, one saw an initiate who was invulnerable except for the one spot. Kriemhild pinned the cross to that spot. This is a picture that prophetically points to the future of Germania. Here is the place where the cross will lie, making it invulnerable. Thus the old saga points here to Christianity, which made this place invulnerable.

Because the Germanic world felt so close to what came over through Christianity, that is why Christianity found such an entrance there. Within Europe, there was no need for Indian philosophy. We could do without it altogether. What is gained from the correct immersion in the Germanic sagas of the gods must appear even more profoundly.

These concepts will come to life again when that which is still alive, albeit veiled, in the soul of the people is awakened to life. This treasure will be unearthed; then we will understand in a unique way what our European ancestors have to say to their descendants.

Theosophy is intended to create a brotherhood across all of humanity, causing people to carry into the future what they understand from the past.

The name Lucifer inspires a slight sense of dread in some, and is usually associated with notions of antipathy. Is this justified? The name Lucifer means: light bearer, light bringer. Medieval beliefs were different, but for those who have studied the deep knowledge of the world, Lucifer actually denotes something quite different.

Spiritual beings play a role in human life. The religions of the East speak of deva and dhyani chohan, the more Western religions, such as Christianity, speak of angels and archangels. To those who are familiar with the spiritual worlds, they represent something true and real. Higher beings play a role in human life. Lucifer is also understood to be among the guiding personalities, the leading or seducing ones.

Here we must be clear about dualism – duality – which plays a role in all areas of life. The ancients, including Pythagoras, speak of this duality: light and darkness, male and female, positive and negative magnetism, and we could cite many more such dualities. – When we make a glass rod electrically positive by rubbing it, we simultaneously make the rubbing material electrically negative. The electricity of glass and that of the rubbed material are related to each other as light is to darkness. In the Persian creation myth, we find Ormuzd and Ahriman: good deity, evil deity. Everything that drives the world forward is done by the good god, while everything that hinders it is withdrawn by the evil god. They place man in the middle.

Remember that everything in the world has a good and an evil side. What do human beings, with their culture, not owe to fire. And on the other hand, how destructive the power of fire can be in volcanic phenomena. Germany's great poet Schiller sang gloriously about this in “The Bell”: “Beneficial is the power of fire...” and so on.

This duality also works in man himself. For centuries, the one principle was seen as evil. A distinction was made between divine - good, and luciferic - evil. In the story of creation, the luciferic principle was represented as a snake. Man had to grow out of a dull nature, so the snake came and opened his eyes to good and evil, and thus another principle was opposed to the divine one. The ancient Indians called the Rishis a snake.

We have to go much deeper into the development of the human soul to see what reality underlies the Lucifer principle. In more recent times, views on this have undergone changes. These were already evident in the old Faust saga. Goethe reshaped it to meet human needs. Faust not only wanted to immerse himself in divine science, he also wanted to make a covenant with evil powers. Then he no longer wanted to approach theology, he wanted to remain a medical doctor. He put the Bible behind the bench and that was considered a reason to fall into the hands of evil forces. In Goethe's work, the crux of the matter is in the second part of Faust: “Whoever strives, we can redeem.” So it is not something destructive, but rather a power is evoked that is not opposed to the deity.

If we want to understand this power, we must realize how man fits into the world around him. Man forms one of the kingdoms; alongside him we have the mineral kingdom, the vegetable kingdom and the animal kingdom. Man perceives himself as a self-aware being and carries within himself all these kingdoms; he is the bearer of all these natures. He has a physical body in common with the mineral, and he also shares the etheric or life body with the plant. Through his world of feelings, which, as the astral body, is the carrier of passions, instincts, desires, he has something in common with the animal. Thus, man is in an interdependent relationship with the three realms.

Man can only sustain his life by breathing. He draws in the air of life – oxygen – into himself, combines the latter with carbon in his body and exhales this poison – carbonic acid. But man and animal could not live if the plant did not continually renew this air of life. Man and animal owe the possibility of life to the plant. The plant owes it to the mineral. It is only logical to extend this chain of development beyond man, not only to lower beings but also to higher ones. Just as man belongs to lower beings, so he also belongs to higher ones. The fact that man does not see higher beings is no reason why they should not exist. Higher senses can bring man this perception.

Man is first of all a tetrad: physical body, etheric body, astral body and the I. He is a developing being. How does his development take place? A savage still follows his animal instincts, he follows every urge; the one who is higher up only follows certain urges, and those who are very high up, let us say, for example, Schiller or Francis of Assisi, follow even fewer of the lower urges, but transform them into ideals. This results in an upward development of the astral body. The inferior man also has an astral body, but he has done little work in it. A superior man raises his astral body from the animal stage to a higher, nobler and more perfect form. The astral body consists of two parts: what other entities have given him, and what he himself has worked into it. That which he has worked into it himself, we call “Manas”, spirit self, and we thus designate the fifth limb of man. Manas is nothing other than the transformed astral body. But man can do much more than transform his astral body. An undeveloped person knows nothing of morality, law, logic; he has developed little Manas.

But there are even deeper changes. In the ninth and tenth centuries, people did not all have such perfect ideas, but much of what they had learned was incorporated into their astral bodies, because it is the carrier of everything we can learn in the world. What we learn changes quickly, but habits and temperaments change more slowly. We could compare what changes quickly with the minute hand of a clock and what changes more slowly with the hour hand. But there is also the opportunity to change what we are used to, and in doing so we change the etheric or life body: because it is denser, it makes it more difficult for the ego to change. As much as the human being changes his etheric body, so much 'budi' arises in him. Religions are instructions on how to work “Budhi” into the etheric body, while morality only changes the astral body. In the highest sense, art does the same as religions.

Thus you can now find the human being with six limbs, even if manas and budhi are only present in him in a germinal state. But there is already secret training that develops the etheric body. What is taught to the individual is doctrine; what transforms humanity is an influence on the budhi, is secret training. A chela, an occult disciple, works in his etheric body.

But what is hardly present in the seed is the Atman. It is such a strong power that a person can work with it right into his physical body. What can a person do in his physical body today? A person who can develop as an artistic human being, as a chela, can become master of his habits. But the person who has worked this seventh link, this Atman, into himself, also learns to control his pulse. And with this, he becomes partaker of the eternal. This is an achievement of mastery.

Now we see the human being with manas, budhi and atman. We now know that man, we said the I, stands in relation to the three lower realms, and now we see that he stands in relation to a realm above him, the divine realm, through what he has worked into himself as Manas. In this divine realm we have to seek the Elohim, divine spirits, of whom the Bible, as Jehovah, names one.

Through his Manas, his spiritual self, man is linked to the higher worlds. Therefore, we speak of man as one who is becoming, an evolving God. Christ Jesus says, “You are gods.” (John 10:34) Man will one day look back on his present spiritual level and he will feel like a human being who has grown out of it completely.

If we believe in evolution, we must also consider this for other beings, and looking back, we see that our older brothers, the Elohim, with them Jehovah, on an earlier planet or on the earlier embodiment of the earth, occupied the same stage that man now occupies on the present embodiment of the earth. The law of embodiment is not only the basis of man, but of all beings. Goethe speaks of the Earth Spirit: “In the flood of life, in the storm of action, I surge up and down,” and so on. The Earth was seen by individuals as a spiritual being and man as its members. The Earth was often embodied and in its previous embodiment it brought the present gods to the level of man. And in a later incarnation, the present-day human being will take on the level of his older brothers, the Elohim or gods. God, the Nameless, the Unfathomable, is not spoken of here. Elohim or Deva, better translated into German as: spirits.

To illustrate this “progressive” view, I will give an albeit trivial example: just as a student passes through different classes, the class that present humanity is going through is what the gods went through in their previous incarnation on Earth. Students also remain in classes, and so there were beings that did not go through this class completely.

Where do they stand today between humans and gods? They are higher beings than humans, but lower than the gods. In a sense, they are familiar with humans. The following law exists: Each of the basic parts of the human being is developed in an incarnation on earth. In the present incarnation on earth, the manas is developing; in the earlier incarnation, the astral body. The essential thing in this development on earth was that man has changed his entire astral body, that he no longer has anything of the animal in him. Through the development of the manas, he can enter into contact with manasic beings. Only when the atman is developed can he develop independently. Today, older brothers work, later still older ones in budhi and still older ones in atman. The higher spirits that have remained are related to the human astral body. They have already tasted of the Divine. Just as in Manas, demigods also help us to assert ourselves and to glow with the Divine. We would remain trapped in lower instincts if it were not for this stimulation. Thus the passions are transformed into higher instincts. There would only be a barren realm of moral principles, but they would not pulsate in man.

The Old Testament has wonderfully developed this law. The entities that evoke enthusiasm, the glow of love for the manasic, are called Luciferic entities. Thus, Lucifer is the one who evokes the astral passion for the divine in man. He thus arouses in him the desire to learn to love the divine, not as a duty, but as an inclination. He adds independence to submission. He is the instigator of human freedom.

Man becomes free only by following the divine out of his own urge. This is reflected in the biblical story of creation. God guided man, he could not choose. Then the serpent came, and the thought came into man, not only to live in God is desirable, but to become God himself, to carry the image of the deity in [himself] as a personality. Through Lucifer — biblically expressed through the serpent — the human body became the light bearer, as Lucifer himself was the light bearer, until Christ entered the world as “I am the light of the world” (John 8:12) and realized the principle of love for the divine. External knowledge, knowing what the laws of the world are, now seems dull to man. This external knowledge should grasp our inner being, should intervene directly as theosophy, as an independent inner experience. This is how Lucifer anchors himself in man. This research is called the school of Luciferian striving. These people are called: children of Lucifer.

If the gods gave science, Lucifer gave enthusiasm.

God: Revelation.

Lucifer: freedom.

We have a filial relationship with God; Lucifer awakened the feeling of being an independent being, of freedom. Devotion was a voluntary sacrifice. As everywhere, there must be a duality: God and Lucifer.

Thus, the Luciferic entities have not been left behind for no reason. They are those who strive to lead us to the divine by our own free choice. To do so, man must also have the opportunity to be evil. He can certainly become divine without it, but only through free choice.

If the Supreme is to be free, then it must be anchored in the other nature. In this way, God and luciferic entities work towards perfection and freedom.

Question & Answer: Question: [What does the] sphinx mean?

Rudolf Steiner: What the mind is trying to grasp today is nothing new as a concept. The pyramids represent the ancient views of our ancestors: there are four lines on which they stand = the fourfold nature of the human being, physical body, etheric body, astral body with the I. That is the foundation. Above it rises the triangle, representing the three basic parts that the ego works out of the four: Atman, Budhi, Manas. The trinity is not yet complete. If you want to feel this, then you must look at the sphinx. She represents the lower nature and from the eye the riddle of future development radiates towards you. In it, man prophetically seeks his future.

Question: [Not handed down.]

Rudolf Steiner: There are two writings – they are not actually writings in the strict sense – one is kept by a religious community, a church in secret, the other is kept by a master, a great leader of humanity.

A few weeks ago, I spoke about the principle of Lucifer and his significance in the world. Today, we will discuss the principle in connection with the drama of the same name by Edouard Schuré. I do not want to talk about the work of art itself.

In this work of art, we have something that few works of art have; for it arose out of the theosophical view. Schur took his material from events and occurrences of the fourth century AD and thus artistically shaped the two great currents of human development.

Today I want to talk about the two currents, about what one might call the Luciferic principle and which deals with the deification of man, in contrast to the other principle, the humanization of God, or of the gods. In fact, such two currents meet in man.

In the mysteries, these greatest secrets of world events were spiritually depicted; the passage of God through all the kingdoms of nature, until finally up to man – and the ascent of man through the physical and astral nature up to deification. Edouard Schur€ shows how these two currents crossed.

For us, the most important thing is the so-called Fall of Man, the expulsion from paradise. Today we want to talk freely about this event in the development of man. You know that man has a series of embodiments behind and in front of him. Everything that is and lives on earth is subject to the same law of embodiment; so are the great beings we call planets. The earth was also in a different planetary state in the past; it too has planetary ancestors. The purpose of such transformations is for these beings to ascend to higher levels: humans, animals, plants, and minerals existed earlier, but in a lower form. It would be an incomplete view to assume that the ascending series ends with humans. Huxley says, “When you look at the truths this way, there is nothing to prevent perfection from passing through humans and ascending to God.”

Occultism says about the development of man on the earlier planets: Man was not yet man there; there were other beings. And when the earth merges into another planet, then the present man will stand spiritually as high as those beings, and other beings will stand below him. The predecessors of humanity had a very different form and different activity. Like them, even if not exactly the same in spirit, man will develop.

These beings now also appear in the biblical creation story as Elohim or spirits of light. These beings rose from humans to gods as the former planet progressed. In the next stage, humans become Elohim. The Bible contains theosophical truths. If we want to understand the task that fell to these Elohim, we must first realize that there are initially three types of activity. The first is to perceive, the second to live, and the third to create. Every being must pass through these three stages. The Elohim first attained the stage of life and then proceeded to creation. Man was initially in the stage of beholding, then he came to life, and in a later stage he will create. “In the beginning God created man and blew into him the living breath. Then man became a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) One of the seven Elohim is Yahweh or Jehovah. His task was to create at the beginning of the earth. We say: Man originated in the third root race, but the present man is quite unlike the Lemurian primeval man.

The mainland of Lemuria was interspersed with mighty masses of fire and perished at that time due to volcanic upheavals. The air circle was not only a mass of water, but filled with substances that had not yet settled.

The land that emerged later, Atlantis, was submerged by floods. With it perished the fourth root race.

The civilization of the fifth root race is spread over Europe, Asia and Africa.

What happened at the beginning of the physical sex? What came over from the earlier planet?

First, the highest humans. And then, between the present-day animal and man, there was a human animal, such as no longer exists today. In the ancient Lemurian times, however, these animals did not walk around, for they were semi-ethereal beings with a touch of matter. Like a breath, they swept over the earth's surface. Opposite them was a sequence of physical beings, very different from minerals, plants and animals; but the latter developed from them. The physical part of the three realms was formed from the earlier planet, and the individuals who were able to evolve were able to lay the foundation and the basis for further development into human beings. This is expressed in the Mosaic creation story with the words: “And God formed man out of the dust of the ground.” (Genesis 2:7)

How did this transformation take place? It was the work of the creative Elohim. These spirits of light transformed the earlier creation; their work was directed towards man, they did not need to create the soul. For that came down from the earlier world as a breath. Thus, in the highest beings of the Lemurian period, there lived a physical being that stood higher than its predecessors on the earlier planet. These beings were tripartite. They had a physical body, an etheric body and an astral body. In the new human being, the “I” now also worked and helped to build the physical body. Thus, the new human being had four parts, and the fact that he became “I” was the work of the spirits of light.

This fourfold nature is considered the most important mystery. The threefold nature is being transformed into the fourfold. If you can visualize these structures, you will understand the dual nature of man: the outer shell and the divine. The seven Elohim work here, and Jehovah has the task of transforming the dual-sex nature into a single-sex one. Thus, male and female sex only came into being on Earth. With the creation of Jehovah, with the creation of the single-sex human beings, humanity on earth begins to receive its true task. The earlier planet was the planet of wisdom, the earth is the planet of love, and the attraction of the sexes is the lowest degree of love. What is love today was wisdom in the past. Every part of the human body, when we examine it, the brain, the sense organs, whatever it is, gives us the impression of wise arrangement. This is because man has gone through the world of wisdom. The planet at that time was pulsating with wisdom, the present one is pulsating with love. Every planet has its task. With this love, man was given not only the relationship between the sexes, but all, all the newly acquired earthly goods that man has.

To indicate what the result of this newly emerging love was in ancient times, let us follow man from the point where the dual sex begins. In those days there were small communities of people descended from one couple. Blood relatives married each other. And consanguinity is the only reason that love remains in the same blood, beyond man and woman. Only later did long-distance marriage occur instead of close marriage. This relationship of love as blood relationship can be traced back to the time of ancient Judaism. National love is implanted in sex love. The Jews form one big family, as it were. Jehovah implanted what was inherited; the Jehovah principle is inheritance, and inherited love is connected with that.

We know that in ancient times, blood relatives had a very different memory. Such a person remembered the experiences of previous generations. Personal memory arose from family memory. Adam, Cain, Seth denote a continuous memory. Everything connected with this memory is called the Jehovah Principle. All truth, wisdom, knowledge is connected with it. What man today regards as a phrase was then truth.

I would like to quote a conversation between Rosegger and Anzengruber here. In Rosegger's work, the peasant figures are all carefully studied, and you can feel it in them; in Anzengruber's work, they come to life before us. Rosegger noticed this and said to Anzengruber: “It would be better for you to look at farmers.” Anzengruber replied: “I have never looked at a farmer; but my ancestors were farmers, and that is in the blood!” Such is the last remnant of something that used to be common. It was not just poetic creation, but a way of looking at things. One did not just see the ancestors, one saw the process of the earth itself. What is present as ancient wisdom is not written down in any other way; it is in the blood. Only Rosicrucian theosophy approaches it differently. This is how man has become, how wisdom and love have been implanted in his blood; it “arises” from the love of the two sexes, to use Jakob Böhme's expression. There is an intermediate stage between human beings and those Elohim. In everyday language, I compared it to a student being held back in a school class. Thus, some of the Elohim remained on the planet that preceded the Earth. These are the luciferic spirits, with Lucifer as their leader or most outstanding one. So, above man are Elohim and the retarded. The latter must now make up for what they have missed. What kind of beings are they? A complete being has developed its seven basic parts. A human being has not yet fully developed them. Man, with his four-part entity, is on the way to developing the seven basic parts. The luciferic entities had not developed an Atma; most of them only came to the development of Budhi, the spirit of life. This makes them superior to man, but inferior to the Elohims. The beings that achieved Budhi were in the Venus state. Venus was the sixth basic part or Budhi. They did not fully develop on the planet of wisdom and did not achieve creative love. They could create in the outer wisdom: art, science, but not in what man creates within. The Jehovah principle creates within: love, community, states; everything that works on the outside, such as art and science, has been handed down from the previous planet and works like a second principle. That is why this appears as a kind of enemy. While the Jehovah principle seeks to uplift us to love, this one to wisdom. It makes the ego a wise being. On the previous planet, wisdom had not yet been implanted as an ego, because the ego had not yet been developed. There was no selfish wisdom.

Wisdom and love are two great currents that have been at work as forces within the process of becoming a human being. Then the striving for freedom intruded. The Luciferic principle does not have the struggle for existence as its goal; war is not the purpose; the purpose is freedom, independence, science, knowledge. A change in the interaction of these two principles occurred with the appearance of Christ Jesus. Then a completely new impulse was given to the development of the earth. An ancient saying goes: “Whoever does not leave wife and brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” (Luke 14:26; Matthew 19:29) Love, linked to blood relationship, must extend to larger communities. Through Jesus Christ, all barriers must cease, and the beginning must be made to love everyone. The Christ principle must be extended to all of humanity, and love must be purified to the highest degree. What began in weakness in the lower sexual instinct could be transformed into love for humanity. And only with that did the Earth become the planet of love. What was grounded in the Jehovah principle was raised to the highest level by the son principle, and from that point on the possibility was gained of contrasting strong love with wisdom.

Since the Christ Principle has been active on Earth, Christ and Lucifer have been standing opposite each other as two poles. The Christ Principle has internalized love and made it the essence of the soul. In the first centuries of Christianity, Hellenism, Greek culture, brought the outer world to its highest level. Whether in sculpture, drama, or the political state, everything the Greeks created was a one-sided external representation of the Jehovah principle.

How did this Greek way of life develop? What happened? Plato was called an Attic Greek-speaking Moses. Plato gave a solid form to the formless ideas of the initiated Moses. If we are broad-minded enough to understand them, wisdom and love breathe towards us in Hellenic culture and present themselves in the god Dionysus. The divine that appears to us has split into individual works of art. Spirit has become form in the Dionysian Greek culture. If the Hellene has become entirely the body of culture, then love in Christ has become entirely the soul of culture. The spirit in the body and in the soul that is inward, occultism represents: female = the soul, male = the body, which is permeated by the spirit. The body filled with spirit is opposed to the soul.

Schuré contrasts Phosphoros, the representative of the Hellenic spirit, the wisdom that creates the outer form, with Kleonis, the Christian soul, which is entirely based on the theosophical spirit.

In all great poetry, the aim is to depict human development, and it is an achievement that we are once again seeing the creation of works of art that have arisen from a theosophical spirit.

In ancient times, there were children of God who proclaimed revelations inherited from above. There were also children of Lucifer who presented themselves as fire spirits and were the teachers of wisdom.

And Jehovah implanted love in them until they matured into the Christ-principle, into a wisdom that can generate love at the same time, and a love that can generate wisdom at the same time. Then the children of God and the children of Lucifer will meet, then the two currents will merge into one. This happens in Christ: He is God become man and man become God.

When the Christian virgin Kleonis united with the pagan spirit Phosphoros, love and wisdom united. The struggle between love and wisdom was present. But when the children of Lucifer and the children of God unite, the medieval idea that the children of Lucifer are opponents of God will fade away. But with that, the great mission of man on earth will be fulfilled.

Whether this applies to Romance and Germanic peoples is not necessary to discuss further here. It is a disaster for a people when those who are or are supposed to be leaders speak a different language and have different thoughts. Today there is one area where such a gap exists: it is the area of religious life. I will speak of the basis of this religious gap: the Bible.

Questions that occupy all people are: Where do people come from, what is the meaning, the goal of life, what is the essence and what is its form? Endless layers seek the solution to such questions in the Bible; but precisely what matters, the living feeling and attitude to the Bible, is lacking. There is a gulf between the theologians who study the Bible and the believers, and when someone says, “We want it to close,” for the time being it is only a wish. There are enough reasons, even without resorting to mysticism and occultism, to believe that the gulf is widening. There comes a time when teachers and believers no longer understand each other. People usually do not realize how great this gap is. Teachers of the past, who studied the Bible, based their teachings on the highest truths. There was a sense that what the Bible contains is something unspeakably high, that one is wise at the beginning, becomes wiser as one understands more and more. Teachers were formed through this wisdom-filled study of the Bible, and there were teachers. Those who listened, who listened intently, felt that this was where wisdom could be found. This is not to say that there are no such men today.

If we look back 150 years, there was still something of that feeling towards the Bible, a feeling of sacred awe, that such writing should be treated quite differently. Goethe was also familiar with this. Today, all this seems difficult to understand. We must realize that the spirit of materialism is not very intrusive where it appears as theoretical materialism. We see this in Haeckel's views. These are not the worst. The worst is the one that guides people to understand things materially and to see only what is tangible and to overlook the meaning behind it.

We want to touch on two things: biblical criticism and inspiration.

Tell a materialist about inspiration and he will laugh at you. Nevertheless, it is the current that we now call theosophical that is reawakening the dulled sense of the concept of inspiration. Inspiration, that is, inspiration from a higher world, would take a different position on what is in the Bible than on another book. The writer of those books was a point of passage, a conduit for the transmission of higher knowledge. This is a crude way of expressing the concept of inspiration, which is completely misunderstood, even in theology. Materialistic believers have suffered the greatest harm.

We will now only talk about what some Bible scholars say. Older and newer ones state that certain statements are made to us that prove that Moses could not have written the books in question, that passages must have been written centuries after Moses, that therefore the passages in question cannot be from him. I will mention one example that most likely makes people head shy. It is the twofold account of the creation of man. First it says: God created man male and female (Gen. 1:27). To make it quite clear: it does not say male and female. Then it says that God created man first and then the woman, his rib (Gen. 1:21-22). What is the basis for this? This is particularly characteristic. It was said that one and the same personality could not give rise to two different descriptions, so they must have been welded together.

So they searched the Bible for contradictions. Furthermore, they found certain differences in style and expression, so they concluded again that these are different sources and that some collector has combined both.

Let us take the six- or seven-day work. It presents in lofty thoughts the creation of the world from the first formation to the day on which God rested. It is a cosmic work that points out to us in vivid terms and intense images that we are dealing with an ancient document of inspiration. The creation of Adam, the leading to the animals, Eve's fall into sin, the snake as a symbol of sin (Genesis 3) led to the assumption that the six- or seven-day work came from a different source. Supercritical Bible researchers found the two designations: Elohists and Jahvehists; others found other discrepancies, so that finally it became clear what is now called the Rainbow Bible.

Thus the Bible work is fragmented. Now you may think that my word should be Bible criticism. That is not the case at all. I only know that in few areas so much diligence, ingenuity and intellect has been applied as to the fragmentation of the Bible. The original fervor, the devotion to this book, as inspiration from another world, has suffered. Now it is necessary to shine a light into this cleft in order to bring it back together again. It depends on the meaning behind it. I would like to use an example to illustrate the state of the art of this question. I will use a simple experience - I have experienced it - to explain. For many years I worked in the Goethe Archive in Weimar. In the records Goethe organized in the 1880s, there was a foreign transcript whose content he mistook for his own thoughts. However, he could not remember how he came to have this essay. When I came to Weimar in 1889, there were doubts that the essay was actually by Goethe. It was a scholarly question. I was able to prove that at that time Goethe had a man by the name of Tobler at his side, of whom Goethe said that he had an excellent memory. I thought that this settled the question; Goethe expressed the thoughts that Tobler wrote down, and so Goethe is the author. It is the passage that you find in the last Goethe volume: “Nature we are” and so on to the final sentence “Love is the crown”. A famous Goethe scholar – I won't mention any names, we owe him a great debt of gratitude – was keen to prove that the ink for these words had not flowed from Goethe's pen. It is not a sufficient comparison, but it is similar to biblical research. Efforts are made to prove when the content was created historically, factually, sensually, because thinking has a materialistic tendency. The sense of the spirit has been lost.

Now something else has to be added. Again, I can best make it clear with an example. Take geometry, this very ordinary school geometry. You can understand it from itself. You do not need to know how it came about. What does a schoolboy know about Euclid? What do we care who wrote it first? What matters is to explore it. When a learned house for all languages, which knows nothing about geometry, approaches Euclid, he is not yet explored by that. So something monstrous can come out at times. No philologist, no matter how famous, will understand Vedanta philosophy just because he is a philologist. If you know geometry, you know Euclid.

The question that now arises is: Is there any possibility at all of investigating the Bible? One must first know the worlds of which the Bible speaks, only then is one a qualified investigator. Is there access to the great riddles of existence? This is the path followed by the theosophical worldview. Just as there are ways to understand geometry, there are means and ways to penetrate into the spiritual world. A number of people are already walking these paths; they are seeking wisdom about the higher worlds. The result is that with each step one takes, the old religious documents arise before him in ever new forms. What does it matter from which sources, if we have the truth?

You know that for theosophical views, this world that we can see and touch is considered one world. This world would be different for us if we had other senses. Fichte once used the example: Imagine you are the only seeing person among blind people and enter the world of people who only grope around. You would be considered a fantasist if you still ascribed the quality of color to things. No one has the right to say that something is not. A person's perception depends on their organs, and how many of them they have.

Through the principle of initiation, an inner sense reveals itself to man, and with it the next world opens up to him, the imaginative or astral world, so called because it works in images. This pictorial consciousness can be tapped into. Those who apply the method described will enter this world. There is nothing, absolutely nothing of magic about it. The imaginative world presents itself as a flowing sea of light and color. These are not mere spots, but clearly defined forms, inwardly glowing and bright. So you rise to the world from which you come.

Develop these organs further and you will enter the world of inspiration. The School of Pythagoras called this world the harmony of the spheres. This is not an image, it is reality. It is not a sensual sound. Goethe and others point to this harmony of the spheres. Christianity calls it the Kingdom of Heaven or the Heavenly Kingdom. Goethe has his Faust say: “The sun resounds in the ancient way” and so on. That is not a poetic image. He knew that this was how to describe the characteristic. In the second part, Goethe says, “Sounds for spiritual ears” and so on, and by that he means the same thing.

This, then, is the world of inspiration, and beyond that is the world of intuition. There, there is an experience of the “thing in itself”, as our great philosopher Kant called it. There, love is something much higher, there is a merging with things.

Those who engage with the meaning of the concept of inspiration know what it means. In this way, a person can go through the world in his development. First, with the sensual eyes and the physical mind, the materialistic development of the human being begins. His astral development preceded this. Just as ice is related to water – water in another form – so your body is soul. Before it took on this form, it was merely soul. You lived in a world that can only be perceived by the imaginative senses. If you examine the world only with the outer senses, you can describe what Haeckel describes. It is all true, but only insofar as the ice remains only ice.

Go back even further, and the human soul was not yet condensed into the physical. The line does not end with imaginative knowledge. The soul has lived much earlier and comes to a point in its development that opens up the soul of man. Imagine this development in such a way that the soul lived separately because the physical world was not yet ready to offer it a suitable body. The world was a kind of stream in which the human being floated.

What enabled man to reclassify? A very specific organ, a kind of swim bladder was transformed into lungs. These were the times when the body became capable of being a condensed soul. In the Bible this is referred to as: “God breathed into the man the breath of life and he was a living soul.” (Genesis 2:7) There is an even higher world than that of inspiration. If we go even further, man was spirit. The body is a condensed soul; the soul is a condensed spirit.

As soon as one enters inspiration from imagination, male and female disappear. The Bible says: God created man male and female – undifferentiated. (Genesis 1:27) They all were in the spiritual body. Even without taking the Bible into consideration, we can establish this. Anyone who approaches the Bible quite freely today will feel it literally.

There are four possible attitudes towards the Bible:

1. The naive person takes it as it is offered to him.
2. the enlightened person sees it as a childish folk fantasy. These are the freethinkers. But some of them, and one of their most important representatives, Bruno Wille, has come to a symbolic interpretation.
3. Those who are beyond cleverness find a mystical-symbolic meaning for the Bible.
4. The theosophist adopts a literal interpretation.

Then comes the time when the person says to himself, “Now you are beginning to understand some of it.” One comes to assume that where one cannot keep up, one just does not yet understand. The Bible is conquered in such a way that the gap is filled again, and those who create the means to do so are inspired men. Those who grasped this initially did so under the influence of inspiration. We are heading towards a new conquest of the Bible and a new relationship between wisdom and the Bible.

Today, it is our turn to explain the relationship between the Bible and wisdom in more detail, but first we need to discuss the “Old Testament” some more. Yesterday, we only mentioned the creation of man and the important passage: God breathed into the man and so on. (Genesis 2:7) Today, we want to try to penetrate the content of the original source of the Bible. So let us first consider what may arouse wonderment in people. It is useful to pick out individual facts. The long lives of the patriarchs in the Bible can arouse amazement. The material scientist would of course say: that is not possible. A theosophy that indulges in generalizing a concept says: Adam, Seth and Enoch are not to be understood as individual people, but as tribes; thus, they are names of tribes. It is not that simple. We have to go deeper into the laws of life. We have to refrain once and for all from symbolizing and allegorizing, and not ask: What does it mean?

I have already spoken to you about the cause of this old age in another context. At the time, I cited a conversation between two poets, Anzengruber and Rosegger. You know Rosegger's charming description of the mountain people. Everything he presents to us has been carefully observed. When you see Anzengruber's plays, you see farmers who stand firmly on their feet. Now something very strange. Anzengruber never lived among farmers. He lived in the city and didn't like to go out. Rosegger said to him: If you would observe the farmers more closely, you would be able to describe them much better. Anzengruber replied: I have never seen farmers, but my father, mother, grandparents were farmers, and that has remained in my blood and rumbles in me.

Direct inheritance seems much more vivid than when the blood is mixed. This is still the case today when a son comes from unmixed blood. In the past, this was the case to a high degree; it was not only in the imagination. In the old days, people did not marry outside their tribe. It was considered a great sin to step outside the blood. In all ancient peoples you find sagas and structures where breaking this commandment had to be atoned for. No blood brotherhood existed among ancient peoples, and what was in the blood was a completely different power. In those days, consanguinity brought with it a kind of clairvoyance. Today that has passed, today it would even cause harm. This clairvoyance was expressed in such a way that one not only lived in the imagination, but one had real memories that went back a long way. Just as you remember your youth today, so one remembered events from the life of the father, grandfather and great-grandfather. Today's man does not believe that. At that time, what the father had done was felt as: I have done it. For today, this is a highly wonderful situation. Thus, what was the experiences of the fathers, as in Anzengruber, passed into the memory. You could have felt your father as your self at that time, so that you did not say “I” to yourself, but you took father, mother, grandfather and great-grandfather all together as “I”, you felt the whole generation as “I”. So Adam was everything that people felt for centuries as a common consciousness, patriarchs are a whole generation embracing self-awareness. You have to know that consciousness arose through blood-brotherly memory. This is how we understand those statements in the Bible, and a great wisdom is revealed to us. So I could explain from chapter to chapter how theosophy is based on our religious feeling.

And now from the “Old Testament” to the “New”, to the actual Gospel. We distinguish the time before Christ Jesus and the time after Christ Jesus. The coming of Christ Jesus into this world is the most significant, most powerful event in the development of humanity. Something completely new occurred there. Recent research has gradually unraveled the Gospels. Contradictions were sought and these have done little to further understanding. What confusion would such a dissection of the Apocalypse create, for example? I will mention only one fact here: the secret revelation of John was seen by Bible researchers as a prophecy of future events of humanity, or even of past ones. For example, some said that the presbyter John lived after Nero and only wrote what happened in terms of earthquakes, plagues and so on. Now I still want to point out a remarkable passage where great events and upheavals were brought about by a beast. The number of this beast is a human number, “666”. The researchers have heard something ringing here; they have heard that things have been expressed through numbers, certain names, forms. There was a possibility of using the alphabet as numbers. This was the practice in certain secret schools. Now researchers have found out, diligent, hard-working researchers, that Nero is supposed to mean the beast, just to avoid believing that there is something spiritual behind it. They simply did not know what it was. The true theosophist must first learn wisdom to understand the meaning of the Bible.

666 is composed of 400, 200, 60 and 6. This means or is called: Sorat. This also has a specific sign: a staff with two wings or ram horns. (Rev 13:11) That is the sign for this being. Spiritual science sees in everything not only a material but also a spiritual essence; for example, the sun is the body of the sun soul. For spiritual science, it is the spirit that moves people forward; its opponent is Sorat – 666. The Book of Revelation says: This beast has two horns, like a lamb or a ram. If you know these things, then you also know what the writer says. You see that you first have to know what it is about, and this requires wisdom.

Augustine, the recognized church teacher of various denominations, said an important sentence regarding the secular position of Christianity: “What is called Christianity has always been there, only that the true religion, which has always existed, has been understood in different ways.

But where did Christianity live before Christ Jesus appeared? In the mystery. What was mystery? That which is today called a church, school or art institution. The knowledge of things was used as a preparation to then serve as an introduction to understanding, just as the divine spirit bent down and ascended again. There one also learned to listen to the secrets of world existence expressed in sounds. Richard Wagner felt this again and tried to reproduce it. Such schools existed, and each person was first tested to see if they were capable of being gradually introduced to a tangible self-awareness through their comprehension, feeling, and understanding. This was the initiation or initiation. There were different levels, because people progressed to different degrees. One thing was necessary: that one went through a prescribed course of development, and this was passed on in the schools of the initiated. The different levels had different names:

1st stage: the Ravens.
2nd degree: the Occultists.
3rd degree: the fighters.
4th level: the lions.
5th stage: had a national name, for example, Persians. Christ says of Nathanael: true Israelite. (John 1: 47)
6th stage: the sun hero (son). 7th stage: one did not say (father).

Let us take one of the 6th stage, a sun hero. His life was as it has been for thousands of years. He could no more stray from his prescribed path than the sun can step out of its orbit, and so he follows the strictly harmonious world orbits. If he were to step out, an unimaginable disaster would occur, as if the sun were to step out. In ancient, ancient legends, there is talk of solar heroes: Hermes, Buddha, Zarathustra, Pythagoras; even in Germanic countries: Siegfried, with a few changes, a basic type. Why is that? Because in those days the process was exactly the opposite of what it is today. The old principle was: not to concern oneself with everyday matters, but to seek the essential. At that time, one described what one had to go through for initiation. The prescribed life of a thousand years was the description of life. Hermes had lived according to this prescription, and thus, when he described his life, he described what others had already experienced before him.

We will better understand the matter if we understand the meaning of the stages: one was used to form the character, another brought the phenomena of the astral world closer, and others brought explorations of even higher worlds. When one had grasped that at the time, then something special occurred. Then there was a final act of initiation. The initiate, through the initiated hierophant, was brought into a state in which the body was dead for three and a half days. The etheric and astral bodies were drawn out and wandered around in the spiritual worlds, guided by the high priest-hierophant. Then they were led back into the body and the person received a new name. Now he knew from his own experience what happens in the spiritual worlds, and was now reborn. He could bear witness that the spiritual life conquers death. Every time a person came back into the body, he woke up with the cry: “My God, my God, how you have glorified me.

Only those who achieved the victory of life over death could attain knowledge. This has happened over and over again in the secret schools of spirituality. This process has been veiled.

Compare this with the description of the life of Christ Jesus. In his case, what happened within in the mysteries took physical appearance. First came the test by the wise man, then came the baptism, and finally he was placed in a coffin similar to a cross. Outwardly, this took place historically in the Mystery of Golgotha. Some do not want to understand this and say, “You interpret it that way and take it as a historical event.”

The hanging on the cross is the outer representation of what previously applied prophetically to the initiated; a deep meaning that is mystically and historically true at the same time. It is as if you were entering a temple of art, where a drama depicts the year 1920 and what was seen would later come true. Before that, the mysteries depicted what later happened in the life of Christ Jesus. Those who described this life brought over ancient initiatory traditions from prophetic mysteries. Such a solar hero had to live according to the rules of initiation. They existed for thousands and thousands of years and therefore the same applied to the Gospels. Hence the great agreement, the exclamation: my God, my God, how hast thou glorified me, or: how hast thou forsaken me, looks very similar in writing and pronunciation. So Augustine could say: Christianity is the true religion.

The saying, “Blessed are they that have not seen, and yet have come to believe” (John 20:29), referred to the vision of the initiates. Thus the Gospels are the same as the ancient books of initiation. They existed before Christ Jesus. But He lived through them in the physical world, because the mighty power of this unique personality made it possible. Thus Christianity appears to us as the fulfillment of ancient wisdom, and in the Bible we have what could be experienced in the initiations, the wisdom of the initiates.

The simple person who simply approaches the Bible builds his heart on it, and with fervor he feels the wisdom that underlies it all. No one would feel this wisdom if wisdom did not bring the Bible about.

Today, with a few exceptions, people are no longer able to approach it with faith. A new understanding of the Bible must now be opened up. I will give you a comparison here. In the Middle Ages, people swore by the books of Aristotle. Galileo could not do that. He was the first to perform an autopsy on a human body and to show that certain nerves originate in the brain and not, as Aristotle taught, in the heart. At that time, things really contradicted each other, and Galilei said: Get rid of the whole of Aristotle. — What about today? What Aristotle called a nerve was not a nerve at all, and so Aristotle was proved right again. First you have to go to the things themselves, then you come back to Aristotle.

The same thing must happen with regard to the Bible. What he himself sees, imagined inspiration – figuratively presenting inspiration, independent of any book, describes the spiritual researcher, and we can thus assume that what he himself sees is literally written correctly. When we understand this, great reverence for this book arises, and we feel that this Redeemer's life was truly written by inspiration.

Through such an achievement, our relationship to the spiritual worlds will change, and we will learn to look up to the inspired with great reverence. First, a bridge must be found to those who are exploring the wisdom of the Bible. The teacher will be wiser, the listener more fervent – the hearts of teachers and believers will resonate. That will be the success of Theosophy:

two things will come:

1. wisdom independent of the Bible,
2. How

Thus the book that used to be sacred will become sacred to us again, and so a true spiritual movement will be the reconquest of the ancient wisdom taught by the Bible. Through the Bible, the most free knowledge and true progress must be made fruitful again for religious life through theosophy. Questions

Question: [Not handed down].

Rudolf Steiner: Everything is in development, including the I. This I has emerged from a group I. Just as the finger of your hand does not feel itself as an I, so the human being at that time felt itself as a group I.

Question: [Not handed down].

Rudolf Steiner: There are personalities who were contemporaries of Christ Jesus. There are no historical sources about him. One passage in Josephus is a forgery; and so is one in Tacitus. Historians therefore say: There is no testimony of this Christ Jesus.

In our time there are deeply initiated people; but if someone wanted to prove historically whether there were initiates after 1900 years, they would find nothing about the initiates. But today there are personalities who were contemporaries who know and can testify that they stood eye to eye with Christ Jesus.

Question: Does keeping silent develop certain powers?

Rudolf Steiner: Through the suppression of certain words that are not said. Certain religious communities are led according to certain basic laws. The Trappists know full well that whoever is a good man of silence now will be a good speaker in the next incarnation.

Theosophy is a mediator of peace, and its second principle, to find the seeds of truth in all worldviews, should not only apply to the past, but especially to the present.

Haeckel's “Welträtsel” (World Riddle) now wants to deal with the great question of existence. The sensation caused by this book shows the interest in this question. But the book is entirely rooted in materialism. If theosophy wants to be life, it has to deal with such facts.

What is the position of the author in modern intellectual life? A bold spirit has shown itself in this work. Ernst Haeckel has had a great influence on modern intellectual life for a decade. He was one of the first to take up Darwinism, boldly and courageously to its ultimate consequences.

Let us first deal with Haeckelianism and Darwinism. Everything that comes from Haeckel has been worked through and is acquired. But how are the conclusions to be drawn from his scientific views? Man is trapped between birth and death, is only a higher animal. After his death, there is no existence. Scientific materialism is a way of thinking from the last century, but not a consequence of Darwinism. Haeckel saw in Goethe his predecessor. Goethe discovered the intermaxillary bone that he had inferred and sought in humans. For him, this was proof of the truth of the relationship between humans and higher animals. Even as a privy councillor in Jena, he was still in the midst of students for this purpose.

Haeckel saw his materialism in his Darwinism. Haeckel's view has been very much shaken in the last decade. Haeckel established the ape relationship. Now he concludes: one must have descended from the other. For example, let's assume two brothers. One is a tramp, the other a moral person. They both have the same ancestors. One descends, the other ascends. Once there was only one nature with the possibility of development in both directions. That was Haeckel's hasty conclusion.

There is nothing more useful today than studying the secret writing of nature. Disregarding individual one-sidedness, the first 30 pages of Haeckel's book are of importance.

Riddle questions:

1. What provided the impetus for matter and force?
2. How did motion come about?
3. Where did life come from?
4. Where did the idea of fitness come from?
5. How could consciousness arise?
6. How did language come about? (Laws must underlie it).

Theosophy makes it clear to us in a different way. Let us look at sleep with her. What lies within a person during sleep? Life is present, but there is no ability to perceive. The soul has two directions, one towards the lower, one towards the higher, the Devachanic. Now the soul in us is still a baby, but it will develop and become more and more richly structured and grow up into the divine. Occultism promotes this development. There the higher world is experienced. That which lives as spirit shines in the darkness of night.

What Haeckel lacks is that he only pursues the idea of development in the past, instead of also pursuing it in the future. In this way, Theosophy will make Haeckel's thoughts fruitful.

We should learn from him, but not criticize him. Force and matter are nothing but crystallized spirit; figuratively speaking, they are like ice to water. Matter is nothing real, it is only spirit in another form. Take coal. What is it? Stone - and was a growing Farrenbaum millions of years ago. The living has become the lifeless. All of the earth's crust originated from the living.

The origin of all things lies in the All-consciousness. The question should not be: how did spirit arise from movement, but rather the other way around: how did movement arise from spirit? The religion of the materialists is nothing more than fetishism. The atom is a fetish. The worst superstition is the belief in the atom, which is real fetishism. Haeckel says: “For us, God is in every atom. That is moving matter.” There is a grain of truth in this, because the Spirit of God lives in every atom. It is just that the materialist regards matter as the first. For the theosophist, God is spread throughout the world: theosophy strives to draw all beings up to God. In doing so, it deifies and spiritualizes the world.

There have always been great searching minds. There have always been epochs in which the human mind sought to penetrate into the deepest questions; at the end of the eighteenth and the beginning of the nineteenth century, it was particularly astonishing. In the German thinkers, we find the highest level of training. But precisely these important ones have become the least known. One man stands at the top: Johann Gottlieb Fichte. Who knows and still reads his “Addresses to the German Nation” today?

Fichte's world view is a difficult one, so let us first take a look at Immanuel Kant. Kant, so to speak, set firm limits to human knowledge. He sought the thing in itself. He did not penetrate into its depths. Fichte went beyond him in a way. The Age of Enlightenment began with Kant. He said: “Man, you shall dare to use your own reason.” This caused the old belief in authority to falter. Stirring memories of the spirit of enlightenment came from France. Rousseau's spirit had a powerful effect on Kant. Materialism appeared there first, and the spirit of enlightenment also made itself felt in Germany; but something else was added there.

Lessing, in his “Education of the Human Race”, showed how he had been seized by this spirit of enlightenment; but with him, for the first time, we encounter a new idea, the idea of re-embodiment. He said: “Is not all eternity mine?” Through many lives, man walks the path to perfection. We see how Goethe showed us the great idea of re-embodiment in great images. That was Fichte's “deed”: Fichte showed in his teaching of science that man has to find the “I” within himself, and it was precisely this that was difficult for man to grasp. Fichte said: The great thing is that man himself says “I” to himself. No one can call out “I” to us from the outside. It is the only name that only we can give ourselves; it is the designation of our unique nature in relation to nature. It is there that the God in man begins to speak. With this, man has begun to ascend to ever higher levels. In 1800, Fichte wrote “On the Destiny of Man”. One should not read it, but live it, let it take effect on oneself. He suggests observing our inner life, immersing ourselves in the inner power of our nature in order to come to the certainty of our eternal essence. In his booklet “Instructions for a Blessed Life” he shows that the I has always lived in us and will always live in us. In such German writings you receive the best theosophical training.

Novalis was an eminently theosophical spirit; he died at the age of 29 as a mining engineer. He himself felt that his mathematics was a great poem. In this he recalls Pythagoras' saying that there is music of the spheres in it. Novalis sensed the movement in the universe as harmonious tones. For him, the starry world was a world built according to mathematical principles — just as the harmonies that one perceives in music can also be calculated. He also sensed and thought the layers of the earth. It was clear to Novalis that man must develop his inner senses. In “The Apprentices of Sais” he clearly stated that man is related to God and the whole world – Pictures: Hyacinth, a beautiful boy, loves the beautiful Rose Child. He owes the realization of the human ego to Fichte.

Another thinker: Schelling. In his 1809 publication “On Human Freedom”, he seeks to bring out Jakob Böhme's ideas. He is concerned with the interesting research into the origin of evil. I can only hint at a comparison today: everyone will see harmony at the bottom of everything. But how does disharmony come about? How can man come to freedom? By also having the possibility of doing evil. Schelling says: the divine good is like sunlight. When light throws light into darkness, it awakens shadows. The light would not be able to develop its power if there were nothing to cast the shadows. — Jakob Böhme calls it the counter-throw. Darkness is precisely the nothing. The something, the good, can only be understood by the fact that evil is a nothing, only a shadow. Schelling also called human beings, as a physical body, a perfection. Hands, for example, are perfect and independent, but can scratch themselves if they turn against each other. — Conversation: Clara and Benno. He had been silent for a long time, then Frederick William IV appointed him to the University of Berlin. Then he wrote “Philosophy of Mythology” and “Philosophy of Revelation”. He speaks there of ancient mysteries. What is a mystery? If we go far back behind Homer to the culture of the Greek secret schools, temple cults, we see that the disciples first had to observe the external drama, the God who descends into nature, who is hidden in all four realms, who only awakens in man. In the human breast is the place of the resurrection of God. This was not art, religion, science, it was all three at once: beauty, religion and piety. It was only later that truth, beauty and piety, science, art and religion separated. The mysteries illustrated this. In Schelling you can find the most beautiful in his “Mystical Revelations”.

Heinrich Kleist: “Käthchen von Heilbronn”, “Prinz von Homburg”. The former cannot be understood if one denies hypnosis and does not look deeper into the soul life. Kleist delved deeply into Schubert's philosophical lectures, which he heard in Dresden at the time, about dreams and the interior of the soul, and through this he gained those thoughts.

Justinus Kerner found a way to study the abnormal soul life with the seer of Prevorst. She came into a spiritual and mental environment in that state. This has many concerns. While the physical body rested during sleep, the soul perceived conditions in its environment. Kerner said: “For her, the state of constant illness is a constant dying.” Eckartshausen presents everything in an idealized way up to a certain point.

Ennemoser was somewhat superficial.

This chain of theosophical thinkers provided deep insights into the further development of humanity, showed the eternal core of being in individuality, and demonstrated re-embodiment.

What significance does the personality have for the being? It gains experience in thinking, feeling and willing. It does not discard this experience when it dies like a garment; no, life was a school for it, and what it took in during its lifetime, it takes with it as treasure into its new existence. A human being would have lived in vain if that were not the case. Thus, with each life, the individuality becomes richer. Everything that the personality has collected is the pearls of a pearl necklace. The personality is the tool for developing out of life. Earth life is what makes us more perfect. The personality lays the foundation for development.

Certain Western views underestimate the personality and believe that we simply shed our personality at death. No, we take its fruits with us. It is valuable to learn what the personality means. And all those spirits are masters at describing the personal. The mission of the German spirit at that time was to emphasize what is pure and beautiful and noble in the personality. And this is precisely what Theosophy shows: beautiful, pure and lofty thinking. Each age has its task and mission. That was the mission of German philosophy. The great minds have been almost completely forgotten, and it is our duty to learn from them. The most wonderful fruits can be gained there. Then one will truly understand the energy that emanated from those minds. “Man can do what he should, and when he says, 'I cannot,' he will not.” There were two great eras: the first when the Vedanta philosophy emerged in Asia in the post-Vedic period, the second at the beginning of the nineteenth century in Germany. On both occasions, the human mind experienced its greatest depth. During this time, will and strength were directed towards the ideal.

Nature is a great living thing,
And everything is fruit, and everything is seed.