The Rudolf Steiner Archive

THE process that I have described to you as the division of the sexes was of such a nature that the two sexes are to be thought of as still united in that animal-man of the Moon and also in his descendants in the Moon recapitulation of the Earth. Then there really took place a kind of cleavage of the human body. This cleavage came about through densification; not until a mineral kingdom had been separated out as it is today could the present human body arise, representing a single sex. The Earth and the human body had first to be solidified to the mineral nature as we know it. In the soft human bodies of the Moon and of the earlier periods of the Earth human beings were of dual-sex, male-female.

Now we must remind ourselves of the fact that Man in a certain respect has preserved a residue of the ancient dual sex inasmuch as in the present man the physical body is masculine, the etheric body feminine, and in the woman it is reversed; for the physical feminine body has a masculine etheric body. These facts open up an interesting insight into the soul life of the sexes; the capacity for sacrifice in the service of love displayed by the woman is connected with the masculinity of the etheric body, whereas the ambition of the man is explained when we realise the feminine nature of his etheric body. I have already said that separation into the human sexes has arisen from the intermingling of the forces sent to us from the sun and the moon. Now you must be clear that in the man the stronger influence on the etheric body emanates from the moon and the stronger influence on the physical body from the sun. In the woman the opposite is the case, the physical body is influenced by the forces of the moon and the etheric body by those of the sun.

The continual change of mineral substances in man's present body could not take place until the mineral realm had taken shape; before this there was quite a different form of nourishment. During the Sun-period of the Earth all plants were permeated by milky juices. Man's nourishment was then actually effected by his imbibing the milk-juices from the plants as today the child draws its nourishment from the mother. The plants which still contain milky juices are the last stragglers from that time when all the plants supplied these juices in abundance. It was not till a later time that nourishment took on its present form.

To understand the significance of the separation of the sexes we must be clear that upon the Moon and during its recapitulation on the Earth all the beings looked very much alike. Just as the cow has the same appearance as her “daughters,” as all other cows, since the Group-soul lies behind, so could men scarcely be distinguished from their forefathers, and this continued till long into the Atlantean Age. Whence arises the fact that human beings no longer resemble each other?

It comes from the rise of the two sexes. From the original dual sex-nature the tendency had continued in the female being to produce similarity in the descendants; in the male the influence worked differently, it tended to call forth variety, individualisation, and with the flowing of the male force into the female, dissimilarity was increasingly created. Thus it was through the male influence that the power of developing individuality came about.

The ancient dual sex had yet another peculiarity. If you had asked one of the old dwellers on the Moon about his experiences, he would have described them as identical with those of his earliest ancestors; everything lived on through the generations. The gradual rise of a consciousness that only extends from birth to death came about by the individualising of the human race, and at the same time arose the possibility of birth and death, as we know them today. For those ancient Moon beings with their floating, swimming motion, were suspended from the environment with which they were united by the “strings” conducting the blood. Thus if a being died it was not a death of the soul, it was only a dying off of a sort of limb, while the consciousness remained above. It was as if your hand, for instance, should wither on your body and a new hand grow in its place. So these human beings with their dim consciousness only experienced dying as a gradual withering of their bodies. These bodies dried up and new ones continually sprang forth; consciousness, however, was preserved through the consciousness of the group-soul, so that really a kind of immortality existed.

Then arose the present blood, which was created in the human body itself, and this went hand in hand with the rise of the two sexes. And with it the necessity of a remarkable process came about. The blood creates a continuous conflict between life and death, and a being who forms red blood within himself becomes the scene of a perpetual struggle, for red blood is continually consumed and changed into blue blood, into a substance of death. Together with man's individual transformation of the blood arose that darkening of the consciousness beyond birth and death. Now, for the first time, with the lighting up of the present consciousness, man lost the ancient dimly sensed immortality, so that the impossibility of looking beyond birth and death is intimately connected with the division of the sexes. And something else too is connected with this.

When man still possessed the Group-soul, existence went on from generation to generation, no interruption was caused through birth and death. Then this interruption appeared and with it the possibility of reincarnation. Earlier, the son was but a direct continuation of the father, the father of the grandfather, consciousness did not break off. Now there came a time when there was darkness beyond birth and death, and a sojourn in Kamaloca and Devachan first became possible. This interchange, this sojourn in higher worlds, could only come about at all after individualisation, after the expulsion of Sun and Moon. Only then appeared what today we call incarnation, and at the same time this intermediate state, which again will one day also come to an end.

Thus we have reached the period in which we have seen the earlier dual-sexed organism, representing a kind of group-soul, divide into a male and a female, so that the similar is reproduced through the female, what is varied and dissimilar through the male. We see in our humanity the feminine to be the principle which still preserves the old conditions of folk and race, and the masculine that which continually breaks through these conditions, splits them up and so individualises mankind. There is actually active in the human being an ancient feminine principle as group-soul and a new masculine principle as individualising element. It will come about that all connections of race and family stock will cease to exist, men will become more and more different from one another, interconnection will no longer depend on the common blood, but on what binds soul to soul. That is the course of human evolution.

In the first Atlantean races there still existed a strong bond of union and the first sub-races grouped themselves according to their colouring. This group-soul element we have still in the races of different colour. These differences will increasingly disappear as the individualising element gains the upper hand. A time will come when there will no longer be races of different colour; the difference between the races will have disappeared, but on the other hand there will be the greatest differences between individuals. The further we go back into ancient times the more we meet with the encroachment of the racial element; the true individualising principle begins as a whole only in later Atlantean times. Among the earlier Atlanteans members of one race actually experienced a deep antipathy for members of another race; the common blood caused the feeling of connection, of love; it was considered against morality to marry a member of another stock.

If, as seer, you wished to examine the connection between the etheric body and the physical body in the old Atlanteans you would make a remarkable discovery. Whereas in the man of today the etheric head is practically covered by the physical part of the head and only protrudes slightly beyond it, in the old Atlantean the etheric head projected far out beyond the physical head; in particular it projected powerfully in the region of the forehead. Now we must think of a point in the physical brain in the place between the eyebrows, only about a centimetre lower, and a second point in the etheric head which would correspond to this. In the Atlantean these two points were still far apart and evolution consisted precisely in the fact that they continually approached each other. In the fifth Atlantean period the point of the etheric head drew in to the physical brain and by reason of these two points coming together there developed what we possess to-day: calculation, counting, the capacity of judging, the power of forming ideas in general, intelligence. Formerly the Atlanteans had only an immensely developed memory, but as yet no logical intellect. Here we have the starting point for the consciousness of the “ego.” A self-reliant independence did not exist in the Atlantean before these two points coincided, on the other hand he could live in much more intimate contact with nature. His dwellings were put together by what was given by nature; he moulded the stones and bound them together with the growing trees. His dwellings were formed out of living nature, were really transformed natural objects. He lived in the little tribes that were still preserved through blood relationship, whilst a powerful authority was exercised by the strongest, who was the chieftain. Everything depended on authority, which however was exercised in a way peculiar to those times.

When man entered on the Atlantean Age, he could as yet utter no articulate speech; this was only developed during that period. A chieftain could not have given commands in speech, but on the other hand these men had the faculty of understanding the language of nature. Present day man has no idea of this, he must learn it again. Picture, for instance, a spring of water which reflects your image to you. As occultist a peculiar feeling emerges in your soul. You say—My image presses towards me out of this spring, to me this is a last token of how on old Saturn everything was reflected out into space. The memory of Saturn arises in the occultist when he beholds his reflection in the spring. And in the echo which the spoken sound gives back arises the recollection of how on Saturn all that resounded into cosmic space, came back as echo. Or you see a Fata Morgana a mirage in the air, in which the air seems to have taken up whatever pictures are imprinted in it and then reflects them again. As occultist you see here a memory of the Sun-period, when the gaseous Sun took in all that came to it from cosmic space, worked it over, and then let it stream back, giving it its own sun-nature at the same time. On the Sun planet you would have seen how things were prepared as Fata Morgana, as a kind of mirage within the gases of the Sun condition. Thus without being a magician one learns to grasp the world from many aspects and that is an important means towards developing into higher worlds. In ancient times man understood nature to a high degree.

There is a great difference between living in an atmosphere like the present and such as it was in Atlantis. The air was then saturated by immense vapour masses; sun and moon were surrounded by a gigantic rainbow halo. There was a time when the mist-masses were so dense that no eye could have seen the stars, when sun and moon were stiff darkened. Only gradually they became visible to man. This coming into sight of sun, moon and stars is magnificently described in records of the Creation. What is described there has really taken place, and much more besides.

The understanding of surrounding nature was still very vividly present in the Atlantean. All that sounds in the rippling of the spring, in the storm of winds, and is an inarticulate sound to you today, was heard by the Atlantean as a speech he understood. There were at that time no commandments, but the Spirit pierced through the vapour-drenched air and spoke to man. The Bible expresses this in the words “And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.” The human being heard the Spirit from surrounding objects; from sun, moon and stars the Spirit spoke to him and you find in those words—in the Bible a plain expression for what took place in man's environment.

Then came the time in which an especially advanced portion of the human race, who lived in a region which today is on the bed of the ocean in the neighbourhood of present Ireland, first experienced that definite union with the etheric body and thus an increase of the intelligence. This portion of humanity began to journey eastwards under the guidance of the most advanced leader while gradually immense volumes of water submerged the continent of Atlantis. The advanced portion of these peoples journeyed right into Asia, and there founded the centre of the civilisation that we call the Post-Atlantean Culture. From this centre civilisation radiated out; it proceeded from the groups of people who later moved farther to the east. There in Central Asia they founded in India the first civilisation, which still had an echo of the culture attained in Atlantis. The ancient Indian had not yet such a consciousness as we have today, but the capacity for it arose when these two points of the brain of which I have spoken coincided. Before this union there still lived a picture-consciousness in the Atlantean, through which he saw Spiritual beings. In the murmuring of the fountain he not only heard a clear language, but the Undine, who has her embodiment in the water, rose for him out of the spring: in the currents of air he saw Sylphs; in the flickering fire he saw the Salamanders. All this he saw and from it have arisen the myths and legends which have been preserved with most purity in the parts of Europe where there remained remnants of those Atlanteans who did not reach India. The Germanic Sagas and Myths are the relics of what was still seen by the old Atlanteans within the vapoury masses. The rivers, the Rhine, for instance, lived in the consciousness of these old Atlanteans as if the wisdom, which was in the mists of ancient Nivelheim had been cast down into their waters. This wisdom seemed to them to be in the rivers, it lived within them as the Rhine Nixies or similar beings.

So here in these regions of Europe lived echoes of the Atlantean culture, but over in India another arose, that still showed remembrances of that picture world. That world itself had sunk from sight, but the longing for what was revealed in it lived on in the Indian. If the Atlantean had heard the voice of Nature's wisdom, to the Indian there remained the longing for the oneness with Nature, and thus the character of this old Indian culture is shown in the desire to fall back into that time where all this was man's natural possession. The ancient Indian was a dreamer. To be sure, what we call reality lay spread all around him, but the world of the senses was “Maya” in his eyes. What the old Atlantean still saw as hovering spirits was what the Indian sought in his longing for the spiritual content of the world, for Brahma. And this kind of going back towards the old dream-like consciousness of the Atlantean has been preserved in the Oriental training to bring back this early consciousness.

Farther to the north we have the Medes and Persians, the original Persian civilisation. Whereas the Indian culture turns sharply away from reality, the Persian is aware that he must reckon with it. For the first time man appears as a worker, who knows that he is not merely to strive for knowledge with his spiritual forces, but that he is to use them for shaping the earth. At first the earth met him as a sort of hostile element which he must overcome, and this opposition was expressed in Ormuzd and Ahriman, the good and the bad divinity, and the conflict between them. Men wished more and more to let the spiritual world flow into the terrestrial world, but as yet they could recognise no law, no laws of nature within the outer world. The old Indian culture had in truth a knowledge of higher worlds, but not on the grounds of a natural science, since everything on the Earth was accounted Maya; the Persian learnt to know nature purely as a field of labour.

We then come to the Chaldean, the Babylonian and the Egyptian peoples. Here man learnt to recognise a law in nature itself. When he looked up to the stars he sought behind them not the gods alone, but he examined the laws of the stars and hence arose that wonderful science which we find among the Chaldeans. The Egyptian priest did not look on the physical as an opposing force, but he incorporated the spiritual which he found in geometry into his soil, his land; outer nature was recognised as conforming to law. The external star-knowledge was inwardly united in Chaldean-Babylonian-Egyptian wisdom with the knowledge of the gods who ensoul the stars. That was the third stage of cultural evolution.

It is only in the fourth stage of post-Atlantean evolution that man advances to the point of incorporating in civilisation that which he himself experiences as spiritual. This is the case in the Greco-Latin time. Here in the work of art, in moulded matter man imprints his own spirit into substance, whether in sculpture or in the drama. Here too we find the first beginnings of human city planning. These cities differed from those of Egypt in the pre-Grecian age. There in Egypt the priests looked up to the stars and sought their laws, and what took place in the heavens they reproduced in what they built. Thus their towers show the seven-story development which man first discovered in the heavenly bodies; so too do the Pyramids show definite cosmic proportions. We find the transition from priest-wisdom to the real human wisdom wonderfully expressed in early Roman history by the seven Kings of Rome. What are these seven kings?

We remember that the original history of Rome leads back to ancient Troy. Troy represents a last result of the ancient priestly communities who organised states by the laws of the stars. Now comes the transition to the fourth stage of culture. The ancient priest-wisdom is superseded by human cleverness, represented by the crafty Odysseus. Still more plainly is this shown in a picture which can only be rightly understood in this way and which represents how the priest-wisdom has to give way before the human power of judgment. The serpent can always be taken as symbol of human wisdom, and the Laocoon group depicts the overthrow of the priestly wisdom of ancient Troy through human cunning and human wisdom symbolised in the serpents.

Then by the directing authorities who work through millennia the events were outlined that had to happen and in accordance with which history must take its course. Those who stood at the foundation of Rome had already foreordained the sevenfold Roman culture as it stands written in the Sibylline Books. Think it out: you find in the names of the seven Roman kings reminiscences of the seven principles. That goes so far in fact that the fifth Roman king, the Etruscan, comes from without; he represents the principle of Manas, Spirit-Self, which binds the three lower with the three higher. The seven Roman kings represent the seven principles of human nature, spiritual connections are inscribed in them. Republican Rome is none other than the human wisdom, which replaced the ancient priestly wisdom. Thus did the fourth epoch grow within the third. Man sent forth what he had in his soul into the great works of art, into drama and jurisprudence. Formerly all justice was derived from the stars. The Romans became a nation of law-givers because there men created justice, “jus,” according to their own requirements.

We live ourselves in the fifth period. How does the meaning of the totality of evolution come to expression in it? The old authority has vanished, man becomes more and more dependent on his own inner nature, his external acts bear increasingly the stamp of his character. Racial ties lose their hold, man becomes more and more individualised. This is the kernel of the religion which says “He who doth not leave father and mother, brother and sister cannot be my disciple.” This means that all love which is founded on natural ties alone is to come to an end, human beings must stand before one another, and soul find soul.

We have the task of drawing down still further on to the physical plane that which flowed from the soul in Greco-Latin times. Man becomes in this way, a being who sinks deeper and deeper into materiality. If the Greek in his works of art has created an idealised image of his soul-life and poured it into the human form, if the Roman in his jurisprudence has created something that still further signifies personal requirements, then our age culminates in machines, which are solely a materialistic expression of mere personal human needs. Mankind sinks lower and lower from heaven, and this fifth period has descended deepest, is the most involved in matter. If the Greek in his creations has lifted man above man in his images (for Zeus represents man raised above himself), if you find still left in Roman jurisprudence something of man that goes out beyond himself (for the Roman placed more value on being a Roman citizen than on being a person and an individual) then in our period you find people who utilise spirit for the satisfying of their material needs. For what purpose is served by all machines, steamships, railways, all complicated inventions? The ancient Chaldean was accustomed to satisfy his need of food in the simplest way; today an immensity of wisdom, crystalised human wisdom, is expended on the stilling of hunger and thirst. We must not deceive ourselves about this. The wisdom that is so employed has descended below itself right into matter.

All that man had earlier drawn down from the spiritual realms had to descend below itself in order to be able to mount upwards again—and with this our age has received its mission. If in man of an earlier time there flowed blood which bound him with his tribe, today the love which still flowed in the earlier blood shows greater and greater cleavage; a love of a spiritual kind must take its place and then we can ascend again to spiritual realms. There is good reason for us to have come down from spiritual heights, for man must go through this descent in order to find the way up to spirituality out of his own strength. The mission of Spiritual Science is to show mankind this upward path.

We have followed the course of mankind as far as the time in which we ourselves stand; we must now show how it will evolve further, and how one who passes through an initiation can even today forestall a certain stage of humanity on his path of knowledge and wisdom.

IT IS now our task to speak somewhat of the progress of human evolution in the future and of what one calls initiation. It is by means of initiation that present day man passes in advance through stages of life which are otherwise only passed through by humanity in the future.

If we occupy ourselves with the first problem it may seem to you audacious to try to speak about the future, or even that it is impossible to find out anything of the future of man. Nevertheless if you will consider the matter a little you will find that the view that one can know something about the future is not so unfounded after all. You have only to compare these things with what the ordinary researcher, the natural scientist, for example, can know with regard to future events. He can tell you definitely that if he mixes together oxygen, hydrogen and sulphur under certain conditions, sulphuric acid always results. One can say exactly what happens when one intercepts rays by a mirror. In fact, this goes even further in regard to things of external life; one can predict eclipses of the sun and moon for indefinitely long periods of time.

How is it possible to do this? Because, and in so far as [one knows], one knows the laws of physical life. Now if someone knows the spiritual laws of life, from these laws he can likewise say what must come about in the future. Here, however, a question generally arises which weighs heavily in people's minds. It is so easy to imagine that it is a contradiction of freedom, of man's own voluntary acts, if it could be known in advance what will happen. This too is an incorrect idea. When you combine sulphur, hydrogen and oxygen under certain conditions, sulphuric acid arises; that is determined by the laws of the combination. Whether you do it, however, depends on your will; and so it is also in the spiritual course of human evolution. What will happen will be done by man in entire freedom of will, and the higher a man develops the freer he will be. Nor must one think that it is already decided what a man will do in the future because one can see it in advance. Most people, however, have no right understanding of this problem and in fact it presents very great difficulties. Since ancient times philosophers have tormented themselves with the question of human freedom and the law of predestined phenomena. Practically all that has been written in this field is extremely unsatisfactory, for as a rule people cannot distinguish between foreseeing and being foreordained. Seeing in advance is in fact no different from looking out to some distant spot in space. If you look in space to a point far off, let us say the corner of the street over there, and you see a man giving a penny to another, have you brought about this action? Has it been caused through the fact that you see it? No, you only see that he does it, and that exercises no pressure on his act. Now in a certain respect it is like this in time, only people cannot grasp it. Let us suppose you are reincarnated in a couple of thousand years, you then do something of your own free will; that is the same as the example of the gift of the penny. Under certain circumstances the seer sees what is done in the future, and this future act is just as little determined by the present point of time as the gift of the penny by the point of space. People often say if one sees that something will happen then it is actually predetermined. But then one is confounding the present with the future. In fact it would be no prevision into the future if it were already predestined; you are not seeing something that is already there, but something that has first to come; you must grasp with exactness the concept of seeing-into-the-future. It must be exercised and practised in patient meditation, then only does one find it possible to understand these things aright.

After these introductory words we will now speak of some few things that can be said about the evolution of humanity in the future. We have reached the point where humanity has descended most deeply into matter, where men turn to account their spiritual forces in the construction and manufacture of instruments and machines that serve the personal life. Connected with this was an ever-increasing densification, both of mankind and the earth as a whole. We have seen that the mineral kingdom, as we call it, the densest part of the earth, only arose at a definite point of time in our evolution. It was only then that man entered upon his present earthly, development; and the division of the sexes and other phenomena went hand in hand with it. At that time when the human being had not as yet entered this physical development which contains a mineral kingdom, he too was of a much finer, softer nature. Just to give some idea of it, let us note how the reproduction of the human race took place in those ancient times before the two sexes were in existence. At that time the human being who was still of double sex and of a thinner, finer corporeality, brought forth another being from itself. This did not take place as it does today, but somewhat as in spiritualistic seances the etheric body of some other being proceeds from the medium. That gives you more or less a picture of this materialisation from oneself, the manner of human propagation in ancient times. It was like an out-pressure from human beings who were ripe to continue their own development.

Thus you see that with the densification of man in the cosmos is connected a descent into the world of matter. And another force is connected with it which could never have developed without it:—egoism. Egoism has a good and a bad side. It is the foundation of human independence and freedom, but in its reverse aspect the foundation too of all that is bad and evil. But man had to go through this force of egoism if he was to learn to do good of his own freewill. Through the forces which had guided him previously, he would always have been impelled to the good; it had, however, to be possible for him to go his own way. Just as he has descended he must now ascend again to spirituality; and as the descent is linked with the predominance of egoism so does the ascent depend on men's selflessness, their feeling of sympathy for one another, becoming stronger and stronger. Mankind has evolved through various epochs, first through the old Indian, then the Persian, the Egyptian-Chaldean-Babylonian, the Greco-Latin to the present, the Fifth epoch. And this will be replaced by a sixth. And as human evolution is working towards this, it is working at the same time at the overcoming of the principle which has been strongest since the time when the etheric body united with the point in the brain of which I spoke to you yesterday. That was the time of the fall into the deepest egoism.

Man was also egotistic in his earlier evolution, but it was then in a different way. The egoism which enters so deeply into the soul as in our present age is inseparable from the predominating materialism; a spiritual age will denote the overcoming of this egoism. Therefore Christianity and all movements imbued with genuine religious life have worked consciously towards breaking through all the old blood-ties. Christianity has made a radical statement in the words, “He who forsaketh not father, mother, wife, child, brother, sister cannot be my disciple.” This indicates nothing less than that in place of the ancient blood ties there must enter the spiritual bond between soul and soul, between one human being and another.

The only question now is—what are the ways and means by which humanity may attain spirituality, that is, the overcoming of materialism, and at the same time reach what may be called the bond of brotherhood, the expression of universal human love. One might imagine that universal human love need only be stressed strongly enough, and that then it must come about or that one should found Unions which aim at the goal of a universal human love. Occultism is never of this opinion. On the contrary! The more a man speaks of universal brotherly love and humanity, becoming in a sense intoxicated by them, the more egotistic he becomes. For precisely as there is a lust of the senses so is there a lust of the soul; and it is in fact a refined voluptuousness to say: “I will become morally higher and higher.” This, to be sure, is not a thought which creates the ordinary conventional egoism, but it does lead to a subtle form of egoism.

It is not by emphasising “Love,” “Sympathy,” that they are generated in the course of mankind's evolution. Mankind will be led to that bond of brotherhood far rather through something else, namely, through spiritual knowledge itself. There is no other means of bringing about a universal human brotherhood than the spreading of occult knowledge through the world. One may talk forever of Love and the Brotherhood of Man, one may found thousands of Unions; they will not lead to the desired goal, however well intentioned they may be. The point is to use the right means, to know how to found this bond of brotherhood. Only those whose lives are grounded in universal occult truth, valid for all men, find themselves together in the one truth. As the sun unites the plants which strive towards it and which yet remain individually separate, so must the truth to which all are striving be a uniform one, then all men find themselves together. But men must work energetically towards truth, for only then can they live together in harmony.

The objection might be made: surely all are striving towards the truth, but there are different standpoints and therefore strife and dissension arises. That denotes a knowledge of truth which is not sufficiently thorough. One must not plead that there may be different standpoints, one must first experience that truth is single and indivisible. It does not depend on popular vote it is true in itself. Or would you put it to the vote as to whether the three angles of a triangle are equal to 180 degrees? Whether millions of people admit that, or not a single one, when you have recognised it, it is true for you. There is no democracy about truth. And those who are not yet in harmony have not penetrated far enough into the truth—thence originates all quarreling over truth. It may be said: “Yes, but someone asserts this and another that in occult matters!” In genuine occultism that is not so. It is the same in occult things as in materialistic things, there too someone asserts this and another that, but then one of them is false. Even so is it in genuine occultism; it is only that people often have a bad habit of judging occult matters before they have been understood.

The aim of the Sixth epoch of humanity will be to popularise occult truth in the widest circles; that is the mission of that epoch. And the society which is united in spirit has the task of carrying this occult truth everywhere—right into life—and applying it practically. This is precisely what is lacking in our age. Only look how our epoch is searching and how no one can find the right solution. There are innumerable problems, the Educational Problem, the Feminist Movement, Medicine, the Social Problem, the Food Question. And people doctor away at these problems, endless articles are written, and each talks from his own standpoint, without being willing to study what lies at the centre—occult truth.

It is not a matter of having some abstract knowledge of the truths of spiritual science, but of applying them directly to life, of studying the social problem, the educational problem, in fact the whole range of human life, from the standpoint of real occult wisdom. “But then,” it might be urged, “one would have to know the highest wisdom.” That arises from the mistake of thinking one must always understand what one makes use of in life. But that is not necessary; understanding of the highest principles often comes much later than their application. If mankind had wished to wait in the matter of digestion till the laws of digestion were understood then the evolution of mankind would not have been possible. So too one does not need to be aware of all spiritual laws in order to let spiritual science flow into everyday life. That is precisely the way in which the Rosicrucian method deals with the spiritual—fewer abstractions, but instead, the study of the problems of everyday life. Do you think that the child knows all the grammatical rules of speech when it has learnt to speak? First it learns to speak and then learns grammar. So we must lay stress on the value it has for a man, with the help of spiritual teachings, to attack what lies directly around him, before he occupies himself with what is to be found in the highest worlds, with information concerning the astral plane and Devachan. This is the only way to understand what exists in our surroundings, and where we ourselves must play our part. And we shall find that it is our task to bind together through the unifying bonds of spiritual wisdom those portions of humanity who have been torn out of the old bonds of blood and race.

And then, inasmuch as we evolve from the fifth into the sixth and then into the seventh epoch, the ancient connection of race and blood will be increasingly lost. Mankind becomes freer of physical ties in order to form groups from the aspect of the spirit. It was a bad habit in Theosophy to speak of races as if they would always remain. The concept of race loses its meaning in the immediate future. To state incessantly that seven and again seven races have always evolved in the world is the speculative extension of an idea that only holds good for our age—looking backwards and forwards; it has never been said from clairvoyant vision, from occultism. Races have arisen, as everything else arises; and as everything again dies out so will races die out too. Those who have always only spoken of races will have to accustom themselves to making their ideas fluid. It is only a convenient way of talking. If one looks but a little into the future those ideas which applied to past and present are already no longer valid. It is most important that people should not consider that something they have once brought into a beautiful concept is a truth for all time. Men must get into the habit of making ideas fluid, of recognising that ideas change-that will be an advance. The ability of passing over from rigidly dogmatic ideas to mobile ones must be cultivated in those who would be the bearers of the future. For just as times change so must our ideas change too, if we would understand the times.

Souls live now in a human body which you distinctly perceive with the senses. By what means has it arisen? It was very different in earlier times when the soul descended, in fact for our present material outlook even comically different. The soul took up its abode in it. By what means has the human being evolved to its present form? Because the soul has itself worked in the body during all its incarnations. You can form an idea of how the soul has worked on the body if you consider what possibility has remained to the man of our materialistic age to work upon his body. He can work relatively but very little on his dense physical body. See how you work temporarily on the body and its physiognomy. Something for instance causes you terror, anxiety; the impression of anxiety and fear makes you go pale. And your physical appearance is affected in the same way by the blush of shame. This passes away again, but you see how it is caused. Something acts on the soul and the effects extends to the blood and thence to the physical body, changing the very appearance. The effect can be still more intensive. You know that people who lead a life of thought have it very much in their power to create an impression on their countenance of their intellectual work, one can observe whether or not a man has lived a life of mental activity. So men still work on their external expression and a man of noble feelings displays them in dignified movements. These are but very slight relics of how man has worked on himself during millions of years. Whereas nowadays you can only bring the blood to the cheek and drive it away again, in earlier times man was entirely under the influence of a picture-world which was the expression of a world of spirit.

The effect of this influence was that the human being could work much more creatively on his body. At the same time the body was also more soft and yielding. There was a time when you could not merely stretch out your hand, when you could not only point with the finger, but when you could send your will into your hand, and so form it that you could thrust out the fingers as continuations. There was a time when the foot was not yet permanent but could be extended as a continuation when man needed it. Thus through the pictures which he received from the surrounding world man shaped his own body. Today in our material age this moulding is unimaginably slow, but a time will come again when it will proceed more rapidly. In the future man will again acquire more influence over his physical corporeality. We shall see when we consider Initiation by what means he gains this influence; although he may not reach it in one life, yet he will be able to do much for the next incarnation.

Thus it is man himself who will bring about the future form of his body. Inasmuch as the human being becomes softer and softer, inasmuch as he separates himself from the hard parts, he is approaching his future. An age comes when man will live above his earthly portion as it were, as in time gone by. This condition, which is comparable to your present sleep-condition, will then be replaced by another when the human being will be able to draw his etheric body out of his physical body at will. It will be as if the denser part of man were here below on earth and the human being will make use of it from outside like an instrument. Man will no longer bear his body about and live within it, but will float above it, the body will itself have become rarefied and finer. That seems a fantastic idea today, but one can be distinctly aware of it from spiritual laws just as one reckons future eclipses of the sun and moon from the laws of astronomy. Above all it will be upon the reproductive force that man will work. He will transform it. Many people cannot imagine that there will ever be a different generative process. But it will be so, the process of generation will be altered. The generative process and all that stands in connection with it will pass over in the future to another organ. The organ that is already preparing to become the future organ of generation is the human larynx. Today it can only bring forth vibrations of the air, can only impart to the air what lies in the word that goes forth from it, so that the vibrations correspond to the word. Later on, not only will the word press forward in its rhythm from the larynx, but it will be irradiated by man, it will be penetrated by very substance. Just as today the word only becomes airwaves, so in the future man's inner being, his own likeness, which today is in his word, will issue from the larynx. The human being will proceed from the human being, man will speak forth man. And this in the future will be the birth of a new human being—that he is spoken forth by another.

Such things throw a definite light on phenomena in our surroundings which no natural science can explain. That transformation of the reproductive force which will again become free of sex, takes over then the functions of the earlier reproduction. Hence in the male organism at the age of puberty, a transformation also takes place in the larynx. The voice becomes deeper. This shows you clearly how these two things are interconnected. Thus occultism throws light again and again on facts of life and illumines phenomena for which materialistic science can give you no explanation.

And just as the organ of the larynx will be transformed, so too will the human heart. It is the organ which stands in intimate connection with the circulation. Now science believes that the heart is a kind of pump; that is a grotesquely fantastic idea. Occultism has never made such a fantastic statement, as has modern materialism. It is the feelings of the soul which give rise to the movement of the blood; the soul drives the blood, and the heart moves because it is driven by the blood. Thus the truth is exactly the opposite of what materialistic science states. Man today, however, cannot guide his heart as he will; when he feels anxiety, it beats faster, since the feeling acts on the blood and this quickens the motion of the heart. But what is suffered involuntarily by man today, will later, at a higher stage of evolution, be in his own power. Later on he will drive his blood by his own volition, and cause the movement of his heart as today he moves the muscles of his hand. The heart with its peculiar structure is a crux, a riddle for modern science. It has diagonally striped fibres, which are otherwise only to be found in voluntary muscles. Why? Because the heart has not yet reached the end of its evolution, but is an organ of the future; because it will in the future be a voluntary muscle. Thus it already shows the rudiments of this in its structure.

All that goes on in the soul changes the organism. And if you now imagine the man who is able to create his own likeness through the spoken word, whose heart has become a voluntary muscle, who will have altered yet other organs, then you have a conception of the future of the human race in future planetary incarnations of our earth. Humanity will progress on our earth as far as it is possible under the influence of a mineral kingdom. This mineral kingdom, in spite of its having arisen the last, will be the first to disappear again in its present form. Man will then no longer build up his body from mineral substances as today, the coming human body will only incorporate into itself substances of a plant nature. All that works in man today, as mineral will disappear. In order to give you a seemingly grotesque example: the human saliva of today is a mineral product, for the physical body is an inter-action of mineral processes. When man will have ended his mineral evolution he will no longer have a mineral spittle; it will be of a plant-nature—man will, so to speak, spit flowers. Glands will no more secrete what is mineral, but a plant-like substance. The mineral kingdom is brought to an end by the evolutionary return of humanity to plant-like existence.

Thus the human being lives over to Jupiter inasmuch as he expels all that is mineral and passes over to the creativeness of the plant. And inasmuch as he then later passes over to animal-creation—the animals will be different from those of today—when his heart will have progressed so far that it can appear as a creator, then he will create in the animal world, as today he creates in the mineral kingdom, and then the Venus condition will arise. And when he can create his kind by virtue of uttering his own likeness, then is the meaning of evolution complete, then is the word fulfilled: “Let us create man in our own image.”

Only by observing this aspect—that the body will be moulded from the soul—will man really transform the human race. Only through a thinking trained in the occult and spiritual sense, will there appear what has been described as the transformation of the heart and the larynx. What humanity thinks today, that will it be in the future. A humanity that thinks materialistically will produce frightful beings in the future, and a humanity that thinks spiritual thoughts, so works upon and transforms the future organism that beautiful human bodies will proceed from it.

What the materialistic mode of thought brings about has not yet been completed. We have two streams today, a great materialistic one which fills the earth, and the small spiritual stream which is restricted to but few human beings. Distinguish between soul-evolution and race-evolution. Do not think that if races pass over to a grotesque form that the soul too does the same. All materialistically thinking souls work on the production of evil race-formations, and what is done of a spiritual nature causes the bringing forth of a good race. Just as mankind has brought forth that which has retrogressed in the animals, plants and minerals, so will a portion split off and represent the evil part of humanity. And in the body which meanwhile will have grown soft the inner badness of the soul will express itself externally. Just as older conditions which have degenerated to the ape species seem grotesque to us today, so do materialistic races remain at the standpoint of evil, and will people the earth as evil races. It will lie entirely with humanity as to whether a soul will remain in the bad race or will ascend by spiritual culture to a good race.

These are things that we must know, if we would live into the future with real knowledge. Otherwise we go through the world with our eyes bound, for forces are working in humanity which we must recognise and to which we must pay attention. A man would neglect his duty to mankind if he did not wish to become acquainted with the forces which work in the direction of right evolution or against it. Knowledge for the sake of knowledge would be egotism. He who wants to know in order to look into higher worlds acts egotistically. But one who tries to carry this knowledge into the direct practice of everyday life, furthers the advance of the coming evolution of humanity. It is extremely important for us to learn more and more to put into practice what exists as the conception of spiritual science.

So you see, the Spiritual Movement has a quite definite goal, namely, to mould future humanity in advance. And the goal can be reached in no other way than through the acceptance of spiritual wisdom. This is the thought that lives in the mind of one who conceives spiritual science as the great task of mankind. He thinks of it as inseparable from evolution and he regards it not as an object of desire but as a task and duty that is laid upon him. And the more we acknowledge this, the more rapidly do we approach the future form of humanity in the Sixth Age. As at that time in ancient Atlantis, in the neighbourhood of modern Ireland, the advanced human beings were drawn to the East in order to found the new civilisations, so have we now the task of working towards the great moment in the Sixth Age, when humanity will undertake a great spiritual ascent.

We must endeavour to come out of materialism again, and societies with a spiritual aim must undertake to guide humanity, not from motives of arrogance and pride, but as a task and duty.

So a certain group of people must join together in order to prepare the future. But this union is not to be conceived of geographically. All ideas of locality have then lost their meaning because it is no longer a question of racial relationships. The point will be for people over the whole earth to find each other spiritually, in order to fashion the future in, a positive way. For this reason, 400 years ago, when our epoch plunged the deepest into matter, the Rosicrucian Brotherhood emphasised that practical spiritual science which contains an answer to all problems of everyday life.

Here you have the ascending evolution following the descending. Just as old knowledge acts as a disintegrating force, as is shown in Mauthner's Criticism of Language, so the spiritual current of thought seeks the unifying bond of spiritual wisdom. Hence arises the new school of initiation which is directly concerned with leading humanity over into a new cycle of time.

Thus with the principle of human evolution is connected the concept of Initiation.

WE have yet to speak today of the principle of Initiation, or esoteric training. And we will speak of the two methods of training which take into special consideration what has been explained here concerning human evolution. For we must be clear that in a certain way we find the truth by retracing our steps to earlier stages of humanity.

It has been said that the inhabitants of old Atlantis could perceive wisdom in all that surrounded them. The further we go back into the far past, the more we find states of consciousness through which men were able to perceive the creative powers which pervade the world, the spiritual beings which surround us. All that surrounds us has arisen through these creative beings and to see them is indeed the meaning of “knowledge.”

When mankind had developed to our present stage of consciousness (and this has only come about during our fifth post-Atlantean epoch) a longing was left in the soul to penetrate again into the spiritual realms. I have told you how in the ancient Indian people there lived from the beginning that deep longing to know the real spirit behind all that surrounds us in the world. We have seen how they had a feeling that all that surrounded them was a dream, an illusion; how their only task was to evolve upwards to the ancient wisdom that had worked creatively in early times. The pupils of the ancient Rishis strove to tread the path which led them through Yoga to look up into the realms from which they had themselves come down. They strove away from Maya to these spiritual realms above.

That is one way which man can take. The most recent way of attaining to wisdom is the Rosicrucian path. This path does not point man to the past but to the future, to those conditions which he will further live through. Through definite methods the pupil is taught to develop in himself the wisdom which exists in germ in every human being.

This is the way which was given through the Founder of the Rosicrucian esoteric stream, known to the outer world as Christian Rosenkreuz. It is not an unchristian way, rather is it a Christian path adapted to modern conditions, and lies between the actual Christian path and the Yoga path.

This path had been partially prepared long before the time of Christianity. It took on a special form through that great initiate, Dionysius the Areopagite, who in the esoteric school of Paul at Athens inaugurated the training from which all later esoteric wisdom and training have been derived.

These are the two paths of esoteric training particularly fitted for the West. All that is connected with our culture and the life we lead and must lead, is lifted up, raised into the principle of initiation through the Christian and through the Rosicrucian training. The purely Christian way is somewhat difficult for modern man, hence the Rosicrucian path has been introduced for those who have to live in the present age. If someone would take the old purely Christian path in the midst of modern life he must be able to cut himself off for a time from the world outside, in order to enter it again later all the more intensively. On the other hand the Rosicrucian path can be followed by all, no matter in what occupation or sphere of life they may be placed.

We will describe the purely Christian way. It is prescribed as to method in the most profound Christian book least understood by the representatives of Christian theology, the Gospel of St. John, and as to contents, in the Apocalypse or Secret Revelation.

The Gospel of St. John is a miraculous book: one must live it, not merely read it. One can live it if one understands that its utterances are precepts for the inner life, and that one must observe them in the right way. The Christian path demands of its disciple that he considers the St. John Gospel a book of meditation. A fundamental assumption, which is more or less absent in the Rosicrucian training, is that one possesses the most steadfast belief in the personality of Christ Jesus. The pupil must at least find it possible to believe that the most lofty Being, the Leader of the Fire-Spirits of the Sun evolution, was physically incorporated as Jesus of Nazareth; that Christ Jesus was not merely the “Simple Man of Nazareth,” not an individual like Socrates, Plato or Pythagoras. One must see his fundamental difference from all others. If one would undergo a purely Christian training one must be sure that in him lived a God-man of a unique nature, otherwise one has not the right basic feeling that enters the soul and awakens it. Therefore one must have an actual belief in the first words of the beginning of St. John's Gospel: “In the beginning was the Logos and the Logos was with God and a God was the Logos “to the words” And the Logos became flesh and dwelt among us.” Thus the same Spirit who was the ruler of the Fire-Spirits, who was linked with the transforming of the Earth, whom we also call the Spirit of the Earth, has actually dwelt among us in a garment of flesh, he was actually in a physical body. That must be recognised! If one cannot do this then it is better to undertake another method of training. One, however, who has accepted this basic condition and calls before his soul in meditation every morning through weeks and months the Gospel words down to the passage “full of grace and truth,” and moreover in such a way that he not only understands them, but lives within them, will experience them as an awakening force in the soul. For these are not ordinary words, but awakening forces which call forth other forces in the soul. The pupil must only have the patience to bring them before his soul continuously, every day, then they become the forces which the Christian training needs, aroused through the awakening of quite definite feelings. The Christian path is more an inner one, whereas in Rosicrucian training the experiences are kindled by the outer world.

The Christian path is pursued by an awakening of the feelings. There are seven stages of feeling which must be aroused. In addition are other exercises which are only given personally to the pupil, and suited to his special character. It is, however, indispensable to experience the 13th Chapter of St. John's Gospel, so to experience it as I will now describe. The teacher says to the pupil: You must develop quite definite feelings. Imagine the following: the plant grows from the soil, but is of a higher order than the mineral soil from which it grows. Nevertheless the plant needs it, the higher could not exist without the lower, and if the plant could think, it would have to say to the earth: It is true that I am higher than thou, yet without thee I cannot live. And it must incline itself to the earth in gratitude. Likewise must the animal bear itself to the plant, for it could not exist without plant life, and even so must the human being bear himself with regard to the animal. And if man has ascended higher, he must say to himself: I could never stand where I do without the lower. He must bow thankfully before them, for they have made it possible for him to exist. No creature in the world could subsist without the lower, to which it must feel gratitude. So even Christ, the very highest, could not exist without the twelve, and the feeling of his inclination to them in gratitude is powerfully portrayed in this 13th chapter. He, the highest of all, washes his disciples' feet.

If this is thought of in full wakefulness as a basic feeling in the human soul, if the pupil lives for weeks and months in reflection and contemplation which deepen this fundamental feeling—the gratitude with which the higher should look down to the lower to which it really owes its existence, then one awakens the first basic feeling. The pupil will have entered deeply enough into the experience when certain symptoms appear, an external symptom and an inner vision. The external symptom is that one feels the feet to be laved by water; in an inner vision one sees oneself as the Christ washing the feet of the twelve. This is the first stage, that of the Washing of the Feet. The event in the 13th Chapter of St. John's Gospel is not only an historical event, it can be experienced by all. It is an external symptomatic expression of the fact that the pupil has raised himself thus far in his life of feeling, nor does this sign fail to appear when he has progressed to this point in the enhancement of his feeling-life.

The second stage, the Scourging, is passed through if one deepens oneself in the following: How would it fare with you if the sufferings and blows of life broke in on you from every side? You should stand upright, you should make yourself strong to meet all the sorrows that life offers, and should bear them. This is the second fundamental feeling which must be experienced. The outer feeling of it is an irritation on the whole surface of the body, and a more inner expression is a vision in which one sees oneself scourged, at first in dream, and then in vision.

Then comes the third, which is the Crowning with Thorns. Here week-long, month-long one must live in the feeling: How would it fare with you, if you must not only undergo the sorrows and sufferings of life, but if even the holiest, your spiritual being, should be subjected to scorn and derision? And again, there must be no lamenting, it must be clear to the pupil that he must stand upright in spite of all. His inwardly developed strength must make him able to stand erect despite mockery and scorn. Whatever threatens to overthrow his soul he must stand erect! Then in an inner astral vision he sees himself with the crown of thorns and is sensible of an external pain on the head. This is the sign that he has advanced far enough in his life of feeling to be able to make this experience.

The fourth is the Crucifixion. Here the pupil must again develop a quite definite feeling. Today man identifies his body with his ego. One who would go through the Christian initiation must accustom himself to carry his body through the world as if it were a foreign object, a table, for instance. His body must become foreign to him, he bears it in and out of the doorway as something external, not himself. When a man has advanced far enough in this fundamental feeling, there is revealed to him what is called the “Ordeal of the Blood.” Certain reddenings of the skin appear on certain places in such a way that he can call forth the wounds of Christ, on the hands, the feet and on the right side of the breast. When the pupil by his depth of feeling is able to develop in himself the Blood Ordeal, the external symptom, then appears likewise the inner, the astral, in which he sees himself crucified.

The fifth is the Mystic Death. The pupil raises himself ever higher to the feeling: I belong to the whole world; I am as little an independent being as the finger on my hand. He feels himself embedded in the whole world, as if a part of it. Then he experiences the feeling that all around him grows dark, as if a black darkness envelops him, like a pall that becomes dense around him. During this time, the pupil of the Christian initiation learns to know all the sorrow and all the pain, all the evil and wickedness that attaches itself to mortal man. That is the Descent into Hell; each one must live through it. Then something comes to pass as if the veil were torn asunder, and the pupil sees into the spiritual worlds. This is called the Rending of the Veil.

The sixth is the Burial and Resurrection. When the pupil has advanced so far he must say: I have already accustomed myself to look on my body as something foreign, but now I see everything in the world as standing as near to me as my own body, which indeed is only taken from these substances. Every blossom, every stone, is as near to me as my body. Then the pupil is buried in the earthly planet. This stage is significantly linked with a new life, with the feeling of being united to the deepest Soul of the planet, with the soul of the Christ, who says, “those who eat my bread tread me underfoot.”

The seventh, the Ascension, cannot be described; one must have a soul that is no longer dependent on thinking through the instrument of the brain. In order to be sensible of what the pupil undergoes in what is called the Ascension, it is necessary to have a soul which can live through this feeling.

This passing through states of humility and deep devotion represents the nature of the Christian initiation, and he who earnestly goes through it experiences his resurrection in the spiritual worlds. Today it is not possible for all to undertake this path, and so the existence of another method leading to the higher worlds has become a necessity. That is the Rosicrucian method.

Here again I must refer to seven stages which will give a picture of the content of this training. Much of it has already been described in Lucifer-Gnosis,¹ much can only be given from teacher to pupil within the school, and yet an idea must be formed of what the training provides. It has seven stages, though not consecutive, it is a question of the pupil's own individuality. The teacher prescribes what seems to him adapted to his pupil, and much else forms a part that cannot be made public.

The seven stages are the following:

1. Study
2. Imaginative knowledge
3. Inspired knowledge, or reading the Occult Script
4. Preparation of the Philosopher's Stone
5. Correspondence between Macrocosm and Microcosm
6. Living into the Macrocosm
7. Divine Bliss

Study in the Rosicrucian sense is the ability to immerse oneself in a content of thought not taken from physical reality but from the higher worlds. This is called the life in pure thought. Modern philosophers for the most part deny this; they say that every thinking must have a certain vestige remaining from sense perception. This, however, is not the case, for no one, for example, can see a true circle; a circle must be seen in the mind; on the blackboard it is only a collection of tiny particles of chalk. One can only attain to a real circle if one leaves aside all examples, all actual things. Thus thinking in Mathematics is a super-sensible activity. But one must also learn to think supersensibly in other fields.

Initiates have always exercised this kind of thinking in regard to the being of man. Rosicrucian theosophy is such super-sensible knowledge, and its study, with which we are now occupied, is the first stage of the Rosicrucian training itself. I am not bringing forward Rosicrucian theosophy for any external reason, but because it is the first stage of the Rosicrucian Initiation. People think often enough that it is unnecessary to talk about the principles of man's being, or the evolution of humanity or the different planetary evolutions, they would rather acquire beautiful feelings, they do not want to study earnestly. Nevertheless, however many beautiful feelings one acquires in one's soul it is impossible to rise into the spiritual worlds by that alone. Rosicrucian theosophy does not try to arouse the feelings, but through the stupendous facts of the spiritual worlds to let the feelings themselves begin to resound. The Rosicrucian feels it a kind of impertinence to take people by storm with feelings. He leads them along the path of mankind's evolution in the belief that feelings will then arise of themselves. He calls up before them the planet journeying in universal space, knowing that when the soul experiences this fact it will be powerfully gripped in feeling. It is only an empty phrase to say one should address oneself direct to the feelings, that is just indolence. Rosicrucian theosophy lets the facts speak, and if these thoughts flow into the feeling nature and overpower it, then that is the right way. Only what the human being feels of his own accord can fill him with bliss or blessedness. The Rosicrucian lets the facts in the cosmos speak, for that is the most impersonal kind of teaching. It is a matter of indifference who stands before you; you must not be affected by a personality, but by what he tells you of the facts of world-becoming. Thus in the Rosicrucian training that direct veneration for the teacher is struck out, he does not claim it nor require it. He wishes to speak to the pupil of what exists, quite apart from himself. One who will press forward into the higher worlds must accustom himself to the kind of thinking in which one thought proceeds from another. A thinking of this nature is developed in my Philosophy of Spiritual Activity and Truth and Science. These books are not written in such a way that one can take a thought and put it in another place; much more are they written as an organism arises, one thought grows out of another. These books have nothing at all to do with the one who wrote them; he gave himself up to what the thoughts themselves worked out in him, how they linked themselves one to another.

Study, then, for one desiring to make a somewhat elementary approach means acquiring a certain knowledge of the elementary facts of spiritual science itself, whereas for one who wishes to go further it means an inner meditation in a thought-structure which lets one thought grow out of another, out of itself.

The second stage is Imaginative Knowledge, the knowledge which unites with what is given to the pupil in the study-stage. The study is the basis, it must be perfected through individual imaginative knowledge. If you think over various things that I have touched upon in the last lectures, you will find traces—in the echo for instance—of what were everyday occurrences on Saturn. It is possible to look on all around us as a physiognomy of an inner spiritual element. People walk over the earth and it is a conglomeration of rocks and stones to them, but men must learn to grasp that all surrounding them is the true physical expression for the Spirit of the Earth. Just as the body is ensouled, so is the earth planet the external expression for an indwelling spirit. When men look on the earth as possessing body and soul as man does, then only they have an idea of what Goethe meant when he said “All things corruptible are but a semblance.” When you see tears run down the human countenance you do not examine by the laws of physics how quickly or how slowly the tears roll down; they express to you the inner sadness of the soul, just as the smiling cheek is the expression for the soul's inner joy. The pupil must educate himself to see in each single flower in the meadow he crosses, the outer expression of a living being, the expression of the Spirit dwelling in the Earth. Some flowers seem to be tears, others are the joyful expression of the earth's Spirit. Every stone, every plant, every flower, all is for him the outer expression of the indwelling Earth Spirit, its physiognomy that speaks to him. And everything “corruptible” or transitory becomes a “semblance” of an eternal, expressing itself through it. Feelings like these had to be attained by the disciple of the Grail, and by the Rosicrucian. The teacher would say: Behold the flower chalice which receives the ray of the sun, the sun calls forth the pure productive forces which slumber in the plant and hence the sun's ray was called the “holy lance of love.” Look now at man; he stands higher than the plant, he has the same organs within him, but all that the plant harbours in itself, perfectly pure and chaste, is in him steeped in lust and impure desire. The future of human evolution consists in this: man will again be chaste and pure, and speak forth his likeness into the world through another organ which will be the transformed organ of generation. Chaste and pure without desire, without passion, man's generative organ will be; and as the calyx of the blossom turns upward to the holy love lance, it will turn to the spiritual ray of wisdom, and fructified by this will bring forth its own image. This organ will be the larynx.

The Grail pupil was shown: the plant on its lower stage has this pure chalice, man has lost it; he has degenerated to impure desires. Out of the spiritualised sun ray he must let this chalice come again, in chastity he must develop that which forms the Holy Grail of the future.

Thus the pupil looks up to the great Ideal. What comes to pass in the slow evolution of the whole human race is experienced earlier by the initiate. He shows us mankind's evolution in pictures and these pictures work quite differently from the abstract thoughts which have been produced by the modern materialistic age. If you picture evolution in such lofty and powerful pictures as the Grail, then the effect is different from that of ordinary knowledge, which is unable to exercise any deep influence on your organism. Imaginative knowledge works down on the etheric body and thence on to the blood and this is the medium which acts formatively on the organism. Man will become increasingly more able to work on his organism through his etheric body. All imaginative knowledge based on truth is at the same time healing and health giving, it makes the blood healthy in its circulation. The best educator is imaginative knowledge, if man is only strong and devoted enough for it to be able to work on him.

The third stage is Reading in the Occult Script, that is, not only seeing isolated pictures but letting the relationship of these pictures work upon one. This becomes what is called occult script. One begins to coordinate the lines of force which stream creatively through the world forming them into definite figures and colour-forms through the imagination. One learns to discover an inner connection which is expressed in these figures and this acts as spiritual tone, as the sphere-harmony, for the figures are founded on true cosmic proportions. Our script is a last decadent relic of this old occult writing and is modeled on it.

One comes to the fourth, Preparing the Philosopher's Stone, through exercises of the breathing process. If man breathes as ordained by nature he needs the plant-world for his breathing.

If the plant were not there he could not live, for it gives him oxygen and assimilates the carbon which he himself breathes out. The plant builds its own organism from this and gives back oxygen, thus through the plant world oxygen is continually renewed for man. Humanity could not exist by itself; eliminate the plant world and mankind would in a short time die out. So you see the cycle: you breathe in oxygen which the plant breathes out, you breathe out carbon which the plant inhales and from which it builds up its own bodily nature. Thus the plant belongs to me, it is the instrument by which my life is sustained. You may see in the coal how the plant builds its body from carbon, for coal is nothing else than the dead remains of plants.

Rosicrucian training guides the pupil through a definitely regulated breathing process to form that organ that can within himself effect the transformation of carbon into oxygen. What is today done by the plant externally, will later on, through a future organ which the pupil is already developing through his training, be effected in man himself This is slowly being prepared. Through the regulated breathing process man will bear in himself the instrument for the preparation of oxygen; he will have become akin to the plant, whereas now he is of a mineral nature. He will retain the carbon in himself and build his body from it, and hence his body will later on be more plant-like, then he can turn towards the holy love lance. The whole of humanity will then possess a consciousness like that gained by the initiate today when he raises himself into the higher worlds.

This is called the transmutation of human substance into that substance of which carbon itself is the basis. This is the Alchemy which leads man to build up his own body as does the plant today. One calls this the preparation of the “Philosopher's Stone” and carbon is its outer symbol. But it is not the Philosopher's Stone until the pupil can create it himself through his regulated breathing process. The teaching can only be given from teacher to pupil, it is wrapped in deep secrecy, and only after he is completely purified and made ready can the pupil receive this mystery. If it were to be made public today, then men in their egoism would gratify their lowest needs through the misuse of this highest mystery.

The fifth is the Correspondence of Microcosm and Macrocosm. When we survey the path of human evolution we see that what lies within man today has gradually entered from without—for instance, the glands were an external growth on the Sun, like our modern fungi; all that today lies within the human skin was once outside. The human body is, as it were, pieced together from what was spread outside it, each separate member of your physical body, etheric body and astral body was somewhere outside in the universe. This is the macrocosm in the microcosm. Your very soul was outside in the Godhead. Whatever is within us corresponds to something which is outside, and we must learn to know the true correspondences in ourselves.

You know the spot on the brow just above the root of the nose; it expresses the fact that a certain something which was formerly outside has drawn into man. If you penetrate this organ in meditation, sink yourself into it, this denotes more than a mere brooding in this point, you learn to know then the part of the outer world which corresponds to it. The larynx, too, you get to know and the forces which build it. Thus you learn about the macrocosm through sinking yourself into your own body. This is no mere brooding within yourself! You should not say: God is within and I will seek Him. You would only find the puny human being whom you yourself magnify into God! One who only speaks of this inward brooding never comes to real knowledge. To reach this by the path of Rosicrucian Theosophy is less comfortable and demands real work. The universe is full of beautiful and marvelous things, one must be absorbed in these, one must seek God in his individual expressions, then one can find him in oneself and then only does one learn to know God as One. The world is like a great book. We find its letters in created things, we must read these from beginning to end, and then we learn to read the book microcosm and the book macrocosm from beginning to end.

This is no longer a mere understanding, it lives over into feeling, it fuses the human being with the whole universe and he feels all things to be the expression of the divine Spirit of the Earth. If a man has reached this point, he voluntarily performs all his deeds in accordance with the will of the whole cosmos and this is what is known as Divine Bliss.

When we are able to think thus, we are treading the Rosicrucian path. The Christian school is based more on the development of inner feelings, in the Rosicrucian school all that is spread out in physical reality as the divine nature of the earth is allowed to work upon us and reverberate in us as feeling. These are two ways which are open to all. If you think in the manner of modern thought then you can take the Rosicrucian path, no matter how scientific you may be. Modern science is an assistance if you do not merely study cosmic evolution, reading the letters, as it were, but carry your research into what is concealed behind, just as in a book one does not consider the letters but reads the meaning by their aid. You must seek the spirit behind science, then science becomes to you but the letter for the spirit.

What has been said is not meant to be a comprehensive account of the Rosicrucian training, it is only meant to serve as an indication of what can be found in it. It is a path for present day man, it makes him capable of working into the future. These are only the elementary stages, to give some idea of the way. We can thus realise how through the Rosicrucian method one may oneself penetrate into the higher mysteries.

Spiritual Science is necessary to humanity for its further progress. What is to take place for the transforming of mankind must be brought about through men themselves. He who accepts the truth in his present incarnation will mould for himself in later incarnations the outer form for the deeper truths.

Thus what we have discussed in this lecture course is coordinated to a whole. It is the instrument which is to work creatively for future civilisation. It is taught today because the man of the future needs these teachings, because they must be directed into the evolutionary path of mankind. Everyone who will not accept this truth of the future, lives at the cost of other men. But he who accepts it lives for others, even if at first he is impelled by an egoistic longing for the higher worlds. If the path is the right one then it is of itself the destroyer of self seeking and the best educator of selflessness.

Occult development is now needed by mankind and must be implanted into it. An earnest, true striving for truth, step by step, this alone leads to genuine brotherliness, this is the magician which can best bring about the uniting of humanity. This will serve as the means to bring about humanity's great goal, unity; and we shall reach this goal when we develop the means to it in ourselves, when we seek to acquire these means in the noblest, purest way, for it is a matter of hallowing humanity through these means.

Thus Spiritual Science appears to us not only as a great ideal, but as a force with which we permeate ourselves and out of which knowledge wells up for us. Spiritual Science will become increasingly more widespread, it will penetrate more and more all the religious and practical aspects of life, just as the great law of existence penetrates all beings; it is a factor in humanity's evolution.

This is the sense in which these lectures on Rosicrucian Theosophy have been given. If it has been understood, not only abstractly, but so that feelings have been evoked through knowledge of facts, then it can work directly into life. When this knowledge flows into all our members, from head to heart and thence into the hand, into all that we do and create, then we have grasped the foundations of spiritual science. Then we have grasped the great task of civilisation which is laid in our hands, and then from this knowledge feelings, too, are developed which one who likes to take things easily would prefer to develop direct.

Rosicrucian Theosophy does not wish to revel in feelings, it wishes to bring the facts of the spirit before your eyes. The pupil must take part, must let himself be stimulated by the facts which have been described, feelings and sensations must be aroused in him through them. In this sense Spiritual Science should become a powerful impulse for the sphere of feeling, but at the same time be that which leads us direct into the facts of super-sensible perceptions, which lets them first arise as thoughts and then leads the seeker upward into the higher worlds.

This was intended to be the significance of these lectures.

• 1. Dr. Steiner refers to the articles in Lucifer-Gnosis afterwards published as Knowledge of the Higher Worlds.

As in recent years at the beginning of our Munich lecture course, may I be allowed to use this first lecture as a kind of introduction to what we are going to deal with in the coming days.

It may well be that the first thought that occurs to you at the beginning of this cycle should refer to what for several years has been the introduction to these Munich lectures, that is, our artistic dramatic productions. If I may be allowed to give expression to the thought that comes before my own soul on this occasion, it is that it gives me the deepest satisfaction to see how, this year as well as last, we have been able to open these productions with a reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis. Seeing that this year we have the pleasure of a still larger audience than before, perhaps it will not be superfluous to repeat a few words I have already spoken here in Munich.

All that is bound up with the Eleusinian Mystery is intimately connected with what we call our anthroposophical striving. We began with quite a small circle of which only a few have remained faithful to the movement. We began years ago in Berlin, actually connecting the representation of initiation and initiation principles of the various epochs and races to all that has been accomplished for the Anthroposophical Movement by our revered friend Edouard Schuré with regard to the reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mystery. It was with all this that we made a kind of introduction to this movement of ours. Now that for some years past we have been able to give dramatic productions of what has issued from Edouard Schuré's soul, we have been able to stamp a kind of impression of the feelings, sentiments and thoughts that, for rather a smaller circle of us, have formed themselves around this starting point of our movement. If I am to define all this, I should say that an inner confidence, an inner faith, flowed out of the spiritual purity and chastity of the way in which these things entered our souls. So that we might say that if we allow these sentiments and feelings to flow into us, together with all that we feel in our souls with regard to our anthroposophical striving, we can at least hope for some measure of success. This is what the things themselves told us in the beginning, what they told us by the deep and serious way they penetrated into the spiritual, and what the years that have since passed have also told us.

What belief were we able to hold at the beginning, and later in the course of the recent years? It was the importance of the moment in the evolution of humanity—I mean the moment in relation to world history—that was able to arise before the soul. The idea could arise that it was quite in accordance with the laws of human evolution that in our present age new forces, and particularly forces of spiritual life, should wish to enter the souls of men if they were to hold their own in face of what the present and immediate future may demand of their inmost being. In giving voice to this thought, may I be allowed to refer to something personal, which is, nevertheless, by no means personal to me.

Years ago, before we started our movement, I often had occasion to speak about all kinds of spiritual matters with the German art historian, Herman Grimm, who, as you know, has since passed into higher worlds. In our walks together from Weimar to Tiefurt, or around Berlin, a good deal was said about the demands of the spiritual life in our time relative to nature; how humanity has sought its goal during the course of European evolution and has tried to find harmony in its soul life. There was one thought that kept coming to the fore in conversation with Herman Grimm, who was so deeply interested in all the spiritual life of the West. When we go to the root of the matter, this one thought was how the European man can look back over a number of centuries, or over the last 2000 years, how the European can look back in such a way that when he probes into his own soul and examines its needs and asks himself, “What can I understand, what is comprehensible to me in human affairs that transpired then that I need for my own life of soul?” He can then answer, “However many of the details of life at that time may be incomprehensible, somewhere there is a link with what I myself experience, if I let the new age pass historically before my soul.” Even the complications that arose in the Roman Empire at the time of Caesar, or in the still more remote time of Republican Rome, appear comprehensible to European consciousness today. We find our bearings when we try to understand the souls of those times, even though in many respects they may be far removed from what present day man can feel or think. But when the soul looks back into ancient Greece it becomes quite a different matter. It is only if we do not go sufficiently deep into things with what we call our human understanding that we, as modern men, can say that the days of ancient Greece may be as easily understood as Roman times or as the times that followed. When in going back we come to ancient Greece and let the historical records of it work on our souls, we begin to meet with what is incomprehensible. I should like to repeat, as something clear and easily understood, what Herman Grimm often used to say, “A man like Alcibiades is a mere prince in a fairy story compared with Caesar or with those who lived in Caesar's day.” Greek life appears in quite a different light, and human and divine bear a different relation to each other. Everyday life and all that might be called the divine enlightenment of everyday life seems quite different. The whole life of soul existing on the soil of ancient Greece seems entirely different. These things become particularly striking when we let those personalities work on our souls who can in truth become far more living in the modern soul than the people of whom history relates—those personalities we find in the works of Homer, Aeschylus or Sophocles.

Starting from such a thought, the results of our modern culture will certainly enable us to say that the further back we go in human evolution, the more does man appear to be directly connected with the super-sensible and all that radiates into and works within his soul. For we can already perceive the beginning of a quite new humanity when, not superficially but fundamentally, we get near the soul of the Greek. Something quite special appears, too, when we allow the historical works of literature that have arisen in the course of European civilization to work upon us. The historians write about the various ages back into Roman times as of something they have grasped and mastered. When you open a history book, you will find that the writer, when desiring to give life and form to the personalities he is representing, is able to apply the feelings and sentiments of his own age as far back as ancient Rome. In purely historical writings, even among the best historians, Greek figures, even those of the later Greek period, are like silhouettes, shadow-pictures that cannot come to life. How could anyone with genuine feeling for what it means for a man to have his feet firmly on the ground, maintain that any historian has really succeeded in thus planting Lycurgus or Alcibiades on their feet, as can be done in the case of Caesar. The Greek soul appears full of mystery when we look back into Grecian times, or so it appears to the man who merely tries to grasp it with his ordinary consciousness. Those who feel this mystery have the right feeling.

In this connection we may well ask how a Greek soul would have felt with respect to many things that are fully comprehensible to the modern soul. Let us consider an early Greek soul. Let us try by means of much that spiritual science gives us to feel our way into this soul. What would the Greek souls have said to the image, the old traditional story, that is so easily comprehended by the later European soul the story of the Fall, the old story of Paradise, and all that later ages received as the Old Testament. This would have been absolutely foreign to the Greek soul, as foreign as the Greek soul itself is to modern man. You cannot think the story of the temptation in Paradise, the story of Adam and Eve, into the Greek soul, so that it would be fully understood there as it lived for instance in the Middle Ages and on even into modern times. Therefore, it is first necessary even for us to prepare our own souls before we can understand that age, so different from our own.

It is when we cherish thoughts like these that we first begin to have a real sense of what it is that our present moment has brought us. Last Sunday when the curtain went down after the last scene of the Eleusinian Mystery, I could not help thinking how thankful we may be that we are able today to turn our eyes and minds to the course of events that show us the Greek soul in its life of feeling and experience. Moreover, that we are able to fill the auditorium with those who can imagine how, in the course of man's evolution on earth from epoch to epoch, the human soul has assumed different forms, and how it has learned to experience in different ways its environment and its own life. For many years we have been striving to understand the life that human souls had to live in the beginning of earthly evolution when the external body, and with it the inner soul life, were quite different from what they afterward became. We have been striving to understand how the human soul lived in Atlantean times, how it lived in post-Atlantean times, and we have grown to realise in what manifold ways the soul has lived and experienced itself within us. The soul that is in each one of us, the soul that has passed through one incarnation after another, not in order to experience the same things over again but to keep on having fresh experiences—in what various ways its life has been lived! So it is possible for us to sit in this auditorium, and to forget the things directly affecting us in this age in order to absorb objectively and dispassionately what was peculiar to souls of a different age. We need not set our understanding to work; we need only give ourselves up to immediate feeling to see that the events enacted in the reconstructed Eleusinian Mystery contain within them all that man's soul lived through from the darkest depths of life up to the light of the spirit, from deep sorrow to heights of bliss, experienced, however, in various ways in the course of time. Then we may get a simple and unprejudiced, but perhaps all the more certain, feeling of what the Greeks felt when such names were spoken, such images awakened, as those of Demeter, Persephone, and Dionysos. It may be possible for whole worlds to arise before us from within the soul when these images are awakened.

As human beings we find ourselves in the external physical world. We learn to know it through our physical senses, through the experiences of our soul, and through what we experience with our understanding and with our reason. We feel today, in quite a distinct way, that our soul is in a measure independent of the external life of surrounding nature, and of all that is concealed in it. The Greeks could never have felt this in the way man feels it today. At that time they never could have understood this estrangement from nature, this emphasis on the need of forsaking the world of the senses in order to press on into spiritual worlds. But in his own way the Greek felt a significant difference, a significant cleft, between what may be called the spirit in man and what may be called the soul. For the things of the soul and the things of the spirit are the expressions we use for human experience, and are two spheres closely impinging on one another.

Let us turn to the scene at the very beginning. Demeter stands in her proud spiritual chastity before Persephone, warning her not to taste the fruits that Eros can give. We turn our gaze to Demeter and see in her all that man calls spiritual, everything as he says in which “he as spirit has part.” But man also sees that in the realm of the earth all that is spiritual is bound up with all that has most to do with the senses and is the most material. Demeter, the Goddess, who brings forth the fruits of the earth and presides over the external and moral ordering of mankind—Demeter, human spirit, chaste and proud in face of much that generally lives in men, but inwardly bound up with and permeating the external world of the senses—it is thus that Demeter stands before us. Persephone appears before our inward vision as something that awakens an image of the human soul principle in our soul. It is connected with all that concerns man's individual existence as he stands there with his soul in the midst of earthly joys and sorrows. If it would picture what lives in Persephone, the soul must feel its connection with all that pulsates through earthly joys and sorrows. Persephone is all soul, Demeter all human spirit. If we then allow the course of the Eleusinian Mystery to work upon us, if the basic tones struck in the very first dialogue between Demeter and Persephone go on resounding in us, become intermingled and then clear, finally leading up to the figure of Dionysos—then, how the whole human being is to be found in Dionysos! How all that becomes living in us when we confront Demeter and Persephone lives again in Dionysos! Then, in the last scene, we see man's soul striving toward harmony of soul and spirit. The whole Dionysian play becomes a striving out of the darkness of life into the light of the spirit.

I have no wish to be a commentator nor to pull to pieces a work of art. I only wish to put into words the feelings that can arise in man with regard to the most intimate secrets of his soul when confronted with the Eleusinian Mystery. I should never think of saying that Demeter was the personification or symbol of a primal form of the human spirit, or that Persephone symbolised the human soul. That would be an insult to the plastic, living nature of a work of art. That would mean applying rigid concepts of the intellect to all that lives in a work of art that is just as living as man or any other living being. But what we may and can feel about the secrets of the soul—of that we may speak.

Now let us set two pictures before ourselves. Let us picture the later European consciousness that is now beginning to free itself and that henceforth will thirst after the forms revealed by the truths of spiritual science. Let us picture this European consciousness as it has been working through the centuries, this European soul that felt the riddle of life on being told how the first human being was there (man and woman), so far removed from the God he had come to fear, and upon hearing the alluring voice of a being strange to him, to his own human soul. Whence did this being come? What is it? How is it related to man's own soul being? The European soul, the European consciousness, hardly attempts any explanation. It accepts the strangeness of Lucifer, and it suffices it to know that from Lucifer came knowledge, but also the voice of temptation. And the words decreeing the divine judgement after the temptation—how they resound as from infinite cosmic space! How little they are suited by their very setting to draw this question from the soul: “Where can I find in the most intimate life of my own soul what is resounding through the wide spaces of the macrocosm?” Try to imagine the drama of Paradise as a living picture. Try to feel inwardly how unnatural it would be to represent the figures in the drama in purely human form. On the other hand, now try to imagine how, in speaking of the deepest and most intimate concerns of the Greek soul, it is a foregone conclusion that you should have before you the human figure of Demeter, the human figure of Persephone, even that of Dionysos or of Zeus! Try from this to experience how infinitely near to the Greek soul came all that permeated the macrocosm! We can characterise this in a few words. All that we need say is that before the Eleusinian Mystery was reconstructed by Edouard Schuré it simply did not exist in the form in which we can now see it. But now we have it! We need only feel what is contained in these two statements to grasp the whole significance of the matter. This to my mind transcends all mere trivial expressions of gratitude because we have also pointed to the whole significance that this reconstruction of the Eleusinian Mystery has for modern spiritual life. All that is connected with the Mystery of Eleusis, and all that has been achieved by the author in the historical re-awakening of the principles of initiation in the various epochs, corresponds to what is deepest and most intimate in the European soul. Everyone who takes spiritual life in a sincere and earnest way is under an obligation of a sacred, serious kind to carry precisely this kind of attitude into the present life of the soul.

My dear friends, you may talk a great deal with people outside in the world about all manner of things concerning anthroposophy, and some may even seem to find satisfaction in such conversation. But when one is able to look into the depths of the soul, one knows that the soul needs to be given, though perhaps unconsciously, what it truly desires in the innermost recesses of the heart.

It was feelings such as these that filled my soul last Sunday when we saw the curtain fall on the last scene of the Mystery of Eleusis, and the weeks preceding our Munich performance showed me that I was not alone in these feelings. All of us sitting here may feel the warmest gratitude toward those who for weeks past have been sacrificing themselves to the work of studying and entering into the personalities they had to represent. The consciousness lives in all those whom you have actually seen on the stage that they are servants of the spiritual world, and that it is necessary in our age that every effort be made to introduce spiritual values into the general culture of mankind. Reverence for spiritual things enabled the players gladly to bear much that preparations for the performances demands. We must also remember with special thanks those who have for years been working behind the scenes, though perhaps even more visibly than the individual players. They have devoted their efforts, and especially their ability, which is more than their efforts, to the service of this particular task. We may regard it as a kind of inner karma of our movement that we are able to have among us one who provides all that the scenes require in the way of drapery and clothing for the players, and who does it all in such a manner that it is not only in keeping with the intentions that I have at heart but is also accompanied by true spirituality. We may take it as a favourable karma of our movement in Central Europe that we have such a personality among us. That this karma has a yet deeper foundation, we can see from the fact that the same person was able to co-operate so successfully in all that has been done, for instance, for our Calendar during the past months. Like all our undertakings it is to serve the great purpose. So that first among those who were able to collaborate in such an outstanding manner, not only as players but in the whole of our work, we may mention Fraulein von Eckardstein. Then I think with deepest gratitude, and I should like to evoke this gratitude in your hearts, too, of our self-sacrificing painters, Volkert, Linde, Hass and this year Steglich of Copenhagen, as well. And many must remain unnamed for they are too numerous.

My dear friends, anthroposophy does not consist merely in theories and prophecies. It consists in the will to sacrifice oneself for the demands of the present age. A feeling for this ought to be awakened so that by real human work the seed may be planted for the spiritual life that is so necessary for the future of mankind. If such is our feeling, we shall understand better and better how those who would call themselves anthroposophists must grow together in the concrete and immediate working together toward worthy and serious aims. First in value is what the individual does, what the individual creates and all that he is prepared to bring as his own offering. Here, perhaps, I may speak of the following.

There were free days between our performances when many of our friends were busy rehearsing from morning to night, and on those days Dr. Unger gave lectures here in Munich. It was a source of deep satisfaction to me when our good managing director, Sellin, came to me behind the scenes yesterday morning full of enthusiasm for Dr. Unger's two lectures with the remark, “A movement with such inspired representatives does not come to naught.” What is it that gives me such great pleasure in such an occurrence? Allow me to say this quite honestly and sincerely. It is the independent force, the absolutely independent way in which a human personality is here presenting the matter out of himself, quite freely, by means of his own faculties, without limiting himself to what I myself would say. To one who himself wishes to work independently, nothing can give truer joy than to find someone else who is independent, shoulder to shoulder with him, giving out according to his own ability once he has recognised that it fits into the whole.

A short while ago I received a letter practically saying that much needed to be done within the German anthroposophical movement if anyone was ever to do anything but repeat quite literally what has been said by me. The way truth is represented out in the world is often like that. I do not want to criticise this remark that objectively contains what is untrue in the strictest sense of the word. I do not mention it in order to blame or condemn. But the other side, which is for us the positive side, must be repeatedly emphasised. Let us feel bound to truthfulness, to the testing of what is. Let us feel that we must never speak of any matter until we have learned about it, until we have gone into it. Otherwise, there can be no blessing in occult development, in occult striving. Truth and truthfulness! That is the first and foremost law. What is the good of any prophet, of any description of super-sensible facts, if they are not permeated by honest and sincere truthfulness. From the place from which I speak to you, it may be that you will accept many things that I have to say, but it will please me best if you accept them out of the conviction that it will always be my own deepest endeavour toward you to make no statements except those that can be made with the most candid truthfulness, since I can see no blessing for any occult movement unless one is dedicated to the truth! It may be contrary to what we desire, contrary to the demands of our ambition or our vanity, contrary to many other things in our soul; it may be against the grain to submit ourselves to any kind of authority, but all the same it may be right. For there is one authority to which we should submit ourselves willingly and of our own free will, and that is the authority of truth, so that all we can achieve, not only in what we say but also in what we do, in all our individual deeds, may be permeated by truthfulness. You must also look for that truthfulness in what is put before you in our anthroposophical artistic and dramatic efforts. Try to find it, and although you may realise that there are some things we have failed to attain, you will see that we have striven to permeate all that we do by an atmosphere of truthfulness. We have tried never to let ourselves speak of “tolerance” if tolerance is not really there and if we do not really practice it. Calling others intolerant does not constitute tolerance; to relate something of someone that is not what he represents does not constitute tolerance; to stress continually that one should “be tolerant” does not constitute tolerance. But if one is truthful one knows one's own value and how far one may go. If we are servants of the truth, it will follow as a matter of course that we shall be tolerant.

We may well speak of these things by way of introduction, although it is not generally my custom to enter into all manner of warnings and admonitions. But, on such an occasion as this, how could these words not flow forth from the heart, these words that would point out how, from an inwardly associated impulse, we were able gradually to make this reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis in a certain respect into something from which we may start. We wished to be open and honest with European souls, we wished to be truthful, seeking with a sense of truthfulness for what the European soul is thirsting. The deepest thoughts are often revealed in the simplest words, formulated in the simplest language. Let us learn, with an honest and sincere conviction of the needs of our age, to recognise what a deed it was to recreate the Eleusinian Mystery out of the dark spiritual depths, which begin just at the point where we go back from ancient Rome to ancient Greece. We may then leave it to each individual soul here present to rejoice in the thought as I am sure many will, very deeply—that the creator of this reconstruction of the Mystery of Eleusis is with us during our time in Munich.

In these lectures we shall have to discuss important questions intimately related to spiritual life. We shall have to speak of what lies at the basis of so-called initiation and, after having indicated some of its secrets and laws, we must go on to speak of the significance of all that radiates out for life from initiation and initiates in the course of human evolution. We shall have to speak of all this in relation to what may be summed up in such contrasting ideas as eternity and the passing moment, the light of the spirit and the darkness of life. Then, having considered the life of man from the point of view these ideas give, we shall return again to the power of initiation and the power of initiates. It is the principle of initiation, then, that on this occasion will be the limit of our studies.

Eternity; we need only touch on this idea to feel resounding in us something connected with the deepest longings of man's soul and with the highest aims of his endeavour. The passing moment always brings before us all that surrounds us in life, that reminds us of the necessity to search in this passing moment of our lives for what is able to give us a view into the land of our desire, into eternity. We only have to call to mind how Goethe introduced into his Faust the deepest secret of this his greatest poem, by making Faust say to the passing moment. “Tarry yet, thou art so fair!” and making him then confess that if such can become the soul's attitude, if it can so identify itself with this confession as to say to the passing moment, “Tarry yet, thou art so fair,” it must necessarily follow that Faust should own that he deserves to fall victim to Mephistopheles, the enemy of mankind on earth. Thus, Goethe makes everything connected with the feeling that flows from the passing moment the basic mystery of his greatest poem. It seems then that what we live in—the passing moment—is in opposition to what we call eternity, for which man's soul must constantly long.

The light of the spirit! In all the anthroposophical studies we have pursued over the years, we have recognised that the striving after spirit light has the fundamental aim of leading man out of the darkness of life. Once more we feel how in Faust, one of the greatest poems in human evolution, a poet, wishing to portray a great and all-embracing soul, cannot but make it come forth out of the darkness of life. What is it that entangles Faust at the beginning of the poem? What envelops him? It is the darkness of life. How often have we to emphasise that so great is the force and power of this darkness over man, that the spirit light, finding him immature, may so work upon him as not to illuminate but to dazzle and stun him. So that the question may not only be, “What is the way to the light of the spirit, where can it be found?” but rather and above all, “How must man tread the path of the soul that is able to lead him to the spirit light in the right way?”

These are only the guiding lines that should occupy us in these lectures. We have reached such a stage in our anthroposophical work that we need not develop our subject from the very start, but may connect it to some of the things already familiar to us.

When we meet the word, initiation, which is for us so intimately connected with the words eternity and spirit light, all the great men of whom we have heard in the successive epochs of humanity as initiates, become living in our souls. With them our souls call to life, too, the several epochs themselves, how they ran their courses, how men lived in them, and how the light streamed into humanity from both initiates and initiation temples in order to make possible what the impulses, the essential driving forces of human evolution, have in all ages become. It would take us too far afield today to refer in detail to all that happened in earth evolution before the Atlantean catastrophe broke upon the face of the earth, completely changing it. We can gain an adequate idea of what we are considering if we turn our gaze to post-Atlantean times, remembering the particular configuration of the human being and his various aspects throughout the ages.

We will let our gaze sweep back over the characteristic civilisation that followed immediately after the face of the earth had been re-formed by the Atlantean catastrophe. We have often spoken reverently of all that in the first post-Atlantean epoch the great and holy teachers of mankind brought to that part of the earth where later the Indian civilisation was developed. We have remarked how the soul cannot but look up from below to the lofty spiritual teachings that came into the world at that time, through certain human individualities who still bore within them all the inward greatness of those men who in Atlantean times had direct communion, which was no longer possible in later epochs of mankind, with the divine spiritual worlds. We have pointed out how the heritage of Atlantean wisdom, now accessible to the occultist alone, lived on in post-Atlantean form in the ancient holy teachers of the first post-Atlantean period of culture. We have also pointed out how great and significant man finds all that then lived, to which, now, it is only the Akashic Records that bear witness, when he receives reflections of it in Indian, or any other oriental literature. The moral and spiritual sublimity contained in these writings as an echo of primeval spiritual teachings cannot be fully realised by present-day humanity insofar as external culture is concerned. Least of all can it be realised in the countries that have been prepared for their present external culture by what the various forms of Christianity have accomplished during the last centuries. Thus the soul felt directed upwards when it turned its gaze to all the greatness that, so dimly sensed today, has only come down to us as a faint echo of primeval spirituality. So, if man looks up to the old wisdom and remembers above all what has often been mentioned here, namely, that only in the seventh and last epochs of the post-Atlantean age will mankind again reach the point of drawing up out of the darkness of life the understanding of what once lived at the beginning of post-Atlantean times and gave the impulse for human evolution—if we consider that mankind must mature to the last epoch before it can feel and experience in itself what at that time was felt and experienced, then only shall we get a sense of how exalted must have been the initiation principle that gave the impulse to the ancient, holy, spiritual culture of mankind.

Then we see how, in the course of successive epochs, mankind, struggling for other spiritual treasures, other treasures of earthly life, seems to descend ever lower, how it takes other forms, but how, according to the needs of the age, great initiates give to men from the spiritual worlds what they require at any particular epoch as impulse for their culture. Then, before our vision, arises the Zarathustra culture that, if seen in its true light, entirely differs from that of the holy Rishis.

We then see the Egyptian-Chaldean culture arise, and the ancient holy mysteries of Greece, to which we referred from a quite different aspect in our last lecture. Everywhere we see the light of the spirit shining down, according to the needs of the different epochs, into the darkness of life. If at the outset of our considerations we ask what are our ideas of an initiate—it is obvious that at the beginning of these lectures only approximate ideas can be given of so vast a concept—we must first gather up much of all we have already heard in the anthroposophical field. We must be clear that for complete initiation it is necessary that man should not look out on the world from within his physical body in the usual way, by perceiving the world around him through his eyes and other sense organs, nor must he gain knowledge of this world or any other world around him through the intellect bound to the brain, nor through what he may call his sense of orientation. He must not form concepts about these worlds in the ordinary way. He must arrive at a stage in which, by means of what we may term “the perceiving of worlds outside his physical body,” he develops something in his life of soul that may be called a super-sensible spiritual body, having within it organs of perception, though of a higher kind, just as the physical body has eyes and cars and other organs of perception and understanding. “One who can see worlds without using the organs of his physical body” can be given as an entirely explicit definition of an initiate. The great initiates, who gave man the important cultural impulses in the course of successive ages, had attained in the highest measure independence of the sensory body, and use of another quite different in character.

I do not wish to say much that is abstract. Wherever possible I shall bring forward concrete examples, and today therefore I should like to illustrate this life outside the sensory body in a higher organisation belonging to the soul and to illustrate it by means of the following example.

If one who has only gone a few steps on the way to initiation, realises through self-observation what it is that he experiences in and of himself, he may say something like, “One of the first things I experienced of myself is that I have within me, besides my physical body of flesh, a finer one that may be called an etheric body, which in earth life is carried about with me just like the physical body.” Anyone making his first steps toward initiation realises this at first in such a way that he feels within this body and experiences it just as, on another level, he feels what lives in his blood or nervous system, or in what arises from his muscular system. Such an inner feeling and experience is present, and it can exist also for the etheric body. It is then particularly useful for a student in the first stages of initiation to get to know the difference, or one might say the relationship, between the realisation of himself, the experience of himself in his physical body, on the one hand, and on the other, in his etheric body. Man experiences himself in the etheric body in the same way as one is conscious of the blood or the beating of one's heart and pulse in the physical body.

To gain a clear idea of this we may consider the etheric body in connection with the physical body, in which one is more at home than in the body that one only succeeds in reaching by means of a journey into the spiritual. One may say to oneself, “In my etheric body I have a part corresponding to my physical brain and to all that constitutes my head. The head, the brain, is as though crystallised out of the etheric body, and so rests within it that it might be compared to a piece of ice floating in water—the water representing the etheric body and the ice, the physical body crystallised from the etheric body. An intimate connection is felt and experienced between what may be called the etheric part of the head or brain, and the physical brain itself. We then realise how we create our thoughts, how we form memory images within the etheric body, and how the physical brain is only a kind of reflector, but we also realise how intimate is the connection of the brain with the etheric body. This can be experienced with especial force when one has to work hard at tasks connected with the physical plane in the physical life, when prolonged thought about things is necessary, and when one must exert the physical body to bring up memory images from the depths of life and to hold them together. In such a process, the etheric body always takes a direct part, whether one knows it or not. But inwardly connected with it is the physical brain, and if this brain is tired out, fatigue is markedly felt in the corresponding etheric part. We then notice something like a block in what is experienced as the etheric part of the brain, something like a foreign body, so that one can no longer get at what one must know since mobility in the physical brain must run parallel with mobility in the etheric body. You may then have the distinct feeling that your etheric body never grows tired. It would be able to gather up thought images to all eternity, and bring to the surface all that you know. But before all this can be expressed in the physical world, it must be reflected back, and this the brain refuses to do. The etheric body never tires. Just because it can be continuously active, it notices the fatigue of the brain all the more. One notices as it were the forces of exhaustion produced by the brain, and when the brain goes to sleep and falls into the torpor of fatigue, one might say, “Now you must stop or you will be ill.” The etheric body cannot be used up, but by giving the brain too much to do it is possible indirectly to over tire it more and more, thus bringing about a lifeless, deathlike condition. A living organism will not suffer anything normally connected with it to be partially deadened and brought into an abnormal state. Hence, out of a free resolve, one must say, “So that I may not kill part of my brain and leave it to go on consuming itself, I must stop when I begin to feel it like something foreign inside me.”

That is what we experience when we try to find the relation between that part of the human or etheric body, which corresponds to the brain or head, and the physical brain or physical head itself. There is an intimate connection between them. In effect, the external life of the senses runs its course in such a way that it is impossible to break down what is parallel between the two. Therefore, if we want to express the relation, we may also say that in our head, especially in our brain, we have a faithful expression of the etheric forces, something that, in the external phenomena and external functions, gives us a really faithful image of the functions and processes in the corresponding etheric part.

It is different in the case of other organs of the human etheric body and the corresponding physical sense organs. These things are quite different. I will give you an example. Consider the hands. Just as there exists in the etheric body an etheric part corresponding to the head or brain, so there are etheric processes in the human etheric body corresponding to the hands. But the difference between the external physical hands and their tasks, and what lies at the basis of the corresponding etheric part is far greater than the difference between the physical head and its corresponding part in the human etheric body. What the hands perform has far more to do with the world of the senses and is much more a purely sensory function, while what is done by the corresponding etheric organs is only manifest in a small degree in what finds physical expression in the hands.

In order to describe the corresponding facts, I must, as is often the case, say things that appear grotesque and strange for physical experience, and for grasping physical observations in words. But what I say is fully in accordance with basic facts, and everyone who knows anything about these things will at once feel that they really are as I am obliged to describe them. They are the etheric parts corresponding to the physical hands. But apart from the fact that what corresponds to these etheric parts finds its expression in the hands and their movements, these etheric organs in the etheric body are true spiritual organs. The etheric organs expressed in the hands and their functions, work far more intuitively, more spiritually, and perform a far higher task than is accomplished by the etheric brain. Whoever has made progress in these matters will say that the brain with its etheric basis is in effect by far the least skilful of the spiritual organs man bears within him because as soon as he begins to bestir himself in the etheric part of the brain, he soon becomes aware of this foreign part of it.

The spiritual activities connected with the organs underlying the hands, but incompletely expressed in the hands and their functions, serve for a far higher, more spiritual kind of knowledge and observation. These organs can lead into the super-sensible world and can occupy themselves with our perception and orientation there. A spiritual seer may express this, somewhat surprisingly but accurately, by saying that the human brain is a most clumsy organ for research in the spiritual world, and that the hands, or the spiritual basis of the hands, are far more interesting and significant organs for gaining knowledge of the world, and are certainly far more skilful organs than the brain.

Not much is gained on the way to initiation by advancing from the use of the physical brain to a free use of the etheric brain. The difference is not great between what may be achieved through a purified, intuitive brain-thinking, and regulated spiritual working in the etheric spiritual counterpart of the brain. The difference becomes much greater between what our hands accomplish in the world, and what can be done by the etheric part that is the spiritual basis of the hands, in the same way as the etheric brain is the spiritual basis of the physical brain. On the path of initiation not much development of the etheric brain is necessary, since it is not a particularly important organ. But the etheric basis of the hands is connected with the activity of the lotus flower in the region of the heart, as you will learn in my book, Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment.

This lotus flower pours out its rays of force in such a way as to build up the organism that, at the stage at which physical man now stands, exists in an incomplete form in the hands and their functions. When we learn this fact, and think of the great difference between the mere use of physical hands and all that we can acquire as regards the super-sensible world through the etheric organs underlying the hands—such far more skilful organs than those of the etheric brain—we gain a vivid conception of learning to experience initiation and all the enrichment that it means for man. We do not acquire much enrichment through the feeling that our brain radiates out to feel its etheric counterpart. This is the case, but it is not a really permeating and significant experience. The significant experience begins when one feels that other parts are also expanding and making contact with the universe. Though it may sound strange, yet it is true that the least skilful organ for spiritual investigation is the brain, since it is the least capable of development. On the other hand, entirely new perspectives are opened out when we consider other apparently subordinate organs.

Thus there takes place a complete transformation of what man experiences in himself when he starts on the first steps toward the heights of initiation. It is necessary that one should bring this to consciousness, that one should grasp it as an inner transformation of the human personality, like the principle of development elsewhere in the universe; one thing passes over into another, the later being called, though perhaps not always appropriately, the more perfect as compared with the earlier. If we are clear how in the course of evolution one thing is transformed into another, how the seed of the plant is transformed and becomes leaves, flower and fruit, we can say that the human personality, too, experiences something of this kind; namely, what it is and what it can become through the methods given in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, which are the first beginnings of what may lead us right up to the highest regions of initiation. It is good—and you will see why—to arouse within us a living conception of how the men who are destined to become spiritual leaders in the course of time develop themselves inwardly, how all becomes transformed that is at first only germinal and appears so imperfect in man, like the hands in comparison with other organs. Outwardly, this transformation is not noticeable, but the inward change is all the more significant. Just as the outer world exists even for one who is blind and cannot see what is visible to others but only appears if the eye is there, so the world that is spiritual is present around us. But we have to bring to it what we can in order that the spiritual content of the world should approach us.

Now, in the various epochs of humanity there must stream into the course of evolution as impulse all that can be given through living oneself into the spiritual world. This is what was always behind everything proceeding from the mysteries, the initiation centres. A true idea of the course of human evolution may be gained by thinking of the great initiates as the real driving force, the real individualities, behind what is to be perceived externally. The connection between what these great initiates have to do and what happens externally in the World, often only becomes perceptible through anthroposophy or some other form of occultism. The external, purely historical knowledge of the learned only sees that human history, human evolution, is running its course; it does not see the driving forces behind it. In external history we follow what seems like a chain of phenomena, one link following another in a succession of external events. But that at certain points of the chain impulses are entering from quite another world by way of initiation, this we only learn to accept through anthroposophical development. Thus, anthroposophically we see the inmost centre in the course of time and all that, fundamentally, gives to evolution its whole stamp and character. We perceive the various developments of religion as an out-streaming from the initiates. We perceive how the impulses flowing from the mysteries and initiation centres pass over into the general life of mankind.

Whoever regards the evolution of mankind in this way becomes, as a matter of course, free from any kind of a priori preference for a particular religion. This has always been the case with genuine occultism. It is one of the first requirements of initiation to divest oneself of all prejudices and preconceived feelings that grow up in a human soul when it incarnates into a particular religious system or community. In self-education one has to watch carefully that nothing remains in the soul that might give preference to any one religion. We must meet with absolute impartiality all that is contained in the various religions that, through initiation as impulse of development, has entered human evolution. As soon as there is any preference for a particular religion, something like an astral mist is formed through which no free vision is possible. Anyone who, by reason of an inclination that is a matter of course in ordinary life, harbours a preference in his soul for any religion, will never be able to understand other religions. Though he may not know it, he will perceive the predominance of one part of the contents of initiation and will never attain impartial knowledge of the other. Thus, for an occult view, it is obvious that one should confront without prejudice the various streams and impulses flowing from initiation. No one in studying a plant would give the flower preference over the root because he then would not be able to form an objective judgement of its whole structure. Just as little can a correct judgement of the inner content of one religious principle be gained if one is unable to observe other religions with complete impartiality.

In these lectures we shall be speaking of the demands the soul must make upon itself when taking the first steps toward initiation. I should like first to arouse a feeling of how initiation is related to life, and of how the various initiation centre's and initiation impulses stand in regard to human evolution, particularly in post-Atlantean times.

Now occult investigation, in following up this course of human evolution, has a peculiar experience that can only be properly appreciated when such words as have just been spoken about the equal value of all religions are genuinely understood. When these ideas become a matter of course, something remarkable is experienced that will be increasingly better understood during the course of these lectures.

Let us turn our gaze to the initiates who give light to mankind as the ages go by. A man living primarily in the physical world, looking back on the initiates as historical and traditional figures, may say, “Those are the great figures of world history.” When necessary, history has taken good care that as little as possible should be known of them. Although this may sound paradoxical, it is a good thing that humanity should know so little of Homer, for example, since it has not been possible for his image to be distorted by the learned as has been done in the case of other personalities. So will it be—we may well long for this—with Goethe when once he has become as unknown a personality as Homer is today. Man's soul then can look out into the external world at these personalities, and see what they did there. Then he may himself take the first steps in initiation and become able to turn his gaze on the great figures of initiation such as Buddha or Zarathustra. He may be able to remember what Buddha or Zarathustra was to him in the world of the senses, what sort of impression he there received of these human individualities. Then, when some degree of spiritual light has dawned for him through initiation, he may ask, “How does Buddha now appear to me, and how Zarathustra?” And he will say, “I now have more knowledge of Buddha and Zarathustra. I know something I was not able to know in the world of the senses.” Such a man may then develop even further, until he comes to the stage when he will see better what these beings are as spiritual entities. One learns to know a Buddha, a Zarathustra, better the more one lives oneself into spiritual light until, when at last a certain limit is reached, it stops. That is one secret phenomenon, however, that has no need to be discussed further here. Suffice it to say that, as higher worlds are approached, further knowledge may come to a stop. This is the case as regards all initiates whom we meet in world evolution.

Now the spiritual student, who has not advanced too far, can easily be mistaken in these matters. That, however, is not of much consequence. It may happen that some human individuality, who in bygone ages stood high as a spiritual seer, on being reincarnated later, seems to have descended from his former spiritual heights. But the truth is simply that there are certain connections in human evolution where those who have already been initiates, are reincarnated as non-initiates because time conditions call for them to accomplish certain deeds for which their initiation, latent during one or more incarnations, may work in some special way. Mistakes may easily arise about such individualities as they appear to us here or there making their way in external life, and quite wrong ideas may be formed about them. But in the course of progress these mistakes have gradually to be corrected. On the whole, therefore, it is a fact that man's relation to the initiates is such that he learns to know them better as he himself ascends toward the light of the spirit.

In the successive epochs of human evolution we find one remarkable phenomenon. I could give examples of what I have just told you of the confusing way in which initiates on reincarnating sometimes appear to have come down from their heights. You would probably be much surprised if I told you, for instance, in what way Dante was reincarnated in the nineteenth century. But it is not my task here to discuss further this result of my own investigation and what was established for me. Rather have I to bring forward with strong proof the things known to everyone conversant with occultism, letting everything else recede into the background and stating nothing that is not generally recognised where bona fide occultism is upheld.

Now another remarkable phenomenon appears to us that can best be expressed by saying that we meet with a Being regarding Whom it would be senseless to say that He was initiated like other initiates. While through Him the principle of initiation stands before us in the world objectively and is there, yet it would be meaningless to speak of this Individuality as having been initiated on earth like other initiates in the course of human evolution. I have often touched on this fact. A certain degree of misconception has arisen by understanding this fact as originating in specifically Christian prejudice. In reality it is not any kind of Christian prejudice, but should be stated as the objective result of occult research. This Individuality Who was not initiated like other initiates, of Whom it would be quite meaningless to speak as having gone through initiation like others, is Christ Jesus Himself. Let us again emphasise that, just as it is impossible to understand a scale if it is said that it should be suspended from two points instead of one since the one point constitutes its very nature—just as it would be impossible for a competent mechanic to maintain that a scale should be suspended from two or more points, it would be equally impossible for any genuine occultist to maintain that our earth evolution could have more than one fulcrum, more than one centre of stability. I have said that this is an objective result of occult research that may be recognised by anyone, be he Buddhist or Moslem.

Anyone who has made certain progress in occult development learns to know the initiates insofar as they are great personalities or have done great deeds. He learns to know them in the spiritual worlds as he ascends toward initiation, and the higher he rises the better he learns to know them. Let us take the example of a man who possibly had no opportunity in his earthly life to learn to know the Buddha and had never concerned himself about him. I know people who have entered deeply into the whole life of the occident without having any idea of the Buddha. It might be said of them that in their bodily life in the physical world they never had anything to do with him. Or take someone who in his earthly life has never interested himself in the great leaders of the Chinese religion. Imagine men of this kind entering the super-physical worlds through initiation or, as in some of the cases I know, entering these worlds for the first time after physical death. They can then become acquainted with Buddha, Moses and Zarathustra because they can meet them as spiritual beings and gain a real knowledge of them. If they want to gain knowledge of these personalities, the fact that they had no opportunity to do so on earth is no hindrance. But it is quite different in the case of Christ. I beg you to receive this as an occult fact. Suppose a man had never in any of his incarnations established a relation with the Christ Being. That is a hindrance to him when, in order to find Christ in higher worlds, he is using his perceptive faculties in an ultra-physical world, for Christ cannot then appear to him in His true form. It is on earth that it is essential to prepare for the vision and recognition of the Christ Being in higher worlds. This is the occult difference in the relation of man to other initiates. The Christ event is such that something specific becomes related to the actual physical evolution of the earth in its most important phase, radiates down into the earth's physical evolution and forms its centre of gravity.

Now let us assume that the beings who live out their lives as human souls did not at first pay any attention to the earth. It might be that something happened in the course of the world to make these souls say, “We will take no notice of the earth; why should we incarnate down there?” This is, of course, impossible but let us assume it for a moment.

Then, insofar as what belongs to the earth is spiritual, these human souls would be able to experience it in the spiritual worlds, and all the great, sublime principles that were active in the initiates would there be visible to them. Were such a soul in the higher worlds to put the question to cosmic evolution, “Of all the beings in the higher worlds I want to know the Christ, to learn to understand His world mission and His essential task,” then the answer would have to be, “If you would know the Being Who is for us the Christ, then you must incarnate on earth. You must in some way participate in the Mystery of Golgotha in order to enter into relation with the Christ Being.”

The Christ Mystery had to take place on earth in accordance with cosmic law. The earth is the stage where, in accordance with cosmic law, the Mystery of Golgotha has had to be enacted, and where the essential foundation has had to be laid for an understanding of the Christ. The understanding of the Christ that man gains on earth is a preparation, on a different scale to any other preparation that takes place on earth, for any vision and knowledge of this Being in the higher worlds. Therefore, in the Christ Being the principle of initiation was lived out in quite a different way from that of other initiates. They experienced a super-sensible world, indeed, sometimes profoundly, and gave the various impulses out of that world into the course of human evolution. But when they had experience of the higher worlds, when they were within them, they were out of their physical bodies. Though it did not require much effort on the part of high initiates to leave the physical body, though but a small step was necessary to issue from it into the fullness of spiritual facts, yet it is true that this transition from the physical body to the higher bodies has to be made. In the Christ Jesus we have the distinctive phenomenon that, in reality, in accordance with the principle of initiation—in accordance, that is, with what man needs in order to bring about initiation—He never, during the whole three years He was living on earth, deliberately left the physical body as is done in initiation. He always remained within it. All that He brought into life and gave to the world during those three years He gave through His physical body. The other initiates gave what they had to give to mankind through their super-physical bodies. In Christ we have the one and only individuality Who has given all that He gave, all that He said, all that went out from Him into human evolution, through His physical body and never indirectly through the higher bodies.

In ordinary consciousness this is experienced in such a way that the sense of it can be summed up by saying that in Christ we have a phenomenon that can be understood by the most primitive consciousness that anyone possesses through the body by means of which we speak in everyday life. Hence, the intimate, brotherly union with the Christ Individuality, the possibility of understanding the Christ Individuality without the aid of education, simply by means of original primitive human feeling; hence, the necessity for working up to a higher form of comprehension, if one wishes to understand the other initiates. Thus what I have often emphasised in these last ten years is true. In Christ we have a Being Whom the simplest mind can understand, although anyone who has raised himself to this higher comprehension will understand Him better. In Christ Jesus all that can be connected with a human body was present, spiritualising the human body to the greatest possible extent, and working in the human body through Christ Jesus. The other initiates were not able to be so fully active while giving forth what was spiritual because they had always to go out of their physical body and return to it later in order to reveal what they had retained of the super-sensible world. Christ, however, always had to live everything out in the physical world through the physical body.

Such things must be taken into consideration if we would go into the true connections. Everything else is empty talk, as for instance, when it is discussed whether Christ or the other initiates stand the higher. Nothing is gained by such classification; that is quite beside the mark. The essential thing is to look into the connection between the beings. It is a matter of personal preference whether the founder of one religion is deemed “higher” than another. That will not do much harm; men are always subject to such little weaknesses. The important thing is to realise wherein consists the actual distinction between the position of Christ and that of the other initiates in the world. We may then calmly allow people to say, “I consider this or that individuality the higher on account of what he did.” When the difference I have described is understood, the distinction will also be understood between the impulses that have come into the world through the various initiates.

If we would speak of initiation and its significance for human life and evolution, we must try to probe into the essential nature of all this with the concepts and modes of thought that are indispensable to any true description of super-sensible worlds. It is comprehensible that at every stage of its development the human soul should experience the deepest longing to discover the nature of the worlds more or less justifiably described as eternal. Surely it is also comprehensible that, at first, human souls should try to probe into higher worlds without much preparation and with the ordinary ideas and concepts of the life of the senses. I expressly say that this is comprehensible, and this may, to a certain extent, apply where the longing after eternity is satisfied by one or other of the religious faiths. But when it is a question of gaining a deeper insight into the course of all spiritual things, particularly into the course of all life of the soul in the real anthroposophical sense, we must gradually accustom ourselves to the necessity of submitting our ideas, concepts and modes of thought to a certain change before we are able to form correct ideas of the higher, super-sensible worlds. Because this is particularly necessary for an actual description of the Christ event, as we shall see in the next lectures, I may perhaps be allowed to say a few words today about the transformation and re-molding of man's conceptual life that is necessary if he would arrive at ideas about the super-sensible worlds.

For this, we must become familiar with the idea that everything is different in the super-sensible world from what it is in the world of the senses because an exact repetition of any world existence is nowhere to be found in the universe. If everything is different, why should it be assumed that human conceptions and representations hold good in the higher worlds as they do in the life of the senses? They certainly do not. Anyone really pursuing the practical path into the worlds opened to him by initiation, anyone having actual experience of super-sensible life, well knows that not only must he transform many things in himself—I might equally say, leave them behind with the Guardian of the Threshold—but he must also lay aside many of his habits, representations and concepts before he can enter the higher worlds.

We will proceed first of all from certain ideas to which we must all undoubtedly be subject in physical life. Here two concepts, or systems of concepts, have a decisive effect. In our life of the senses they stand side by side; they run parallel. The one consists of all the ideas we form about the natural world, about the forces and laws of nature. Side by side with all these ideas of ours, there exists in ordinary sensory life what we call the moral world order, the sum of our moral conceptions, thoughts and ideas. If a man takes accurate stock of himself, he must soon come to the conclusion that in the life of the senses these two systems of concepts natural order and moral world order—must be kept distinct. If we are describing a plant, we analyse it according to natural forces and natural laws. Let us suppose it is a poisonous plant. We do not confuse our description with the issue of whether or not it is morally responsible for being poisonous. We maintain that it is part of sound thinking in the life of the senses, when describing the world of nature, to rid ourselves of what we call moral concepts and ideas. We know that we must do the same, too, when we want to gain a clear and objective idea of the animal world. We feel, for instance, that it would be senseless to hold a lion responsible for its cruelty in the same way as we should a man. But if many modern naturalists are finding something like moral conceptions in the animal kingdom, I might say more as a matter of preference than from any real necessity, to a certain extent this may be justified. At the same time, we can at most speak of an echo, of a suggestion, of moral concepts in what animals do and in what happens in the animal kingdom. A simple development of the interpretation of nature requires that we should free ourselves from moral concepts so long as these interpretations are confined to the world of the senses. Then, however, as unprejudiced and thoughtful observation of oneself must affirm, the moral world order enters with authority into our life, making unconditional and absolute demands. We know it is his moral ideas that decide the world of a man, and indeed not only his worth in human social life. It also makes one able to say that even a man who is not moral, if he be granted grace at some special moment to reflect quietly about himself, will determine his own value as a human being according to the moral ideas that light up in his consciousness. It must repeatedly be emphasised that these two systems of concepts must be kept properly distinct.

All this becomes quite different the moment the higher, super-sensible worlds are entered, and one gains the power of perceiving, observing, experiencing and living outside the physical body. When such observation is really attained, it takes place at first in the etheric body of which I spoke yesterday. Then, later, the world, or rather a second super-sensible world, is observed with the astral body. The further we rise into higher worlds, the more do the concepts and ideas that we have worked upon and acquired in the ordinary physical world lose their significance. They must be transformed if we are rightly to describe and understand what comes to meet us in the super-sensible worlds. In the ordinary world of sense existence, we have only one thing to remind us of a fundamental fact familiar to every clairvoyant, and that is when we speak in symbols and metaphors so that our words re-echo what in actual reality is only experienced in higher worlds. When the expression is used that greed or jealousy or hate “burns,” there is something in such an expression that belongs to the many wonderful mysteries of the creative activity of speech, where there shines down into primitive, elementary human consciousness what, in its reality, is only present in the higher worlds. Everyone knows that when he speaks of a “burning hate” he does not mean a burning like the burning of a fire in the external world. He knows that he is speaking figuratively, but that it would avail him nothing to try to explain the objects and processes of nature by calling moral ideas to his aid. In speaking, however, of processes in the higher worlds, it is not in the same metaphorical, figurative sense that we use such expressions. I may perhaps remind you that in my mystery play, The Guardian of the Threshold, certain processes of the soul, feelings and desires, are twice spoken of as “burning” in the higher world. This expression is not to be taken as a metaphor; it stands for something quite real and actual, a spiritual reality. Lucifer, for instance, would never say that something burned him in the same sense as a man in the physical world would speak of hate burning him. Lucifer would say it in a real and literal sense. For what in super-sensible worlds might be compared to the natural order, to the natural processes of the sense world, is far more intimately connected with what may be called the moral world within the super-sensible world, than is the case with these two ideas in the world of the senses.

We can gain some idea of all this at once if we turn to man's etheric body. When speaking of the physical body, we can talk of raising a hand to perform a moral action. We can see the hand with our physical eyes and, to explain its functions, we can investigate it through knowledge belonging to the material world. This description of the hand in physical existence is not essentially different whether we have to do with a hand performing a moral or an immoral action. So far as we can give a description of the hand in physical life at all, we have no business to mix with the question of how the hand is formed and all that we bring to its explanation, the other question of whether it is the habit of performing moral actions or not.

The matter is different where a man's etheric body is concerned. Suppose that to clairvoyant vision a man's etheric body, or some particular part of it, appears incompletely developed. On enquiring into the true cause of such being the case with some particular organ, we find that the reason for the imperfect development lies in a moral fault, in some moral deficiency in the man. Thus, man's moral qualities are actually expressed to some extent in his etheric body. They are still more distinctly and more intensively expressed in his astral body. While, therefore, in the case of a man, we should be doing him a great injustice by assuming that some physical deformity were the expression of something in his moral nature, in what concerns the moral world it is certainly true that if we think of the expressions natural order, natural processes and moral causes as merging into one another in the higher worlds, moral qualities are actual natural causes and are there expressed in forms and processes. To avoid any misunderstanding, I should like expressly to state that the perfect or imperfect development of man's higher organism—his etheric and astral bodies, his higher bodies if we may so call them—need have nothing to do with the perfect or imperfect development of his physical body. A man may even have some physical organ crippled from birth, while the corresponding etheric organ may not only show a perfectly normal development but, in certain circumstances, a more perfect development more complete in itself, when the corresponding physical organ is thus crippled or deformed. The idea, therefore, that moral qualities are faithfully expressed in the form of the body cannot be applied to physical existence, but it is nevertheless absolutely true of the part of man that belongs to super-sensible worlds.

Thus we see that the natural order and the moral order, which apparently run side by side in the ordinary life of the senses, are interwoven in the super-sensible worlds, and in speaking of some part of the etheric body, we can well say that such and such a form is due to hate. Hate shows itself in this member of the etheric body in quite a different way from how love is expressed. We may speak thus where the super-sensible worlds are concerned, but it would have no meaning were we confined to a description of nature in the world of the senses. This necessity to change our concepts when the higher worlds are in question is a particularly distinctive feature as regards what, in ordinary sensory life are reckoned as cravings or desires. We may ask how cravings, desires and emotions appear to us in the life of the senses. They appear in such a way that we seem to see them arise from the very recesses of man's soul being. If we see any particular craving aroused in a man, we are then able to recognise something of his inner condition and how it causes this craving to arise. We can see that it is above all the inner nature of the soul that determines the character of the man's desires. We know quite well, for instance, that a piece of veal will call up quite different cravings in two different men. It does not depend on the veal, but on all that a physical man has in his soul. A Raphael Madonna may leave one man completely cold, while another may experience a whole world of feeling. We may thus say that man's world of desire is kindled within his inmost nature.

All this is changed when we enter the super-sensible world. It is foolish to say that one cannot speak of desires and so forth in super-sensible worlds. They do actually exist, and they are determined in the great majority of cases by external things—by what a being sees and perceives. Hence, a clairvoyant in these worlds cannot get such a near view of the inner conditions of the being he meets when wanting to discover his desires and cravings, but he has to observe the super-sensible surroundings of the being in question. When, therefore, in the super-sensible world, he perceives a being having desires, longings, emotions, he does not look at the being himself, as we should do in the physical world, but he looks at the surroundings. He looks to see what other beings are present in the neighbourhood. He will always find that the nature of the being's desires and emotions vary according to the kind of beings who surround him because there, desires and emotions can always be explained by external things.

A case in point may make all this clearer for you. Suppose a man enters the super-sensible worlds either through the first stages of initiation or by passing through the gate of death. A clairvoyant then observes him in the super-sensible worlds. Let us assume that the man had taken some imperfection belonging to his character with him out of physical existence—some kind of incapacity, a moral imperfection, perhaps some crime committed in the physical world that stays with him in the super-sensible worlds as a torturing memory. To make a search for this, it is not so much a question of the clairvoyant looking into the inner soul of the man, as it is of observing his surroundings. Why should this be? It is because this content of soul, this quality of soul that the man carries over with him as an imperfection or moral flaw performs something real, something actual. It guides the man and brings him to a particular place in the super-sensible world, to the very place where there is some being who possesses in perfection what is imperfect in the man who is newly arrived. Thus, this moral flaw, this consciousness of a faculty lacking, has an actual effect. It guides a man along a certain path and confronts him with a being possessing in perfection the very quality lacking in himself, and he is condemned to continual contemplation of this being.

Thus, in the super-sensible worlds we come into the presence of beings who possess all that we ourselves do not possess, and they show us what we lack. We are not drawn to them by what in physical life are called desires, but by means of a real process. If the clairvoyant sees what kinds of beings surround a man there, he can, by objective observation tell what the man lacks and what are his failings. The being into whose presence the man comes, at whom he is condemned to go on gazing, stands there as a continual reproach, one might say. This reproach, standing outside him, has the effect of rousing within him what in super-sensible worlds might be called a craving, a desire, to become different. It arouses in him the activity and strength to work his own transformation, so that he may rid himself of his fault, of his imperfection. You need not exclaim that the super-sensible worlds must, therefore, always be able to show forth beings having in perfection all that we lack! The super-sensible worlds are indeed rich enough to be able to confront us with beings perfect in everything where we are in fault. They are far richer than we in physical life can imagine. Yes, indeed, the super-sensible world is always able to confront man with a being having in perfection everything in which he himself is imperfect!

This gives some idea of how desires and cravings are real forces, determining our path in the super-sensible world. It is not as though our desires represented something objective in which we could remain stationary. But according to what we are, we are led on our way and placed where all that we lack appears before us as something real, or as an effective reproach. It might easily be said that if this is so man would be completely without freedom in super-sensible worlds because he would be confronted with an external world that would determine how he was to work upon himself. On further observation, however, in super-sensible worlds it turns out that while one being may feel the reproach and begin to work toward perfection, another may resist and fight against imitating what is thus placed as a reproach before him. But this resistance works quite differently in the super-sensible worlds from how it does in the world of the senses. When a being refuses thus to work on himself, he is driven back into other worlds that are strange to him, where he does not know the way, and where the necessary conditions of life are lacking. In other words, this being condemns himself to a kind of inward process of destruction. One may always either choose the fruitful, helpful process shown to one and behave oneself accordingly, or inoculate oneself with destructive forces by resisting it. One has this amount of freedom. But reciprocal action definitely takes place between what is moral and all that is going on in super-sensible space.

A further example of this is that our conceptions of beauty and ugliness, quite in place in the world of the senses, can really no longer be applied when we ascend into super-sensible worlds. Indeed, there are manifold reasons why these conceptions can no longer be used there in the way in which they are used in the world of the senses. When we perceive in super-sensible worlds, we see above all a significant difference in the various beings that meet us. By virtue of the intuitive knowledge that will then be ours, we will be able to say that the being we are looking at is able, and has the will, actually to reveal in his external appearance all that is within him.

Let us assume that such a being has an etheric light-body, that it is one of the beings who do not incarnate into the world of the senses but who only in higher worlds take on a light-body or something of that nature. This light-body may be the expression of what such a being is within. It is not like a man in the sense world who confronts us in a definite form and yet may be hiding within him the most manifold feelings and sentiments, so that he is able to say, “My feelings are for myself alone. What is seen of me externally is my natural form, and I am well able to conceal what appears in my soul.” That is not the case with certain beings in the super-sensible worlds; their external form is the most direct expression of what they bear within them. In their component parts, what they are lies fully open to view. But there are other beings unable directly to express, to manifest, their real nature in their external super-sensible appearance. Confronted by beings of this kind, clairvoyant consciousness has the feeling of something repellent, something from which it wants to get away, something oppressive that may even be offensive.

Thus, we can distinguish two kinds of beings, those who are perfectly willing to expose their inner nature, to reveal what is within them, and beings who give one the feeling that what they expose is definitely distorted and what is within them is concealed and does not issue forth. In man's life of the senses, one cannot say to the same extent, when one person is capable of being secretive and another is perfectly frank, that the difference lies in their natures. Their features may be different, but they belong to the same world as far as their natures are concerned. In the super-sensible worlds, however, those who reveal all that they have within them, and those who do not, are two radically different kinds of beings. If we would use the words beautiful and ugly with approximately the meaning we have in the world of the senses, we must apply them to these two kinds of beings. In the super-sensible world we only come to the point by calling the beings who reveal everything, beautiful, for in front of them we feel just as we do before a beautiful picture. But the beings who do not reveal their natures in their external form are felt to be ugly. Thus, if we can put it so, beauty or ugliness depends upon the fundamental natures of the beings.

What is the consequence of this? When clairvoyant consciousness enters a world where it must have these feelings about beauty and ugliness, much in its whole mode of feeling must undergo a change. It is quite natural for the clairvoyant to say that a being revealing all that he has within him is beautiful, and the other idea immediately arises that to be beautiful is to be upright and honest. A being is beautiful because he hides nothing, because he bears in his very countenance what is within him. True and beautiful are one and the same when we enter the super-sensible world. A being who does not reveal what is within him is ugly. That is immediately felt by clairvoyant consciousness. But there is the further feeling that he lies and does not show what he ought. What is ugly is at the same time untruthful! What is true, upright and honest is at the same time beautiful; what is ugly is untruthful. In the super-sensible worlds a point is reached when a separation between the concepts beautiful and true, in the one case, and between ugly and untrue in the other, loses all meaning. So the expression beautiful must be used of a being who is felt to be honest and upright, while the opposite feeling must be called ugly.

We see here how moral and aesthetic concepts merge when the higher worlds are reached. It is a peculiar feature of this ascent into super-sensible worlds that concepts do thus merge into one another, that things to which we refer separately in the world of the physical senses become linked and fused together. Hence, other modes of feeling must be acquired if expressions of the sense world are to be used of super-sensible beings. One is almost always obliged to represent these things more simply, and still more in accordance with physical consciousness than really coincides with a strictly correct representation because they become so complicated.

To my explanation of how the concepts true, upright and beautiful, in the one case, and ugly and untruthful in the other, become linked together, I must add something further. On making one's way into super-sensible worlds one may meet a being who, according to all ideas acquired in the life of the senses, must be called beautiful, perhaps even exquisite—beautiful, radiant and exquisite. There is the picture! But simply because this being appears in such a form, is no proof that it is also a good being; it may even be quite an evil being and yet stand before one in this sublime, angelic form. According to the idea of beauty that we have in the sense world, we should call such a being beautiful in its super-sensible appearance. How could we help it? Seeing it thus in the world of the senses we should be quite right in calling it beautiful. It may really be the ugliest being in existence, and yet, if one uses the expressions of the sense world, the word beautiful must be used. It may be an utterly evil being, containing hidden wickedness and untruthfulness, a very devil in the form of an angel; this is quite possible in super-sensible worlds. Still, in diverse ways of which we still have to speak, one may gradually get to the truth of the matter by approaching it in clairvoyant consciousness. One is confronted by this angelic form and if, during super-sensible vision, one has become capable of coherent thought, it is possible for one to say, “I must not let myself be deceived by the fact that I am looking at something angelic or a wonderful form of some kind; anything is possible; it may be an angel but also it could be a devil.” One may now begin with what must so often be undertaken on entering higher worlds, that is, a good examination of oneself.

We may seek counsel with ourselves to find out how many bad points such as selfishness or egoism we possess. Then our soul becomes permeated with bitterness and remorse. But this bitterness, this pain, may be the very thing to lead us to purify and cleanse ourselves from our selfishness and egoism. When, through this, one comes to see how little one is free from self, and how necessary it is to struggle to be free, then the whole process in the soul lights up. Now, if we have got so far as not to lose our vision while taking stock of ourselves as usually happens at first, the angel in certain cases may be revealed as no angel at all, but may assume an ugly form. Then one can gradually reach the point of saying to oneself, “I myself gave this wicked being the power to express its wickedness by masquerading before me in a quite different form, but, by permeating myself with purer feelings, I have forced it to show me its true form.”

Consequently, a process of the soul has a compelling force in the super-sensible world. We ourselves either make it possible for these beings to lie to us, or we compel them to show themselves in their true form. The appearance of the super-sensible world to us depends on how and with what qualities we enter it. What is called the source of illusion must be dealt with in quite a different way from what is customary.

Someone may enter the super-sensible world and describe all sorts of glorious things. If you told him he had been deceived he would not believe it, for did he not see it all? But he did not see what he would have seen had he done what I have just described. Had he acted in this way he would at once have seen the truth: It is beautiful when a devil shows himself as a devil but it is ugly for him to appear in the form of an angel.

When we enter the super-sensible world, we must above all rid ourselves of the habit of speaking of things according to the ideas we gained of them in the world of the senses. If we keep to these ideas we shall first say to the form appearing to us that it is a beautiful angel and afterwards that it is a hideous devil. But clairvoyant consciousness, if it is to give a correct description, cannot express it thus. On the contrary, it must say of the ugly devil that it is a beautiful devil, even though, according to material conceptions, it is quite hideous. We do not arrive at this point simply by turning upside down all the ideas gained from the life of the senses. That would certainly be an easy way. Anyone could then describe the devachanic plane, for instance, by putting beautiful for all that was ugly in the sense world, ugly for beautiful, red for green, white for black, and so forth. But that cannot be done; the concepts of the super-sensible worlds must be acquired by experience. We must acquire them gradually, as a growing child acquires sense conceptions, not by theory but by experience. When we become conscious that we are speaking in the language of the super-sensible world, it will no longer seem natural to call a devil ugly if he appears as a devil. Feelings of this kind must be acquired if we are to find our bearings in the super-sensible world and to know our way about there. From this it will be easy to form some idea of what is meant when, for the sake of simplicity, we say, “On the one side stands the world of the senses, on the other, the super-sensible worlds”. Super-sensible existence is entered by crossing the boundary of sensory life, but if it be entered with all that is gained from this life, if the conceptions and ideas acquired in the sense world are applied there, they are of no use and the wrong construction is put upon things. One must learn to transform one's knowledge at the boundary, not just theoretically but in a living way. Ideas acquired in the life of the senses cannot be used at all on crossing over; they must be left behind. So you see how at the boundary much must be left behind of all that is so intimately woven into us in the world of sense existence.

I should like now to describe the matter not theoretically but from the point of view of concrete perception. Let us suppose that someone, having acquired the capacity for crossing the boundary of which we have been speaking, enters the super-sensible world from the world of the senses. At the boundary he asks himself, “What must I leave behind now, so as to feel at home in the super-sensible world?” After due reflection he will say, “I must really leave behind everything I have experienced, learned or acquired in my various earthly incarnations from primeval times up to the present. I must lay everything aside here because I am entering a world in which all that can be learned during incarnation has no further meaning.” It is quite easy to say such a thing, easy to hear and easy to grasp it in the abstraction of a concept. But it is an entirely new inner world really to experience such a thing, to feel it livingly, to lay aside like a garment all that one has appropriated during incarnations in sensory existence in order to enter a world where it no longer has any meaning. If this becomes a living feeling, then one has a living experience that really has nothing to do with theory. It is a living experience such as we have in the world of reality when we actually meet a man and make his acquaintance, and when he speaks and behaves in a certain manner toward us, so that we learn to know him in a way we should were we living with him, not just by making concepts about him.

Here we stand at the boundary between the life of the senses and spiritual life, confronted not by a system of concepts but by a reality that only works super-sensibly, and as concretely and livingly as a human being. This is the Guardian of the Threshold. He is there as a concrete and real being. When we learn to know him, we know he belongs to those beings who, to a certain extent, have taken part in life since primeval times on earth, but who have not gone through what one experiences as a being of soul. This is the being who, in the mystery play, The Guardian of the Threshold, is meant to be expressed dramatically in the words:

Thou knowest well, who has been guardian
Of this realm's threshold since the world began,
What beings need to cross the threshold o'er
Who to thy time and to thy kind belong ...

This “to thy time and to thy kind” is something that proceeds indeed, from the very essence of the matter. Of other times and other kinds are the men, the beings, who since primeval times have in a certain sense separated themselves from the path of humanity on earth, and in each of these we meet a being of whom we may say, “I have a being before me who experiences and lives through a great deal in the world, but he does not concern himself with all the love and grief and pain that can be experienced on earth, nor yet with the failings and immorality there. He neither knows nor wishes to know anything of what has taken place up to now in the depths of man's nature.” Christian tradition expresses this in the words: “When confronted by the mystery of man's becoming, such beings veiled their faces.” A whole world is expressed in this contrast between such beings and human beings.

Now a feeling arises as immediately as does the feeling we have on meeting a fair-haired man, that “he has fair hair.” There comes this feeling: In passing through various earthly cultures. I have naturally acquired faults, but I must get back again to my original state; I must retrace my steps on earth, and this being can show me the way just because he does not possess my faults. One has before one a being who stands there majestically as an actual reproach, but at the same time spurring one on toward all that one is not. The being shows one this most vividly, and one can feel one's own being completely filled with the knowledge of what he is and what he is not. There one stands before this living reproach. This being belongs to the rank of archangels. The meeting actually takes place, and has the effect of suddenly revealing to us what we have become as earthly man in sensory existence. This is direct self-knowledge in the truest and broadest sense. You see yourself as you are; you also see yourself as you ought to become!

But it is not always fit for man to see himself thus. Today I have only spoken of the world of concept and idea that has to be discarded. But much else must be laid aside. When we reach the Guardian of the Threshold, we must really lay aside all that we know of ourselves, but we must still retain something to carry on with us. That is the chief thing. This knowledge that we have to leave everything behind at the threshold is an inner experience in itself to which one must have attained, and the preparation for this stage of clairvoyance must consist in schooling ourselves to bear what would otherwise be full of terror and fear. With proper schooling we need not speak of danger because such a schooling does away with danger. Powers of endurance must be attained through due preparation; they are the fundamental force necessary for all further experience. In ordinary life man is not capable of enduring all that he must endure when standing before the Guardian of the Threshold.

The Guardian of the Threshold is there for a strange purpose. If it is not to be misunderstood, it has to be judged from the standpoint of the super-sensible world. In man, the activities of the super-sensible world are always at work, though he knows nothing of this. Whenever we think and feel and will, it always necessitates a certain activity of the, astral body and connection with the astral world. But man knows nothing of this; if he knew what his bodies really were he would not be able to bear it and would be stunned by it. So that when man meets this being without sufficient preparation, everything must be veiled from him, including the being. The being must draw a veil over the super-sensible world. He must do this for the protection of man who, while within the world of the senses, could not endure the sight. In this we really see a concept that, in the world of the senses, can only be judged morally, as the most direct ordering of nature. The protection of man from sight of the super-sensible world is the function of the Guardian of the Threshold. He must hold man back until he has completed the necessary preparation.

We have here tried to gather up a few ideas that may help us to form a concept of the Guardian of the Threshold. I have tried to collect ideas, concepts and experiences of this kind in a little book, A Road to Self Knowledge, that will be in your hands in the course of the next few days. It may be helpful to you in conjunction with these lectures. The book will consist of a series of eight meditations, and is so conceived that should the reader carry them out, he will gain something definite for his life of soul. Today I have tried to deal with a few of the ideas that can lead us to the Guardian of the Threshold. Starting from this point we shall pass beyond the Guardian of the Threshold, and try to gain some degree of insight and perspective from which we can reach a yet deeper understanding of the Christ Being and of the Christ Initiation.

In order to fulfil the aims of this short course, we shall need the ideas gained in our last lecture along with others if we are to characterise what was alluded to in the lecture of the day before yesterday.

In literature you will find everywhere where mention is made of initiation that the riddle of death, so closely concerning all mankind, is, in some way or another, touched upon. In anything of the nature of records you will find allusions to how at a certain stage the initiate has to experience, in a somewhat different form, how the passing is made through the gate of death. To the occultist these records are actually founded on truth. The experiences that have to be passed through during the ascent into spiritual worlds are akin to the experiences man must undergo in the natural crossing from life in the physical body to the entirely different sheath found between death and a new birth. If we would come to the essence of this matter in the right way, we must first ask what man knows about himself in ordinary life. Such an abstract question may not be of much interest, but for an understanding of what takes place in initiates, it is necessary to focus one's attention on the question, “What does the soul consider itself to be?”

During sleep the soul does not know what it is because sleep runs its course either in a state of unconsciousness, or dreams play into it, which, to be rightly understood must be interpreted by the occultist. So, in considering the questions, “What is man? What is his soul in ordinary sense existence?” we have to do only with waking life. Now we know that in the first place there are the gateways we call our sense organs, through which the world of light and colour, sound and smell, the world of heat and cold, and so forth, stream into our souls. In the life of the senses what we call “our world” is really only a gathering up of all that streams in through these sensory gateways. Then we have the instruments of our understanding, our feeling and willing, with which to work on what meets us in the outer world. Within our soul cravings and desires arise, strivings, states of satisfaction and dissatisfaction, joy, disillusion, and so on. Were we to envisage the whole compass of what man recognises as himself, it is all this. If we want to know what the “inner world” is in ordinary life, we can in reality put forward nothing more than the whole of what has just been described. Moreover, man can also look at himself from outside. He can observe his own body. Through countless facts that need not here be dealt with in detail, he becomes aware that he must regard his body as the instrument for his waking life between birth and death. We have already touched upon the longings that play into this life. Among them is a longing to know what man really is within the limits of birth and death, the longing to issue forth from what may be called the darkness of life. But man has no direct experience in his ordinary life of the senses of how to do this. His experiences are such that the ebb and flow of impulses, cravings, sense impressions, ideas, intellectual connections, and so forth, completely fill his waking life. We can now link this to what was occupying us at the end of our last lecture.

Attention was then drawn to the way in which man, on reaching the boundary between sense existence and spirit existence, has to alter his conceptions, how he must leave behind all his thoughts about the ugly and beautiful, true and false, good and bad, as these concepts take on quite another significance and a different kind of value within the spiritual worlds. From this we can get some idea of how we must change ourselves if we would enter these worlds. Now, having considered what man knows of himself in waking life between birth and death, we can ask in relation to what was said in our last lecture, how much of all this that he knows can he take with him across the boundary where the Guardian of the Threshold stands? How much of all that he lives through and experiences in sense existence, in his impulses, desires and passions, in his feelings, ideas, and the concepts of his understanding and his judgements can he take with him across the boundary where stands the Guardian of the Threshold? It is in the first stages of initiation that man discovers that, of all that constitutes man, nothing at all can be carried over! It is neither exaggeration nor paradox but the literal truth to say that, of all that can be mentioned as belonging to man's sensory existence, he can carry over nothing at all into the spiritual world; everything must be left behind at the boundary where stands the Guardian of the Threshold.

Let us be clear on one point, however. Of all that man knows as himself in sensory existence, one thing of the greatest importance clings; that is, what actually has to do with the stages of initiation. It clings in man's love of and delight in it all, to which it is quite inappropriate to apply the usual rather unsympathetic concept of egoism. We cannot meet the case simply by saying that a man must lay aside his egoism in order to pass over selflessly into the region of the spiritual world. That is easy to say. This egoism, in the finer and more hidden parts of its nature, is intimately connected with what we may not only egoistically hold to be of value in life, but must hold to be of value because through it we are men in the world in which we have to maintain ourselves. We are men through our ability to hold together what we experience, to reflect upon it in a certain way, and to live it through. All this makes us the men we are. Whatever we can do worthily in the ordinary life of the senses, we carry through because we foster this faculty of holding together what we experience in our personality, in our individuality. If we did not value our experience, we should become idle, dull, and achieve nothing for the ordinary world. It would therefore be superficial to say that egoism should always be looked upon as harmful because in its finer composition it represents the force that drives man on in the world in which he has incarnated. Nevertheless, all this must be laid aside; it must remain behind and be discarded for the simple reason that it is not suited to the world we have to enter. As our physical body is hardly adapted for a bath in molten iron at 900 degrees centigrade, what we call “our self,” with all that we love in ordinary life, is ill-adapted for the spiritual world. It must be left behind; if it were not we should experience something resembling the effect a bath of molten iron would have on a physical body. We should not be able to stand it but would be completely destroyed!

A thought may now occur to you that is quite natural but nevertheless has to be grasped and felt in all its depth. This thought is, “If I am now to lay aside all that I am, all that I can talk of in the life of my senses, what at long last, actually remains of me? Is there anything left of myself to enter the spiritual world if I have to cast myself aside?” It is a fact that man can take nothing with him into the super-sensible worlds of all that he recognises as himself; all that he can take is something of which in the ordinary world he knows nothing, something that is in him without his knowledge, that is lying in the depths of his soul as the hidden elements of his being. These must be so strong that out of them he can take into spiritual worlds all of which he will be in need when he has to lay aside what he knows. Thoroughly to grasp this thought, or rather this feeling, you must connect what has just been said with the customary thoughts about death. In ordinary sensory life it is only natural for a man to love what he recognises as himself. Because he knows nothing further of himself over and above his longing for immortality, he has a longing to keep hold of what he has loved in sense existence. His dread of the spiritual world can be so great that it becomes the acme of fear because of the thought, “You are going where all is unsubstantial and unknown; you do not even know whether you can preserve yourself there because all that you know must be lost to you!”

Now it is part of initiation that the elements of being that lie in the hidden depths of the soul should be drawn up while still in sensory life and brought to consciousness. This is partly achieved by the means described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds and Its Attainment, by raising into consciousness from the depths of the soul experiences that come forth like a condensed and strengthened soul life. This condensed and strengthened life of soul, of which we otherwise know nothing, can pass over into the spiritual world. We thereby prepare ourselves by meditation and concentration, by what is called in The Guardian of the Threshold the “attitude of soul that is strengthened by thought,” so that we are able to take something with us into the spiritual world, and to be something there.

But what happens then to all we have laid aside? Now this is something extraordinarily important. To begin with, if we would put it pictorially, it may really be said that what one talks about in sensory life, all that we know, is laid aside and left with the Guardian of the Threshold at the boundary, just as if it were the soul's clothing that was cast off before the crossing into the spiritual world. Pictorially speaking, that is quite correct. Initiation, however, necessitates that not only should this happen, but something else as well. One's self and all that one has must, indeed, be laid aside, yet something of it must be carried on. Were it not so we should lose all connection with the one and only being of which we were previously conscious. So, after all, something must be carried over! We should leave everything behind and yet take something of it with us. Here we have a contradiction, but really it is not difficult to explain.

You will easily understand what it is to the soul to go through this process if I compare it with a phenomenon of ordinary life. In life we have a similar process, a process to be compared with this, although the latter is far more intense and far more powerfully felt. It is the process of remembering some experience we have had in life. What you experienced yesterday is left behind, but you take it with you in your memory. The important thing is to have sufficiently prepared ourselves, by previous meditation, concentration and so on, so that on crossing the threshold into the spiritual world, we have the power to hold fast in super-sensible memory what we have left behind. If we are not prepared in the proper way we shall not have the power of recollection. We are then a mere nothing for our own consciousness; we know nothing of ourselves. On entering spiritual worlds the point is to remember through super-sensible memory what one has left behind. These memories are all that can be taken with one. That they are so taken, ensures the so-called continuity, the preservation, of the self. Even in ordinary life, we can be bereft of the continuity of consciousness, and with it lose all our real self. This happens when things that should be remembered—many things indeed in our life—have to be effaced from consciousness and forgotten through ill health. Much in ordinary life depends on the continuity of memory. All that is made possible by the first steps of initiation hangs on the memory in super-sensible life, on preserving the memory of ordinary life. Such a memory is indeed possible, and it is brought about through initiation. All this can be linked to the riddle of death.

When a man passes through death, he has not the identical forces he acquired by initiation because, when he lays aside the body, he acquires certain forces through the help of beings of the super-sensible world. He gains the power to preserve in memory what in laying aside the body he has forgotten. Here you have the real answer to the question, “What remains of the experiences of my soul when I have passed through the gate of death? How does my soul live on?” That is a question of the greatest importance, and through the experience of the initiates you have the answer, “The soul lives on because in its hidden depths there are forces able to hold fast in memory what has been experienced.” To be immortal means having the power to preserve in memory the renounced past existence. That is the real definition of human immortality. Through initiation we have proof, experienced proof, that forces live in man that can remind him, after he has laid aside his physical body, of all that he has experienced in sensory life, and of anything at all that has happened. In this way the human self is preserved into the future; thus man experiences his former existence as memories in his future life. We should feel the whole power of the thought that is called forth by initiation, that could be expressed in the words, “The human being is of such a nature that he bears his own being through future ages by the force of super-sensible memory.” If you feel this thought pouring with feeling into the void of the universe, picturing the soul as it carries its own being through eternity, then you have a far better definition of what is called a monad than can be given through any philosophical concepts. Then you will feel what a monad is, that is, a self-enclosed being, a being carrying itself. It is only through the experiences of initiation that one can arrive at such conceptions.

That is only one side of what I have been describing to you. We must consider its first steps more precisely if we want to approach with feeling what can give us ideas about initiation. Let us assume that a man has, through an attitude of soul strengthened by thought and meditation, come to the point of being able to perceive in his etheric body. This perception is experienced in the body that, in its several parts, is more closely bound up with the brain, and less closely, for example, with the hands. The feeling oneself into the etheric body is experienced in the sensation, “You are being spread out. You are becoming wider, fleeing out into the boundless spaces of the universe.” Such is the subjective feeling. This is not, however, that one rushes headlong into the unreal and the vague; everything there is concrete life. One lives oneself into the purely concrete, and in this widening out one comes at the same time to definite experiences. Except in special circumstances, hardly anyone accomplishing the first steps of initiation will be spared the experience of a particular impression or feeling of dread and anxiety, an experience of being in the vast universe with no firm ground beneath one's feet, an oppression of the soul. This is the kind of inner experience one lives through.

But there is something of still greater importance. In ordinary life we think, we have an idea, one thought suggests another, and we connect the one thought with the other, combining these perhaps with feelings, wishes, willing and so forth. In a sound life of the soul, one will always find it possible to say, “I think this, I feel that.” Were we unable to speak thus, it would mean a break, a disturbance, in sound soul life. We widen out, we expand when growing into the etheric body, but at the same time our thoughts also expand. When thinking, we lose the sensation of being within ourselves, and we get the feeling that we are growing into the etheric world that is permeated with thoughts that think themselves. That arises as an actual experience. It is as if we ourselves were blotted out and our thoughts were thinking themselves, as if the feelings we ourselves have, or that things have, felt themselves, as if we could not do our willing for ourselves but that all this was awakened and willed in us. The feeling one has is one of being given up to the objective, to the world. But, as a rule, another feeling is added. This is another of the experiences during the first steps of initiation. We have the feeling that, as we expand and widen out, and our thoughts think themselves, feelings feel themselves, in the same measure our consciousness becomes weaker and weaker, more and more toned down, and our capacity for knowing is deadened.

Now for the soul to go through such experiences, one must allow something quite definite to enter it. It is necessary for these things to be grasped by the soul as accurately as possible. For this reason I have collected a few things—if not the same, of a similar nature and tending in the same direction—in the book A Road to Self Knowledge. If you take it in connection with these lectures, you may gain a good deal. A quite definite state of soul, produced by oneself, must come about similar to what I described yesterday. One must practice self-observation and try to bring home to oneself, without either mercy or consideration, the really grievous faults one knows oneself to possess, so that there comes before the soul a feeling, into which one must live deeply, of how little one corresponds to the great ideal of humanity. With real force of thought and meditation, one's moral weakness, all one's weaknesses, must be called up before the soul. So doing, one will become stronger. What has already begun to be deadened, what has been described as a kind of fading out of the soul, brightens up again. It once more begins to be visible.

At this point something can be experienced that finds easy expression in words, but is oppressive and even disturbing during the first stages of initiation. These words all apply to the life of soul and not to life in the body. For anyone who has been led aright into spiritual worlds, will already have received intimation that there is no question of external bodily danger. Such a man, if he faithfully observes the good advice offered him, can remain externally the same man in life, in spite of the ebb and flow within him of every sort of pain, torment and disillusion, among which may also be premonitions of bliss. Such things must be gone into because in them lie the seeds of a higher vision, of a higher insight. In this way one gradually comes to recognise that by learning to observe, to perceive and to experience independently of the physical body—in other words, learning to live in the etheric body—one grows into the etheric world in the way described. But in so doing one learns the reason why this etheric world fades into a kind of unconsciousness. In simple words we might say, “It does not like me; it does not think me suited for it.” This deadening, this vanishing away, is merely the expression for, “They will not let me in!” But in dwelling on one's faults one grows stronger, and what had begun to disappear lights up again. This produces, however, the significant feeling that a super-sensible world of an etheric nature is around one, but that it may only be entered to a certain degree. It will only allow one to enter to the degree that one makes oneself increasingly strong, morally and intellectually. Otherwise, no. And it shows you this by fading away before you.

That is what is such a strain—so oppressive and sometimes even grotesque and distorted—this battling for the spiritual world and the consciousness of how unworthy one is for entrance there. By continuing to work hard at our self-contemplation and the strengthening of our attitude of soul through thinking, by meditation, concentration and permeating oneself with moral impulses, one can enter ever more and more into the etheric world. This is, after all, only the first stage of initiation. If we would review the next stage, we must call attention to a most remarkable phenomenon that really has no parallel in ordinary sensory existence.

The body that man lives in when once he can perceive the etheric world is his etheric body. But this he already possessed before. The difference between his etheric body before and after super-sensible observation is only that through initiation the etheric body is as it were awakened. While before it was as though asleep, afterward it is awakened. That is really the most apt expression one can use. But one thing will be noticed, that, when by means of any particular measure that has taken effect in the life of the souls the faculty has been acquired of seeing some fact or being of the etheric world—well, you then see just this being. Assume that you are so far prepared that you see this one being, or perhaps also a second being. Then, if you maintain the same power, you will probably see the two beings—or one of them—again and again. This is not difficult. But you will not easily see anything more. If you let the matter rest for awhile and then come back to it, you will still only see the same. In short, the etheric world is not like the physical world. Once the eyes are prepared for the physical world, they see all that it is possible to see; if the ears are prepared, they hear everything equally well. It is not so, however, in the etheric world. There you must keep preparing anew, from one kind of being to another kind of being and, bit by bit, the parts of the etheric body. There you must look for the whole world again, and you must awaken your etheric body for every single human being over and over again. You set up a connection, a relation, with what you have once seen, for which you have once awakened your etheric body, and must always go on awakening new relations. The etheric body alone cannot do this. It cannot control itself and can only keep on returning to the same being, or it can wait until it is prepared for seeing other beings.

A man who has taken the first steps toward initiation and has reached the point of seeing some being or process cannot at once find his bearings in the spiritual world; he cannot freely compare one being with another because he has no free access to the beings. If you are to find your bearings, if you are not merely to look at things but are to say with decision, “This is a being or that is a process,” then you must be able to compare whichever it is with other beings and processes of the super-sensible world. You must be able to make your way from one to the other; you must be able to find your bearings. This orientation has to be learned, and we learn it through regular meditation and by permeating ourselves with moral impulses. Then we feel growing within us forces the activity of which we experience as something strange. If we would describe this, we must return to what was said before. The etheric body, though present in ordinary life, is asleep, and for super-sensible perception must be awakened. But the forces with which to awaken it must be there in the soul. What is done here is experienced in a special way. I can only make this clear by means of a comparison.

Imagine that you go to sleep and that you know, “My body is lying in bed; I cannot move it but I know it is there! I am going into the spiritual world, but I shall come back soon to wake this body up again.” This can happen consciously, but in the case of a man in ordinary life it happens unconsciously. He really goes through what I have just been describing. In his physical condition he is both a waking and a sleeping being and it is he himself who wakes his physical body, although he is not conscious that this is so. But a man who has taken the first steps toward initiation becomes conscious of this, and thereafter actually knows, “There is my etheric body.” His attitude toward it is such that he feels, “That is the more narrowly confined part that corresponds to the brain; this is the more mobile part corresponding to the hands; this, the completely mobile part corresponding to the feet.” This, however, may sound strange. We know all this but the knowledge sleeps in us.

By further development, by preparing our inner life of soul in the necessary way and reaching up to the spiritual world, we are continually awakened. First we awaken this bit, then that. Now we set this movement going, then another. In short, it is a conscious awakening of the etheric body, so that we may speak of the sleeping state as being the ordinary state of the etheric body, and of a waking state into which it is brought by initiation. That is the difference between sleeping and waking in the physical body and in the etheric body. In the physical body sleeping and waking are alternating conditions, they occur in turn; while in the etheric body there is no such alternation; in it sleeping and waking are simultaneous. Thus, a man on the way to initiation may, by his first efforts, reach the point of awakening many of the etheric parts of his head, while all that corresponds to his hands and feet is still deep asleep. Whereas the physical body is asleep at one time, awake at another, in the etheric body some parts are awake and others asleep at the same time. Progress consists in making the sleeping parts more and more into waking ones, and that is what we actually are doing.

If man were not a spiritual being, all that I have here put forward as a comparison could not take place; then, as he lay in bed, he could not observe the awakening of his physical body. But what belongs to the soul is something that is independent of what is awakened. What awakens it bit by bit is not the etheric body, it is something else. If we grasp the concept, “There is something in my soul that holds active sway over my etheric body, and bit by bit awakens it,” we then have a concrete and correct idea of the so-called astral body. To live in the astral body, to experience oneself in the astral body, means in the first place that one feels oneself to be a kind of inner forceful being, gradually able bit by bit to awaken conscious life in the sleeping etheric body. So there is a condition that may be described as one in which we experience ourselves outside the physical body, not only in the etheric body but also in the astral body.

In order to be clear about this step in initiation, it is necessary to acquire the power of differentiating between the various merely inward experiences in coming down into the etheric body. I have described what is experienced on entering the etheric body, how you expand, flow out. That is the concrete feeling. But the chief feeling generally experienced is that you are also pressing further and further out of your physical body and pouring yourself out into the wide spaces of the universe—the living oneself into the astral body, the conscious living into what is bit by bit awakening the etheric body. This is all linked up, too, with a springing out of oneself to seize something outside; this is not a mere expansion of something already there One realises when in the etheric body that the physical body still belongs to it. But when one makes one's way into the astral body, one realises, “It is as if I had first lived in myself, and had then come out of myself to penetrate into something else; now my physical body, and perhaps my etheric body, too, is something outside me. I am now in something where I was not wont to be; my physical body has now become objective and no longer subjective. I am looking at it from outside.”

This springing beyond oneself, this looking at and understanding oneself, is the crossing over to life in the astral body. When this is attained, when this leap over has been made and you know this is now you and that you are looking at yourself, just as you used to look at a plant or a stone, you will then have the feeling that, indeed, no one will fail to have in the first stages of initiation, “Now you are in the super-sensible world, and you are spreading yourself out, away into infinity.” One cannot use the expression on all sides because the super-sensible world has many more sides and quite different dimensions from those of the ordinary world. But you are alone there. You are with your life in the astral body and everywhere around is the universe, an infinite expansion, not any being anywhere but yourself alone! You are overcome by a feeling of what may be called loneliness of soul raised to its supreme degree.

It is a matter of enduring such feelings and of being able to go through them because it is by surmounting them that the forces arise that lead one on; they become the forces of the seer. What I have tried to put in a few lines in the drama The Guardian of the Threshold becomes intensely real. I refer to the scene in which Maria leads Johannes into the infinite tracts of the fields of ice where the human soul is alone—in absolute loneliness. In this loneliness one has to wait—patiently wait. Much depends on whether one is able to wait, whether one has acquired sufficient moral force to wait. Then comes something of which it may be said, “Yes, you are absolutely alone in infinity, but in you there arises something like pure memories that yet are no memories.” I say, “Like memories that are no memories” because all our memories in ordinary life are such that we can recall anything with which we once came into contact, anything we once experienced. But imagine that you stand there with all that is innermost in your soul, while images keep rising up within you that need to be related to something. But you have never previously experienced them! You know that these images are related to beings, but you have never met these beings. This surging up within you of an unknown world, which you realise you bear within you as pure image—this is the next experience on the path of initiation.

After that comes a strange experience in which it is possible to get into relation with all the images that arise, that you can love and hate them, that you can feel reverence in face of one, pride in face of another. Not only a number of inner images are awakened, but also something like a surging hither and thither of super-sensible feelings and sensations. You are utterly alone with yourself, alone with your own inner world rising up within you. At first you are aware of nothing except an indefinite gloom, but your connection with everything is complete.

Let us take a characteristic example. Something that rises there as a picture calls forth your love. This is a severe temptation; a terrible temptation now arises because you love something in yourself. You are exposed to the temptation of loving the thing because it is yours, and you must now put forth all your strength not to love this being just because it is yours, but, in spite of the fact that it is yours, to love it for some quality it possesses. It becomes your task to make selfless what is in yourself. That is a hard task, a task with which nothing can be compared that has to do with the soul in the ordinary physical world. In the ordinary sensory existence it is quite impossible for a man to love what is within him absolutely selflessly. But that is what he must do on rising to this world. By irradiating the being with the force of love, it radiates force itself, and this makes you feel that “it is trying to get out of you.”

You also notice that the more love you yourself can apply, the more strength it has to break through something that is like a veil, and to make its way out into the universe. If you hate it, it also gains force, but then it strains you apart, presses against you and makes its way through, as though heart or lungs would force themselves through the skin of your body. This runs through everything with which you bring yourself into relation through love and hate. The difference between the two experiences is that what you love selflessly goes away, but you feel that you, too, go with it, that it takes you away, and that you, too, take the same path. What you hate, or anything toward which you show pride, tears through the veil and disappears leaving you alone, and you remain in your loneliness. At a certain stage this difference is strongly marked. You are either taken away or left behind. If you are taken, you are able to reach the being whose image you have experienced. You learn to know it.

By this surging up within you of the images of unknown beings with whom you are nevertheless in relation, you come out of yourself and meet all these beings whom you learn to know in a second spiritual world. You live yourself into a world generally called the devachanic world, the true spiritual world, not the astral world. It is nonsense to say that through his astral body, which I have described as the awakener of the etheric body, man enters the astral world. Rather does he rise into the true spiritual world, into what is called the spirit-land in my book Theosophy. There he meets pure spiritual beings.

Now to know more of these beings in their different orders, and how they become what is described as the world of the Higher Hierarchies, whom we have learned to know as rising from the Angels to the Seraphim, of all this we shall hear more in the next lecture.

Yesterday, in such words as are possible for these matters, I tried to characterise how the withdrawal from the physical body, and feeling and experiencing oneself in the etheric and astral bodies take place. I pointed out that this experience takes place in such a way that living oneself into the etheric body seems like a flowing out, as it were, into cosmic space, during which one is continually conscious of streaming out into infinity in all directions from one's own body as a central point. Experience in the astral body, however, appears as a springing out of oneself into the astral body. It is at this moment that one begins to feel outside one's physical body in such a way that everything in the physical body that was called oneself is now experienced as something external to one, something existing outside. One is inside something else. I pointed out to you yesterday that the world then confronting us must be called, in conformity with my book, Theosophy, for instance, the spirit-land. It might also be called the lower mental plane. It would be wrong if something derogatory is implied by imagining that when one selflessly and in the right way reaches the point of living in the astral body, one is then in the astral world.

Now there is a great difference between life, observation and experience in sensory existence, and experience in the astral body in face of the spirit-land. In the life of the senses we are confronted with substances, forces, objects, processes and so on. We are also confronted with beings, and besides the beings of the other kingdoms of nature, insofar as we are justified in calling them so, we are confronted in particular with our own fellow beings. In sensory existence we confront these other beings in such a way that we know how they take up into themselves the substances and forces of the world of the senses, permeate themselves with these, and thereby live the life that runs its course by means of external natural forces within the laws of nature. In short, in the life of the senses we must distinguish between the course of nature, and the beings who live out their lives within this natural course and permeate themselves with the substances and forces there. We have, then, the course of nature and also the beings. But when in the astral body we are seeing into the spiritual world, we can no longer make this distinction. In the spiritual world we are confronted with beings alone, but over against these beings there is no such thing as the so-called course of nature. Everything to which you are guided in the way indicated in our last lecture, everything you meet, is being. Wherever there is anything, it is being, and you cannot say as you do in sensory life that there is an animal and here the external substances it is going to cat. There is not this duality there, for whatever is, is being.

I have already told you how you stand with regard to these beings, that this is mainly the world of the hierarchies, and we have often described it from other points of view. You learn to know the world of the hierarchies in their order of succession, from those beings whom you learn to know first as angels, and archangels, up to those who seem to be almost vanishing, so indistinct do they become—the Cherubim and Seraphim. But one thing is possible when you find yourself in these worlds; you can succeed in entering into relation with these beings. Whatever you are in sensory existence you must have left behind you, in the sense of the way we described this before, but, as I have already said, you still bear it in memory. Into these worlds you carry the memory of what you have left behind and, as in physical life we look back into our memories, so you look back from the higher worlds on to what you have been in sensory existence. You still possess it in memory pictures.

Now as you ascend the first steps of initiation into higher worlds, it is good to learn to distinguish between the first step and those that follow. It is not good to neglect this. It really amounts to this, that you will best learn to find your way in higher worlds if, among the first memory pictures you carry across there, which remind you of your sensory existence, you do not have the image of your own physical body and of its form. It is indeed a matter of experience that this is so. Anyone who has to give advice as to the exercises to be undertaken in order to bring about the first steps of initiation will see to it that, after crossing the threshold, after passing the Guardian of the Threshold, the first memory images have nothing to do with the perception of the physical bodily form. They are essentially such as can be included under the heading of a morally intellectual perception of the self. What you should first experience is how to estimate your own moral qualities. You should perceive what moral or immoral tendencies you have, what sense of truthfulness, or superficial feeling, and also realise how to assess your value as a man of soul.

This is what must first be felt. This does not arise in such a way that it can best be expressed in the words we use in physical life. When you enter the spiritual world, experience is far more intimately bound up with you than anything of the kind in sensory existence. When you have done something that does not satisfy you morally, your entire inner life feels that there is something bitter, that there is something as it were poured out into the world to which you have now accustomed yourself, that fills it with an aroma of bitterness—but aroma should not here be understood in the physical sense. You feel yourself soaked through with this aroma of bitterness. What can be morally justified is filled with a pleasant aroma. One might say that the sphere you enter when you are not satisfied with what you have done, is dark and gloomy, but light and clear is the part of the universe into which you come when you can be at peace with yourself. Therefore, if you are to find your way about, this should be the kind of moral or intellectual valuation to which you should submit yourself, that, like the atmosphere, fills for you the world into which you are entering. So it is best to feel this world with your soul, and after having made yourself familiar with this feeling of the soul for spiritual space, only then should the memory arise that may have the very form and shape of your physical bodily form in sensory life, as long as this form comes before you like an interpenetration into your newly acquired moral atmosphere.

What I have here been describing may not, however, only arise out of the midst of daily life, coming like an entrance into the spiritual world when the appropriate steps toward initiation have been taken. It may also occur in another way. However it arises, it depends fundamentally on the karma of the individual human being and on the way he is constituted. It cannot be said that one way of arising is better or worse than the other; it is simply that either one or the other may occur. In the midst of his daily life man may feel himself drawn into the spiritual world, but it may also happen that his experience during sleep becomes different. In the ordinary experience as soon as a man falls asleep he becomes unconscious, regaining his consciousness on re-awaking, and in his life during the day, except for remembrance of his dreams, he has no memory of his sleeping life. He lives through sleep in a state of unconsciousness. Now in the first stage of initiation it may also happen that something else is extended over man's sleeping life so that he begins to experience another way of falling asleep. With the approach of sleeping life another kind of consciousness is then experienced. This lasts, interrupted more or less by periods of unconsciousness, for various lengths of time according to the progress the man has made. Then, as morning approaches it dies away. During this experience, in the first period after falling asleep, there arises what can be called a memory of one's moral attitude, of one's qualities of soul. This is particularly vivid just after going to sleep and it gradually dies away toward the time of waking.

Therefore, as a result of the exercises for the first stages of initiation, the usual unconsciousness of sleep can become lit up and transfused with consciousness. Then one rises into the actual worlds of the hierarchies and feels oneself to belong there. But this living within the world in which all is being, must, as compared with ordinary life in the world of the senses, be described somewhat as follows. Suppose that someone in the sensory world is standing before a pot of flowers and looking at it. The plant is outside, external to him; he observes it as he stands there looking at it. Now the experience in the higher world of which we have just been speaking, can in no way be compared with this kind of observation. It would be quite wrong to imagine that there one went about looking at the beings thus, from outside, placing oneself before them, as one would observe a flowerpot in the world of the senses. It is not so. If you would compare anything in sensory existence with the way in which you stand as regards the world of the hierarchies, it could only be in the following manner. This, of course, will be only a comparison, but it may help you to have a clear idea.

Let us assume that you sit down somewhere and instead of thinking laboriously of some special thing, you set yourself to think about nothing in particular. Some uncalled-for thought may then arise within you, of which, to start with, you were not thinking at all. It may occupy your soul so completely that it altogether fills it; you feel you can no longer distinguish the thought from yourself and that you are entirely one with the thought that thus suddenly arises. If you have the feeling that this is a living thought, it draws your soul with it, your soul is bound up with the thought, and it might just as well be said that the thought is in your soul as that your soul is in the thought, then you have something in sense life similar to the way in which you get to know the beings of the higher hierarchies and the way you behave toward them. The words, “I am beside them, I am outside them,” lose all meaning. You are with them, just as your thoughts live with you. Not that you might say, “The thoughts live in me.” You have rather to say, “A thought thinks itself in me.” The beings experience themselves, and you experience the experience of the beings. You are within them; you are one with them, so that your whole being is poured out into the sphere in which they live. You share their life, all the time knowing quite well that they, too, are experiencing themselves in this. No one must imagine that after the first steps on the path of initiation he will immediately have the feeling of experiencing all that these beings experience. Throughout he need know nothing beyond his being in their presence, as in sensory existence he might be confronted by somebody he was meeting for the first time. The expression, “The beings live and experience themselves within you,” is justified, yet you need know nothing more of them to begin with than you would know of a man on first acquaintance. In this way, therefore, it is a co-experience. This gradually grows in intensity, and you penetrate ever further into the nature of these beings.

Now, something else is bound up with what has just been described as a spiritual experience. It is a certain fundamental feeling that rests in the soul like the actual result of all its separate experiences. It is a feeling that perhaps I can picture to you by means of a contrast. What you experience in the world of the senses when standing at some particular spot looking at what is around you is the exact opposite of this fundamental feeling. Imagine someone standing here in the middle of the hall, seeing everything that is here. He would say that here is this man, there that man, and so on. That would be his relation to the surrounding world. But it is, however, the opposite of the prevailing mood in the world we have just been describing. There, you cannot say, “I am here, there is this being, there that one,” but you must say, “I am this being.” In reality that is the true feeling. What I have just said as regards all the separate beings is felt in face of the world as a whole. You are really everything in yourself. This being within the beings is extended over your whole mood of soul. It is in this mood of soul that you experience consciously the time between falling asleep and waking. When you live through this consciously, you cannot but have a poured out feeling toward all that you experience. You feel yourself within everything to the very limit of the world that you are at all able to perceive.

I once made the following experiment, and I should like to cite it here as an episode—not as anything remarkable, but in order to make myself clear. Some years ago it suddenly struck me that certain more or less super-sensible states come before us in the great poetic works of the world as a reflection, an echo. What I mean is that if a clairvoyant becomes clear about the fundamental mood of his soul in certain super-sensible experiences and he then turns to world literature, he will find that such moods of soul run through certain chapters, or sections, of the really great poetic works. These moods are not necessarily the poet's occult experiences, but the clairvoyant can say to himself that, if he wishes to live over again as an echo in the sensory world what he experienced in this mood of his soul, he can turn to some great poem and find there something like its shadow picture. When in the light of his experience the clairvoyant reads Dante, for instance, he sometimes has the feeling that there in the poem is a reflection, or shadow, that in its original state can only be experienced clairvoyantly.

Now I once made a search for certain states capable of description in poetic works, in order to set up some sort of concordance between experiences in higher worlds and what is present as a reflection of these in the physical world, and I asked myself, “Is it not possible that this particular mood poured out over the soul during fully conscious sleep (that I have described as a being in the higher worlds, but a being to be apprehended in the mood), might not this be found echoed in some mood of soul in the literature of the world?” But nothing came from this direct approach.

When the question was put differently, however, something was forthcoming. Experience shows that it is also permissible to ask, “How would a being who was not a human being—for instance, some other being of the higher hierarchies—feel this mood of soul, this living within the higher worlds?” Or, to put it more exactly, man feels himself within the higher worlds and sees beings of the other hierarchies. Now just as in the world of the senses you can ask, “What does another person feel about something that you yourself feel?” so this same question can be put to a being of the higher hierarchies, and it will then be possible to gain an idea of the experience of some other being. Just as it would be possible for us in fully conscious sleep, we can form an idea, as in the case of man himself, of a definite kind of higher experience in face of life in the higher worlds, but of experience that plays a large part in the soul of man.

One can imagine, therefore, a being belonging to a higher hierarchical rank than man on earth, who is able to feel what human beings feel but in a higher way. If the question is put in this way, if you reflect not on an ordinary but on a typical man, and then picture the mood of soul, it becomes possible to find something in world literature from which one can form this concept, that such a mood is poured out as an echo of what can really only be represented in its original state correctly by translating oneself into the world we have just been describing. But there is certainly nothing to be found in European literature of which it might be said, “One can here trace the mood of what pours itself out over a soul when it feels itself within the spiritual world and all that belongs there.” It is wonderful how you begin to understand in a new way and to feel fresh delight and admiration when you let this mood work on you like an echo coming from the words of Krishna in the Bhagavad Gita. Quite a new light floods these lines of the Gita when you realise that all I have just been describing is contained, not in the words, but in the echo of the mood that fills the soul. I wanted to give this merely as an illustration of clairvoyance; to picture it in such a way that you can now take up this poem and try to discover the mood flowing into it. Starting from that you may get a feeling of the clairvoyant's corresponding experience, when from his daytime existence he is transposed into these worlds in full consciousness, or when his consciousness is extended during sleep.

Something else, however, is mixed with this mood, this basic feeling; something else accompanies it. It is only by means of a concept that I can try to picture what is here experienced in words because one must always have recourse to words in physical life. What is experienced is something of this nature. So far as you feel anything at all of a world, you feel yourself poured out into it. At first you do not really feel anything external anywhere, you only feel the one point in the world in which you were beforehand. That is the only external thing you feel. You find whatever harm you have done and whatever good you have done crowded into that one point. That is external. For the rest, you feel yourself with all that you have achieved in the world poured out over the whole world. You have indeed the feeling that it would be nonsense to apply certain words natural in sensory existence to this experience of your connection with the world. For instance, the words before and after cease to have meaning because as you go to sleep you do not feel that it is before, and that waking comes after. You only feel certain experiences that begin as you go to sleep, and continue to happen. After living through a number of experiences, in a certain respect you are at the same point again, but not in the same way as before going to sleep.

You have rather the feeling, “I have been to sleep,” and the feeling that the word “then” can no longer justifiably be used. There have taken place a number of experiences during which before and after have ceased to have meaning. If I now use the expression after a certain time (though it is not correct)—“after a certain time one again stands where one stood before”—it must be imagined that you are standing opposite yourself, as it were, as though you were out of your body, walking around and looking at yourself. So you stand at about the same point where you stood on leaving the body, but you are now standing opposite yourself; you have changed your direction. Then (again using “then” in a merely comparative sense) events continue to take place, and it is as if you had returned to your body and were inside it once more. You do not experience any before or after, but what you can only describe as a revolving, about which the words “beginning,” “middle” and “end” can only be used together.

In this kind of experience, it is just the same as when you say about any point of the whole circumference of a circle, “Here it begins,” and, having made the whole round, “Here it ends.” You have no feeling of having lived through a period of time, but rather the feeling of making a round, of describing a circle, and in this experience you completely lose the feeling of time that you normally have in sensory existence. You only feel that you are in the world that has the fundamental characteristic of being round, of being circular. A being who has never walked the earth, who has never lived in the world of the senses but has always lived in the world of which we are speaking, would never be struck by the idea that the world once had a beginning and could be coming to an end. He would always think of it as a self-enclosed, round world. Such a being would have no inducement to say that he strove for eternity for the simple reason that everything around him is eternal, that nowhere is there anything beyond which he could look from the temporal into the eternal.

This feeling of timelessness, this feeling of the circle, appears at a certain stage of clairvoyance, or in the conscious experience of sleep. With it is intermingled a certain yearning, a yearning that arises because in this experience in the higher world you are never really at rest. Everywhere you feel yourself in this revolving movement, always moving, never staying still. The longing you have is, “If only a halt could be made, if only somewhere one could enter time!” This is just the opposite, one might say, of what is experienced in sensory existence, in which we always feel ourselves in time while yearning after eternity. In the world of which I have been speaking, we feel ourselves in eternity with this one desire, “If only at some point the world would stand still and enter time existence!” This is what you realise to be the very fundamental feeling—the everlasting movement of the universe, and the longing for time; this experience of eternal becoming, this becoming that is its own surety, and the longing, “Ah, if only one could but somewhere, somehow, come to an end!”

Yes, when the conceptions of the life of the senses are applied to these things one is fully justified in thinking them strange. But we must not let this impede us. That would imply that we do not wish to accept a real description of the higher worlds. If that is really what we want on setting foot in them, all ordinary descriptions of the world of the senses, and everything else besides, must be abandoned. I beg you to look upon this feeling I have just pictured as an experience that one has in oneself and for oneself, and it is important that one should experience this in oneself and for oneself, because that belongs to the first stages on the path to initiation. This feeling may arise in two ways. In one way it may be expressed by saying, “I have a longing for what is transitory, for existence concentrated in time; I do not wish to be poured out into eternity.” If you have this feeling in the spiritual world (I ask you to consider this well) you do not necessarily bring it back with you into the world of the senses. On the contrary, it need not be present there at all when you return; it may only be in the spiritual world. You may say you have this feeling in the spiritual world—chat you would like to experience yourself right within time, you would like to be concentrated in independence at some point of world existence. You would like to do this so completely that you could say, “Why should I bother about eternity that extends itself out in the rest of the universe! I want to make this something independent for myself, and to live in that.”

Just imagine this wish, this feeling, experienced in the spiritual world. We have not yet expressed this exactly, but have still to describe it in another way to make it precise, and then to combine it with something else. If we want to bring this down into human sensory existence, we have to describe it—if we still wish to do so at all—by what is reminiscent of the world of the senses. You will remember that I have just said, “Up above, everything is being and we cannot speak of it in any other way.” But that is not the whole truth. When in the world of the senses some desire takes possession of us we may say, “You feel yourself driven on by some being who works in you and causes you to express this wish to make sure of some particular point.” If one has understood the wish to make sure of one point, the wish to be concentrated in temporal things, as an impulse given by a being of the spiritual world—it can only be such a being—then one has to grasp what influence Luciferic beings have in that world.

Having reached this conception, we may now ask, “How can one speak about being confronted with a Luciferic being?” When, in the world of the higher hierarchies, we feel thus influenced to draw away from eternity to a state of independent concentration in the world, then it is that we feel the working of Lucifer. When we have experienced that, then we know how the forces that are Luciferic can be described. They may be described in the way I have just shown, and only then does it become possible to speak with reality of a contrast that even finds an echo in our world of the senses. This contrast simply arises from the realisation that in sensory existence it is quite natural for us to be placed into the temporal, whereas in the spiritual world that lies—to speak from a transitory point of view—above the astral world, it is natural for us no longer to perceive what is temporal, but only what is eternal. This devachanic experience that appears there as a longing for temporal life is echoed in the longing for eternity. The interplay of actually experienced time—time experienced in the passing moment—with the longing for eternity, arises because of the penetration of our world of the senses by the devachanic world, the world of spirit-land. Just as for ordinary sense perception, the spirit-land is hidden behind our physical world, so the eternal is hidden behind the passing moment. Just as there is no point where we can say, “Here ends the world of the senses, and here begins the spiritual world,” but everywhere the spiritual world permeates sensory existence, so each passing moment, in accordance with its quality, is permeated by eternity. We do not experience eternity by coming out of time, but by being able to experience it clairvoyantly in the moment itself. We are guaranteed eternity in the passing moment; in every moment it is there.

Wherever you go in the world, when speaking from the standpoint of clairvoyant consciousness, you can never say of beings that one is temporal and another eternal. To say that here is a temporal being or there an eternal being has no meaning for spiritual consciousness. Real meaning lies in something quite different. What underlies existence—the passing moment and eternity—is everywhere and forever, and the only way to put the question is, “How comes it that eternity sometimes appears as the passing moment, that the eternal sometimes appears temporal, and that a being in the world assumes a form that is temporal?” It simply comes from this, that sensory existence, wherever it occurs, is interspersed with Luciferic beings, and to the extent that these beings play into sensory existence, eternity is rendered temporal. It must therefore be said, “A being appearing anywhere in time is eternal insofar as it has power to liberate itself from the Luciferic existence, but insofar as it is subject to it, it remains temporal.”

When we begin to describe things in a spiritual way, we leave off using expressions of ordinary life. In ordinary life, if we apply the teaching of religion and of anthroposophy, we should say, “Man has his body as an outer sheath, and within he has his soul and spirit being; his body is mortal, but his being of soul and spirit is immortal and eternal.” This is how it should be expressed, insofar as we are in the world of the senses and want to describe what is there. It is no longer correct if we wish to apply the standpoint of the spiritual world; then it must be put in this way, “Man is a being in whose nature as a whole, progressive, divine beings must work together with Luciferic beings; to the extent that progressive, divine beings are in him, part of his being wrests itself away from all that is Luciferic, and so comes to participate in the eternal. Insofar as divine beings work in man, he shares in the eternal; insofar as the Luciferic world works in him, all that is bound up with the temporal and transitory becomes part of his very being.”

The temporal and eternal thus appear as the working together of diverse beings. In the higher worlds there is no longer any sense in speaking of abstract opposites such as the temporal and the eternal because there they cease to have any meaning. There we have to speak of beings. We speak, therefore, of progressive, divine beings and of Luciferic beings. Because these beings are present in the higher worlds, their relation to one another is reflected in the antithesis of time and eternity.

I have said that it is good if a man, on rising to the world to which we are referring, should at first experience memories of a more moral kind rather than his external physical form. Persevering with the exercises for the first steps in initiation, he should gradually become so clairvoyant that there will then appear the memory picture, too, of his physical form. There is something else, however, connected with the arising of this memory picture of one's physical form, and that is that actually from this time on (and it is right) he feels as a memory not only his life of soul in general, not only in general his good and bad deeds and his moral and his foolish ones, but his entire ego. It is his whole self that he feels as a memory in the moment when he can look back on his body as form. He then feels his being as if split in two. He beholds the part he left behind with the Guardian of the Threshold, and he beholds what, in the sense world, he called his ego. Now, on looking back on his ego, he feels that there also is a cleavage, and quite calmly says to himself: “Only now are you able to remember what you formerly called your ego. You now live in a more highly organised ego that bears the same relation to the former ego that you as thinker bear to memories of life in the world of the senses.” At this stage one sees for the first time what man, earthly man, actually is; one looks down on one's ego-man.

At the same time, however, one is raised to a still higher world that may be called the higher spirit-land or, if you will, the higher mental world; a world that differs somewhat from the others. We are in this higher spirit-land when experiencing the splitting of the ego, and the ordinary ego in memory only. It is here that one is first able to form a true estimate of man on earth. As one looks back one begins to know what man is in his inmost being. There, too, it is first possible to come to an experienced judgement concerning the course of history. Human evolution that has been experienced becomes for us the progress of the soul as an ego being. Standing out from the general progress are the beings who are leaders in the advancement of humanity. Here one actually experiences what I described in the second lecture, that is, the impulses that are continually flowing into human evolution through the initiates, those initiates who, wherever they may be, have to leave the life of the senses and go to spiritual worlds so that they can give out these impulses. When you reach the point of experiencing man as an ego being, you also experience for the first time a true insight into the human being as such. To this there is only one exception.

Let us recapitulate all that has been said. When a man goes through the first stages of initiation, he can raise himself clairvoyantly to the world of the lower spirit-land; he experiences conceptions of what has to do with the soul, of what is moral and what is intellectual. He looks down on all that is going on in souls, even if they do not comprehend themselves as ego beings. This comprehension of one's being as an ego being, together with all the blossoming of spiritual life in the initiates, is experienced in the higher spirit-land with one single exception that is right and good if it can happen as an exception that breaks through the general rule. From the lower spirit-land one sees the whole being of Christ Jesus! So that, looking back in a purely human way, and holding fast to what is present in remembrance, you have a memory of Christ Jesus and of all the events that have taken place in connection with Him, that is, if the other condition of which I spoke in the second lecture has already been fulfilled. The truth about the other initiates, however, you experience for the first time in the higher spirit-land.

There we have a vastly important distinction. When a man rises into the spiritual world, on looking back he perceives what is of the earth. But he sees it first with its soul quality unless he can remember in such a way that, looking back on earthly existence, he remembers physical man and the shape and form in which he goes about. That is a thing he should only experience at the higher point described. It is only Christ Jesus that he may and should see at the first steps on the path of initiation. This he can do when on going forward he sees himself surrounded by nothing but what is of a soul nature, that at first has nothing in it of the ego. But then, within, as a kind of central point, is the Christ Being, fulfilling the Mystery of Golgotha and permeated by the ego.

What I have just told you cannot, of course, be understood as coming from any of the world conceptions of existing Christian religions. I hardly imagine that you would find it described anywhere. You can, indeed, find what may be called the reverse of what I have said in a certain special way that one first lights upon when looking occultly and precisely into the matter, because up to the present, Christianity has not reached the goal it has finally to attain. Perhaps some of you will know that there are many among the official representatives of Christianity who have a mortal dread of what is known as occultism, and look on it simply as the work of the devil that can only do man harm. Why is this so? Why do we repeatedly find, when we speak to the representatives of any particular priesthood and the conversation turns to occultism or anthroposophy that they shy away from it? If you point out to them that the Christian saints have always experienced the higher worlds, and that their biographies tell us so, you get the reply, “Oh yes, that may be so but these things should not be striven after. There is no harm in reading the lives of the saints, but you shouldn't copy them if you want to keep away from the wiles of the devil.”

Now why does this occur? If you take all that I have told you into consideration, you will understand that what here finds expression is a kind of fear, a strong feeling of fear. Ordinary people do not recognise its origin, but the occultist can do so.

As I have said in the second lecture, in the higher worlds there can only be this memory of the Christ when a man has rightly understood Him on earth, in the physical world of the senses. It is important to have this memory of the Christ in the very next world you enter, where you still keep a memory image of the rest of humanity. On the one hand, it is necessary to have the memory image; on the other, you can only have it down here if it has already permeated you. Hence it happens that those who know something of occultism, but have not thoroughly assimilated certain important and outstanding facts, think it is all one whether man, when today he presses on into spiritual worlds, has become acquainted or not with this image of the Christ. They do not consider that what is above depends to any great extent on what has been experienced below, although in other respects they are continually emphasising it.

But the kind of position in which you find yourself with regard to the Christ in the higher worlds does indeed depend on how you relate yourself to Him in the physical world. If in the physical world you do not try to call up the right conception of Him, you are not in a certain respect sufficiently developed for the higher worlds, and in spite of the fact that you should find Him there, you cannot do so. So that if you have not concerned yourself about this matter that is full of splendour and so significant, on rising to higher worlds you may completely miss this image of the Christ. If, then, anyone when still in sensory existence, were to reject the idea of forming a relationship to Christ, he might even become a great occultist and yet, through his perceptions in the higher worlds, have no knowledge of the Christ; he would not find Him there, nor be able to learn anything from Him. There would always be something wanting in his conception of the Christ. That is the significant thing.

I am not here giving out anything that is merely a subjective opinion, but what is the common objective result of those who have made the relevant investigations. Among occultists it can be said objectively that it is so, but in anyone who does not feel impelled to become an occultist, and who is simply a faithful follower of his particular religious creed, the same thing is expressed in that unconsciousness that I have just described as a state of fear. Then if anyone would embark upon the path into higher worlds, this is said to be devil's work; it is thought that perhaps he cannot have found the right relation to Christ, and therefore ought not to be led beyond the ordinary world. In a certain sense this fear is well-grounded. These men do not know the way to Christ, and if they then enter higher worlds, Christ is lost to them. This feeling among certain priestly orders can be understood as a kind of fear, but there is no way of meeting it. I beg you to give this little digression your serious attention, and to go on thinking about it in life. It is interesting as a piece of historical culture, and will help you to understand much that plays itself out in life.

I have shown you different aspects of the Christ from two different points of view, and have tried to throw light on His being. But all that I have previously said would be just as valid and comprehensible without these two points of view. It is necessary, however, to meet the facts objectively and, without the bias of any religious tendency, to grasp them objectively as cosmic facts.

Thus we have tried to throw a certain light on the concepts of the temporal, the transitory, the passing moment and eternity on the one hand, and on the other of mortality and immortality. We have seen how the concepts ‘transitory’ and ‘temporal’ are bound up with the Luciferic principle, and how, bound up with the Christ principle we shall find such concepts as ‘eternity’ and ‘immortality.’ Anyone might believe—at least to a small extent—that this constituted a kind of undervaluing of the Luciferic principle and its rejection in all circumstances because by it we are directed to the temporal, the more transitory, and to the concentration upon one point. For today, I should like just to say this, that in all circumstances it is not right to look upon the ‘Light-bearer’ as one of whom we should be afraid, nor is it right to think that we must turn our back on Lucifer as from one whom we must always escape. If one does that it is to forget the teaching of true occultism, namely, that here in the world of the senses there is a feeling analogous to that in the super-sensible world. In sensory life man feels, “I live in the temporal and yearn after the eternal; I live in the passing moment and crave for eternity.” In spiritual life there is the feeling: “I live in the eternal and long for the passing moment.” If you now turn to the book, Cosmic Memory: Atlantis and Lemuria, was man's development in old Lemurian times a kind of transition from such a state as we have in sleep into a waking state? Follow attentively what happened in Lemurian times, and you can say that since man passed through a transition out of a state of spiritual sleep into the waking state that we have on earth, the whole of evolution passed over at that time from the spiritual into the physical. There is the transition. Since Lemurian times our sensory existence has acquired meaning. Do you think it unnatural that when he gradually slipped away from higher worlds to be seized upon by Luciferic powers, man should have taken with him something like a longing for eternity? Again, in respect to what is Luciferic, you have a kind of memory of a pre-earthly state, a memory of something that man had before he came into sensory existence that should not have been preserved, namely, a longing for the passing moment and for all that has to do with time. How far this takes part in the evolution of man we shall speak of tomorrow.

From the previous lectures you will perhaps have realised how necessary it is to make our conceptions capable of change and movement if we are to arrive at a right description of the various worlds of which we can speak, one of which is our ordinary sensory existence, our ordinary world of the senses. From much that has been said it should be evident to you that we must speak of human concepts in a different language when representing the transition from one world to another. That is one side of the matter. But there is another side; all these worlds work reciprocally and in one world the inter-working of the remaining worlds can always be perceived as a kind of reflection. In each world we are met by the phenomena and beings of that particular world, and, in addition, by all that is working into it from the other worlds. All this must be carefully considered if we would understand the secrets of initiation, the relation of the passing moment to eternity, and the relation of the darkness in life to the light of the spirit. There are certain rules and instructions, which you will find described in Knowledge of the Higher Worlds, to which the soul can be subjected in order to enter super-sensible worlds. It goes without saying that such rules are not only useful but indispensable to anyone really wanting to undertake the first or further steps toward initiation.

At this particular time there is one thing, however, to which we must call attention. Our present age has a certain peculiarity connected with the whole character of the world-cycle in which we live. It has an academic, theorising tendency, and no matter how much we strive to get rid of it, it still remains engrained in the souls of present-day men. For this reason, when it is a question of rising into higher worlds, they expect before everything to be told how, in such circumstances, each person should act whose soul is desirous of reaching super-sensible worlds. But in comparison with the real experience of super-sensible life, into these descriptions that may be said to give a normal path, a normal “line of march” for a quick ascent into higher worlds, there always seems to enter what, in a certain respect, might be called an element of the doubtful.

Life is a complicated affair, and every soul, in whatever position it is found—everyone wishing to start on the ascent into higher worlds must do so from some particular position in life—every soul is involved in a definite karma and starts from a definite point. No two souls are in the same situation. The path for each soul into super-sensible worlds is therefore individual, and is determined by the condition of the soul at its point of departure. If you want to keep to the truth, you cannot say that normally such and such a path must be taken by every soul for the ascent into higher worlds, for initiation. Hence the need of something more than instructions given in short pamphlets (a much easier affair) saying the soul should do this or that and giving rise to the belief that it is possible by following out such rules to rise to higher worlds in any circumstances and in the same way as any other soul.

This is why such things are doubtful. It was for this very reason that I tried in A Road to Self Knowledge to indicate something individual that can at the same time be useful to every soul. For the same reason, the necessity also arose of showing how the ways of initiation are both manifold and varied. Without wishing to give any kind of explanation about what has been done, I should just like to point out the different ways in which the necessities are shown in the three figures who appear before our souls as Johannes Thomasius, Capesius and Strader in my mystery plays The Portal of Initiation, The Soul's Probation and The Guardian of the Threshold. You are here shown, as it were, three different aspects of the first stages on the path of initiation. You cannot say of any one of these that it is better or worse than the others; in each case you must admit that it is the outcome of individual karma. It can only be said that a soul such as Johannes or Capesius must necessarily follow the paths we have tried to indicate, not theoretically or pedantically, but in the actual, dramatic figures.

It will become increasingly necessary to lead people away from the belief that a few rules will suffice in these matters—increasingly necessary in precisely these spiritual spheres to point the way from the academic to living figures. Because the connections of the worlds are so manifold, the ways of individuals must be manifold too. But when one first begins seriously to observe certain individualities or beings of the higher worlds and to verify what part they have in man, then especially must we feel the need, instead of giving mere definitions of them, to show these figures livingly and in their multiplicity. In our time it is particularly important for those who strive for spiritual knowledge to observe, in all their manifold and variable nature, such figures as Lucifer and Ahriman whom we shall always encounter on the path of initiation. It will then be apparent how remarkable are the connections and links between one world and another.

There are many signs today of how, gradually, understanding can be aroused of this interplay of one world with another. I should like to start from the obvious even though it is not sufficiently appreciated that it is. In our time, in the widest circles, there is a strong impulse to get to know the order of nature, the laws of nature, that work through everything, including all the living things that meet us in the world of the senses. There is a tendency to ignore any knowledge coming from other worlds about man and world existence and simply to build a whole world conception out of the one world. This it is that gives the more or less monistic or materialistic stamp to our present world conception. Now, one may say that against this endeavour, other strivings have made themselves felt today as a kind of wholesome check. Within the world in which we live, these endeavours seek such phenomena as are governed by laws different from those of the natural world and, in all their manifoldness, are felt by the materialistic mind to be inconsistent with the order of nature. We should certainly pay heed to all that is done in a serious and scientific way in this field. In this contemporary confrontation of purely materialistic research with another research, which, although little noticed and by using the same methods as ordinary research, seeks other connections in our sensory existence than this existence itself offers—in all this we may, indeed, look for quite different worlds, with different laws of being playing into this other research. In this respect it is most desirable, particularly for anthroposophists, to give heed to all that is being done in this direction by extending the methods of science to the interplay of super-sensible worlds into our physical existence. I have already pointed this out to smaller circles; today I shall do so for this larger one.

In the first part of his book, The Mystery of Man, a book I should like especially to recommend to you, our friend, Ludwig Deinhard, has undertaken the commendable task of giving lucid classification and description of everything that in our age can be investigated by means of the scientific methods recognised today about the interplay of a super-sensible world into the world that is accessible to us all. These scientific methods are indeed still being applied with prejudice. This lucid classification has been a worthy task. It can be a lesson to anyone interested in seeing how, simply by taking the facts and following them up, we can find that the super-sensible actually springs forth from the life of the senses. So this book, The Mystery of Man, by Ludwig Deinhard, which has appeared recently, has an important task, and I take this opportunity of bringing it to your notice.

This interplay of other worlds into the sensory world, creates something within it that is really repeated and appears in all worlds. This makes it, however, particularly necessary that we should not form pedantic, rigid or one-sided dogmas or opinions that this or that is so, that Lucifer is like this, Ahriman like that; that one must shun the Luciferic, the Ahrimanic, and so on. Our considerations yesterday followed this theme.

Let us assume that someone who has taken the first steps on the path of initiation, because his soul life has become clairvoyant by his own efforts to open the eyes of his soul, meets the figure in super-sensible worlds whom we call Lucifer. How did we describe this being yesterday? He comes before the soul as a being forever striving to make the eternal, which otherwise is in constant movement and change, into the stable, temporal and momentary, so that as something individual it can rejoice in its power to grow individually great. If as a soul you meet Lucifer in super-sensible worlds, he then appears there as the great Light-bearer who leads, really leads, to bringing down into sensory existence all the treasures that pertain to real being in the spiritual world, and to the creation of its reflection and revelation in the world of the senses. If you follow Lucifer in this striving of his in super-sensible worlds, then you are working for the fulfilment of the primordial task of the universe; that is, to reveal the un-revealed, to commit to the moment all that is eternal and to make it possible that all that flows away into limitless eternity should be held fast in the inward greatness of the individual moment.

Now a desire exists in every human soul as an echo from the spiritual worlds to bring to fulfilment this striving to make manifest the un-revealed, to fix the eternal in the passing moment. Hence it is that when man enters super-sensible worlds, either by way of initiation or by death, it is really Lucifer who acts as his Light-bearer. The dangers to which man is exposed when face to face with Lucifer in higher worlds are really only present when man takes with him into these worlds too great a measure of what in sensory existence constitutes his right relation to Lucifer. Lucifer is only dangerous for man's life in higher worlds if he takes with him too much of the nature and essential being of physical man. How then do matters stand with Lucifer within the actual life of the senses, where there is always the interplay of super-sensible worlds? In the historical course of man during sensory existence and in his evolution we have to do above all with the interplay of the higher worlds, which send active impulses into physical life so that one thing may take place after another, in the way things are played out during the whole earth existence in the history of mankind.

The self-seeking strivings of every human soul that we regard as human and egoistic play into the life of the senses, and we know that the development of every soul must start from egoism. That is natural. We also know that man can work his way out from egoism. Into all that souls have been able to do on earth through egoism, there comes what we may call the manifestation of the eternal in the passing moment. Luciferic forces are forever playing into what is fixed in the individual soul and also into all that the individual man can do for the whole world-order and existence through being an egoist and having the power to develop within him inward greatness that wells forth from his inner being. For what is individual greatness in the individual soul but the seed of all the greatness in the whole world evolution of man? What gave Homer, Shakespeare, Dante, Goethe, their power to affect mankind? It was their ego-hood, and because within them there were whole worlds, worlds that issued forth from their inner being alone, out of their ego-hood. In this indirect way, through ego-hood, the impulses of spiritual life are introduced, which are from epoch to epoch the mediators of the greatest spiritual deeds of mankind. In this we find Lucifer again. It is he who is Light-bearer, impulse and power behind all the greatness that radiates into human evolution from the mighty forces of eternity that, at certain points of time, surge up from the individual human soul.

Man's soul is placed between two poles that are simply the impression and reflection of all the worlds in which the soul actually stands. At the one pole the human soul hardens within itself, winds itself into the cocoon of its selfhood, and only desires what is of service to itself, what is for its self-gratification. At the other pole the human soul draws forces from its own depths that are able to radiate into the whole life of humanity. When does this ego-hood of man come to light? This happens the moment we think how necessary it is for every man to sacrifice for others what is his own, what is his most individually, what belongs most deeply to his ego-hood. But in all that man can do for his fellows out of his ego-hood lives Lucifer, the other pole of Lucifer; in all that man can thus achieve for humanity under the influence of the Light-bearer, lies a reflection of what Lucifer really is in higher worlds, a reflection of his creative activity, which is the revealing of the un-revealed.

Can we then say that Lucifer is evil, or can we say that Lucifer is good? One can only say that if a man maintains that Lucifer is evil, and that we must flee from him, then it must also be said that we must avoid fire, because in certain circumstances it destroys life. On the path of initiation we find that the words good and evil cannot be used in this way for the description of any being of the super-sensible world order. Fire is good when it acts in good conditions, evil when it works in evil ones; in itself it is neither the one nor the other. So it is with Lucifer. He exercises a good influence on man's soul when he becomes the instigator of man's sacrifice on the altar of human evolution of all that is most individual in his soul. Lucifer becomes an evil being—rather, what he does becomes evil—when he arouses impulses leading only to self-gratification in the human soul. Thus, once our attention has been drawn to these beings, we have to follow up the effect their deeds have in the world. The acts of super-sensible beings can be described as good or bad; the beings themselves, never!

Just imagine that somewhere, on some island or other, there were a human race holding the opinion that, in all circumstances, one must protect oneself from Lucifer and that he has to be kept at the greatest possible distance. That would not prove that the men of this island had better knowledge of Lucifer than anyone else, but simply, by virtue of their particular qualities that these men were only able to convert into evil what Lucifer could give them. The views about Lucifer held by the people of this island would only be characteristic of the people, not of Lucifer. I will not say whether or not this island exists. You can look for it yourselves in the evolution of the world.

We must seek the attributes of Lucifer in the being Lucifer whom we meet in the super-sensible world. The manner of his working has to be sought in how his powers take on different qualities when, for instance, they work on such an island and their effects actively ray out on such an island.

And the Ahrimanic? What is that? When we meet Ahriman in the super-sensible world, we find his particular attributes are quite different from those of Lucifer. To come into relation with Lucifer in the super-sensible world, we really only need to purify and cleanse ourselves from all the dross of faulty ego-hood and the egoism of sensory existence. For that, Lucifer will make us a good guide in the actual super-sensible world, and we shall not easily become his prey. But with Ahriman it is different; his is another task in world evolution. While Lucifer reveals all that is hidden, Ahriman's task for the world of the senses can be described by saying that where our world of the senses is, where it becomes visible, there is Ahriman, but he permeates it invisibly, super-sensibly. How does Ahriman help us? He helps us considerably in the physical world; he helps every soul. Indeed, he helps every soul to carry into higher worlds as much as possible from the world of the senses, of what is played out only there, because the world of the senses exists for some purpose and is not merely maya. It exists as the stage for events that beings may experience, and what is thus enacted and experienced must be borne up into super-sensible worlds. The power to carry into eternity what is of value in sensory existence is the power that belongs to Ahriman. To give the passing moment back to eternity, that is in Ahriman's power.

For the individual soul in relation to Ahriman, however, something quite different comes into consideration. What men experience primarily in sensory existence is of infinite value to them, and I hardly think I shall meet with much opposition if I say that the enthusiasm and the inclination carefully to preserve what we experience in sensory existence, and to save it up as far as possible for eternity, is generally much greater than the other tendency, namely, to bring down into the world of the senses all that we can from the hidden spiritual worlds. Man loves the world of the senses quite naturally and comprehensibly, and would like to take as much as possible of it with him into spiritual existence. Certain religious faiths, in order to comfort their adherents, tell them that they can quite well take with them into spiritual life all that is in sensory existence. No doubt they say it because they unconsciously realise how much man loves what is his in physical existence. This is what Ahriman's power strives to bring about, that all that we have here can be carried on with us into spiritual worlds. This inclination and desire to carry up the physical into the super-physical is both strong and forceful in the soul. It is not at all easy to get rid of it when, through death or initiation, you rise from the world of the senses into higher worlds. Therefore, you still have it in you when you become a being of the higher world. If you meet Ahriman there, this is just where he becomes dangerous because he willingly helps you to carry into these super-sensible worlds all you have gained and experienced in sensory existence.

There could be no more cherished companion than Ahriman for those who would preserve each passing moment for eternity. Many men, as soon as they have passed the gateway into the super-sensible world, find in Ahriman an accommodating companion; he is always seeking to make what takes place on earth play its part in the higher worlds and to claim it there for himself and for those who work with him. But even that is not the worst, because you do not enter the super-sensible world without having in a certain respect cast off your selfhood. If you gained entrance there with your ordinary, normal impelling force, you would soon seize hold of Ahriman and feel him to be a most easy-going companion. But you cannot enter in that state. On entering higher worlds, you already have the faculty for recognising him as partaking in the divine, since with overwhelming tragedy he permeates earth evolution in sensory existence and is forever at pains so to transform it that it shall become a spiritual life. That is Ahriman's deep tragedy! He would like to change all that has ever appeared in the physical into the spiritual, and he battles in the world order for the purification and cleansing, in cleansing fires, of everything physical. In his sense that is good, but it would be evil in the sense of the divine, spiritual beings if Ahriman, who is their opponent in the world order, could carry out all his aims.

Much must be done there in a different way from how he would have it done. I should like here to describe what I mean by a comparison. By applying this comparison to the whole world order, you will be able to appreciate how Ahriman strives for himself after what he can call good, yet how impossible it is to fit this “good” into the whole world order.

Now let us take any animal that, for its progressive development in sensory existence, must shed its skin. From time to time, it must lay aside its skin like a kind of image of itself and progress in life with a new form. Something has to be cast aside to give the being in question new possibilities of life. Ahriman would like to save everything and would like to prevent all snakes from casting their skin; he would like everything used up that, in the mind of the world order, must be cast aside. Man, too, would like to do that in sensory existence. There is a great deal he would prefer not to leave but to take with him, although in the mind of a higher world order it is destined for the temporal and the passing moment. Because the urge is so strong in him, man would, if it were possible for him among all his questions in the sensory world about unknown paths and so forth, want first to ask, “Where can Ahriman be found? Where can Ahriman help one to carry into eternity what is held in the passing moment?”

Here is the one good thing! Man is not able to find Ahriman in the world of the senses because here he is invisible and spiritual. It belongs to the obligations of the Guardian of the Threshold that Ahriman should remain as invisible as possible in the physical world. Thus, man can unfold what lies in his own forces alone for the preservation of the passing moment in eternity, and cannot unconsciously let Ahriman help him. Here again, good and evil play into man's physical life as two poles. Man as a soul passes through human evolution in which one task is good, genuine and true; that is, to carry out of the sensory world all that has eternal value and to make it part of the eternal kingdom. This is the duty laid upon us—to take the precious treasures of the moment and offer them up on the altar of eternity. When we let Ahriman help us with the real treasures of temporal life, then it is good. But when at the moment of entering the super-sensible world, we come to know Ahriman—until then we cannot see him—and show him the tendency that remains in us to carry out of the sensory world into the super-sensible world what has no value, then this has a great deal of value for him. It is worthless, however, for his opponents. Then he can find us to be useful tools to lead what is loved here in sensory existence over into eternity. Because it is thus loved, it takes its place through him in eternity.

So once more we see how what emanates from Ahriman cannot, in itself, be called either good or bad, but becomes good or bad according to how men place themselves toward it and enter into relation with it. Through this we can realise how easy it is for descriptions to be superficial when answering questions that show so little real thought as, “What is Ahriman like?” or “What is Lucifer like?” In the higher worlds where descriptions of these beings are only possible, there are really no such utterances, no such questions. Thus is man drawn into the labyrinth of life. Both Lucifer and Ahriman are working in this labyrinth, and man has to discover how to take up the right attitude toward them. This necessity for seeking our right relationship to the beings of super-sensible worlds is just what gives us the power for self-development. Connections with super-sensible worlds are not maintained by striving for a knowledge based on that of the senses, so much as by creating a relationship with spiritual beings in the way we have just described. For this reason men must go into the darkness of life in which beings work who can just as well be good as evil, and who can become good or evil in the effects of what they do according to the way in which we relate ourselves to them. That is what constitutes the darkness of life. Hence, the light of life, spiritual light, can only shine into the darkness of life by our acquiring the right relation to, and getting to know, the several powers of the super-sensible world who play into our physical world. Also, when wishing to speak of super-sensible worlds, we change our ideas and concepts. I should like to bring before your souls by yet another example how differently we must think if we would find the connection between the sensory world and the super-sensible world in the right way.

We live here in physical existence in such a way that we feel how there plays with and around us what we call our destiny. In our destiny we find many sympathetic and many adverse things. Anyone who can conjure up a true idea of himself knows that feeling and experiencing with others, and the sympathy or antipathy with which we meet the fortunes of life, are among our most powerful sensations and are most deeply rooted in our soul. Now it happens—I need not here repeat why as this has been told you frequently in earlier lectures—that in our higher ego, which, in the sense of our previous lectures, bears within it merely a memory of the ordinary ego—in this higher ego, we ourselves prepare the very destiny that then may torment us and cause us suffering throughout a whole lifetime. Are there not some who deny the idea of reincarnation because, having lived through this one, they have no desire to build a new existence for themselves? The reason for this is that they labour under the delusion that in the worlds man inhabits after death everything goes on in the same way as in the world of the senses. Here, in the sensory world one thing may please, another displease us. But during the life between death and a new birth, it never occurs to us that we should feel in this way. There we feel quite differently, though here we may not know it. When, after death we come into the spiritual world, we realise, for example, “I have lived on earth in a life of the senses; I have possessed a certain faculty, but this faculty found a one-sided expression in me; it is possible I even made bad use of it. I must now form myself anew in another earth existence and embodiment so that this one-sidedness may be balanced and the imperfection rectified. In other words, I must take over in another imperfection what I have previously had in an imperfect form, so that by working in the opposite direction I may balance and harmonise the matter.”

Then a time begins between death and a new birth, which goes on until the new birth, during which man says for example, “Formerly, I worked and made myself proficient at painting. I will now be born so that in my new life I will be quite incapable of painting. By not being able to paint, I shall never be able to harbour in my soul a judgement arrived at from the standpoint of a painter, but I shall be able only to judge as one would who has simply seen something. Thus, I shall acquire other forces that will be helpful in harmonising and balancing what was mine before.” So we can look back on a life between birth and death to something happily passed through and yet say, “If I were so to direct my whole evolution as only to experience life thus, I should never get its full flavour.” Out of forces thus developed, there follows the desire, “What once I experienced in happiness I must now experience in suffering.” You then arrange everything in such a way that, impelled by this longing you have to experience suffering in a certain sphere and by undergoing this, you make further progress in life. Then the fact becomes clear that in the super-sensible worlds we have craved for pain and suffering, though in sensory existence we feel they are something to be avoided.

Here the difference between life in sensory existence and life between death and rebirth in super-sensible worlds becomes of real, practical significance. Quite different forces are active in our life between death and a new birth from all that we find sympathetic or otherwise between birth and death. What then does a man do who would judge life in super-sensible worlds according to his sympathies and antipathies of sensory existence? Actually, he transplants in perspective into the super-sensible world what he had in sensory existence. It is just as though you were to draw or paint a rose, for instance, on a sheet of glass. Then, if you look at the sheet of glass you will not see it. You look through the glass but the painting that you take for a reality is projected onto the space of the wall behind. But it is not real at all; it is you who have transplanted it there. In the same way, a man, when he wants to judge of the super-sensible world by the sympathies and antipathies of the sensory world, can project into that world something like shadows that may nevertheless have validity there. This something has a certain effect and is in a way authentic. Even if it is not seen, something like a fog is projected onto what stands in that world before the observer.

Thus, again and from another side, we are shown through feeling what may be called the darkness of life. If we ask why we live in this darkness between birth and death, it may be said that it is because judgements and valuations of life that are justified and natural in life between birth and death must have no value for the existence we lead in super-sensible worlds between death and a new birth. In sensory existence we have need of a life of soul that in super-sensible life no longer has validity. Therefore, if we are to gain comprehensive knowledge of the universe, we must allow all our investigations and our knowledge of the super-sensible world to be. penetrated by the light of its spirit. The greatest mistake that men can make in their view of the world is that of imagining that they can extend to super-sensible worlds the concepts and ideas gained from the world of the senses and without having the patience and endurance to await from actual investigation into the super-sensible, descriptions of all that, as spiritual light from higher worlds, radiates into the darkness of sensory existence. Here the question confronts us, “Is it indeed only those having power of vision in super-sensible worlds, those who have had the privilege of initiation, who are able to let this spiritual light of super-sensible worlds work upon them?” This belief is widely spread throughout the world. You often hear it said: “How can one understand anything of the super-sensible worlds if one has never gone through initiation?” You then hear it pointed out that the only true way must be to go through initiation, the one path leading to super-sensible worlds.

What the connections are in this sphere, how understanding is related to seeing in super-sensible worlds, and how much consolation and strength we can have in life through the apprehension of spiritual light in our darkness will be our starting-point tomorrow. That will lead us a few steps further into the problem we are now considering.

We were able to close our considerations yesterday by touching on the attitude of the individual toward what we may call the description of the super-sensible world and all that arises from the researches, observations and experiences of initiation. Attention was drawn to how easily the opinion may be formed that value and significance for the life of the soul can only result from the experiences of initiation in one who has made the first steps on that path and is therefore able, through his own vision, to penetrate into the experience and observation of higher worlds. It has, however, often been emphasised that this is not so. It is true that one can see, observe, discover and explore what takes place in the higher worlds, but only if one has so transformed one's own soul as to be able to look into those worlds. As we said yesterday, they are indeed quite different from the world of sensory existence, though they are connected with it in various respects and are to be regarded essentially as its foundation.

On the other hand, in what concerns the understanding of these other worlds, you would not be judging correctly if you affirmed that, in order to comprehend, grasp and receive what can be given by those who have taken the first or further steps toward initiation, you had necessarily to experience it yourself. On the contrary, it must be emphasised repeatedly that any man who devotes himself without prejudice to what is vouched for by actual spiritual investigators in super-sensible worlds, any man who will accept their descriptions, experiences and communications without prejudice, letting his unbiased judgement and active understanding hold the field, will really be able to grasp all that he is offered. In the life of the senses it is quite different. We are perfectly justified in saying that there is hardly anyone who could glean an idea of the Sistine Madonna, or of an unknown, distant landscape simply from a description. If you have a lively imagination, you may be able to form some sort of picture from a description, but it is still true to say that only he who can see for himself, can grasp things in sensory existence. So that in this existence understanding must come after seeing. That is by no means the case in higher worlds. Those who seek there, can draw out that for which they seek, put it into the forms and concepts of human ideas, and thus give it to the world. Of course, men may be entangled in materialistic or other dogmas, or they may have no will whatever to give themselves open-mindedly to what is being imparted; in that case it will not be understood. Or it may not be a man's own fault that he cannot understand it because his life and education may not hitherto have given him the facility for open-mindedly receiving these things. But anyone who is in a position to devote himself to these things without prejudice and can gather up all that comes to him by way of sound understanding and sound judgement will at length say, “However incredible these things at first appear, it is just this healthy, comprehensive, all-round thinking that leads to the understanding of them, even though one is quite incapable of seeing anything of the higher worlds.”

As I have been able to tell you in the last few days, anyone who attains to visions of the higher worlds bears images within him of his own inner life and is at first guided by what is in those images. It is the same with the understanding of things in the super-sensible world. Understanding precedes seeing, is in no way influenced by it, nor does it exercise any influence over it. Previous understanding need not in the least affect what brings man to a vision of what is completely unprejudiced and in accordance with truth. On the contrary, previous understanding and grasping of these things with all-round powers of judgement (to which, it must be admitted, there is little inclination among people nowadays) prepare the heart and soul to enter in the appropriate way into the power of vision. Thus, we must continually repeat that true occultism, true science of the spirit with sincere and earnest intention, will never draw back before the demand that we should dispassionately grasp and understand what is said, that we should try to penetrate it with sound human understanding and with powers of judgement that flow freely into every sphere. We shall then find it possible.

A good deal about these matters will be found in my book, A Road to Self Knowledge, where much that is complementary to these lectures is contained. But special mention should be made of how something significant can contribute to the purification and cleansing of the soul when the effort is made by those who seek the way of the science of the spirit out of the darkness of life. Above all, mention should be made of how to understand things and to grasp them objectively with what every man, if only he is willing, can have at his disposal in his sound power of judgement. By this way of sound understanding, by this refusal of all authority and all authorised belief, we gain special light when we come to certain refinements in occult observation.

From the whole spirit and meaning of these lectures, it will have appeared that, as the steps are taken toward initiation, it becomes increasingly a matter of each man being independent, as regards his experience, of everything for which his physical body can serve him as an instrument. He must learn to experience in his higher bodies, in his etheric body, in his astral body, and also in what may be called his ego or thought body. The essential thing at every stage of initiation is this making oneself capable of perceiving in the higher bodies. In this connection, however, it is necessary for a man to do something in order to free himself of his physical sensory body. He must consciously divest himself, strip himself of everything that binds him to the world insofar as in this linking, this binding, the physical body lends itself as a tool.

This, of course, is not possible for everyone, especially in an age as materialistic as this. It is least of all possible for those who today give their opinion about the riddles and phenomena of the universe, those who by the present, peculiar methods of education, are brought up to the belief that already in earliest youth it is possible to attain—not merely to try to do so—considered judgement about world phenomena. Why is it that so much harm is done in the world nowadays by judgements born purely out of passion and emotion? When we look through what appears in print in the world, we see that the book trade is flooded with the most immature productions arising simply out of sympathies and antipathies. Why is this? It may also be asked, “Were there not in former times, too, men who out of the darkness of life confronted the results of super-sensible investigation with hatred and aversion even as today? Were there not men of darkness such as the materialists of today, who availed themselves of every possible method that hatred, ignorance and darkness could suggest?” The answer is that there were always such men, but they never worked in the way they work today. And why? Sometimes we have to pause and make note of such things in our conscience. There have been men who have hated the world and all unprejudiced penetration into higher worlds because this may sometimes bring to light most uncomfortable facts. But such men in the past could often neither read nor write. Their level of education fell short of reading and writing. Those holding such opinions today are able by means of education to read and write, and the public at large has no power of discriminating between the various things that appear in the press nor do they know how to appreciate them at their proper value. There is not much will to develop discrimination so as to come to the realisation that, in this age, there is need for the sifting and purifying intervention of a movement that combines occultism with the science of the spirit.

Men have many difficult things to learn. Simply from the facts revealed by higher worlds, there is much to be learned. For instance, it will have to be learned that even when, through partial schooling or preparation of the soul organism or other organisms, one does penetrate into higher worlds, even then it may be possible for a good deal to remain in respect of the bond with the external world that arises by way of the physical senses. Once the boundary that is so firmly drawn between the life of the senses and spiritual life is crossed by the spiritual seer, all that still remains of certain justifiable weaknesses in sensory existence when experienced in higher spiritual vision enwraps him in darkness, in maya. Only by incessantly taking ourselves to task during the period when we are seeing into the spiritual world can we, as a being there, completely shut out all that we must necessarily have in sensory existence. Only by making sure that during spiritual vision there will be no interplay of what surrounds us in the sensory world shall we be able to see, unadulterated and free of illusion, the spiritual, super-sensible world.

Without alluding to anything in particular, let us take a definite case. Say that someone wishing to pass through the stages of initiation, or having already done so, has a personal relation to someone else based on immediate personal feeling and emotion. Let us suppose that this relation of a spiritual seer, who is about to be initiated or has already made steps toward initiation, is a definite personal relation between two human beings based on mutual attraction such as is awakened in the life of the senses, possibly out of confiding love, so that—and I mean this in a higher sense there is physical interplay between the two. Let us assume something of the kind to be present, and the one who was a spiritual seer was wishing to make investigations about the person toward whom he felt thus attracted during sensory existence. Let us also suppose him to be unable to rid himself of all this love formed in sensory existence for the person in question. It would then be practically impossible for him to learn the truth about the super-sensible being of such a personality. Oh, it is indeed necessary, however much one may love, however close a personal attachment one may feel in sensory existence, to try perseveringly to cast it all aside when trying to observe the super-sensible. It may be that one feels a personal attraction such as this, and does not free oneself from the kind of fondness for the said personality that one would have in sensory existence. Then, before the eyes of the spiritual seer, pictures of the past and future of this personality will appear, for instance, that must unavoidably be false. Complete illusion may ensue. Therefore, anyone having a serious sense of responsibility in face of what is given from the realm of spiritual wisdom cannot be too careful when revealing to the world anything that happens in his own immediate circle, in the circle of those with whom he is familiar. When there are indications of any occult results relating to what concerns the immediate personal circle of the investigator, it is always a safe rule to regard them as in the highest degree doubtful.

This is not said with reference to any particular fact. It is merely said because for every occultist it is an objective fact. With this are connected, however, things that play throughout into higher spheres, one might say. With this is connected the fact that anyone wishing to make investigations into super-sensible worlds is little adapted to get a basic conception of the right kind in relation to religious questions, if with his prejudices and personal feelings he is attached to any particular religious community, if he is more attached to one religious community than to another, or is indeed a propagandist of any religious community. One who has a leaning toward personally prompted propaganda cannot also be an objective occultist! This is a statement that must indeed be made with all severity. There are conditions that we may be allowed to bring into relation with our karma of Western culture. In a certain sense these make it not too difficult for a westerner, when he has made himself a little familiar with the basic demands of super-sensible life, to form an objective judgement as to how we should place into human evolution the great event we call the Mystery of Golgotha. For how is it that so much of the darkness of life, enters into religious life and into the way in which men understand it? Why does all that only wants to be concerned with the passing moment and has no wish to raise itself to the light of the spirit and to all that is eternal enter religious life? Because everything related to religious life is intimately bound up with all that is human egoism—not merely individual egoism, but the egoism of family, race and people. From this point of view, and because there is need that these things should be observed with complete lack of prejudices let me call your attention to a particular phenomenon.

Take an Oriental. What part does his religious life play in regard to the founder of his religion when he considers the connection of his racial or national evolution? Consider whether it is easy for an Oriental, or any other man who is not of the West, to think historically about the course of the history into which he is placed without linking this historical life with men like Krishna, Buddha, Mohammad, or Confucius. Everywhere we see that, quite as a matter of course, what is in religious life is bound up with what takes place in profane external life, and flows into the heart and soul of the people. It is impossible to imagine a Buddhist, for instance, writing a history without making Buddha the central point. This is not said as a criticism but because it is true of the men who belong to such cultural evolutions.

But now let us go to the West and look, not at dogmas, but at facts. I shall pick out a recognised historian of the West, Leopold von Ranke, who is known throughout the world for his objectivity, his calm sense of values, his quite individual way of facing things objectively. Ranke has written many chapters on historical evolution, but one remarkable thing has become known about him. He once, in the presence of a friend, revealed that he had so represented the course of history that he had never taken into account the Christ, nor the facts immediately associated with Him! He went to a good deal of trouble to write a history of the West in accordance with his objective sense without making Christ take part in it. In his old age it caused him many pangs of conscience when he had to ask, “If deeds flow into the actual historical happenings for which there are no documents nor records, can this history be said to be true?” This is not mentioned here to decide whether such a history is true or untrue—I hold it to be supremely justified—but because one of the best histories, by one of the best recognised Western historians, has been so written that Christ has been entirely omitted, that Christ was not included in the course of the history. That is a fundamentally important and significant fact. Wherever has accidental civilisation led us? Western civilisation has brought us to this, that we do not always look up to the Being Who should stand forth as the central figure of all history, had there been the right connection with Him. It is not science that has led us to this. How has it come about? Let us throw light on this matter from another point of view.

Where have the great founders of religion lived, those who were the great initiates and who gave their people what they needed out of their national substance? Is it conceivable, for instance, that Hermes should have worked on his epoch through the substance of any other people, or is it conceivable that Buddha should have worked in any other way than through the particular qualities of the race into which he was placed, or should have sent his forces into them? Now let us turn our eyes to Him Whom we do not call an initiate but know as the Personality through Whom world initiation, cosmic initiation, has worked. Did He belong to any particular nation? He was born in an unknown corner of the world, far removed from great empires, and there the events were played out. Since the Gospels and other records of the New Testament cannot be looked upon as reliable historical records, it may be said that, of all these events, none can be proved by documentary evidence. Those who joined Him as pupils and disciples did so without distinction of family, race or sex. This, then, is the difference, that whereas in former times the people looked to their racial initiates, here they turned to One Who belonged to no people, Who indeed accomplished His greatest deeds of culture among a people with whom He had not lived.

That is the great step forward out of the darkness of life to the light of the spirit that we must not misunderstand if we are in earnest about the evolution of mankind. Those are the things that have really to be considered, things that have to be effectively pointed out by the science that can be drawn from real observation of super-sensible worlds. From much that I have been able to tell you, you will see how essential it is to have some understanding of what was said by the double of Johannes Thomasius in The Guardian of the Threshold, “Thinking has a purifying force.” This purifying force of thinking really works in such a way that it leads us out of our darkness into spirit light. It leads us away from the passing moment into eternity. But it is not willingly admitted that thinking has this purifying force. There is, however, something strange about the occult nature of thinking. A materialistic science imagines that man thinks with his brain; that is simply an error. If you appreciate the whole meaning of what is said in A Road to Self Knowledge, you will also understand that the process and activity of thinking, the combining and working out of ideas, do not take place in the physical body, but in the etheric body.

In truth, in ordinary life, also, man thinks with his etheric body, but the fact that he is in ordinary life precludes his having any knowledge of the activity that takes place within him when he thinks with his etheric body. Fundamentally, man is always thinking; his etheric body is always in motion, and it is this motion that constitutes thinking. But, of all this activity in the etheric body, it is only the reflection that comes into consciousness. You must conceive of a certain relation of the etheric body to the physical body somewhat in the following way. Assume that you were walking down this hall beneath this row of windows, and that mirrors were hanging on the walls between each window. As you pass the first mirror you see your face; where there is no mirror you do not see your face, but, as you go on you again see it for there is another mirror that throws its image back to you. Your face is there all the way along, but you only see it when it is reflected. The etheric body is in a perpetual flow of thought, but it only becomes perception when the brain in the physical body reflects what is going on in the etheric body. This etheric body is there all the time, but a man ordinarily knows nothing of it. It is reflected by the brain, which is to be regarded as an instrument of reflection, and whenever life is reflected it becomes conscious. That is why the physical body must be there, so that the etheric body, which actually does the thinking, may know something of this thinking. The brain itself, however, does not think, nor does the physical body. This thinking has its seat in the etheric body, and what a man perceives in his brain is just as little his thinking as what appears in the mirror is you. When a man wishes to take the first steps toward initiation, it is in truth as if you passed before all the mirrors trying all the time to be inside yourself, and then became capable of experiencing what your form was like, so that you would perceive yourself outwardly actually from within.

Such is the ascent from life in the senses to spiritual life. Whereas man can ordinarily only perceive what is going on in his instrument of reflection—what as a reflection he sees in his brain—by means of initiation he comes to direct experience and perception in his etheric body. Then, on reaching this inner experience and perception, he comes into touch with quite another world, that of essential being. His own being, his experience, his perception, widen out beyond the objective world. What he then experiences is a world of spiritual being that he may also experience in sensory existence, as far as the periphery of what is experienced is concerned. But only then can he rise to grasping something in spiritual existence that is here only present for us as physical image. Then he can understand that the impulses of initiates did not merely flow from earthly wisdom, but that great initiates have come to their greatest impulses, moral impulses, and so forth, and work with such mighty power because all they have is not merely taken from the earth; it is received by them from what is far beyond the earth. For as soon as man gets beyond the earth, he there comes to what is bound up with earthly existence.

If through initiation he passes from earthly existence to cosmic existence, then he comes to experiences—if he is studying an initiate such as Buddha, for instance—when he can say, “He has lived on earth as Bodhisattva through many incarnations.” Whoever has learned to understand Buddhism in this connection, must of necessity become as believing as a Buddhist; he will know that in the personality of Gautama Buddha this individuality lived for the last time in a physical body. In this incarnation, however, he became Buddha and has now ascended for spiritual work in spiritual worlds, so that the spiritual vision can be directed to the passing of the Buddha individuality from earthly life to spiritual life, to association in spiritual existence. If you then trace this individuality back, you will see how, as a Bodhisattva, he passed through many incarnations. At length, however, you come to an earlier time when you can no longer say, “We are here dealing with an individuality living on the earth, “ because then you have to follow him to an earlier abode, and the change in this outstanding individuality is so represented that he grows right out beyond earthly existence. Then, at a certain time, we see the Buddha descending from another planet of our solar system, wherein he previously worked; we see him at work there, preparing himself for his earthly course. We follow him on through this course on earth as Bodhisattva, and at length as Buddha, to the point when, from being a Bodhisattva, he becomes a Buddha. We find that, whereas during his earthly incarnations his activity had indeed grown together with the earth, yet at the same time he was growing into a great cosmic whole. We see him ascend to yet another planet of our planetary system, to Mars, there to undertake a new mission closely united with his mission on earth. It is wonderful to follow how a totality appears in this way. First we see Buddha active on another planet; then he comes down to earth, and we must say, “This individuality of the initiate, Gautama Buddha, worked for a while on earth; after that, however, if we would follow him further, we must ascend to another planet.” In this way we get an unbroken line. It is thus possible to say of Buddha that he came down from another planet and, after working on earth, again ascended to a different planet, inhabited by a people who have little understanding of earthly mankind. There he continues to work, because this further work is of great significance.

Thus, in the case of many initiates, we should find how they carry into the earth from the cosmos what in the earth itself is connected with the cosmos; by means of this we should keep in view how the initiates go through cosmic wanderings. So when we try to get to the root of things everywhere, at the same time we see what irradiates our darkness, and we see how, by looking at things in an occult way, the darkness becomes filled with light.

It is curious how sometimes some people ask, “Isn't it unjust that such an Individuality as the Christ should have brought something special into the world? If that is the case, those who have lived after Christ have had some special advantage over their predecessors.” Even anthroposophists have sometimes asked this! But the souls living after Christ's appearance on earth are the same as those who were there before, so that there can be no question of injustice. We can only point to one exception in this respect, and this seems to be Buddha. He went through an incarnation in pre-Christian times, and therefore took no share in any way in what came to earth through the event of Golgotha. If we now turn our attention to where we only find darkness, to the difficulty of understanding how a soul takes leave of the earth at a certain point of time (whoever has heard my earlier lectures will know that this soul had experience in other worlds, and that it is here a question of experience on earth), if we keep all this before our mind's eye and follow it up, then it becomes apparent that Buddha was sent to the planet where he carried on his pre-earthly planetary activity by the central Individuality of the whole planetary system, by the Spirit of its central point, by Him Whom we call the Cosmic Christ. In primeval times Buddha had been sent to work on another planet, and then, as a consequence of this work, he was sent to work on earth. Whereas the earth is the planet that became the scene of the Mystery of Golgotha, Mars is the planet on which, after his work on earth, Buddha had to accomplish a similar event.

These things lie far afield and may appear inconsistent with the statement that all that is derived from initiation can be grasped with sound human understanding. We ought, however, to take what history offers, look at it together with all its connections, and it will be seen that the external course of history can here corroborate everything. If anyone denies this, it is because he has not made sufficient use of his sound judgement. This applies today to many people. By all that has been said in this course of lectures, I have wanted to call up in a picture, and also to show through the Plays, how different, powerful and mighty are the worlds we enter when we pass through the gates into super-sensible worlds. I wanted to evoke a more comprehensive picture than is possible by means of mere theories and dogmas. I wanted to represent and describe many things, not merely in words but by calling forth feeling for what is behind the Threshold where the Guardian stands.

When we survey present-day spiritual life, perhaps what sinks most deeply into the soul is all that may be said about the Guardian of the Threshold. He stands there because the human soul in ordinary existence is not sufficiently mature to live through and experience all that takes place in super-sensible worlds. He stands there for our protection. That is just as true as that the human soul, living on into the future, will have to experience more and more about super-sensible worlds. The reason why the Guardian stands there is because, were the human soul to pass into super-sensible worlds before it was ready, which can never happen on an authentic occult path, this soul would feel that it had fallen into what was infinitely fearful, infinitely terrible. This is because in their pettiness and immaturity, in their love of sensory existence and dependence on it, men could never bear all that is connected with the entrance into super-sensible worlds. Why, one cannot even approach those who want to be progressive, with all that our modern life demands! From the place from which, up to now, we have been allowed to reveal super-sensible truths, we have been obliged to point out how, in the course of the twentieth century, a super-sensible event will come to pass in the human super-sensible body when man, as if through a natural occurrence, will find the risen Christ. So much we were able to point out. But this reappearing Christ will not sail the sea in ships, nor travel in trains, nor airships. He will go into the individual being of man, into what passes from human soul to human soul. There, according to how these souls are constituted, He will be recognised by the means given in the etheric. What thus we are allowed to tell of the manner in which the risen Christ will be revealed seems feeble as compared with what will actually come to the soul of man, straight from the super-sensible world because men would like to see with physical eyes the Mighty Being Who is to come. They would like to picture Him going by airplane or travelling by sea. They would like to be able physically to touch and glorify Him Who should come. The reason is that they dread coming into actual contact, with the super-sensible.

When these things occur, they present themselves to the occultist as disguised fear and dread of truth. This is said quite dispassionately, merely as an objective statement. The occultist who recognises the Guardian standing at the boundary between physical existence and spiritual life, can see how those outside in ordinary life cannot even grasp the necessity of making a start on the path into super-sensible worlds. In truth, such personalities are all in a state of fear. They are not aware of their fear because it is disguised as a particular kind of sense of truth, as a materialistic sense of truth. But, by those confronted by the knowledge of the super-sensible world and of its super-sensible beings, it appears as a certain hatred, a state of anger, a kindling of pettiness toward that other, super-sensible world. So it may happen that, on the one side, stand those who want to have knowledge of the super-sensible worlds and, on the other, those who would know nothing of them, or who would say that objective science tells nothing about such worlds because they cannot be proved. It is the popular followers of science who deter others from approaching the Guardian of the Threshold when they say they reject super-sensible worlds by reason of their own sense of truth, their personal scientific conviction. In reality, however, it is their fear that does not let them come to the Guardian of the Threshold. The whole strength of this fear is masked behind the fight that would like to break out today in opposition to all that should come as spiritual light out of spiritual worlds into the darkness of life.

That is the representation that can be appreciated by anyone who knows the Guardian at the Threshold of spiritual existence, anyone who knows what significance super-sensible knowledge has for the whole of present-day spiritual life. The reason why you are now sitting here is that a ray of spiritual light has found its way into your souls, telling you that in all human souls super-sensible knowledge must take its hold. Because the message of this ray of spiritual light becomes ever more living, the spectators and audiences at our plays and lectures become increasingly numerous. If free play be given for the light of the spirit to speak naturally to human souls, it will then be able to stream its rays into them. But if the victory be outside with the opponents of super-sensible knowledge, then, perhaps, the light of the spirit may have for a time to be darkened; it may be obliged to withdraw; that is to say, it must be withdrawn, if I am to use such a foolish expression. Then, for awhile the world will have to go without any connection between the darkness of life and spiritual light. It is certainly necessary for those who should know something of spiritual light to learn something else again, which is to learn to observe with sincerity what is offered here in the external world by the spiritual world. Those today who still let themselves be blinded by all that is said for and against super-sensible knowledge, those who do not seek in their own souls the sure impulse that can only come from super-sensible worlds, will never be able to find this impulse.

As I have often said, what we have at present in the way of literature, what has been permitted to be given in a number of literary works by the grace of the Masters of Wisdom and of the Harmony of Feeling, contains basically what we may say has been allowed to be imparted to men by act of grace. If from this moment I could no longer either speak or write, were men only to build further upon what they already have—I myself being no longer present—if men looked for the meaning in all they have been given, they would find all that is needed.

If now at the close of these lectures, I may be permitted to speak of the connection of personal karma with the karma of this spiritual movement, we have here the possibility that, in a certain respect, all that has come into the world as objective occultism—not as the “Steiner way of thought,” for there is no such thing, but as objective occultism—can never be extinguished. No matter how much opposition may arise, it cannot mean the extinction of occultism for the future; what is here will remain. I can see proof of this in the need of our age for a spiritual movement, and in the fact that a short space of time has been granted for this spiritual treasure to be brought down into the physical world through the grace of our spiritual Guardian. So let opponents come! What is necessary may be done through their very opposition! Many people who today willingly receive the spiritual treasure of anthroposophy and are made happy by it, in face of what they should be seeing at the present time, are quite oblivious of it; in fact, they have their night-caps on! Many do not feel themselves bound to the truth, to distinguishing what should be the sole truth. Perhaps by a little harmless persecution, some of those who have their night-caps down, not only over their heads but right over their eyes and ears, will be induced to take them off. Perhaps even that may be necessary.

Yet, however things may go, now that we have reached the end of these lectures from which so much that is in truth vexatious has come to us and has been forced on us out of necessity, let us now, as usual, remember that once again we have received something from the spiritual life.

Now we are going on our several ways, one here, one there, but the light of the spirit for which we are striving and seeking in our darkness, will enable us to be together no matter where we are nor how far we may be separated in space. May the souls present here feel this communion when afterwards they meditate upon what they have heard or when they live over again the mutual love that has been shown. We have been together physically, but this will not always be so. We are together super-sensibly. Let us learn so to be together super-sensibly, that we may bear forcible witness to the existence of the super-sensible, of the super-physical world! If after having been so long together we can take such feelings away with us, our souls will then be taking with them the best that anthroposophy can give to man the love that proceeds from spiritual truth itself. If between now and the occasion when we hope to be together again, something may happen to prevent it, nevertheless one thing is always possible, that through this separation in space our being together physically may be transformed into true spiritual communion, so that in us the spiritual treasure may work and live and prosper. We have had among us men of the most varied shades of thought, but men of whose presence we are always glad even when they bring contrary opinions into our midst. It is not a matter of opinion or of contrary opinion, but rather of an honest and sincere sense of truth, and of, I would say, pledging ourselves here in sensory existence to truthfulness and honesty. Do not regard my saying this as something that must necessarily follow from the subject of these lectures. But the essential is that we should have been able in many spheres to experience the search for truth in our time.

In whatever way we may be assembled next year, and however things may turn out, let us grasp the reunion of this year as the seed of something of which, no matter what may perhaps be ahead of us, we can never be deprived. At this time I would appeal to all that your souls can feel out of spontaneous inner experience, as an echo, when you look back to these days in Munich. In farewell, I heartily greet the individual soul of each friend, looking forward to a further meeting in the sense in which those who have learned to know and therefore to love each other will always find themselves together in due season, and will always meet again.