The Rudolf Steiner Archive

We have followed the evolution of our earth so far that we have seen how, after various important events which are described by the opening of the seven seals and the sounding of the seven trumpets, in the future the earth with all its beings will pass into a kind of spiritual condition, with the exception of those who refuse to receive the Christ-principle; this refusal we have to understand as a malevolent and unintelligent spiritual opposition energetically exercised. Of course, when the earth has taken on its astral, its spiritual form, these beings too will be unable to exist in a dense material form—shall we say—in earthly substance; in the epoch following after the sounding of the trumpets, the epoch characterized by the outpouring of the vials of wrath, they will also pass over into astral forms. But the lower nature they will have acquired through not having accepted the Christ-principle will be expressed in the astral by their having essentially the animal form we have characterized, with the seven heads and ten horns. Now from all that has been said you will be able to gather what the relation is between what we call “heads” and what we call “horns”; but in connection with this the question may arise in your mind: Why is it that just certain organs which appear is the physical body are called “horns”? Why does one designate as horns the physical organs and their vestiges in the astral when the earth shall have become astral? It can easily be understood that those who have not taken up the principle of Christ must fall back again into the condition in which man was before he could partake of the Christ-principle. Man was formerly a non-individual being with a group-soul; and we have seen that during the first four ages of the Atlantean epoch he was furnished with the group-souls which are correctly symbolized by the lion, bull, eagle and human heads, but the last must be conceived of as an animal human head. We must imagine that when man reappears in the spiritualized earth and has failed to take in the Christ-principle during our epoch, he will then again appear in the old form, because he has contributed nothing towards the highest development of his previous group-soul nature; and not only in this form but with three heads more, which were added during the ages. Before the great flood of Atlantis three further ages followed after the first four.

In these three ages those who later received the Christ-principle had in a certain way the possibility of taking up three further group-soul heads; but they have transformed them, they have raised the animal nature in man to a higher stage. They will appear in a spiritualized form when the earth is spiritualized. The others, who have rejected the Christ-principle, will appear with seven heads, because there were before the flood seven ages during which the animal nature was developed. And because in the last three Atlantean ages there was bi-sexuality in contra-distinction to the first four, each head, so to speak, appears with two possibilities towards the animal nature, with male and female possibilities, so that in these three later ages each head appears with two horns; that is man with ten horns altogether. Some one might now say, “I quite understand that those who do not work upon themselves so as to strip off the form which they have and lift it up to the human, will reappear in the animal form; but I do not understand why horns are spoken of! It is quite comprehensible when heads are spoken of, but why horns?” I will now explain why one not only speaks of horns, but must speak of them. The expression is not merely to be understood symbolically, it is reality. Those who fail to take up the Christ-principle into themselves will actually appear in astral form also, but because they have so shaped their instincts that they have held fast, so to speak, to the animal group-soul, the corresponding instincts appear in the astral body which men will then have, in the form of horny protuberances. It is an actual form.

I will explain by means of a single organ how it comes about that the man who does not receive the Christ-principle will actually appear with horns when the earth has become spiritualized. Take the organ of the human larynx and the windpipe. You are continually breathing air in and out through this wind-pipe. This is an activity which man exercises. In a person who spiritualizes himself, this activity is in the service of the spiritual; but in one who does not incline towards the Christ-principle it takes on the character of the old forces belonging to the seven heads. Suppose we illustrate it in this way:

The air continually passes in through the larynx from outside. But you know that the astral body of man surrounds him. The stream of air which passes in will always be in connection with the astral. Now when the earth is spiritualized it can be seen whether the breathing of a man was the servant of the Christ-principle or the servant of the lower forces already in the world before the Christ-principle. If it was the servant of the Christ-principle it loses the form adapted to the present body. Man himself has the power to transform everything which is astral into a higher spiritualized form. If he does not take up the Christ-principle he is unable to draw out of this fleshly form that which is suited to it, and the consequence is that after the fleshly form has fallen away and disappeared, after the physical larynx has gone, this form of the astral body remains, which always comes into the larynx with the breath. This form remains in the shape of a horn. Wherever the external astral forces go in and out of man they remain adapted to the preceding animal form when man passes over into the astral form, that is, he then appears with true astral horns; these are actual astral shapes. They correspond exactly to the penetration of the astral substantiality during the earth life. These pictures do not present random symbols, they present the true form of what will one day appear. This must be clearly understood.

Let us now determine our present position in evolution in accordance with what we have already considered, in accordance with that somewhat uncongenial diagram of many numbers. We now clearly understand that the forty-nine great transformations of Saturn have passed away, the seven conditions of life belonging to Saturn (which in theosophical books are also called rounds), each with its seven conditions of form (globes); and that, further, the forty-nine corresponding Sun-conditions and the forty-nine Moon-conditions have also passed away. Man has so far passed through these 147 conditions in his earlier evolution. Added to these now come the conditions which man has already passed through during our Earth period. The first three conditions of life, which are also called the first three rounds, are behind us, and we are now living in the fourth condition of life, in the fourth round. Now as each of these rounds includes its seven conditions of form, we have completed 3 x 7 conditions during the first three earth-rounds; therefore to the 147 we must add another twenty-one. We have not yet completed the fourth condition of life, but part of it is behind us; we have finished the first three conditions of form, the almost formless spiritual conditions, the arupa, the rupa and the astral conditions, and are now in the physical. So to the 147 plus twenty-one we must add three more. Thus we have completed 171 conditions of form out of the 343 of the seven planets. You must particularly bear in mind that we are now in the 172nd condition of form, which is the physical earth. During this 172nd condition all that we have described has taken place. When this condition began, the earth was united with sun and moon. During this condition the sun and moon withdrew, and after these events man appeared as he now is upon the physical earth. Then began the Atlantean epoch, of which we have spoken. We have also said that we must again divide this condition of form, which is the 172nd, into seven epochs. The first lies in the far distant past. When it began the sun was still united with the earth. Somewhat figuratively we have grown accustomed to call this epoch the Polarian human race. It is difficult to form any idea of this epoch. Then during the withdrawal of the sun comes the race of the Hyperboreans; then, during the exit of the moon, a third, the so-called Lemurian human race. The fourth epoch within the 172nd condition of form is the Atlantean race. The fifth is the one in which we are living. Following the fourth was the great Atlantean flood. After our own will follow the epoch expressed in the Apocalypse of John by the seven seals; and then comes the one typified by the seven trumpets.

Now we know that each of these seven epochs is again divided into seven ages. Our own epoch, the fifth within the 172nd condition of form, is divided into the ancient Indian age of civilization, the ancient Persian, the Assyrian-Babylonian-Chaldean-Egyptian-Jewish, the Graeco-Latin, our own, a sixth and then a seventh age of civilization. Then follows the great War of All against All. The succeeding epoch is again divided into seven parts, expressed by the seven seals; and the epoch expressed by the seven trumpets is again divided into seven parts. If you now consider that 171 conditions of form will be added to those that have already passed away, you will have 342. One more added to this gives 343 in all; but we are living in this one, it stands in the middle. Some one might now say: “It is really a very wonderful thing that we have the good fortune to be living exactly in the middle of evolution.” This must indeed seem a curious fact to those who do not reflect further upon it, that we are living in the middle of evolution! But to one who understands the whole matter it is by no means strange. It is no more wonderful than if some one, standing in an open field in level country where he sees equally far behind and in front, finds himself in the middle of the field of vision. If he goes some distance further, he again sees equally far behind and in front. There would be entirely different conditions in evolution if we were to take our stand at another point. We are always in the middle. Man can always see equally far behind him and before him, even with the highest spiritual vision. Something else might perhaps strike one. Some one might say: “How is it that you do not say that we are exactly in the middle in other respects? For now it is no longer the case. We are in the 172nd condition of form. The exact middle would be in the fourth epoch of this, but we are now in the fifth, that is, somewhat beyond the middle. This does not exactly agree with the statement that we are actually in the middle.” Underlying this there is a remarkable fact, you may understand it by a comparison. If you comprehend this clearly, you will see that it is an important fact. It is really the case that in regard to the great main conditions we are in the middle; but in regard to the conditions which concern us immediately, we stand somewhat beyond the middle. Why is this? Imagine you are travelling through a very level country in a special railway carriage from which you can have a clear view in every direction. Suppose you are able to do this for some length of time. You have a perfectly clear view, and if at any one point in your journey you could rapidly make a sketch of the whole of the surroundings, this picture would be absolutely circular. There is only one case in which this would not be so. Imagine you are sitting in the rapidly moving train and you note the picture you see. At this moment you fall asleep and travel for a time while sleeping. During this time you are unaware of the way in which the picture is changing. You awake. Imagine that at this moment the picture you saw on going to sleep again quickly arises. It does not now agree. The reason is that you have been asleep for a certain length of time. Your picture does not now coincide with the view which is equal in every direction, for there is in addition the part you have slept through.

Let us now ask: “Is it perhaps the case that man has slept from the middle of his evolution up to our age?” It might be explicable to us that the picture would have to agree up to that point. Now, as we have come beyond the middle, it would be possible, if we have slept, that the picture may have altered a little. Has man been asleep? In the occult sense humanity has been asleep since the middle of the Atlantean epoch, because that was the time when the whole human race, as such, lost the ancient dim spiritual vision. From the spiritual point of view man sank as if into a state of sleep. He began to turn his attention to the sense world, and thus, from the point of view of the spiritual world, to pass into a state of sleep; and only when he has regained the higher vision will he have a free view, so to speak, in every direction. There will then no longer be this disarrangement of evolution, there will be the same distance behind and in front. Since the middle of the Atlantean epoch man has, in fact, been asleep, by reason of his being unable normally to participate in the sight of the spiritual worlds if we leave Initiates out of account—somnambulists also, if you will—we have to say that man does not see; for seeing means really to look into the world. As regards the spiritual world humanity is asleep, and it will continue to sleep for a time. For the period since the Atlantean epoch the statement of John's Gospel holds good: “The light shone into the darkness and the darkness comprehended it not.”

Thus in this division there is hidden an important truth, the truth that humanity is living in a dark age, the age of darkness, and the Christ-principle has come in this age in order that humanity might be led forth into the age of light. For this reason it was correct to put the present position of evolution not in the middle, but beyond the middle, because in Atlantis begins the dark age which will continue into our sixth age, when the elect appear in white garments, when they appear as the first of those who are again able, under ordinary normal conditions, to have the spiritual world around them and the age of darkness will have passed away. Then appears the age of which it must be said, “The light shines in darkness and the darkness comprehends the light.“ For this reason the dark age will also be called the time when man directs his gaze only to the physically material world in the normal condition and does not see the spiritual world behind it. We shall now connect this with what has already been said regarding evolution. When evolution has progressed beyond the seventh epoch, beyond the epoch indicated by the sounding of the trumpets, the earth then spiritualizes itself and passes over first into the astral, then into the lower devachanic and finally into the higher devachanic condition. Afterwards it returns to the same conditions by condensing more and more from the finest spiritual; and the condition comes which usually is described as the fifth round, which again will have seven conditions of form, and in the middle will again pass through a development of what must be characterized as seven successive epochs, or, shall we say, race conditions.

Now let us, even if it be somewhat difficult, look a little more deeply into the following conditions of our earth evolution. Let us turn our gaze to a quite definite point in our future evolution just as we have been considering the present stage. Let us start with our present, namely the 172nd condition. Prior to this 172nd condition the Earth had already completed three sub-conditions; the 172nd condition is the Earth itself. Three have already been completed and it is now in the fourth of these conditions. First, however, we are considering only the conditions of form. We reckon that we are in the fourth condition of life or fourth round. Granted this is so and we say: In this fourth condition of life or round we have already passed through three conditions of form and are now in the fourth. Now we ask further how many of the sub-conditions have we passed through? The first, second, third and fourth. The last was the Atlantean epoch. This is now completed. We have passed through four conditions and are now in the fifth, the post-Atlantean. Of this fifth epoch we have again passed through four sub-conditions, namely, the ancient Indian, the ancient Persian, the Egyptian and the Graeco-Latin, and are now in the fifth age. So that we can say: before our immediate present stage of evolution we have completed 344 conditions. These 344 conditions which we have completed are described is Apocalyptic language as the number of evolution. When, therefore, it is asked: What is the number of evolution, our evolution, the answer is 344. This is not read according to the system of ten, but according to the system of seven. Three conditions (out of the seven) have been gone through, and four conditions (out of the next smaller seven) have been gone through, four conditions (out of again the next smaller seven). That is what is really meant by the 3-4-4. One must not simply read it like other numbers, but it contains, written side by side, the number of stages passed through.

When the earth is spiritualized and has developed to its next conditions, then more and more stages will have been gone through. And the time will come, when six conditions of the first kind, six of the second and six of the third will have been passed through. Just as we now have the 344 as the number of evolution, in the future when six conditions of life, six root-races and six sub-races have been gone through, the number 666 (six six six) will apply, read in the manner above described, which is the method used by the writer of the Apocalypse. Thus a time will come when the number 666 is the number of evolution. This will only be in a very distant future, but this future is already being prepared at the present time. Three great main conditions have been completed and we are now living in the fourth. But when we have reached the great War of All against All, and the epoch indicated by the seven seals has passed away, we shall have gone through six of the middle kind. When the first trumpet sounds we shall have passed through six such main races, and when the first six trumpets are over, we shall have experienced 66. By then humanity will have had opportunity to prepare for the terrible time which will follow much later, when not only 66 but 666 will be reached. All that lies in the future is already being prepared now. The time following the War of All against All, the time after the seventh trumpet is sounded, will see men who, through excluding themselves from the Christ-principle, will have attained a high degree of evil, of the tendency to sink into the abyss. By then these men will have sunk so low that when the point of time 666 comes they will be able to descend very low into evil, into the abyss of evil. Men will have taken into themselves, already in the period after the great War of All against All, when the seventh trumpet sounds, the germs of this descent into the abyss in the far-distant future. It will, indeed, for a long time be possible for those who have taken these germs into themselves to turn round and be converted, to tarn back in their development in order even then to receive the Christ-principle. But the first predisposition will have been formed, and those who retain this tendency will no longer be able—when that distant future has come which is indicated not by 466, but by 666—to change this tendency into good. They will succumb to the frightful fate of which we have still to speak.

Thus we see that with this number six, whether it is simply six, or six six, or six six six, there is connected something bad for human evolution. We are now living in the fifth main period and the fifth sub-period. After the great War we shall pass into the sixth epoch; but before the great War there comes, immediately after our fifth age, the sixth age, described as the community of Philadelphia. We know that we are now living in the age in which materialism has spread abroad in humanity. We have seen that throughout the past centuries man has become more and more materialistic; but this materialism is such that a person can turn back from it at any time. The materialist still has opportunity to turn back. It is, however, necessary that at the present time a spiritual conception of the world should gain ground, a conception which leads a small group of people to this spiritual view of the world. This group will comprise those who will lay the first foundation of the great bond of brotherhood in the sixth age, which will follow ours, and is, therefore, not very far distant, whose beginning lies in a period which can be counted in millennia and these will bring about the very first division in humanity. Those who persist obstinately in materialism, and also the others who will be inclined to accept a spiritual conception, who in the small group develop a bond of brotherhood, both these will appear in the sixth age. This simple 6 can already be fateful to many, but not finally binding, for a turning back will still be possible. But mankind will continue beyond the great War of All against All. Five epochs will have passed away; the number 6 will appear again. Afterwards the allurements and temptations will come again in order further to develop the materialistic tendencies and to carry them over into the epoch of the sounding of the trumpets, and when six great periods and six smaller periods have passed away, after 66, there will already be very considerable tendencies in humanity which will not be so easy to put increasingly right as they are at the present time. Thus we see that actually the world of bad tendencies works within humanity and that the good men separate from the evil more and more clearly and definitely, in accordance with the description of the writer of the Apocalypse. The last great separation will be when the number six will be fulfilled not only for the shorter periods but for the longer ones. This will be the case when our earth has completed its six kingdoms of life or six rounds, and within the seventh. round, again six conditions of form. When the earth has finished this, the tendencies of humanity to evil will have developed to a frightful form. Nothing but evil will then appear, with frightful devastating power, in those who have remained evil.

How often, therefore, during our earth period, does humanity have the opportunity to succumb to the enticement of evil? First of all in the age after the present one, before the great War. Then man has a second and a third opportunity as well. This descent into evil is gradual. In the period when the earth has passed over into a spiritual condition, we have to deal first of all with two possibilities. When the earth reunites with the sun, those who have received the Christ-principle will then be ripe to rise into the forces of the earth which unite with the sun; those who have received the possibility of evil will be excluded. These are, as it were, in such a position that they thrust the sun away from themselves, they thrust away that which would enable them to unite with the forces of the sun. They are opponents of this union. For this reason the Apocalypse rightly designated the power, the Being, who leads men so to spiritualize themselves that they can unite with the sun as the Christ, and—as we shall hear—as the Lamb. One describes the Christ-Being as the genius of the sun who unites himself with the earth and becomes also the genius of the earth. He has already begun to be this since the event of Golgotha. But there is also an opposing principle to the Lamb, there is also a Sun-Demon, the so-called Demon of the Sun, that which works in the evil forces of man, thrusting back the force of the Lamb, and it works un such a way that a certain amount of the human race is thrust out of the evolution which leads to the sun. These are the opposing forces of the sun, they are in opposition to the sun; at the same time they are the forces which have the tendency to be entirely thrown out of our evolution when the 666 stages have passed away; they will then be finally cast into the abyss. So that we may say: At the time when the earth is united with the sun there will be excluded, not only that which is symbolized by the beast with seven heads and ten horns, but also that which is furnished with forces which are in opposition to the sun. All this is destined to disappear into the abyss when the 666 is fulfilled.

Now this 666 has always been written in a very mysterious way; we shall see later on that there is every reason to wrap in mystery the facts with which we are now dealing. And for this reason it was written 666. In the mysteries from which the writer of the Apocalypse received his initiation, they wrote 400 200 660. This is written in such a way that the laity cannot understand it. This 666 was hidden; it was to remain a secret. By having 200 here and by the other figures being transposed, an illusion is produced. Now in the kind of writing used by the Initiates there is a certain principle which consists in letters being expressed by corresponding numbers. Several of the remarkable people who, in the course of the nineteenth century wished to unravel the mystery of the number 666, hit on the principle of expressing letters by numbers, but they have come upon it in such a way that one can say: they have, indeed, heard sounds but not in unison. For they have acquired in an unclear way that which I have now explained and which has always been taught esoteric-ally. They have found out that when one sets letters of the Hebrew alphabet in place of these numbers the result is “Nero,” thus they have concluded that 666 signifies Nero. This is not the case. 666 must first be written: 400 + 200 + 6 + 60, and then one can arrive at the meaning. Then one must write 400 as ת (Tau), 200 as ר (Resh), 6 as ו (Vau), and 60 as ם (Samech). These four letters express the four numbers 400 + 200 + 6 + 60. In a wonderful way they have been drawn into this mystery, wonderful through the ingenuity of those who have drawn them in because at the same time the sounds of these four letters have again a special occult significance. What must the number 666 actually mean if it is to express what we have explained? It must mean the principle which leads man to complete hardening un the external physical life, so that he simply thrusts from him that which enables him to strip off the lower principles and to rise to the higher. That which man has obtained as physical body, etheric body, astral body and lower “I,” before it rises to the higher—these four principles are at the same time expressed by these four letters, by Samech, the physical body, Vau, the etheric body, Resh, the astral body and Tau, the lower “I.” Thus we see that that which is hardened in these four principles before they begin their divine evolution is expressed by the four letters. The writer of the Apocalypse can truly say, “Here is Truth!” For wisdom is contained in it. “Let him who hath understanding consider the number 666.”

And now we will read it. We read it in this way, from right to left.

We have then to supply the vowels and it reads: Sorath, Sorath is the name of the Sun-Demon, the adversary of the Lamb. Every such spiritual being was described not only by name but also by a certain symbolical sign. For Sorath, the sun-demon, there was this sign:

a thick stroke bent back upon itself and terminating in two curved points.

Now we must understand the writer of the Apocalypse rightly. At the very beginning he makes a remarkable statement, which is usually wrongly translated. The beginning of the Apocalypse runs, however “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him to spew unto his servants things which must shortly come to pass; and he sent and signified it by his angel unto his servant John.” “Signified it.” By this we must understand that he gives the important, the real content of the mystery hi signs. He has put that which 666 expresses in signs. What he describes is the sign, and he describes it thus (Rev. xiii. 11): “And I saw another beast coming up out of the earth; and he had two horns like a lamb.” These are nothing else than the two strokes at the upper part of the sign, and in order to conceal this he simply calls the two strokes here “horns.” It was always the case in the use of the mystery language that one uses a word in more than one sense so as to make it impossible for the uninitiated to understand without special effort. That which he describes here: “It has two horns like a lamb,” is the symbol of the sun-demon, which in the mystery language is expressed by the word “Sorath,” and this, if we convert the several letters into their numbers is expressed by the four numbers, 400, 200, 6 and 60. This is a very veiled way of expressing 666. Thus we see that the writer of the Apocalypse is referring to the adversary of the Lamb. When the earth passes over into the spiritual, the forms of men appear below in such a way that they receive their old animal form. The beast with the seven heads and ten horns appears. But there also appears their seducer, the adversary of Christ, who has the great power to prevent their returning to the sun. Man himself cannot be the adversary of Christ, he can only let slip the opportunity to take the Christ-principle into himself, through what dwells in him as false power; but there is such an adversary, the sun-demon. This appears as soon as there is something that can become his prey. Before the prey is there, before the men are there with the seven heads and ten horns, there is nothing to lead astray, the tempter has nothing to seek there; but when men appear with such inclination, then comes the tempter, and he appears as the second beast and seduces them!

Thus at the moment when the earth passes over into the astral condition there appears that in man which existed in him when the earth was still clothed with a covering of water. The human animal appears. From the water one sees the beast with seven heads and ten horns raise itself. Through this human animal having left the earth unused, Sorath, the adversary of the sun, the tempter, can now arise out of the earth, through this he can approach man and tear him down with all his might into the abyss. Thus from this time on we see a being drawing close to man, which has a fear-fill power! What, then, does this being do in order to lead man into the most horrible things one can think of? For man to be led into what is merely immoral, what is already known to normal man, it did not need this monster which appears as the sun-demon. Only when that which in a good sense distinguishes the beings who bring salvation to the human race, only when spiritual eminence is turned to its opposite, only when spiritual power is placed in the service of the lower “I”-principle, can it bring humanity to the point when the beast represented with two horns gains power over it. The misuse of spiritual forces is connected with that seductive power of the beast with the two horns. And we call this abuse of the spiritual power black magic, in contradistinction to its right use, which is white magic. Thus through the separation of the human race there is prepared at the same time the power to attain greater and greater spiritual conditions on the one hand, and thereby to obtain the use of the spiritual forces, and arrive at white magic; while on the other hand abuse of spiritual forces is a preparation for the most fearful kind of power of the two horned beast—black magic. Humanity will finally he divided into beings who practise white magic and those who practise black magic. Thus in the mystery of 666 or Sorath is hidden the secret of black magic; and the tempter to black magic, that most fearful crime in the earth evolution, with which no other crimes can be compared, this seducer is represented by the writer of the Apocalypse as the two-horned beast. Thus there appears on our horizon, so to speak, the division of humanity in the far distant future; the chosen of Christ, who finally will be the white magicians, and the adversaries, the terrible wizards, the black magicians who cannot escape from matter and whom the writer of the Apocalypse describes as those who make prostitution with matter. Hence this whole practice of black magic, the union which takes place between man and the hardening in matter is presented to him in the spiritual vision of the great Babylon, the community made up of all those who carry on black magic; in the frightful marriage, or rather, unrestrained marriage, between man and the forces of prostituted matter. And thus in the far future we see two powers confronting each other; on the one hand those who swell the population of the great Babylon, and on the other hand chose who rise above matter, who as human beings unite with the principle represented as the Lamb. We see how on the one hand the blackest ones segregate themselves in Babylon, led by all the forces opposing the sun, by Sorath the two-horned beast, and we see those who have developed front the elect, who unite with Christ, or the Lamb, who appears to them; the marriage of the Lamb on the one hand, and that of Babylon, the descending Babylon, on the other! We see Babylon descend into the abyss, and the elect, who have celebrated the marriage with the Lamb, rise to the exercise of the forces of white magic. And as they not only recognize the spiritual forces but also understand how to operate then magically, they are able to prepare what they possess in the earth for the next planetary incarnation, Jupiter. They sketch out the great outlines, so to speak, which Jupiter is to have. We see the preparatory forms, which are to survive as the forms of the next earth incarnation, as Jupiter, come forth by the power of the white magicians: we see the New Jerusalem produced by white magic. But that which is described as Sorath—666—must first be expelled. That which has succumbed to the principle of the two-horned beast, and hence has hardened itself into the beast with the seven heads and ten horns, is driven forth. The power by which the sun-genius overcomes those who are expelled, which drives them down into the abyss, is called the countenance of the sun-genius and the countenance of the sun-genius is Michael, who, as the representative, so to speak, of the sun-genius, overcomes the beast with the two horns, the seducer, which is also called the great dragon. This is represented to the seer in the picture of Michael who has the key, who stands by the side of God and holds the opposing forces chained.

Thus is characterized in the Christian-Rosicrucian esotericism the casting out of those who belong to 666, and the overcoming of the dragon, the seducer. Thus before our gaze to-day there appears that which the writer of the Apocalypse has enveloped in mystery, which one must first discover by removing the veil, and of which he says, “Here is Wisdom.” “Let him who hath understanding count the number of the beast” (that is, the two-horned beast); “for this number is 666.”

Those who have connected this with Nero have made a poor response to this challenge of the writer of the Apocalypse. For you see from what cosmic depths the wisdom must be drawn which leads to the explanation of the number 666. Although to-day you may have to make efforts to understand this passage, you must not forget that it is necessary to make efforts to understand the deepest mysteries. And the Apocalyptist has veiled these deepest mysteries of cosmic evolution. He has veiled then because it is good for man that the most important mysteries should be expressed in symbols. For apart from all the rest, through the powers exercised to decipher the signs is gained much of that which at the same time lifts us up to the good powers themselves. Let us not be cast down because we have to wind our way through a scheme of numbers. If you had had to grasp what was given secretly in the ancient schools in such numbers, before anything else was given, you would have had to go through very much more. There the pupils were obliged in be silent for a long time and quietly listen when nothing but numbers, 777, 666, etc., were explained again and again, at first in their formal meaning. And only when they had grasped this meaning were they allowed to know its actual significance.

Certain dread concerning the destiny of humanity in the future may come over one who enters with feelings into the thoughts which occupied us at the close of our last lecture. A picture of this future of humanity was brought before us which on the one hand was great and powerful, filling one with bliss, showing the future condition of the man who has understood the mission of our present age upon the earth, who has received the Christ-spirit and is thereby able to keep pace with the necessary spiritualization of our earth, a glorious blessed picture of those men who are called in exoteric Christianity the “Redeemed,” and, not quite appropriately, the “Elect.” But the opposite picture had also to be put before you, the picture of the abyss in which is found a humanity which was not in a position to receive the Christ-spirit, which remained in matter, which excluded itself, so to speak, from the spiritualizing process leading into the future; and this portion of humanity which has fallen away from the spiritualized earth, and, in a certain sense apart from it, advances towards a frightful fate. When the beast with the seven heads and ten horns glowers at us from the abyss, the beast led astray by the other frightful being, the two-horned beast, this picture gives rise to fear and horror, and many aright ask: “Is it not hard and unwise on the part of Providence to lead a number of men to such a frightful fate, and in a way, to condemn them to the abyss of evil?” And the question might arise, “Would it not have been more fitting for a wise Providence to have averted this frightful fate from the very beginning?”

In answer to these questions, we might, to begin with, say something abstract, theoretical—and it already signifies a great deal for one who can grasp this theoretical statement is his feeling: It is extremely wise that Providence has taken care that this terrible fate is possible for a number of men. For if it were impossible for man to sink into the abyss of evil, he would not have been able to attain what on the one hand we call love and on the other freedom; since to the occultist freedom is inseparably connected with the idea of love. It would be impossible for man to develop either love or freedom without the possibility of sailing down into the abyss. A man unable, of his own free decision, to choose good or evil, would be a being who would only be led on a leading-string to a good which must be attained of necessity and who had no power to choose the good of his own fully purified will, by the love which springs from freedom. If it were impossible for man to follow in the trail of the monster with the two horns, it would also be impossible for him to follow God out of his own individual love. It was in accordance with a wise Providence to give the possibility of freedom to the humanity which has been developing through our planetary system, and this possibility of freedom could be given on no other condition than that man himself has to make the free choice between good and evil.

But this is only an empty theory, you might say, and man rises but slowly to the point where he not only says this in words and accepts it in moments of speculation as a kind of explanation, but also experiences it in his feeling. Seldom does man now rise to the thought, “I thank thee, O wise Providence, that thou hast made it possible for me to bring thee a love which is not forced but springs up free in my own breast: that thou dost not force use to love thee, but that thou hast given me tine choice of following thee.” Nevertheless, man has to rise to this feeling if he wishes really to feel this theoretical explanation. We can, however, offer additional comfort, or, rather, another quieting assurance, from a clairvoyant observation of the world. For it was stated in our last lecture that at the present day, he alone has au almost unalterable tendency to the abyss who is already entangled in some way in the prongs of the two-horned beast, which leads men to the practice of black magic. Even for such as now fall into the arts of black magic it will still be possible to withdraw in the future. But those who do not come at all into any contact with black magic arts (and this is for the time being the case with most people), these may have nevertheless a certain tendency in the period following the War of All against All, towards final evil, but the possibility in the future of turning back again and following the good will be far greater than the compulsion unconditionally to follow evil.

From these lectures it may be seen that for those who now turn to a spiritual conception of the world, in order to live beyond the great War into the sixth epoch (which is represented by the opening of the seals), there is the possibility to receive the Christ-principle. They will be able to receive the spiritual elements which are laid down in the age signified by the community at Philadelphia, and in the near future they will manifest a strong tendency towards becoming spiritual. Those who turn to-day to a spiritual view receive a powerful disposition to enter upon the upward path. One must not fail to recognize how important it is even at the present time that a number of persons should not turn a deaf ear to the anthroposophical world conception, which is bringing to humanity in a fully conscious manner the first germs of spiritual life, whereas formerly this took place unconsciously. That is the important thing, that this portion of humanity should take with it the first conscious tendencies towards the upward movement.

Through a group of people dedicating themselves to-day to the foundation of a great brotherhood which will live over into the epoch of the seven seals, help will be provided for those others, who to-day still turn a deaf ear to the teachings of Spiritual Science. For the present, we have still to go through many incarnations of the present souls before the great War of All against All, and again up to the decisive point after the great War. And afterwards in the epoch of the seals we also have to go through many changes, and men will often have the opportunity to open their hearts to the spiritual world-conception, which is to-day flowing through the anthroposophical Movement. There will be many opportunities, and you must not imagine that future opportunities will only be such as they are to-day. The way in which we are able to make the spiritual view of the world known to others is still very feeble. Even if a man were now to speak in such a way that his voice were to sound forth directly like the fire of the spirit, that would be feeble as compared with the possibilities which will exist in later and more developed bodies in order to direct our fellow-men to this spiritual movement. When humanity as a whole will have developed higher and higher in future ages, there will be very different means through which the spiritual conception of the world will be able to penetrate into men's hearts, and the most fiery word to-day is small and weak compared with what will work in the future to give all souls the possibility of the spiritual conception of the world—all the souls now living in bodies in which no heart beats for this spiritual conception of the world.

We are at the beginning of the spiritual movement, and it will grow. It will require much obduracy and much hardness to close the heart and mind to the powerful impressions of the future. The souls now living in bodies which have the heart to hear and feel Anthroposophy, are now preparing them-selves to live in bodies in the future in which power will be given them to serve their fellow-creatures, who up to that time had been unable to feel this heart beat within them. We are only preparing for the preparers, as yet nothing more. The spiritual movement is to-day but a very small flame; in the future it will develop into a mighty spiritual fire.

When we bring this other picture before our minds, when we let it enter right into our feelings, then there will live in us a very different feeling and a very different possibility of knowledge concerning this fact. To-day it is what we call black magic into which men can, in a certain way, fall consciously or unconsciously. Those who are now living thoughtlessly, who are quite untouched by the spiritual conception of the world, who live in their comfortable everyday torpor and say, “What does it matter to me what these dreaming Anthroposophists say?” these have the least opportunity of coming into the circle of black magic. In their case they are now only neglecting the opportunity to help their fellow-men in the future in their efforts to attain the spiritual life. For themselves they have not yet lost touch. But those who to-day are beginning in an unjustifiable way to oppose the spiritual life, are really taking up into themselves in the very first beginnings the germs of some-thing one might call black magic. There are very few individuals to-day who have already fallen into black magic in the frightful sense in which this horrible art of humanity must really be spoken of.

You will best understand that this really is so if I give you but a slight indication of the way in which black magic is systematic-ally cultivated; then you will see that you may search high and low among all your acquaintances and you will find no one of whom you could believe that he was already inclining to such arts. All the rest is fundamentally only the purest dilettantism which may be easily got rid of in future ages. It is bad enough that in our day things are sometimes praised with the intention to defraud people—which in a certain sense is also the beginning of the art of black magic. It is also bad that certain ideas are percolating, which—although they do not absolutely belong to the black art—nevertheless mislead people; these are the ideas which rule the world to-day in certain, circles and which can flourish amidst materialistic thought, but which although not without danger, will not be irreparable in the next epochs. Only when a man begins to practise the ABC of black magic is he on the dangerous path to the abyss. The ABC consists in the pupil of a black magician being taught to destroy life quite consciously, and in doing so to cause as much pain as possible and to feel a certain satisfaction in it. When the purpose is to stab or to cut into a living being with the intention of feeling pleasure in that being's pain, that is the ABC of the black arts. We cannot touch upon the further stages, but you will find it horrible enough when you are told that the beginning in black magic is to cut and stab into living flesh, not like the vivisector cuts—this is already bad enough, but the principle of vivisection finds its overthrow in the vivisector himself, because in kamaloca he will himself have to feel the pain he has caused his victims, and for this reason will leave vivisection alone in the future. But he who systematically cuts into flesh, and feels satisfaction in it begins to follow the precipitous path of black magic, and this draws him closer and closer to the being described as the two-horned beast.

This seductive being is of quite a different nature from man. It originates from other world periods; it has acquired the tendencies of other world periods and will feel deep satisfaction when it meets with beings such as those evil ones who have refused to take up inwardly the good which can flow from the earth. This being has been unable to receive anything from the earth; it has seen the earthly evolution come but has said, “I have not progressed with the earth in such a way that I can gain anything from earthly existence.” This being could only have got something from the earth by being able to gain the rulership at a certain moment, namely, when the Christ-principle descended to the earth. If the Christ-principle had then been strangled in the germ, if Christ had been overcome by the adversary, it would have been possible for the whole earth to succumb to the Sorath-principle. This, however, did not take place, and so this being has to be content with those who have not inclined towards the Christ-principle, who have remained embedded in matter; they in the future will form his cohorts.

Now in order to understand these hosts more clearly we must consider two ideas which in a certain sense may serve as a key to certain chapters of the Apocalypse. We must study the ideas of the “first death” and the “second death.” What is the first death and what is the second death of man, or of humanity? We must form a clear picture of the ideas which the writer of the Apocalypse connected with these words. To this end we must once more recall to mind the elementary truths concerning human existence.

Consider a human being of the present day. He lives in such a way that from morning when he awakes until evening when he falls asleep he consists of four principles: the physical body, etheric body, astral body and the “I.” We also know that during his earthly existence man works from his “I” upon the lower principles of his being, and that during the earth existence he must succeed in bringing the astral body under the control of the “I.” We know that the earth will be followed by its next incarnation, Jupiter. When main has reached Jupiter he will appear as a different being. The Jupiter-man will have thoroughly worked from his “I” upon his astral body; and when to-day we say, The earth-man who stands before us in the waking condition has developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I,” we must say of the Jupiter-man: he will have developed physical body, etheric body, astral body and “I” but he will have changed his astral body into spirit-self. He will live at a higher stage of consciousness, a stage which may be described as follows: The ancient dim-picture-consciousness of the Moon, which existed also in the first epochs of the earth-consciousness, will again be there with its pictures as clairvoyant consciousness, but it will be furnished with the human “I,” so that with this Jupiter-consciousness man will reflect as logically as he does now with his day-consciousness on the earth.

The Jupiter-man therefore will possess spiritual vision of a certain degree. Part of the soul-world will lie open to him; the will perceive the pleasure and pain of those around him in pictures which will arise in his imaginative consciousness. He will there-fore live under entirely different moral conditions. Now imagine that as a Jupiter-man you have a human soul before you. The pain and pleasure of this soul will arise in pictures before you. The pictures of the pair of the other soul will distress you, and if you do not remove the other's pain it will be impossible for you to feel happy. The pictures of sorrow and suffering would torment the Jupiter-man with his exalted consciousness if he were to do nothing to alleviate this sorrow and thus at the same dine remove his own distressing pictures which are nothing but the expression of the sorrow around him! It will not be possible for one to feel pleasure or pain without others also feeling it.

Thus we see that man gains an entirely new state of consciousness in addition to his present “I”-consciousness. If we wish to understand the importance of this in evolution we must once more turn our attention to man when asleep.

During this condition the physical body and etheric body lie on the bed, and his “I” and astral body are outside. During the night (if we speak somewhat inexactly) he callously abandons his physical and etheric bodies. But through being able to liberate himself during the night from his physical and etheric bodies, through being able to live at night in the spiritual world, it is possible for man during this earthly existence to work transformingly from his “I” upon his astral body. How does he do this?

To describe this clearly let us take man in his waking state. Let us suppose that in addition to his professional work and duties he devotes a short time to higher considerations in order to make the great impulses his own which flow from John's Gospel, from the words: “In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God ...” Let us suppose that he allows to rise within him the great pictures brought before him in John's Gospel, so that he is always filled by the thought: “At the beginning of our era a Being lived in Palestine whom I wish to follow. I will so order my life that everything may be approved by this Being; and I will consider myself as a man who has taken this personality as his ideal.” But we need not intolerantly think that John's Gospel alone may be taken. It is possible in many other ways to immerse oneself in something which can fill the soul with such pictures; and although in a certain way we must describe John's Gospel as the greatest revelation which has originated in humanity, which can exercise the most powerful effect, we may, however, say that others who devote themselves to the Vedanta wisdom or immerse themselves in the Bhagavad Gita or in the Dhammapada, will also have sufficient opportunities in following incarnations to come to the Christ-principle just through what they have thus acquired. Let us suppose that during the day a man fills his mind with pictures and ideas such as these, then his astral body is laid hold of by these thoughts, feelings and pictures, and they form forces in his astral body and produce various effects in it. Then when man withdraws from his physical and etheric bodies at night, these effects remain in the astral body, and he who during the day has been able to immerse himself in the pictures and feelings of John's Gospel has produced something in his astral body which during the night appears in it as a powerful effect. In this way man works to-day during the waking consciousness upon his astral body.

Only the Initiate can become conscious of these effects to-day, but men are gradually developing towards this consciousness. Those who reach the goal of the earth evolution will then have an astral body completely permeated by the “I,” and by the spiritual content which it will have formed. They will have this consciousness as a result, as a fruit of the earth evolution, and will carry it over into the Jupiter evolution. We might say that when the Earth period has thus come to an end man will have gained capacities which are symbolically represented by the building of the New Jerusalem. Man will then already look into that picture-world of Jupiter; the spirit-self will then be fully developed in him. That is the goal of the earth evolution. What, then, is man to gain in the course of his earthly evolution? What is the first goal? The transformation of the astral body. This astral body which to-day is always free of the physical and etheric bodies at night will appear in the future as a transformed portion of the human being. Mau brings into it what he gains on the earth; but this would not be sufficient for the earth evolution. Imagine that man were to come out of the physical body and etheric body every night and were to fill his astral body with what he had acquired during the day, but that the physical and etheric bodies were untouched by it. Man would then still not reach his earthly goal. Something else must take place; it must be possible for man during his earthly evolution to imprint, at least in the etheric body, what he has taken into himself. It is necessary for this etheric body also to receive effects from what man develops in his astral body. Man cannot yet of himself work into this etheric body. Upon Jupiter, when he has trans-formed his astral body, he will be able to work into this etheric body also, but to-day he cannot do this; he still needs helpers, so to speak. Upon Jupiter he will be capable of beginning the real work on the etheric body. Upon Venus he will work upon the physical body; this is the part most difficult to overcome. To-day he still has to leave both the physical and etheric bodies every night and emerge from them. But in order that the etheric body may receive its effects, so that man shall gradually learn to work into it, he needs a helper. And the helper who makes this possible is none other than Christ, while we designate the Being who helps man to work into the physical body as the Father. But man cannot work into his physical body before the helper conies who makes it possible to work into the etheric body. “No man cometh to the Father, but by me.” No one acquires the capacity of working into the physical body who has not gone through the Christ-principle. However, when he has reached the goal of earthly evolution, man will have the capacity—through being able to transform his astral body by his own power—to work upon the etheric body also. This he owes to the living presence of the Christ-principle on the earth. Had Christ not united him-self with the earth as a living being, had he not come into the aura of the earth, that which is developed in the astral body would not be communicated to the etheric body. From this we see that one who shuts himself up by turning away from the Christ-principle deprives himself of the possibility of working into his etheric body in the way that is necessary during earthly evolution.

Thus we shall be able to characterize in another way the two kinds of men which we find at the end of the earth's evolution. We have those who have received the Christ-principle and thus transformed their astral body, and who have gained the help of Christ to transform the etheric body also. And we have the others who did not come to the Christ-principle; who also were unable to change anything in the etheric body, for they could not find the helper, Christ. Now let us look at the future of mankind. The earth spiritualizes itself, that is, man must lose completely something which he now un his physical existence considers as belonging to him. We can form an idea of what will then happen to man if we consider the ordinary course of his life after death. He loses the physical body at death. It is to this physical body that he owes the desires and inclinations which bind him to the ordinary life; and we have described what man experiences after death. Let us take a person who is fond of some particularly dainty food. During life he can enjoy this, but not after death. The desire, however, does not cease, for this is seated, not in the physical body but in the astral body, and as the physical instrument is absent it is impossible to gratify this desire. Such persons look down from kamaloca to the physical world which they have left; they see there all that could give them satisfaction, but they cannot enjoy it because they have no physical instrument for the purpose. Through this they experience a burning thirst. Thus it is with all desires that remain in man after death and are related to the physical world, because they can only be satisfied through physical instruments. This is the case every time after death; each time man sees his physical body fall away, and as something remains in him from this physical body it still urges him to the ordinary world of the physical plane, and until he has weaned himself from this in the spiritual world he lives in the fire of desire. Now imagine the last earthly incarnation before the spiritualization of the earth, the laying aside of the last physical body. Those who are now living on the earth will have progressed so far through the Christ-principle that, in a certain way, it will not be very difficult for than to lay aside the very last physical body; they will, however, be obliged to leave something, for all that can give pleasure from the objects of this earth will have disappeared once and for all from the spiritual earth. Think of the last death possible in our earth evolution, think of the laying aside of the last physical body. It is this last death of the incarnations which in the Apocalypse is called the first death, and those who have received the Christ-principle see this physical body as a sort of husk which falls away. The etheric body has now become important to them for, with the help of Christ, it has become so organized that it is for the time being adapted to the astral body and no longer desires and longs for what is below in the physical world. Only through all that has been brought into the etheric body through the help of Christ do men continue to live on in the spiritualized earth. Harmony has been produced between their astral and etheric bodies by the Christ-principle.

On the other hand there are those who have not received the Christ-principle. These do not possess this harmony. They too must lose the physical body, for there is no such thing in the spiritual earth. Everything physical must first be dissolved. It remains as desires for the physical, as the unpurified spiritual, as the spiritual hardened in matter. An etheric body remains which the Christ has not helped to be adapted to the astral body, but which is suited to the physical body. They are the souls who will feel hot fires of desire for physical sensuality; in the etheric body they will feel unappeasable, burning desire by reason of what they have had in the physical life and which they must now do without. Thus, in the next period, after the physical has melted away, we have men who live in an etheric body which harmonizes with the astral body, and we have others whose etheric body lives in discord because they desire what has fallen away with the physical body.

Then in the further stage of evolution there comes a condition where the spiritualizing of the earth has proceeded so far that there can no longer be even an etheric body. Those whose etheric body completely harmonizes with the astral body lay aside this etheric body without pain, for they remain in their astral body which is filled with the Christ-Being. They feel the laying aside of the etheric body as a necessity in evolution, for they feel within them the capacity to build it up again for them-selves because they have received Christ. Those, however, who in this etheric body desire what belongs to the past cannot retain this etheric body, when all becomes astral. It will be taken from them, it will be torn out of them, and they now perceive this as a second dying, as the “second death.”

This second death passes unnoticed over those who have made their etheric body harmonize with the astral body through the reception of the Christ-principle. The second death has no power over then. But the others feel the second death when they have to pass over into the future astral form. The condition of humanity will then be such that those who have reached the goal of evolution will have entirely permeated their astral body with Christ. They will be ready to pass over to Jupiter. Upon our earth they have made the plan of the Jupiter evolution. This is the plan which is called the New Jerusalem. They live in a new heaven and a new earth, that is, Jupiter. This new Jupiter will be accompanied by a satellite, composed of those who are excluded from the life in the spiritual, who have experienced the second death and are, therefore, unable to attain the Jupiter consciousness.

Thus we have such men as have pressed forward to the Jupiter consciousness, who have attained to spirit-self; and such beings as have thrust away the forces which would have given them this consciousness. They are those who only upon Jupiter have attained to the “I”-consciousness of the earth, who exist there, so to speak, as man now exists on the earth with his four members. But such a man can develop himself only on the earth, the earth alone has the environment, the ground, the air, the clouds, the plants, the minerals which are necessary to man if he wishes to gain what may be gained within the four members. Jupiter will be quite differently formed, it will be a new earth, soil, air, water, everything will be different. It will be impossible for beings who have only gained the earth consciousness to live a normal life; they will be backward beings.

But now comes something more for our comfort. Even on this Jupiter there is still a last possibility, through the strong powers which the advanced will have, to move those fallen beings to turn back and even to convert a number. Only with the Venus incarnation of the earth will conic the last decision, the unalterable decision. When we reflect upon all this, the thought we recently considered will be seen in a new light. It will no longer call forth anxiety and disquietude, but only the determination: “I will do everything necessary to fulfil the earth mission.”

When we consider all this in the right way, a mighty picture of the future of humanity opens up before us and we get some idea of all that was in the illuminated soul of the writer of the Apocalypse who wrote down what we, in a faltering way, can discover from a study of it. Every word of the writer, indeed every turn of expression, is significant. We must only try to understand it clearly. Thus, according to our last lecture, in 666 we are referred to the beast with the two horns, and then a remarkable statement is made, “Here is Wisdom! Let him that hath understanding count the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.” An apparent contradiction, but one of the many contradictions which are to be found in every occult work and exposition. You may be sure of one thing; that an exposition which runs so smoothly that the ordinary human intellect can find no contradiction is certainly not based on an occult foundation. Nothing in world-evolution is so shallow and trivial as that which the human intellect, the ordinary intelligence perceives as free from contradiction. One must penetrate more deeply into the substrata of human contemplation and then the contradictions will disappear. One who observes how a plant grows from root to fruit, how the green leaf changes into the petals, these into the stamens, etc., may say, “Here we have contradictory forms, the flower-leaf contradicts the stem-leaf.” But one who looks more deeply will see the unity, the deeper unity in the contradiction. So it is with what the intellect can see in the world. It is precisely in the deepest wisdom that it sees contradictions. Hence it must not disturb us when here in the Apocalypse we meet with an apparent contradiction: “Let him that hath understanding ponder over the number of the beast, for it is the number of a man.”

We must once more consider by what means it may be possible for a man to be led astray by the two-horned beast. We have pointed out that since the middle of the Atlantean epoch man has slept through the higher spiritual development, so to speak. This sleep still exists at the present time. But it was necessary. If it had not entered in, that which we call the intellect would never have been developed. Man did not possess this before our epoch, he acted from other impulses. His pictures drove him to action, without reflection. He had lost this ancient gift of spiritual vision and in its place he has developed intellect and thereby descended into matter. This has drawn a veil over the spiritual world, but at the same time the intellect has been acquired. This may be a great hindrance to the spiritual development. At the very last it will be nothing else but this misguided intellect, this misguided intelligence, which can prevent man from coming to the Christ-principle; and if those who at last succumb to the two-horned beast could look back upon what has dealt them the worst blow they would say, “The tendency to descend into the abyss only came later, but that which darkened the Christ-principle for me was the intellect.” Let him who has this intellect reflect upon the number of the beast; for only through man having become man, that is to say, through his being gifted with this ego-intellect, can he succumb to the beast 666. For the number of the beast is at the same time the number of a man. And only one possessing intellect can perceive that this is so. It is the number of that man who has let himself be misled by his intellect. Deep truths such as these are concealed in these things.

Thus you see that the writer of the Apocalypse gives you a great deal when you reflect upon the various intimations we have given. He expresses many of the truths known to Spiritual Science. He gives what he promises. He leads man to the vision of what is to come; to the vision of the beings and powers which guide the world. He leads us to the spirit in the first seal, and to the form presented in the last seal. Here we see how the regular form of the New Jerusalem is revealed to him spiritually. The regularity of the New Jerusalem is indicated in the last chapter by its description as a cube. To describe all that is in this last picture would take us too far.

It is now necessary to point out for what purpose the Apocalypse was written. I should indeed have to say a great deal if I were to describe this in detail, but you cm at least take away with you one hint, one which we find at a certain part of the Apocalypse. The writer of the Apocalypse says: A time will come when that high degree of consciousness will actually have developed, when man will see the beings who direct the world, the beings represented by the Lamb and by the appearance of the Son of Man, with the flaming sword. We are referred to this in tones which contain within them that assurance of which we have spoken. The writer of the Apocalypse, who is a great seer, knows that in ancient times men were gifted with a dim clairvoyance. We have described this and have seen how at that time inns were the companions, so to speak, of beings in the spiritual world, and themselves saw the spiritual world. But who has lost this gift of seership? Who? We must now put this forward as an important question. We have seen that fundamentally it was lost by those men who were led to the physical plane, the physical life, when the second half of the Atlantean epoch began. Man looked upon the solid formation of our earth, upon the clearly outlined objects of our earth. The ancient clairvoyance disappeared; he became self-conscious, but the spiritual world was closed to him. The formations which un ancient times filled the air like an ocean of mist, disappeared; the air became clear, the ground distinct. Man descended to the visible earth. This took place comparatively late, it coincided with the attainment of the present intellect, the present self-consciousness of man. Now let us remember what has been said about this earth as well as about the great Event of Golgotha. If some one had observed the earth at that time from a distance with spiritual vision at the moment when the blood flowed from the wounds of the Redeemer, he would have perceived that its whole astral aura changed. The earth was then permeated by the Christ-force. Through this event the earth will be able to reunite with the sun. This power will grow. This is the power which preserves our etheric body from the second death. Christ becomes the Earth-spirit more and more, and the true Christian understands the words, “He who eats my bread treads me underfoot”; he considers the body of the earth as the body of Christ. The earth as a planetary body is the body of Christ; of course at present this is only at its beginning. Christ has still to become the Earth-spirit; He will smite himself fully with the earth, and when the earth later unites with the sun, the great Earth-spirit, Christ, will be the Sun-Spirit.

The body of the earth will be the body of Christ; and men must work upon this body. They began this when they entered upon the earth; they have worked upon this earth with their forces. In all traditions one can fund something which is little noticed because little understood. Thus, for example, in the Persian tradition we find that since the time men lost clairvoyant consciousness they have become beings who have pierced the earth. While they live in the phases which they pierce the earth—that is, while they work upon the earth—during this time when they pierce the body of Christ they do not see with clairvoyant consciousness the guiding powers and, above all, they do not see the Christ face to face. But the writer of the Apocalypse refers to the time when not only those who at that time had spiritual vision will see the spiritual, but when humanity will again have come to the stage where it is possible to see the Christ-Being himself. All will see him, including those who have pierced him, these who had to pass through a portion of their evolution in cultivating the earth, in the piercing of the earth, they will see the Christ. For these sayings are such that they lead those who gradually learn to unveil them deep into the imaginative world of the Mysteries, of the Apocalyptic language.

What, then, did the Apocalyptist wish to write, what did he wish to represent? This question will be answered if we briefly refer to the origin of the Apocalypse. Where do we first fund what is written down in the Apocalypse? If you could look back into the Mysteries of ancient Greece, into the Orphic and Eleusinian Mysteries, if you could go back into the Mysteries of ancient Egypt, Chaldea, Persia and India, you would find the Apocalypse everywhere. It existed, it was there. It was not written down, but lived from one generation of priests to another, through the generations of the Initiators, where the memory was so vivid that one could master such abundant material. Memory even in much later times was far better than ours; we need only remember the singers of the Iliad, how they went about and sang their songs from memory. It is comparatively not long ago, that memory has deteriorated so much. In the Mysteries these truths were not written down, but they lived from generation to generation of the Initiators. Why was the Apocalypse written? It was intended to serve as an instruction for those who brought the pupils into Initiation. At that time the one who was to be initiated was led out of the physical body and remained as if dead. But when he had been led out, the Initiator enabled him to see in his etheric body that which later through the Christ-impulse he would be able to see spiritually in the physical body. Thus the ancient Initiates were the prophets who could point to Christ; and they did so. They were able to do this, because Christ is shown in this Apocalypse as due to appear in the future. The Mystery of Golgotha had never yet taken place where a person in the physical body could set forth the whole drama of Initiation historically. Where then could the possibility of this Event of Golgotha be comprehended? At a certain stage the Initiates had comprehended it outside their body. That which took place on Golgotha had taken place before in another consciousness. There might have been thousands there, and yet the Event of Golgotha could have passed by them unnoticed. What would it have been to them? The death of an ordinary condemned person! It was only possible to understand what took place on Golgotha where the contents of the Mysteries were known. The Initiators could say, You can understand the one whom we have shown you during the three and a half days, whom the prophets announced to you, if you use the means which the Mysteries can give you. The Apocalyptist had received the tradition of the Mysteries orally; he said, “If I am permeated with what can be experienced in the Mysteries, Christ appears to me.” Thus the Apocalypse was nothing new; but its application to the unique Event of Golgotha was something new. The essential thing was that for those who have ears to hear it was possible, with the help of what is in the Apocalypse of John, to penetrate gradually to the true understanding of the Event of Golgotha. This was the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. He received the Apocalypse from the ancient Mysteries; it is an ancient sacred book of humanity and has only been presented externally to humanity by the disciple whom the Lord loved and to whom he bequeathed the task of announcing his true form. He is to remain until Christ comes; so that those who have a more illuminated consciousness will be able to understand him. He is the great teacher of the true Event of Golgotha. He has given to man the means by which he can really understand the Event of Golgotha. At the beginning of the Apocalypse the writer says (I have tried to translate the first few words in such a way that they convey the true meaning): “This is the revelation of Jesus Christ which God gave unto his servant, to show in brief what must needs come to pass. This is put in symbols and sent through an angel to his servant John, who wrote these things.” He wishes to describe it in brief; what does this mean? It means in other words: “If I were to describe in detail all that will take place from now up to the goal of the earth evolution, I. should have to write a very great deal, but I will show it to you in a short sketch.” This the translators who could not penetrate into the spirit of the Apocalypse have translated as “to show what must shortly come to pass.” They thought that what is described in the Apocalypse was to happen in the near future. But it ought to read: “I will briefly describe what will take place.” The original text fully admits of the true interpretation I have tried to give in the introduction to Seals and Columns.

We have said much in these lectures concerning this ancient sacred record of the human race, much concerning the secrets which the Lord imparted to humanity by the disciple whom he loved. You may have learnt from this that the Apocalypse is a profound book full of wisdom, and have perhaps many tines during these considerations been troubled because much in it is so difficult to understand. Now I should like to say one thing at the close of our studies. All that I have been able to say to you corresponds exactly to the intentions of the writer of the Apocalypse, and was always taught in this way in the schools which have kept to the intention of the writer of the Apocalypse. But it is by no means all that could be said and one can go much deeper into the truths, into the foundations of the Apocalypse. And if we were to penetrate fully into all the depths, what I have been able to say to you would seem only like a first superficial presentation. It cannot be done in any other way, we can at first give only a superficial presentation. One must go through this. One has to begin with the elementary things, and then, when one has gone a little further, greater depths will be found. For below the surface there is a very great deal of which we have been only able to unveil a very little. If you go further along the path which in a certain way you have begun by turning your attention to the exposition of the Apocalypse of John, you will gradually penetrate into the depths of the spiritual life. You will come into depths which cannot possibly be expressed to-day, because they could not be brought into consciousness, because no one has yet ears to hear. The ears must first be prepared to hear, by such explanations as have now been given. Then they will gradually be there, cars able to hear the Word which flows at such profound depths through the Apocalypse. If you have been able to receive a little of what could be imparted, you must be aware that only the most superficial things could be given, and of these only a few observations. May it give you the impulse to penetrate more and more deeply into what can only be surmised through these lectures. If I were to say only what can be said about the surface, I should have to lecture for still many, many weeks. These lectures could only be a stimulus for further study, and those who feel the impulse to penetrate more deeply into the Apocalypse will have received them in the right way.

Dear attendees! It is often said that there is a deep truth to the statement that the greatest mystery of all is man himself. Although this saying is often uttered, in its depth, in its full meaning, it is not understood. Rather, the full mysteriousness of man is felt and sensed deeply enough only in the rarest of cases. In truth, not only does man face himself as a significant, difficult-to-solve riddle when he looks beyond the most superficial things in life, but also every fellow human being faces us, in a certain, and very deep way, as a riddle in turn. And what should interest us today in particular is that when we talk about the human puzzle, we cannot hope to have solved this human puzzle with a single answer; but if we proceed not theoretically but in accordance with life, we must say: in this human puzzle there are basically as many individual puzzles as there are people in the world.

Within certain limits, each person can be seen as a separate puzzle within the greater puzzle of the human race. And what we are to deal with today is intimately connected with this view of the human being: that peculiar coloring of the human being, that fundamental tone of human individuality, which we encounter in one person in this way, in another differently, and which we describe with the word: the human temperament.

Everything that can enlighten us about the diversity of human nature is encompassed by this word, and we may hope that if we are able to shed some light on the mystery of human temperaments, we may also gain a handle to solve the human puzzle a little in its most diverse forms. Of course, when we approach this human puzzle not in a general, theoretical way, but in a lively, individual way, we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, will somehow lead us to solve the human riddle in its most diverse forms. temperament; if we approach this human puzzle individually and full of life, then we must not succumb to the great illusion that an external knowledge of the human being, a mere sensual-physical knowledge of the human being, could somehow lead us further.

For spiritual scientific or, let us say, theosophical consideration, as we have often been able to mention here, the human being is a very diversely composed being, and we only understand him if we not only look at the outside of himself, at what eyes see and hands touch, what the outer senses can perceive, what the human, brain-bound mind can dissect, but we can only hope to fully understand man little by little if we also consider the supersensible aspects of human nature. And since it has often been said which are the members of human nature, they need only be mentioned briefly today, insofar as we need to do so in order to then enter into the consideration of human temperaments.

That which eyes see, hands grasp, and the physical organs can perceive in a person is, after all, only the outermost link of the human being for spiritual scientific observation, the link of the human being that it shares with the entire seemingly lifeless mineral nature around it. Beyond that, we have the next link of the human being, a link that cannot be perceived by the outer senses, which already belongs to the supersensible, invisible links of human nature. And while we call that which man has in common with inanimate nature the physical body, we call this supersensible first the etheric or life body. We find it in every living being, in plants, which it permeates and organizes just as much as it does in human beings, and in animals. In spiritual science, we do not speak of this etheric or life body in the same way that materialists speak of life, as if life were just something that emerges as an effect from the physical body and the interaction of the forces and substances of the physical body. No, for spiritual science this etheric body is not only something independent, something that the consciousness of the human being, which can see behind the world of the senses with clairvoyance, really sees as reality, just as the physical eyes see the physical body, but this etheric body is actually that which underlies the physical body as the first, as the actual creator. The physical body is not the cause but the consequence of the finer, the etheric or life body. Just as – this image has also been used here often – just as for someone who looks into a container in which there is water, ice can condense out of this water into lumps, so the spiritual is around us, and the physical is the condensation of the spiritual. Thus, within the human etheric body, the physical body, with all its substances and powers, is a condensation of the etheric body. And so it is with all living beings.

A third link in the human being, which he has in common only with animals, is the so-called astral body, the carrier of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires, urges and passions, ideas and thoughts. The astral body is the carrier of all that surges up and down within the human soul. Just as the physical body is a densification of the etheric body, so the astral body is a densification of the astral body. The objection raised by the materialist is a very cheap one: Can you imagine that somewhere in the world there are passions, thoughts, feelings, desires and suffering flying around freely? Must they not be bound to a physical body? Of course, if someone has a vessel of water in front of them and only begins to see when the water has condensed into ice, then they may deny the water. So the materialist is quite right when he says that only the physical exists for him; but the one who recognizes the higher organs of the human being, which Goethe describes as spiritual eyes, must also recognize that our world is truly only filled with tangible and visible content, but with entities, with processes that only exist in passions and drives and desires that weave through each other and that can condense into the etheric and the physical. In short, we distinguish the third limb in the human being, the so-called astral body, the bearer of lust and suffering, joy and pain, desires and thoughts.

And as a fourth link, we have always recognized in the human being that which encompasses the name of the human being, which can only sound from within if it is to denote what it is applied to; as a fourth link, we denote the bearer of the human ego, of human self-awareness. The I can only name itself; only from within can it give itself the name “I”; the name “I” cannot possibly reach your ears from the outside if it is to mean you.

This is only a rough sketch of how we think of the human being as a four-fold creature. All these aspects interact in the most diverse ways. The I has an effect on the physical, etheric and astral bodies, the astral body on the I, the physical and etheric bodies, and so on, and so on. These four members of human nature are in a perpetual interaction. It is important that, in addition to this interaction, which can always be observed by clairvoyant consciousness during waking, we also consider the changes that can occur in the context of these four members, first of all those changes that take place every day in the alternation of the waking day consciousness and the sleeping consciousness.

When a person falls asleep, his physical and etheric bodies remain in bed. The astral body and the ego leave. In the morning, the ego and the astral body plunge back into the etheric and physical bodies and make use of the organs through which the environment can be seen as physical. The human being also exists at night, even if unconsciousness spreads around him. He just cannot see anything because, in his current state of development, he does not have spiritual ears and eyes in his astral body. He has to use the physical organs, and he can only do that if he submerges into the physical body. That is the change that a person goes through day after day. Human nature undergoes yet another change, the change that is characterized by the meaningful words that basically already encompass a large part of the human mystery: birth and death – or life and death.

Today, once again, we must briefly call ourselves to mind what happens to a person when they pass through the mysterious portal of death. It is not like when a person falls asleep. In death, the physical body remains as a corpse, and the I, the astral body and the etheric body separate from this corpse. What does not occur between birth and death, that the etheric body leaves the physical body, happens in death. We can see from this that throughout life, and indeed both during waking and sleeping states, the etheric body is a fighter against the disintegration of the physical body. Where the etheric body does not fight against disintegration, the physical body follows its own substances and forces and disintegrates, decays. This is the nature of the physical body, which it unfolds as a corpse. That it does not reveal them during life, that it does not follow the chemical-physical forces as it does in death, is due to the etheric body, which is a loyal defender against the disintegration of the physical body between birth and death. And when a person has passed through death, then, having discarded his physical body, he can live on in the spiritual world with the fruits that he has harvested in the life between birth and death, which he has harvested through his experiences. The etheric body, which withdraws from the physical body, contains a true image of all experiences between birth and death, and it is something like an essence, like an extract of the etheric body, which we take with us into the following life after death, into the life in the spirit. We take something like an extract of our etheric body with us, which usually also detaches from us as a second corpse after a few days, and this extract remains with us for all eternity. It contains something like a brief excerpt from the last life; we take this with us into the future life.

Now, however, we still have a task after death. We have to undergo a kind of probationary period, a period of getting out of the habit. You can best imagine this time if you start from a simple consideration, if you say to yourself: the astral body of man is the carrier of pleasure and suffering, of instincts, desires, all pleasures. The physical body is not the carrier of these; it only provides the instruments for enjoyment. The enjoyment itself lies in the astral body. But you take the astral body with you after death. Immediately after death, it is exactly as it was in life. Let us assume that a person was a gourmet. After death, he still has his astral body; it always longs for tasty morsels. But there is no possibility of satisfying this craving. It can only be satisfied if you have a palate. The physical body is discarded, so the astral body craves the pleasures of life after death. It is the same with everything that can only be satisfied by physical tools. All of this must be weaned off within a certain period of time.

This period of disaccustoming, during which man learns to have no more desire for anything that can only be satisfied by the physical organs, is usually called the time of desires, Kamaloka. For when man has gone through this period of disaccustoming, when he no longer desires anything that can only be satisfied by the physical senses, then he discards the third corpse. First he has discarded the physical body, then the etheric body, which dissolves a few days after physical death, and then he discards the unusable part of the astral body. And then man is that purely spiritual being who undergoes a time of purely spiritual life.

The transition from the period of weaning from physical passions makes itself felt in that man first has, as the innermost part of his experience, something that can be described as a feeling of bliss. Now begins the time when he works towards a new existence, when he begins to apply what he has learned in previous lives, what he has received as fruit, and to gradually develop it into a spiritual archetype, of which the next life can become an image. Creation is always connected with a feeling of bliss. And that creation in which we gradually form the archetype for a next existence, that is supreme bliss. I will not even talk about the bliss associated with every spiritual production, but there is bliss when only - forgive the comparison - the hen participates in the production of the new chicken. There is a bliss that permeates a being in all creation. It is therefore also a bliss that a person experiences when he is free from all the limitations of the physical world, when he brings everything together spiritually, which, when it is spiritually developed, leads to a new existence on this earth.

When the human being has fully developed his spiritual core, which takes a long time, then the descent into the physical world begins again, and then it is the case that the human being surrounds himself with three new bodies. Depending on the person's qualities, the substances from the astral world attach themselves, forming his new astral body. We can compare this formation with, say, when we have spread metal filings on a thin plate and pass a magnet underneath; these metal filings then arrange themselves into all kinds of shapes, in which they then shine. In the same way, the astral substance arranges itself around a spiritual core during the descent.

Then the person is led to a pair of parents and, through the connection of this spiritual core of the being, which has incorporated its astral cover, with what takes place between the parents, the further human covers around this core of the person's being are formed. In the interaction of what descends with the parents, a new etheric body and a new physical body are formed around the descending, so that every time we see a person enter into an existence, we have to say to ourselves: This human being receives from two sides what he actually is for this earthly existence. The inner being descends from spiritual heights. Because the human being is spiritual and astral, he descends from higher worlds. Through that which is inherited from generation to generation, from ancestors to descendants, what we see as the outer shell is formed around the human being, but also much of what belongs to the etheric body, to the fighter against the disintegration of the physical body.

And now, having realized that the human being is formed from two sides, let us ask ourselves what would happen if one or the other extreme were to prevail. Let us assume that a person brings with him only a few qualities from the spiritual heights, then his astral body would also have a little richer content, and what is structured around the person as an etheric and physical shell would have an overwhelming effect. That is to say, a person who brings only poor content with him would be in all his ancestors, a repetition, so to speak, within the line of inheritance. The richer the content that a person brings down, the more that which goes from the ancestors to the grandson, that which lies in the line of inheritance in general similarities, the more it is driven into the individual being changed. People who descend into poverty from a spiritual point of view are, so to speak, overwhelmed by the external, which closes around them through race, tribe, family and class. They have the character traits of their people, their family. People who descend with a rich content, with a significant inner development of strength, emerge as sharply defined individuals. They also absorb what passes from ancestors to descendants, but the similarity recedes in the face of the individual traits that are a consequence of the spiritual development of the individuality. We can see this when we look at “primitive” people, or especially when we turn our spiritual gaze back to the primeval times of the earth. The people of a nation resemble one another. Why do they resemble one another? Because the people who incarnated in such primeval times have experienced few past stages of existence, have learned little in earlier stages, and therefore bring little with them from the spiritual. With more developed peoples we have more developed stages; there we find people who have many, many lives behind them, who have absorbed rich, rich fruits from earlier lives and therefore bring down into the spiritual what they have carried up as fruits through many lives, and shape an individual existence for themselves. But every human being in our present period of humanity must, so to speak, make this compromise; he must descend and encase himself in a physical shell, which he must take from the line of inheritance. This duality is present in every human being and forms a whole. On the one hand, the human being is similar to what flows down through the ancestors; on the other hand, he is a being of his own.

Of course, materialistic thinking objects to such things in particular. For example, it is said: Oh, what are you talking about the descending human being; it's all inherited! We can also find the qualities of the greatest genius in our ancestors. There are people who take Goethe or Leibniz or this or that person and research them up to the earliest ancestors, and then find the characteristics that emerge in genius scattered among the ancestors, one characteristic in this person and one in that. And so these people tell us: You can see that genius is based solely on inheritance. Genius is very rarely found at the beginning of a generation, but usually at the end of it, so it has inherited its characteristics from its ancestors. – What a strange logic this is! For anyone who considers this logic will find that it says the opposite of what it claims. This logic wants to prove that genius inherits its characteristics. It would prove it if it could be shown that Here is a genius, the son has inherited his qualities, the grandson again and so on. But that is not the case. That is precisely what is denied. The genius is infertile. It is rare that one can simply inherit genius. If the genius is at the end of a line of succession, this does not mean that this individuality flows down in its entirety in the line. Of course, the physical and etheric bodies, which are the instruments of the human essence, come from the line of inheritance, and it is not surprising that they show the characteristics that can be read together here or there. That is just as clever as telling someone who has fallen into water and been pulled out: This one is wet. That is self-evident. So it is with the characteristics that one inherits. The logic that is usually applied to somehow refute the well-established fact that a person flows together from the two lines, one of which goes from generation to generation and is called race, people, tribe, family, but the other lies within the spiritual world, where a person progresses from life to life and, in long periods between death and a new birth, prepares for that new birth in a purely spiritual world, is wrong. These two lines merge.

How is the agreement created between what comes from the spiritual world and what lies within the line of inheritance and is determined by words like people, family? How is a balance created? This balance can only be created by the fact that the qualities that distinguish people in that they belong to a race, a tribe, a family, that these are countered by others that are similar to them and combine with those that come from below. If we were only the automata that reproduce in the line of inheritance, we would say: This is how we are. We look up the line of ancestors and find the qualities that are in our physical and etheric bodies in our ancestors. We find not only the shape of the nose and forehead, hair color and physiognomy in our ancestors, but also inner qualities, which come close to what can be described by the word “moral”, are inherited. There are concepts, for example about sensations and feelings, that are native to this family or that race or that tribe. How do they reproduce? If reproduction only took place from physical body to physical body, then people would only be similar in relation to this. The fact that they also agree in such qualities, which are character traits of a tribe, stems from the fact that an etheric body belongs to that which also continues through the generations. And just as the physical body reacts from below up onto the etheric body, which properties of the physical body from below up imprint on the etheric body after it is formed, these become the racial peculiarities. Originally, the physical body came into being as if through a kind of condensation of the etheric body. But once it is there, it absorbs impressions from the outside world. These in turn have an effect on the etheric body, and to the extent that they have an effect, they are transmitted within the line of inheritance. Thus, the etheric body of each person is endowed with very specific, typical, stereotyped, even racial characteristics, due to the fact that the latter is, so to speak, a descendant of some ancestor.

The spiritual core of the human being, in which he descends into the physical world, must adapt to what is available to him in this physical world as a cover. This must offer something that is related to the properties of the etheric body. In other words, the descending ego must now be able to imprint such properties into the etheric body that the etheric body, through these properties imprinted on it from above, from the astral body, can form a compromise between what comes from below and what comes from above. When a person enters a new existence, certain qualities flow together in the etheric body, which is connected to the physical body below and other qualities flow through it from above, which are imprinted on it by the descending astral body.

The properties that are imprinted on the etheric body by the descending astral body establish the human temperament. This is where temperament is located. The human being brings this temperament with them. They do not yet have it when they only have the astral body; they have it because this astral body, as it descends, has to connect with the etheric body, which has certain characteristics of the race, of the people. Since it develops certain qualities, so to speak, that correspond to the lower nature, but are also appropriate to the original, core characteristics of the human being, temperament is something that is both individual and that, so to speak, casts its tone over the general characteristics that the human being shares with race, tribe, and family. If we only inherited the peculiarities of race, tribe, and family, we would be average figures; if we came from above with our core nature and now had to drive into it, so to speak, then little would fit. What we bring with us, what we may have developed thousands of years ago, would not match well with what we find. What can adapt as an individual to the stereotyped general from below is temperament.

Thus, through his temperament, the human being escapes from being a completely individual being. For through his temperament, the human being moderates his full obstinacy as an individual being, dulling it. But at the same time, he removes the stereotyped nature. Therefore, we also see that people's temperaments arise from the mixing of basically a few basic temperaments.

You all know these four basic colors of temperament, which are referred to as melancholic, phlegmatic, sanguine, choleric. Actually, there are not only these four, but seven shades of temperament. Only the choleric temperament is basically separate. The sanguine, phlegmatic and melancholic temperaments all have an active and a passive side, so they occur in two ways. This gives seven colors, just as seven colors can be distinguished in the rainbow, seven tones in the musical scale. The eighth is just a repetition of the prime. But that should concern us less. We should realize that we can never ascribe any one of these temperaments to any one person, but that each person is a mixture of all these temperaments; only the predominant one of the four makes him appear melancholic or phlegmatic or sanguine, and depending on that, we describe him as such or such. The melancholic contains the others, only they recede in comparison to the melancholic basic mood. You could easily prove this by looking at someone like Napoleon, for example; he certainly had a choleric temperament. Think about how phlegmatic he was in very specific things that didn't interest him. He could be very phlegmatic in certain fields. A person has one prominent characteristic, but is composed of the four, or rather seven, basic colors of temperament.

Now the question arises: when is a person primarily a melancholic, a phlegmatic, a sanguine, a choleric? It has already been said in the introduction that all aspects of human nature interact with each other. Thus, all higher aspects of human nature interact with the physical body. If the human being had no ego, no individually constituted ego, then his blood and the whole blood circulation would not be as they are. The blood circulation is the expression of the ego. The ego is purely spiritual, but the effect of this spiritual, this ego, is the blood in its whole circulation. How the blood circulates in us is the expression of our ego. The expression of the astral body is the nervous system – at least one expression. The expression of the etheric body is the glandular system. Only that entity can have a glandular system that is permeated by an etheric body; for the etheric body permeates the physical body with the glandular system, which is necessary for all life, for nourishment and reproduction. Only a being that has an astral body can think and feel, because an astral body permeates the physical body with a nervous system. And only a being that is an ego can have a blood circulation, because that is the physical expression of the ego. Thus, every limb that we count among the higher limbs has an effect on the physical body. But conversely, the physical body has an effect back again.

We have seen that the temperaments have their particular expression in the etheric body. Through this balance, which takes place between what is imprinted in the etheric body from above when a person descends and what comes into the etheric body from below in the form of certain qualities, the temperament arises. If, in a particular incarnation, a person has a physical body that makes a stronger impression on the etheric body than the astral body and the ego, then what is called the melancholic temperament develops in that person. Due to the nature of the descending astral body, because it does not, so to speak, fully master the laws of the physical body, this physical body, with all its heaviness, has an effect on the ether body, and this is how the melancholic temperament arises. In particular, in the case of a person, it must be that part of the physical body that is the physical instrument of thought, of the spiritual life in general, which, in the case of the melancholic temperament, has a retroactive effect on the etheric body, on the person's entire life circumstances. Therefore, the person who, through his astral body and ego, cannot, so to speak, master the physical brain, that which is otherwise the physical instrument for thoughts, will be under the control of his thoughts. The physical body forces the etheric body to do this, so that the person is not master of his thoughts, but is ruled by them.

This is the cause of the melancholic person's tendency to brood. They drag themselves along behind their masses of thoughts and feelings, which keep coming back, because the physical body has the predominant influence on the ether body. And wherever the physical body has a predominant, that is, too great an influence on the human being, wherever his life proves to be such that he cannot be fully controlled by the higher limbs, the consequences of this are evident, even when they become pathological. It is only the consequence of the fact that the higher members of human nature cannot exercise their full dominion over the physical body when, for example, epileptic seizures or nervous headaches occur. As soon as the melancholic character tends towards the pathological, such things can occur.

That is why in Greece, where they still had clairvoyant feelings, they called a person a melancholic when the densest part had the most predominant influence. The physical body is what humans have in common with mineral beings, which are grouped together under the concept of the earth. The ancient Greeks still knew what is no longer known today, namely that the human physical body is formed by its various fluids. These were not merely seen as something physical, nor were they merely examined in the chemical retort. Rather, it was known that they underlie everything spiritual. therefore designated this temperament, in which the physical body exercises the predominant influence, as black — melas —, as the melancholic temperament, because one saw the secretion of juices in man, which causes the tenacity of the physical body, whereby the latter withdraws from the normal influences of the higher limbs and thus makes man a dark, introspective being. For through his higher members, man belongs to a much greater totality. Through his etheric and astral bodies and his I, he would feel himself as belonging to the great whole, the great cosmic I, the Godhead. That which is the human being's spiritual being is precisely what makes him personal, in that he is enclosed in the skin of his physical body. This is why the melancholic person finds it so difficult to detach from their physical existence, because this physical aspect exerts the predominant influence.

If the etheric body is not strongly influenced by either the physical body or the astral body and I, if the impulses of the family, the peculiarities of the race, are not strongly pronounced, if there is no strong effect on the etheric body from above and below, if it remains neutral, so to speak, then the phlegmatic temperament arises. The phlegm is the balanced part of the etheric body. In this case, neither the physical nor the astral body and the I have a particularly strong effect. In this case, the person has the balanced phlegm of the forces of his ether body surging through him. You can see this in the physical form of the body, which you can see projected outwards. You can see how, in the phlegmatic person, the etheric body receives no strong influences from above or below, and so what is surplus in life settles in the fat. You can see in every detail the consequences of what we must see in the spiritual; the physical is in every detail an expression of the spiritual. We can only understand the physical if we grasp the spiritual.

When the distribution of the faculties is such that the astral body has a predominant effect on the etheric body, making its impressions particularly strong, and suppressing what comes up from the physical body, then what we call the sanguine temperament arises. Here the astral body is active; the surging feelings and sensations are lively and animated. The person is open to all impressions from the outside world. We will soon hear that it is the ego that contains the images that arise in the astral body and have their physical instrument in the nervous system, and that the blood, the expression of the ego that contains them, is physical. In fact, the blood and nervous systems work together in a very strange way. Imagine that the blood weakens. What happens? Fantastic images, hallucinations, fantasies that do not correspond to reality appear. The right inhibitions for these hallucinative and imaginative powers are formed physically by the blood and spiritually by the ego. There is nothing pathological about the sanguine person, but he is therefore open to all impressions from the outside world because the actual ego does not yet appear strong enough. What appears strong is the astral body and the nervous system. That is why the sanguine person is open to all impressions; that is why the sanguine person is mobile because his astral body is mobile. Look at the sanguine gait of the sanguine child, how it bounces, how it is interested in this and that. If it were not the case that the child is alternately interested in this and that, then the impressions would have to be regulated by the ego and the blood.

This is the case with the choleric person. When the I and its blood are active, predominantly active, and have an effect on the etheric body, then this establishes the choleric temperament, which goes too far in the other direction, which does not rush from image to image, but instead develops forces that contain the change. These forces are there with him.

Thus we see how we learn to understand the different shades of temperament, which are caused by the impact of what comes from above and below. If the influence of the physical body on the etheric body predominates, the result is the melancholic temperament; if the etheric body is neutral, the phlegmatic temperament. If the astral body is particularly active internally, we have the sanguine temperament, and if it is the ego that is primarily given the right of mastery in the human individuality, then the choleric temperament is the result.

Once you have grasped these things in the spiritual, you will also find them distinctly manifested in the physical. Imagine choleric people, people in whom the I is strongly developed. They contain the astral body. And now this is the original creator of the physical body. The astral body has the need, the longing, to make the physical body as slender as possible, to develop it as diversely as possible. In the case of choleric people, the ego works against this, thus curbing growth. Now look around you at choleric people, and you will see the repressed growth of the physical body. I would like to draw your attention to the picture of a spruce that was a choleric person; it had precisely this expression in the physical body; and I only need to mention Napoleon and the expression of the small, stocky figure. Here, too, the restrained growth has been expressed.

In particular, the characteristics of temperament are revealed precisely in what the person can give through his or her individuality, can give in contrast to what generally characterizes him or her. You can see how the human being flows together from these two currents. The human being has firmly established forms in himself; that which is permanent, rigid in facial expression, is inherited. What is mobile becomes an expression of the individual, which comes down from the spiritual. It is into this mobile element that temperament is laid. The facial features can be an expression of rigidity, of what has been inherited; the gaze comes from the person's individuality. The gaze is the expression of temperament: the piercing gaze of the choleric, the restless gaze of the sanguine, the restrained gaze of the melancholic, and the dull gaze of the phlegmatic. As for me, take a look at the shape of the feet. Those who are connoisseurs would be able to say that this breed has this foot shape, another that. But it is different when it comes to walking. In that, we have an individual expression. At most, the basic forms of the gait show the racial character, but otherwise the individual comes into it. Therefore, the gait is something like the mediation between the individual and the general. You can see the sanguine person's bouncing gait, the choleric person's firm gait, the melancholy person's heavy step, which is caused by the heavy physical body with its predominant influence on the etheric body, and you can see the phlegmatic person's casual gait. In all the characteristics where the individual plays a role, what is semi-individual is revealed because it has to balance with what is generally racial in man; temperament plays a role here.

If we now understand this secret of temperament and how it works, then on the one hand we will say to ourselves: Oh, it is precisely in such subtle peculiarities of the human being that we see how we can only understand the human being if we understand not only the physical body but the whole being. And on the other hand, it also shows us how necessary it is to know all this when we work on a person by promoting their development. We know from other lectures that the physical body develops until the age of seven, the etheric body from then until the age of fourteen, and then the astral body and the I. The individual parts are interlinked. We see, therefore, that we can only grasp the right thing if we listen to the peculiar nature of the chemical composition — so to speak — of the temperaments, to hear something of the unique imprint of the developing human being. Only in this way can we, as educators or counselors, cultivate human nature if we understand this unique, almost chemical composition that presents itself to us through the four temperaments. Truly, just as every human being is composed of four elements - the physical, etheric, astral body and the I - so the influences of these four mix and show themselves to us in all possible nuances, which can be traced back to these four or seven temperaments. And now we see - because such a multiple mixture can be - how each individual person can be an enigma, and how only if we grasp the person in a lively way can we understand him. If we perceive each person as an enigma, then we are truly facing him for the first time.

Temperament is not something theoretical, but something that works from person to person. We will not only want to unravel the human being with our minds, but we will accept the whole person and let him perceive us as a riddle. Then we will approach the human being with full respect and love when we perceive his or her individual nature in such a way that he or she ultimately appears to us as a riddle that we marvel at and admire, but that we grasp in our perception, in the way we approach each individual through our respect and love, through our appreciation. Oh, there are also other riddles than just those that are solved with the mind. People are all riddles, and they are not solved merely with the mind, but the way we appreciate, honor and respect them, how we approach them with our feelings and how we act for them, that is also a way of solving riddles, and we will develop this way when we learn to feel how the individual mixes with the general through its intermediate thing, the temperament. Indeed, we see two currents flowing together in the human being when he enters this earthly existence. And we see at the same time that these currents must work together in order to bring forth fruit through this life, to take it with him for a subsequent life, to live out in a new embodiment. There is change and there is eternity in man. The eternal core ascends from spirit world to spirit world; but that which is changing is not unnecessarily experienced. In the balance between temperament and racial character, we create the fruits out of our etheric body, which we take with us through our entire subsequent life.

And so it is absolutely true for this area, too, that freedom exists alongside necessity, that we enter into life through the confluence of the two currents and are shaped by necessary laws, but that nothing is destroyed that we ourselves shape within our individuality and the general.

Freedom and necessity are equally beautiful, one as much as the other, expressed in Goethe's word - if only we fully understand it - which is meant to tell us how the law passes through human nature; when we see how the temperaments interact in their chemical mixture, then we find, especially in this mystery of the human temperament, the truth of what the Symbolum Goethe so beautifully says and with which we want to conclude:

Just as on the day you were born,
The sun greeted the planets,
You immediately thrived and thrived
According to the law by which you came into being.
That is how you must be, you cannot escape it!
So said the Sibyls, so said the prophets,
And no time and no power dismembered

Today we shall be concerned with a chapter of Anthroposophy which links on to many things we were able to study in the last Lecture-Course here but in a certain respect is quite independent.¹ Again today we shall be considering matters for those who are more advanced—I do not mean advanced in respect of intellect or knowledge, but in respect of the attitude of soul, the feelings, that are necessary for the assimilation of higher truths which so often seem paradoxical, weird and fantastic to the materialistic mind—truths which must be accepted, not as if they were everyday matters, but as something that is not only possible, but reality.

We shall turn our attention to a certain chapter of occult history. Everybody knows what external history means; everybody knows that history presents the successive happenings and facts of the outer physical world as far as they can be followed with the help of documents, original manuscripts and records, traditions, and so forth. But in Anthroposophy, by means of those spiritual records that are accessible to us, we go still farther back, even in this external history, to the time of the great Atlantean Flood. We observe the successive culture-epochs following it, but we go even farther back into the distant past, to times preceding this great Flood which has been preserved as tradition in the legends of different peoples. All this is history, investigated, it is true, by occult means, but in a certain sense it is still an external, physical—more or less physical—history of facts and events. But there is also an occult history, and you will understand what this means if you think of the following.

Before entering into the bodies of our present civilisation, all your souls lived in bodies of the old Indian, Persian, Egypto-Chaldean, Greco-Roman epochs, and so forth—leaving aside still earlier times. When, through birth, these souls entered into existence on the physical plane they saw and experienced what can be experienced on this plane. These souls beheld the creations of the old Indian culture, the great pyramids built by the Egyptians, the Greek temples, and so on. From this we can picture the flow of events through which man passes in the course of history on the outer physical plane during life between birth and death. The question may now be asked : What, then, is happening when, through the Gate of Death, the soul passes into its life between death and a new birth? The souls now incarnated passed through death in ancient India, ancient Persia, and so on. Have conditions in the life between death and rebirth always been the same through the ages? Is there anything comparable with ‘history’ in that life? Were the experiences different when souls passed through the Gate of Death in the times of ancient India or ancient Persia, and are they again different in our present age? Is there in that life anything like a successive course of happenings? When we speak of the experiences of the periods spent in Kama-Loca and in Devachan until the time of a new incarnation, we describe them as they are today. Many people may imagine that these experiences are similar in all epochs, but this is not so. For just as when souls have passed through the Gate of Birth they have different experiences in the different epochs, so there is also a ‘history’ of what happens between death and rebirth. These happenings in our present age are rightly described as we describe them, but they have not been the same in all the ages. Today we shall consider, briefly, something of the history of that other side of existence, particularly during Post-Atlantean epochs.

For this purpose we do well to think, to begin with, of the old Atlantean epoch. In this Atlantean epoch, life was very different from what it came to be later on. When in the night the soul of the old Atlantean had gone out of the physical and etheric bodies and was living in the spiritual worlds, it was not enveloped in darkness as is the case today. During the night-consciousness the soul was in divine-spiritual worlds—divine-Spiritual Beings were its companions. The alternation between day and night was quite different in the old Atlantean epoch. When the Atlantean awoke in the morning, that is to say, when his astral body and Ego came down again into the physical and etheric bodies, then, in the earlier periods of Atlantis, man did not see external objects with sharp outlines as he does today, but the objects were hazy—as when we go out at night in a thick November fog the lamps seem to be surrounded by an aura instead of emitting clear light. To the early Atlantean, every object on the physical plane was indistinct and indefinite, and only gradually assumed sharp contours in the day-consciousness. When, at night, he rose in his astral body and Ego out of the physical and etheric bodies, he was not in a realm of unconsciousness, but he had definite, even if hazy, experiences of the divine-spiritual worlds. And the figures preserved as the Gods, the names and ideas of Gods such as Wotan, Baldur, Zeus, Apollo, Thor—are not figures of fantasy but Beings who were actually experienced by man in the times of old Atlantis.

Then came the great Flood. The less advanced Atlanteans went from West to East, settling in the lands of Europe. The most advanced of all went towards Asia and founded in Central Asia the great colony of the Manu. The Manu was the lofty Being who was the leader of this handful of the most advanced Atlanteans who went with him to Central Asia and from there called the different cultures to life. It must here be borne in mind that in Asia and Africa, as the result of earlier and later migrations, and through other peoples who were descendants of still earlier epochs, the countries were inhabited, and these pupils of the Manu went out in various directions in order to spread new streams of culture. The first mission went from Central Asia to India. The Manu sent his first pupils to India; he himself, for certain reasons, withdrew into the background. The first pupils of the Manu became the teachers and leaders of the first Post-Atlantean culture—that of the ancient Indian peoples. The first form of Post-Atlantean culture therefore arose under the influence of these Teachers—the holy Rishis. We already know the basic character of this culture. The pupils of the Rishis had a kind of memory of ancient times, of how in Atlantis they themselves had been companions of the Gods. Their real homeland then had been in the spiritual world. Now they were in the physical world. And so in ancient India men had an intense longing for their primeval, spiritual homeland. They felt that they were strangers in the physical world. For them this world was illusion, maya, merely an external expression of the Spiritual. Hence their longing for the Spiritual and their view that the physical world was illusion, deception, maya. They had as yet no love for the physical world; they still longed for the spiritual world. They saw the stars, the rivers, the mountains, but felt no interest in any of these things. What happened between birth and death was regarded as illusion, as maya, for men knew that they lived in their real homeland between death and rebirth. Such was the fundamental mood of the old Indians. But ever and again they received information and tidings of the spiritual worlds through the holy Rishis, who were the pupils of the great Manu.

It is a good thing to try to form definite ideas of the nature of these great Indian Teachers. A feeling of reverent awe arises in those who can envisage in some small measure what took place spiritually between the Rishis and their pupils in Northern India at this starting-point of Post-Atlantean humanity. Without Spiritual Science it is hardly possible for anyone today, when humanity has descended so deeply into the physical plane and has adopted such a materialistic way of thinking, to form a true idea of the kind of knowledge that was brought by the Manu from the West to the East as a heritage of the Atlantean age. For if the Book with the Twelve Chapters, the Book in which the Manu had preserved the ancient traditions of the earth, in which was written down what could be made known of the laws and conditions prevailing in ancient times when humanity lived in the bosom of the Gods—if that Book could be laid before men today it would be utterly incomprehensible to them. Nevertheless it contained the instructions that were given by the Manu to his most intimate pupils and through which the seven holy Rishis prepared themselves for their mission. Some idea of what the holy Rishis were like can be formed in the following way.—Anyone who saw them in life would have seen utterly simple men. And such indeed they were, for a great part of their life. But there were times when the Rishis were anything but ordinary men. They were not learned in the modern sense, but at such times they were the mouthpiece and instrument of higher spiritual Beings. Higher spiritual Beings ensouled the Rishis and then, when they spoke, they were not giving utterance to what they knew, but to the speech of the Spirit who had entered into them, right down into the physical body. Thus the Seven Planetary Regents themselves were present during this first epoch of Post-Atlantean civilisation. The Seven Planetary Spirits of the universe spoke through the mouths of the holy Rishis, who were merely their instruments. And the words spoken had stupendous power; they were magical words, not merely teachings but commands for what men were to do. Revelations from the cosmos itself were spoken forth by the seven holy Rishis. The later Vedic literature is no more than a faint echo of the wisdom that streamed to humanity out of the cosmos itself through the holy Rishis. This was the first Post-Atlantean manifestation and revelation of the Divine. It was only at certain times that the Rishis were inspired by the Planetary Spirits and then they could impart great and mighty things to men. Far greater things were spoken through them to humanity between birth and death in this first Post-Atlantean epoch than in the other world, for all the secrets to which men could no longer look up from the physical world could be made known to them by the Rishis.

Initiates are able to work and teach not only in the physical world, but in alternating states of consciousness they are able, while still maintaining connection with the physical body, to pass over into the spiritual world and to become the teachers of the souls living between death and rebirth. The great teachers give instruction here, in physical life, and also in the life between death and rebirth. The Rishis too were teachers of man in the world beyond death. There they could, it is true, proclaim the same great spiritual truths of which they spoke in the physical world, but they could say nothing of particular value to the Dead about the other side of existence, i.e. about the physical world. There was nothing in this physical world that could be of value for the life after death. The ancient Indian yearned for the life between death and rebirth; he was happy there, and had no inclination whatever for physical life. And so when the ancient Indian passed into the other world, he was not merely a knower in some degree, he was not only able to see, up to a certain level, what was happen ing there, but he was also able to act with skill—for man has to act in the other world too. The souls of the ancient Indians were far better fitted to work in that world than in the physical world. The instruments available in the physical world at that time were simple and primitive, and men were not skilled on the physical plane. But as souls in that other world they were able to work with skill that was a heritage from an earlier epoch. Men's life between death and rebirth was more intense, more active, than it was in the physical world. The spiritual world afforded them deep happiness; everything was light and clear after death.

World-history continued its course and the epoch of ancient Persian culture approached. Man had progressed, inasmuch as he now began to love the physical plane; he wanted to work on the physical plane and felt that his spiritual forces should be applied to the cultivation of the earth. The culture inspired by the Manu had grown dearer to the ancient Persians. Zarathustra now became their great Teacher. The teachings that had flowed from the inspirations of the Rishis were now, in the second Post-Atlantean epoch, transmitted through Zarathustra. The task of this great Teacher was to create a counterweight to existing conditions. Man must come to love the physical plane, the physical earth, to become more conscious of it, to discover the means of promoting culture, to live more and more intensely on the physical plane, not merely regarding it as illusion, maya, but as a revelation of the Divine Powers. Zarathustra said to the people : In the material world there is something that is opposed to the Spiritual; the power of Evil is mingled with matter. But if you unite yourselves with the beings who are servants of the good Spirit, then, in union with them, you will overcome the Evil that is mingled with matter.—There was inevitably the danger, the first glimmering of the danger, that connection with the Spiritual might be lost. Hence as well as narrating the truths of the spiritual world, it was the special task of the teachers to emphasise to the people that the Spiritual reveals itself in the material; and those who had fallen prey to matter owing to an exaggerated belief in it, had to be brought back again to belief in the Spiritual, to the belief that God reveals himself in matter.—That was what Zarathustra had to proclaim, and he spoke with mighty power. In terms of modern language it is no longer possible to convey any adequate idea of the words of fire with which he proclaimed what he himself was still able to behold, because he was the successor of the pupils of the Manu. For example, he still saw in the Sun not merely the external, physical phenomenon, but the spiritual: Beings whose abode is the Sun, for whom the physical Sun is merely their bodily vehicle, and he called these spiritual Beings in their totality: Ahura Mazdao, the great Sun-, Aura-, Ahura Mazdao, or Ormtizd. From this source came the inspiration for all the teachings he was to inculcate into the second Post-Atlantean culture-epoch which was already in danger of falling prey to the attacks of Ahriman. In mighty words Zarathustra spoke to humanity somewhat as follows. I will speak ‘Give heed and hear me, ye who from near and far long for this. Mark well my words! For no longer may the false teacher corrupt the world, he, the Evil One, whose mouth has proclaimed wrong beliefs. I speak of what is greatest in the world, of what He, the Mighty One, has revealed to me. Whoever does not follow my words, as I mean them, woe will befall him at the end of days.’ In words of power such as these, it was proclaimed that He, the all-pervading Spirit, is revealed in what is external, and that the one who believed he could mislead humanity by making men believe that the material alone has reality, must not conquer. And Zarathustra announced that when the time was fulfilled, One would come in human form as the embodiment of all the Powers working and weaving through the world, One Whose coming could at that time be only a prophecy.—Zarathustra called Him by the name of Saoschra. He, the Power Who resides in the Sun, Who could be seen at that time only through external veils—He would come one day in human form. Zarathustra proclaimed the Christ Who was to come in the future.

Zarathustra had two pupils whom he did not instruct for the purpose of sending them out to teach the Persians. They were pupils such as are always to be found with the great Initiates and who prepare in quietude for their missions, refraining, to begin with, from going out into the world to teach.

These two pupils, in later incarnations, were : Hermes, the great Teacher of the Egyptians, and Moses.

The wisdom outpoured in the second Post-Atlantean epoch had necessarily to take the form it did, because humanity had advanced a stage and men had a greater love for the physical plane. But because this was so, experiences between death and rebirth were darkened. Men could still see in the spiritual world, but no longer with the clarity of vision that prevailed in the old Indian epoch. When the souls from Persian bodies passed into Devachan, their experiences were less vivid, less intense, and the more skilful they became in their work on the physical plane, the less skilful were they in their actions in the spiritual world. In the outer world there is an ascending line of progress; in the world after death, however, there is a decline. When the Initiates passed into that other world—it was, of course, a spiritual journey and the Initiates remained united with the physical body—when they passed into that world to be with human souls living between death and rebirth, they could say much about the momentous things which men had formerly seen there but which now were darkened. They could give teachings concerning the higher spiritual realities that had gradually faded from man's vision between death and rebirth, but they could impart nothing as yet about happenings in the physical world. Nor would this have been of any great significance for the other world. If the Initiates had related the doings of men (in the physical world) this would have had no inspiring effect in the life between death and rebirth. To tell of any happenings on the physical plane would have had no value for that other world.

Then came the Egyptian epoch. Men now had an even greater love for the physical plane and had become still more skilful there. They no longer regarded it as maya or illusion. They looked up to the stars and saw in their constellations and movements a script of the Gods. They saw revelations of divine-spiritual Beings in physical manifestation. And they worked upon the earth with knowledge acquired through their human forces.—We need think only of how the Egyptians cultivated the soil.—Man had now brought his spiritual forces from the spiritual into the physical, and the link between these spiritual forces and the physical world became steadily firmer. The first great Teacher of the Egyptians was Hermes, in his new incarnation. We will try to form some idea of the kind of teachings he gave.

For this purpose it will be especially helpful to think about that aspect of the figure of Osiris which can be of interest to us today.—Osiris was the central God of Egypt, the God who was honoured above all other Gods. The Egyptian Gods were worshipped under many names by the people, priests and initiates. The legend of Osiris is known to you. Osiris ruled over mankind. Then his brother Typhon laid him, by cunning, in a casket which he threw into the sea. Isis, the sorrowing spouse, sought for and found the corpse but could not bring Osiris back again into this world. From the other world a ray from Osiris fell upon Isis who then gave birth to Horus, the successor of Osiris on the earth. Osiris remained in the other world. The Egyptians were told: Osiris is a Being who stands close to man. He is one of the last Beings with whom men were in communion when they lived consciously in the spiritual world. Men have descended into the physical world in order that they may develop further here, and then they ascend again, enriched by the experiences gained in the physical world. Osiris is one of those Beings who no longer needed to descend to the physical world, because they had already reached such a height that this was not necessary for them. They had moved to a higher level and were not created to dwell in a physical body—the casket. Such Beings can have only a fleeting contact with the physical world. Osiris can be found only when man passes over into the other life. He is the last Figure you can still experience—so said the Initiates to the Egyptians—if you make yourselves worthy, if you follow the commandments. Then, after death, when you are judged, you will be together with Osiris; you will feel yourselves to be members of Osiris.

Those who aspired to be united with Osiris had therefore to be referred to the life after death. But as the experiences accessible after death had now become still less intense, even when men were united with Osiris they were only able to experience faintly and weakly that which constituted their highest bliss—the union with Osiris. But through the belief implanted in them by the priests, they knew and firmly hoped that they would indeed be united with Osiris, and in solemn moments after death they felt themselves as members of the Osiris-soul. This consciousness of belonging to Osiris gradually faded away. While culture was progressing to higher stages on the physical plane, a decline was taking place in the spiritual world between death and rebirth. Man's vision of the world of Devachan became steadily fainter. And when the Initiates came over into that world, they still could not tell of happenings in the physical world that would have had any special significance for that other world. What happened in the spiritual world was entirely the result of its own prevailing conditions. Happenings in the physical world could be of little interest to the souls of the Dead. What man could do in the physical world was a preparation for the Osiris-experience, but it was a preparation for something that could be experienced only in the deepest spiritual depths of yonder world.

Then came the Greco-Roman age, the fourth Post-Atlantean culture-epoch. The marriage between the human spirit and external matter became closer, more intimate still, and the splendour of Greek culture stems from this marriage between the spiritual capacities of men and external physical life. When we have before us a Greek temple with its wonderful forms—even in aftermath as at Paestum in Southern Italy—we Can see what the human spirit has achieved in the conquest of external matter. In the lines and distribution of forces in the Greek temple, architecture has reached its zenith. The reason why a Greek temple is such a wonder-work of architecture and of art is because everything in it is the expression of the Spiritual. That is why it is so inspiring to contemplate the harmony presented in a Greek temple.

One peculiarity that is discovered by clairvoyant consciousness in connection with a Greek temple must here be made known.—Let us suppose that clairvoyant consciousness has before it the last echoes of a Greek temple built in the Doric style as are the temples at Paestum, and is able to feel the aftermath of what the Greeks felt on the physical plane; let us assume that clairvoyant consciousness, while beholding the physical form of such a creation, experiences all the rapture and enchantment that it is still possible to experience at the sight. Then clairvoyant consciousness will make a certain discovery. When it frees itself from the body and, without using the physical organs, sees in the spiritual world, then the Greek temple, with all its splendour, has vanished. What was so perfect, so great and glorious in the physical world, cannot be carried over into the spiritual world—not even for modern clairvoyant consciousness. At the place in space where the glorious temple stood, there is nothing corresponding with it in the spiritual world. It was so in the case of all the great masterpieces of that wonderful Greco-Latin epoch, and in another connection too.

This was the same epoch when, in Rome, man's consciousness of personality came to its strongest expression in the physical world. The Roman felt himself first and foremost as a personal citizen of the earth, firmly rooted on, this earth. To the same degree to which man felt himself standing firmly on the earth, he felt weak between death and rebirth, feeble and ineffectual in that other world. Life between death and rebirth had faded in intensity even more than before. Above all, what was experienced in its splendour in the physical world could not be carried into yonder world. It is no mere legend passed on from the Greek epoch, that one of the great Heroes, when visited in the nether world of the Shades by an Initiate, said: ‘Better it is to be a beggar in the upper world than a king in the realm of the Shades’—because man felt shadowy and empty between death and rebirth, and longed for the life between birth and death with its beauty and its grandeur. Life had surrendered itself to the most perfect and complete marriage between the human spirit and external form, and at the cost of this marriage, life between death and rebirth had fallen into decline.

In this epoch fell the Event for which preparation had been made by that other Initiate who had been Zarathustra's pupil—namely, Moses. Moses was chosen to proclaim—to begin with in the only form in which this was possible—a God Who could also reveal Himself in the physical world, Who would be actually present in the physical world. Naturally, this revelation was to the effect that the one and only true image of God Who weaves through the world could not, at the time the revelation was given, be apprehended by the senses. And when, at the starting-point of his mission, the ‘EJE ASCHER EJE’ (I am the I am) was proclaimed through Moses, this was the first announcement of the God Who henceforward would not be found only in the other world but Who had passed into this world and was to be experienced here. The Jahve-Being was proclaimed through this second pupil of Zarathustra, and thereby preparation was made for the coming of Christ, for the Mystery of Golgotha.

You know, to some extent, what the Mystery of Golgotha signifies for the physical plane: it is actual proof that life in the spirit is victorious over death. This victory was achieved through the fact that the One Who had been proclaimed by the prophets, the One Who was there at the creation of all the kingdoms of Nature, walked upon the earth. This Archetypal Being of the world, Who is the Spirit of the Sun, is rightly given a Greek name, for He could, and indeed had to, appear in the Greek age, when mankind needed the impulse for re-ascent. And in eternal memory of this, the Being Who incarnated in the sheaths of Jesus of Nazareth was called by the name of CHRIST. This name derives from the epoch when it was necessary that Christ should appear. At the moment when the Jesus of Nazareth-sheath died on Golgotha, something happened that is not a mere legend but can still be confirmed today on the path of spiritual science by one who is adequately prepared. At the moment of the Death on the Cross, at that same moment Christ appeared in the other world among the Dead, among those who were living between death and rebirth. And this appearance of Christ was like a lightning-flash in that other world. It was as though the life in that world which had faded into shadow, was lit up by lightning. Now, for the first time, something could be made known in the world after death that was different from anything of which the earlier Initiates had been able to tell when they passed into that world. Even an Initiate of the Eleusinian Mysteries would at most have been able to tell of the beauties of the physical world which the Dead could no longer behold; at most he could have awakened a longing for the physical, but nothing of real importance would have been brought to the Dead by making known to them what was taking place in the world of flesh. The first tidings brought by Christ to the Dead were that in the world between birth and death something had come to pass that has meaning not for this physical world only, but also for the life in the other world. This Event in the physical world was one that works on into the spiritual world itself. Actual examples of this can be found.

When in the physical world we contemplate the most beautiful temple or any one of the loveliest creations of the age of ancient Greece and are enchanted by the sight of it, in that other world it has faded away, is not to be found. If, however, we steep ourselves in the Gospel of St. John or in the Apocalypse, where the happenings connected with the Mystery of Golgotha are made known, we can have wonderful experiences if, with clairvoyant consciousness, we then pass over into the spiritual world. These feelings and experiences do not fade, but they live on, becoming still more glorious, still more comprehensible, in the spiritual world. Everything that is connected with the Event of Golgotha becomes even more sublime in the spiritual world. This is by no means the case with everything. However deep your wonder may be at the sight of the Pyramids, only a faint echo of them can be experienced in yonder world. A Greek temple or a Greek tragedy may enthrall one but nothing goes over into the other world, either for an Initiate or for those who are not initiated. But if you contemplate a picture by Raphael in which the Christian truths are expressed, you carry much of the picture with you into the spiritual world, and things which in the physical world you cannot even glimpse, will dawn upon you there. In yonder world they become a light which lightens the spiritual world anew. And so it was when Christ appeared in the world of the Shades. For the first time, that world was flooded with light. And more and more, through everything that Christianity has brought into the world, the spiritual world will be illuminated.

So culture descends, as it were, from the heights of the Atlantean world to the Greco-Latin world, when in the spiritual world it was in decadence and had sunk most deeply into the material world. That was when the greatest desolation prevailed in the spiritual world. And now, with the appearance of Christ in the underworld, comes the great impulse of Light. Existence between death and rebirth becomes ever brighter, ever clearer. The ascent begins in the history of life in that other world. Christianity is only at its beginning today. More and more it will become evident that man grows in spirituality through what he can experience in this world; and he takes with him into the other world what he experiences here in connection with the Event of Golgotha. Thus in the spiritual world, too, there is an ascent.

And so we may also speak of history in the life between death and rebirth, and when we study this history of the hidden side of the world, we realise the infinite significance of the Mystery of Golgotha, not for the physical world alone but also for all three worlds in which man lives. The Being Who is united with our evolution, Who has created everything that is around us, Who dwelt in Jesus of Nazareth, once said: ‘Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall you believe my words?’ (John, V, 46.)—clearly indicating thereby that it was He of whom Moses was speaking when he proclaimed the Divine Being Who was announcing Himself as the ‘I am the I am.’ The Being Who was in Jesus of Nazareth accomplished something in our world that has significance not only for the physical plane but, as the most momentous of all events, spread through the three worlds, from the physical right up into the spiritual world. Such is the mighty vista of the Event of Golgotha brought before our souls by occult history.

• 1. The Apocalypse of St. John. 12 lectures. 17–30 June, 1908.

Anyone who superficially and casually reads a brochure about the aims of spiritual science or Theosophy and what their goals are can easily come to a judgment, as undoubtedly many, many of our contemporaries do who listen to this kind of Theosophy. This judgment is: What does spiritual science or Theosophy actually have to say about the practical training of thinking? For many people form their opinion from such superficial acquaintance that spiritual science or Theosophy is something that floats in cloud-cuckoo-land, is alien and far removed from the world, and that it draws people away from the true, genuine practice of life, and that it can therefore say the least about the demands of practical thinking, which should actually be linked to the demands of practical life.

Those who delve a little deeper into the nature of spiritual science or Theosophy will come to a different conclusion and will recognize that there are two reasons why it is particularly suited to say something about thinking as a practical task in life.

The first reason is that Theosophy or spiritual science is not intended to educate impractical, unworldly and hostile people. On the contrary, in all that it seeks to be, it can reach into the most everyday life, one might say, into the handholds of the hourly life with which we deal in the practice of life. Only then is the task of spiritual science or theosophy properly grasped when it permeates us into all our individual activities, when it not only makes us wise, not only teaches us about the highest tasks and riddles of existence, but when it also makes us skillful and practical for the most everyday life. That is one reason. The other is one that is more closely related to the task and mission of spiritual science or theosophy.

It has often been emphasized here in this city that what spiritual science or Theosophy has to say about the highest problems of existence, about the secrets of life, about the riddles of man, what is presented through the observations of clairvoyant consciousness, that all this, when presented, can be understood by the unprejudiced, healthy human mind. That has been said often. Research and investigation into the laws and secrets of existence in the higher worlds can only be carried out by those who have developed the abilities and powers slumbering in their souls, the spiritual eye and the spiritual ear. When what has been researched in the higher worlds is then related, it can be understood by anyone who does not let themselves be deterred from this understanding by the prejudices that flow into them through the suggestion of our contemporary culture or any other culture.

If Theosophy can be understood in this way, then it is not only useful but necessary for everyone, regardless of their station in life. It is what makes them a true human being, so to speak. It is therefore a universal human good, and it can and must also be of interest to those who perhaps say to themselves: I will never get around to becoming a spiritual researcher myself in this life, to having my eyes opened to see into the spiritual worlds. You don't need to do that to get to know spiritual science or theosophy; but from certain points of view, spiritual science or theosophy is a preparation for this opening of the spiritual eyes, of the spiritual organs of perception and cognition in general. It should lead people up into the spiritual world.

So for anyone who wants to penetrate into these spiritual worlds, who, so to speak, wants to acquire clairvoyant consciousness, the right foundation is not enthusiasm, not overheated enthusiasm, but for them the right foundation is to stand firmly on the ground of life with both feet. One would almost like to say, although it may sound grotesque, that the less a person approaches spiritual research with overheated imagination and reveries and fantasies, the better it is. Not the enthusiast, not the person with a particularly vivid imagination, not they are the ones who can actually become the spiritual researcher's dearest students, but rather those who stand firmly on the ground of life. He prefers sober people, because enthusiasm comes from the thing itself, when the great facts of life affect us. Then we are already raised to the poetic, enthusiastic attitude by the facts, and that is what is healthy — not by letting an overheated inner self bring us to enthusiasm.

Therefore, a practical thinking that stands firmly on the ground of life is also a good, even the very best prerequisite for those who aspire, so to speak, to clairvoyant consciousness. The more sober a person is, the more practical, the better if he is to be raised to the spheres of clairvoyant vision.

All this can show you that, on the one hand, spiritual science has every reason to believe that something can be said about the practice of thinking and its training on the basis of its results, and that, on the other hand, it has a profound interest in giving a great deal of practical thinking. However, it will therefore quite easily come into conflict with those people who usually, especially today, call themselves practitioners of life, with those practitioners of life who, when they hear just a few words about spiritual science, will immediately speak of fantasy and say: This is something that contradicts all practice.

But what is life practice for these practitioners, for those who are so proud of their life practice, who are so full of themselves about their life practice, who reject everything that does not fit neatly into their life practice? For those who are able to observe life, it is the case that these people are accustomed as early as possible, early and diligently accustomed to walking on well-trodden paths – to observe what one sees, how it is done, and to observe it in such a way that one can see how it is done, whether in the trading office or in the workshop, everywhere, and yes, yes, not to step out of the usual hand movements; otherwise, if you wanted to step out, you expose yourself to the danger of being expelled from the spheres in which you want to be included; that is the usual practice of life, that you only muddle through in the way it has become everywhere.

For those who are able to observe life, this practice consists of short-sightedness, habit, intolerance, always with certain additives - this will soon be apparent to the psychoanalyst - brutality. This is necessary so that everything that does not want to fit into this dogmatic practice of life can be trampled down. But then very strange things happen.

It is best to illustrate this with examples, some of which have already been mentioned here. Today, we want to bring one of these examples to mind in order to hold up our usual way of life to it. Who would not find it practical today that you don't have to go to the post office with every letter and that you don't have to open a huge book to look up how far away the place is to which the letter is addressed, and then determine, based on half-pennies, how much postage you have to pay? In the few cases where you still have to do that today, you can see how practical it is to have what is known as the penny postage stamp, the standard stamp, even for long distances. That was not the case eighty years ago. In the forties of the last century, you still had to go to the post office counter with a letter and it was very complicated. It was not a postal practitioner who invented this standard stamp, but an Englishman named Hill, who was not from the “practical” side of life. He was the first to say what advantages there would be if postage stamps were introduced. This is no myth. You can read it in the records of the English Parliament. The one who was the practitioner said: Oh, I don't believe what Hill has calculated; because such a device certainly cannot improve our traffic as he claims. And even if it were true, then one would have to be against it, because then one would have to make the post office building three times as large as it is. – That was the practical man, while the impractical man has just made this world-changing discovery of the penny postage stamp.

And I need only remind you of something that should be known here. When the first railroad was to be built, a medical council was asked whether, for hygienic reasons, railroads should be built. The document can be read, and the judgment was passed by the practitioners – it is not that many years ago – that railroads should not be built because, as the practitioners judged, people would destroy their nervous systems. But if you wanted to build railways anyway and people could be found to ride them, then you would have to build high board walls on both sides so that those who pass by the railroad would not get concussions. Another example of such a judgment based on practical experience is when the postmaster Nagler in Potsdam said: “I already send two stagecoaches out every day with no one sitting in them; how is anyone supposed to sit in the train if I send even more every day?”

These are all facts from practical life. With such a view of the practice of life, however, truly practical thinking can come into conflict. But these truly practical thinkers must penetrate a little deeper into the nature of actual thinking, and there I may perhaps start from something very concrete. Here we have a case of thinking that is quite impractical. During my time as a student, I experienced an instance of impractical thinking that was so pronounced that it revealed to me a type of impractical thinker that I would call “the inner prankster.” This category can be used to describe many people in terms of their thinking.

And I can make it clear to you what these inner pushers of thought are. During my time as a student, a colleague approached me with a red face and said: I have now made a wonderful invention; I have to go quickly to Radinger – that was the departmental representative – and explain my invention to him. It's something revolutionary. — He couldn't be stopped, he ran to the specialist and came back a little dejected. He had to wait an hour and yet had no time to lose with his world-changing invention! In the meantime, he wanted to explain the matter to me. He started. He was very perceptive and told me about an extraordinarily well-designed machine construction. He couldn't come to any other conclusion than that he had solved the problem: by using as little steam power as possible, which the machine initially consumes, with the help of the most diverse translations, it ultimately achieves a huge amount of work. I had the matter explained to me and finally I said: Yes, you see, if you boil the matter down to a simple idea, it is just as feasible as the important problem of standing inside a railroad car and pushing it. As surely as you move it forward, so surely does this machine work. — He also saw the matter immediately and no longer went to the expert.

The way this man thought at the time is how many people think, and that is why they can be called the “inner pushers”. They think in certain contexts that represent a limited area. They do not see what goes beyond that. They are inside the matter and find everything very astute, as it must be inside the matter. But people do not think that there must also be something out there. It is actually the case, without people realizing it, that the vast majority of them move in a very limited circle, without even looking out into the distance and without knowing that you have to look for resistance outside in order to push. People don't think about the fact that you can't push from the inside as long as you're just fiddling around inside the car, in your own limited area. They think they need not know anything about what is going on outside. But the world has little to do with these pushers. They make no progress in the world, just as the cart pushed from the inside makes no progress. But many people make no progress because they think in the same way as this category.

What is important is that we learn to develop our thinking so that we can see beyond the wagon. Even if we also have an overview of the sciences, we very, very often find precisely this element, the thinking of pushing the wagon inwardly, within them. For it is usually — and this is characteristic of our sciences — the person who works in a particular field who does not see beyond the narrowest view. I have already explained this. Think of the Kant-Laplace theory. For many people it is still something to which they cling, even if it is no longer held to in some places. But the other theories are no better.

This theory, which assumes an original nebula, lets it rotate, lets it secrete the rings and planets, it sensualizes very nicely in our schools, very cute, on a small scale the formation of a world system. You take a certain substance that floats on water, make large drops out of it, cut a map sheet into a circle and slide it into the equator direction. Then you take a pin, stick it in and make the drop rotate. Droplets separate and rotate. You have a nice, cute little planetary system; the sun in the middle and the planets around it. How could one, people think, more vividly show that things can really come into being through something like this? You see it coming into being on a small scale. That is obvious proof. It's quite pretty. But that is an inner cart-pusher thinking. The experimenter has forgotten that he is turning and that the cute thing would not come into being if he did not turn. Of course, you don't need to think that there is a giant standing out there in the room setting the primeval nebula in motion. But you must not forget the spiritual foundations that must underlie what is taking place mechanically.

All this shows you how necessary it is for our outer life and for our life in science that our thinking is truly rooted in the soil of thinking practice. Spiritual science itself can now show us three things that must be fulfilled if we really want to train our thinking in a practical sense. And it is the case that, however little it may initially appear to lead to thinking practice, the person who applies it to themselves will experience how their thinking becomes clearer, sharper and more comprehensive.

We will look at these three stages of practical thought training in a moment. But first we must consider the basic condition, the attitude needed if we want to think about acquiring the right attitude towards thinking. I have already used the image. No one should think they can draw water from a glass that contains none. Those who think about thinking today think according to this pattern. They think that they can draw thoughts from a world in which there are none. This alone gives our thoughts and concepts and ideas that arise in our soul the possibility of meaning something, of not being something insubstantial, but rather that the world is only really built according to the thoughts that we find in it. Only a world that has arisen from the thoughts that we find is entitled to be thought through thoughts. The person looking at a clock will readily see that the thoughts inherent in it were had by the clockmaker. Only he who reflects on the world would wish to believe that the world is ordered according to thoughts that are only conceived afterwards by man. He would only accept thoughts that the soul forms, and would not believe that things are only formed according to the thoughts that man forms last.

Aristotle coined the phrase: What man finds last in things is what was first put into them. If man finds thoughts last, it is because they were first put into things. But if you take this seriously, you gain, above all, what could be called trust in such thinking, which seeks to be in league with reality. If I know that thinking is not only found in the mind, as materialistic thinking believes, but that everything that confronts me is thought, then I will seek to see the thoughts in the things, to hold to the things when I should think.

A psychologist of Goethe's time, Heinroth, has just Goethe's thinking - because Goethe was born into this life as if by predisposition with the aim of thinking about things with thinking, as it were, in thinking in things, not abstractly. Heinroth called Goethe's thinking concrete thinking, which, so to speak, only thinks what is in the objects, and only thinks what can really flow into the objects. And Goethe himself found this to be extremely true. Truly, Goethe had this disposition – as we shall perhaps see more clearly, to think precisely in things – so that thinking was not separate from things, but immersed in the fabric of things.

Those who are not born with such an inclination but have to gradually acquire this practical, objective thinking that lives in things must observe three things: First, if we want to become practical thinkers, we as human beings must have a certain relationship to the objects and facts around us, and this relationship can be expressed as follows: We must strive as much as possible to have interest in the objects and facts of life. Interest in the outside world is the first magic formula for acquiring practical thinking.

The second is: Our own actions, our own activities must be controlled as activities of joy and love.

The third is: When we think for ourselves, when we go beyond life and turn our thoughts inward, then we must preferably have inner satisfaction for doing so.

These are indeed the three gradations, the magic means of all practical thinking: interest in the environment, pleasure and love for all activities, and inner satisfaction, as one says, in reflection, that is, in the thinking that we do silently to ourselves, apart from things. But we must really have these things.

Yes, but what is interest in things, really? Interest in things is nothing other than a real introduction to practical thinking, when we do not approach things with our templates, with our preconceived notions, but when we are inclined to take things as individualities at every moment and to say to ourselves: They always have something to tell us.

It seems to be saying little, but it means an enormous amount when applied to life practice. Most people approach people and the things around them with stereotyped concepts. And they look at an individual person, for example; but they do not see this person, only something superficial and fleeting, and if that fits with their stereotyped concepts, then they are done. This never leads to practical thinking.

It is very difficult to be understood in these matters. When I gave this lecture recently, someone said afterwards: Yes, I always have the idea: If someone has a thick, red neck and also looks very thick in other ways, then he is a materialist, the person himself “tells” me that through his appearance. — The person who spoke has heard everything that has been said, but has not understood it. He has been in the case that he has formed the dogmatic concept: When he sees a man with a red, thick neck, who is also otherwise thick, he judges him to be a materialist, instead of looking at the individual being and thinking: “She has something to say to me, she has the spiritual-conceptual within herself, I have to respond to her; each individual can still say something to me.”

That is one thing. But then it is not just a matter of cultivating such an interest for this individual thing, but for the course of events itself. And here one can go a long way by means of special exercises. Suppose you are confronted with a very specific event, a specific fact; you observe the fact; a person does this or that. You record this faithfully. Then form the following thoughts: If this happens today, then, on the basis of this fact, I will form an idea of what may have happened yesterday as a prerequisite for what is happening today. I will construct in my mind what has gone before, that is, I extend the fact backwards in my mind. And then I go about and research how it was. At first, the person will find that he was mistaken, but little by little he will realize that by doing such exercises, by constructing backwards the causes up to a certain time and then then, by looking at the facts, he will see whether his thinking is based in such a way that it meets reality. After some time, he will see that he thinks from the facts themselves, that they guide him, that he makes the right assumptions.

But you can also do it differently, like this: You can examine a natural event or any event in human life that happens today, and then you constructively imagine in your thoughts what will happen tomorrow as a result of this event. You wait quietly for what actually occurs and compare it with what you have thought up yourself. Again, you will see that you are initially wrong. But if you stick so faithfully to real facts and have the confidence: you immerse yourself in the facts and let that arise in your thoughts, which must also arise in reality, you stick to the event and demand of yourself that the thoughts themselves take a course like the facts, then you will get ahead.

These are tremendously effective exercises that can be done in relation to practical thinking. But there is one thing to watch out for. Such an exercise must be done selflessly in a certain way, otherwise it will not work. That is experience. It is ineffective if this selfishness is involved, which can be expressed in this way: if a person imagines that this or that must happen, and then when it actually happens, he says, “Didn't I predict it just like that?” This selfish joy is an obstacle to the power we are developing actually working. This is a fact, a real experience that anyone who does the exercises can experience for themselves. These things are subject to certain laws, just like the facts of chemical analysis and synthesis.

So we see how man can, as it were, creep into things, can identify himself with facts in thought. Then what he thinks takes place in the sense of the facts. I am speaking today to adults – it would be going too far for children – but let me just say this: if someone wants to develop real thinking that is connected to the outside world, so that, as it were, their thinking corresponds to what is going on outside, then they must be careful not to do such exercises in such a way that one event is placed next to the other, but they must take care to develop a feeling for the weight of an event. This is something that is connected with the practical training of thinking, but which very few people today know. Anyone who observes knows how little people have a feeling for the fact that it makes a difference whether one thing is said by one person or another. Both can express the same thing. But the way one presents himself to us gives his statements a different weight than the way the other presents himself to us. For the weight of what we acquire, we must, above all, acquire a certain feeling.

Goethe was born with such talents. He had developed them in previous incarnations. Therefore, he became something — for those who know the facts, this is clear —, therefore he became something that many who call themselves practical today are not at all. Goethe, of course, became a lawyer and also practised law. Those who know of his work in this field are aware that although his legal knowledge was not very extensive, his legal work was characterized by the opposite of what can be observed today: a lawsuit is in progress and it is handed over to a lawyer. You go there and want to ask him something. But there is no real reflection. You are not immersed in it. Bundles of files are opened, notes are looked at. You can find the most impractical thing there. For many, the people you have to turn to as practitioners are those who make things as impractical as possible. Goethe was practical. He didn't know much about law, but what he touched, he touched in the most practical way. We must not imagine that a person like Goethe is necessarily impractical. If the files that Goethe created as a minister in Weimar are ever released, we will see that he was a practical man. Goethe's practice was quite different from that of non-poets, although this is not meant as a dig at practitioners who are so arrogant.

Another thing can be said about Goethe: it is well known that he accompanied his duke to Apolda and that he practically carried out everything that needed to be done during the recruitment of new soldiers. And when they were finished, he worked on his “Iphigenia”, and he was already working on it during this process. Now we have to say, how many of our poets would not feel disturbed if they had to dig up recruits in addition to writing down their brilliant ideas! But I don't think that the “Iphigenia” has become worse than some contemporary poetry because it was worked on during the recruitment of recruits. But Goethe did that because his thoughts were concrete, so that his thoughts worked in the things, not detached from the things, not speculative.

This is evident when Goethe was able to explain the connection between his train of thought and the course of events outside in the most eminent way. Goethe studied meteorology. Today's meteorologists look down on the dilettantism of his knowledge of the weather; but with him things were such that they were practical eye movements, eye movements that sensed when they looked over something what an event would become in the near future. It often happened that Goethe would stand at the window, look out and see a small piece of sky and say: “In three hours it will rain.” That was a better prediction than many today. Goethe wove his thoughts into the things within it. It is precisely through his interest in the world around him that we can also artificially acquire this level of intellectual practice.

A second important thing is the joy and love for what we do. This means that we must try to have joy and love for the hand movements themselves, regardless of what comes of them. Then we will also gladly do what can be missed, where nothing comes of it but that which leads to beautiful results. This is really a condition of practical thinking.

I knew a young person who practised his practical thinking by binding his schoolbooks himself. He took great pleasure in doing all the various steps involved in binding a book. This is a better training for practical thinking than all brooding and ruminating. The necessity to check, so to speak, every thread that you stretch and pull for its effectiveness, to always pay attention to how the fingers move, that is really a good pre-school for practical thinking. And the more you have made futile attempts, the better for practical thinking.

Even excellent people in the field of theory and practice, such as Leonardo da Vinci, emphasize this, and they never tire of characterizing the details. Leonardo da Vinci talks about how to try to draw a template, first drawing the template on tracing paper; then you place the drawing over the template and memorize where you have deviated. Then you draw again, taking special care in those places. This simple matter was not too insignificant for Leonardo da Vinci to fill an entire page of his works with it. And you can try to apply this instruction to all possible areas of life to shape your thinking into a practical one.

The third thing is the inner satisfaction of the thought process. Everyone should have this, regardless of their station in life. Even if you devote only a little time to it, it will come back to you in abundance, even in material terms. No matter what area of life you are in, you should be able to reflect not only on the things you are involved with, but also on other areas. You should have moments of reflection on this or that question. Such minutes of reflection, in which you think in such a way that you do not desire that your thoughts flow into the outside world, should fill you with inner satisfaction. As a human being, you will get nowhere by solving problems that are actually far removed from what you are thinking in relation to the immediate practicalities of life. If you initially only have inner satisfaction from what you are doing with your thoughts, you will get ahead as a human being. If the carpenter only thinks about making tables and chairs, he will get nowhere as a human being. As a human being, you get ahead when you think about what gives you inner satisfaction. This trains the thinking organs. As a human being, and indirectly as a practitioner, you get ahead. No one will deny that you face life differently if you are this or that being. There is a big difference between a dog and a human standing before the Sistine Madonna. Man has a completely different relationship to it. Because man always remains in a certain area, he does not go beyond himself. Because he engages in thought and finds satisfaction in it, he advances. Through the process of reflection, in which he finds satisfaction, he affects practice differently than without it, and it is precisely through this that he will transcend a narrow field. He will rise above the standpoint of the inner coachman with an inwardly satisfying thinking, which is nothing more than what grants and seeks inner satisfaction.

Here one can also find the reasons why it is wrong that it is emphasized over and over again by our schools: Oh, what things are taught that cannot be applied in practical life! If only they are taught properly, then these things, which cannot be applied directly, are of immense importance. They transform the human being, these things that cannot be applied in life. What flows into life flows less into the human being himself; what does not flow into life forms the fine organs. This helps people to progress. It makes them more independent, and their minds are so imbued with the ferment of thought that it goes right to their limbs. You can see that a person develops such inner, satisfying thinking that does not directly involve the outside world; they become more agile, more skillful in their limbs.

There is no substitute for such training of the mind. Anyone who has experience in these matters can very precisely distinguish between those who do the exercises mentioned and those who do not. If you are traveling, for example, you can easily recognize the “practitioners”. Those who are practical in the workshop are sometimes quite awkward in other respects. It makes one feel peculiar when one sees how the simplest finger movement cannot be performed when the situation is different from what it usually is. This is a direct result of the fact that they have not been accustomed to developing thoughts inwardly and deriving satisfaction from them. Of course, one does not have to do one without the other. Those who only want to live in reflection become a foe of life and a speculator. But the person in whom the two things are in balance, who looks at things calmly and reflects calmly, will live his whole life, one might say, with skill. He will be able to do anything; he will even use the soup spoon differently than someone who does not do that.

This can be taken into the details of life, because thoughts are realities. They communicate with the material in all possible ways. That is what matters. In this way, we train our thinking for right practice. We then look out the windows of the car in which we sit and see the laws that are given by the fact that the car is still connected to the world, and not just pushing inside. This pushing inside is very widespread; and especially in today's culture, as it is so intimately and intensely influenced by science, those who have engaged in real practical training of thinking can see how much depends on the mere impracticality of thinking.

If people had any idea of what practical thinking is, they would see from the impracticality of thinking that certain things must be wrong. The facts investigated by science can be admirable, but the conclusions drawn from them are often dreadful because of the impractical thinking of the person drawing them. How can it be proved to many today that there is actually no soul, that everything a person accomplishes is based on purely mechanical laws? Yes, you can still find a very strange conclusion in the first pages of a “Outline of Psychology” — written by a person who is highly respected. Anyone with even a spark of understanding and practical thinking will immediately be able to reduce this to its true value. It says: Earlier times said that there was an independent soul; but today man has also been drawn into this web of the preservation of strength. It was first investigated, they say, in animals that everything that is fed to them is only transformed, and that what they do is transformed food. What the animals receive as strength is only converted food. How could there be an independent soul when only what you have stuffed in comes out converted?

They were not satisfied with showing this in animals; they also tried to show in humans that what you put into people in the way of the energy values of food comes out again in other forms. Why do you need a soul for that? This was tried on students. The calculations are very ingenious and are supposed to prove that there is no soul in it, that everything is converted food energy, what a person thinks and does. The facts are admirably observed. The methods are very well thought out, the instruments are magnificent. But the conclusions are the most gruesome one can imagine. One only has to trace the thought back to the simplest elements to see this immediately.

The thought is constructed exactly according to the following pattern. We line up at a bank. We know that money is carried into it. Now we check all the money, we write everything down, individually. Then we check what is carried out. We then come to the wonderful conclusion that the money that is carried out is exactly the same amount as what is carried in. From this we conclude that there is no need for officials inside; because just as much money is carried out as comes in. The other judgment is equally astute: just as much work and thought goes out as food value goes into people.

But it goes into much more subtle areas. Today we have a wonderful field of research that shines a light into the smallest organs of beings. There we find very significant small organs. The research methods are admirable, through which one is able to prove something in plants that imitates the human soul organs. It is proven that there are faceted organs that form the eye. Yes, they even photograph images that arise in the plant eyes, and from this it is concluded – nothing is to be disparaged about the wonderful research method, but only the conclusion is to be put into the right perspective – it is concluded: because it can be observed in this way, the plant must be ensouled in a similar way to animals and humans. One sees certain plants that draw insects through their organs and consume them. They develop a certain digestive activity; they attract insects and, as it were, digest them. And the conclusions that are drawn from this are very likely to blur the difference, which must not be blurred, between plants, animals and humans.

Someone who is familiar with practical thinking can say the following: I also know a strange creature that has the property of attracting small creatures by certain actions within itself, as if with magnetic force, and, when they approach, not only to transport them into its interior, but even to kill them there. That is the mousetrap. And the thought form that is now applied to the mousetrap is formed according to the same pattern as the thought forms that some people apply to something that is supposed to open up a new field of plants, to the soul life of plants.

When you consider things like this, you can begin to appreciate how important it is to really train this thinking through the specified means in practice. You cannot just train the circumspection of thinking, but also achieve a certain clarity of thinking through artificial means, through the following exercises. Again, the exercises differ from the habits of thinking.

Most people will not be able to form their judgments about any matter quickly enough. And once they have them, they are satisfied. They do not consider that it could have been different; if someone else says otherwise, they are a fool. This is not how you learn to think. You learn it by considering other possibilities for thought when you have formed an opinion, by not clinging to what you yourself have thought, but also putting the other opinion alongside in all love. You will see that it is possible, which can only be characterized by saying: Only those who disregard their own opinion can recognize the truth.

It is very useful when answering a question or solving a task to first consider the different ways in which it can be resolved, and then to leave it at that, to say to yourself: “Now I'll leave it.” You have to have a belief that is very important for practice, the belief that you have something within you, a kind of higher person who can think even better than you think when you are present. You don't have to be so selfish that you want to be everywhere in your soul and believe that you know the very best. Those who believe in the real validity of thinking and have confidence in it will say to themselves: my thoughts will progress most beautifully and objectively through their own powers if I am not there at all, if I switch off and turn to something else, and then present it all to myself again tomorrow or the day after. You will notice that, if you have not been there, you have become much wiser about this question. The possibilities of thought then work in one, and one comes to a decision in a much more favorable sense. This is of tremendous importance. And if one believes that selflessness has not yet allowed a decision to be made a second time, then it is of tremendous educational importance to wait again. And one will very soon notice how thinking becomes clearer and more forceful. It becomes much easier to quickly put things together once you have trained your thinking.

In this way, you can specify the things through which thinking can gradually be trained. Again, something of great importance is that you pay attention to the following for practical training in thinking: As long as you are interested in something, you should look at it, observe it and remain silent. You should only speak when you no longer have any direct interest in it, when you have risen above it. As long as you are still too involved in your interest in something, you should consider it and remain silent. It is best to speak when you no longer have a direct interest in something, but have detached yourself from it with joy and sorrow. Those who can do this will get very far. Those who resolve to form an opinion only when their interest has waned, who can take an interest in anything and hold back with their judgment, who only form their opinion in retrospect, will go a long way. This is a very significant pointer to how one can essentially train one's practical thinking.

And what is particularly important now is that one is not at all with what one already is, with the way thinking develops. It is very important for those who want to train themselves practically to try not to think at all for certain periods of the day. For the best training of the thinking is achieved when we harm it as little as possible by our thinking. When we can refrain from all thoughts, when we are able not to grasp the thoughts we can grasp, but to think nothing, then the inner, ever-present power of the soul takes effect and actually brings us a step forward.

This is very difficult and requires a great deal of energy. But it is of immense value to suppress all those errant thoughts that surge up and down within us and to think nothing at all. What is thinking in us is also there when we are not thinking along with it. This is best achieved when we are not present for a while. Because then we do not stand in the way through our personality, through our individuality. Just as it is work when we consider various possibilities and then let the thoughts work by themselves, it is essential that we let the power of thought work without us being there, that we let the thinking being develop in us, even if only for a few moments, without our intervention. Anyone who does this for a long time will notice the great benefit of such a thing.

Fichte was right when he said something completely different. You see, he was talking about the “destiny of the scholar” and knew in advance that he would have to set such high ideals that people would not go along with them because they would find them impractical. So he says:

We know full well that ideals cannot be applied directly in real life. We only claim that reality must be judged by them and modified by those who feel the strength within themselves to do so. Even if they cannot be convinced, once they are what they are, they lose very little; and humanity loses nothing. It merely makes it clear that they cannot be counted on in the plan of ennobling humanity. The latter will undoubtedly continue on its way; let benign nature prevail over the former and give them, in due course, rain and sunshine, wholesome nourishment and an undisturbed circulation of the fluids, and with that, wise thoughts.

Thus says Fichte about those who speak of the impracticality of ideals. A benevolent providence does indeed do its part in relation to human thinking. For much of what man spoils of his power of thought, the balance is created by man sleeping. If he were always awake and impairing his mental power with his thoughts, it would be unbearable. The fact that a person sleeps gives him the opportunity to repeatedly advance into his inner thinking power. However, thinking is much more effectively promoted when a person decides not to think, even though he is awake. The moments of not thinking are the greatest educational means for thinking.

Only isolated points could be selected from the whole range of what could be said and what could not be exhausted in twenty lectures. These points can indicate how one can find one's way out of the laws of spiritual science or theosophy and how thinking can be trained for practical life. For truly, thinking is trained by such things, it is trained for both perspicacity and clarity as well as for presence of mind. We make constant progress if we do not let ourselves be annoyed when we apply such things. One would like to say: If only such inner schooling of thinking were applied pedagogically early enough, everything that can be chiseled out inwardly would permeate the human organism so completely that it would become skillful.

What has been said today is concrete thinking that makes people skillful. I tell you, as strange as it sounds: nature still ensures that people can pick up what they have dropped. But if one were to train the powers of thinking as it has been said today, one would bring people to the point where they can pick up with their toes what falls down. It is only the lack of training of thinking that makes us so clumsy in many things, because the training of thinking does not work in the center of the human being, does not go to the center. This principle lies in everything that has been said today: to go to the center of the human being, to let the forces radiate out from there into all human limbs, so that the human being is enabled to use even the soup spoon correctly.

When spiritual science introduces proper schooling of the thinking, then people will systematically see an example in Goethe, and they will arrive at valid thinking by immersing themselves in things. It is precisely by training one's thinking in this way that one comes to find the simplest thoughts everywhere, to find what can be easily grasped. It must be possible to trace all things back to their simple thought construction. This is only possible if thinking is trained in the indicated way, otherwise thinking goes its own way. In detail, the thoughts can be correct, but as a whole they are not useful.

Isn't it true that, especially today, science is proving that or the other, which clear thinking recognizes as an error at first glance. There are people today, for example, who say: Actually, there is no substance, only movement. A witty brochure has recently been published that takes the view that everything is movement. It really says that when a person walks from one place to another, he does not carry what appears to us to be his substantiality from one place to another, but only movement, and by walking to the other place, he adds a new movement. This is thought of in terms of the pattern of the sun being up there, the solar particles are moving, they are dancing; by dancing, something does not go from the sun to us, it is said, the nearest ether environment dances, and the ether dances down to us. Only the movement is transmitted, it is said, and that is perceived as light. In this perceptive book, this whole ether dance is applied to the human being. The whole human being is actually just a dance. When I go to the next place, I create a new movement and so on. One would just like to advise the good man, when he walks, never to forget that he is creating the movement again, otherwise he would have to disappear into nothingness.

This is an example of how everything today is traced back to movement. But Goethe, in his straightforward thinking, had to experience that in his time everything was traced back to rest. All this is caused by impractical thinking, which is incapable of reducing complexity to simplicity. Goethe, as a practical man, faced all this, and the fact that he found his way through all the quirks is based on what he said in his practical thinking.

Let us also say this to ourselves in conclusion. It can also indicate the right point of view for the attitude we should acquire. He experienced that people who thought impractically confronted his practical way of thinking, and there he said the principle that one should really write for all thinking practice in one's soul, the principle:

Enemy eyes may meet mine,
But I will keep calm and silent;
And though they deny you movement,
Go on as if before them I do not exist.

There are certain reasons why I have recently been given the task of speaking to the branches of our Theosophical Society about a very specific topic, a topic that is intended to educate our dear members about certain facts that lie behind the development of humanity, about certain facts that can only really be known within the spiritual world, and that relate to complicated questions of reincarnation and world karma. It is quite right that we first proclaim the teachings of Theosophy in our branches, so to speak, in a more general way. We have already seen in the last lecture here that, so to speak, at the beginning of our work, we have to speak more generally about the processes between death and a new birth, and that we then have to modify, in a sense, what lies behind it in even more mysterious things. This is how we have to work in general. For the theosophical life is such that it only gradually allows us to ascend into the veiled sanctuaries of the becoming of the world and of humanity.

Today we will hear more details about these questions, which we usually can only answer by saying that there is reincarnation, there are repeated lives on earth; the innermost core of a person's being goes from life to life. This is generally correct, but only imprecise, it is, so to speak, spoken in broad terms. We are only just beginning to learn the subtler truths, for we are only gradually growing beyond the ABC of spiritual wisdom; we are still at the ABC. We must not entertain the idea that we have already gone very far beyond the ABC with what we have been able to master. But it will continue if patience and energy are available.

Today we first turn our gaze a little further back into the course of our human development. Once again we look back to the ancient time of the Atlantean development, to the time when our souls were embodied in Atlantean bodies. All the souls that are now embodied here in our bodies were once embodied in Atlantean bodies. We have talked about the way our souls perceived and recognized things back then; today we want to talk about something else, namely that there were already initiates in Atlantis who had accordingly advanced in what our ancestors in Atlantis had around them in the world, who were at a higher level of clairvoyance and were able to ascend to high degrees of knowledge and activity through the independent cultivation of their psychic abilities. These initiates worked in certain sacred sites. We can give these sacred sites a name, but it could only come about later. Because it was used by the stragglers of ancient Atlantis, it best describes those peculiar places that stood between places of worship or churches and schools. We can call these places of worship “oracles”. What was initially practiced in such oracles? There were the highly advanced individuals of Atlantean humanity. They sought out their disciples among the Atlantean population, those who were ready to be trained. These were accepted into the oracle sites and initiated into the secrets of the development of the world and humanity. They learned the truths that related to the spiritual background of the world, namely the spiritual background of our solar system. There was an oracle of Mars. All the heavenly bodies of our solar system interact. He who regards Mars only as a physical body knows little about the real workings of the world. Only he who recognizes the spiritual essence of Mars knows what forces are at work from Mars; he can glimpse a little into those places that lie behind the scenes of ordinary existence. And one can already know a great deal about the mysterious forces that direct our Earth once one has become acquainted with the secrets of Mars, for example. It is the case that, during the Atlantean development, certain initiates had to devote all their energies to researching the secrets of Mars. They could not have investigated the secrets of Saturn, Jupiter and Venus at the same time; for that there were other oracles. There was a Venus oracle, a Saturn oracle, a Jupiter oracle, a Mars oracle, a Mercury oracle, a Vulcan oracle. And there was one great oracle - this was the most significant oracle of ancient Atlantis - which investigated the secrets of the Sun and that which works from the Sun on to the Earth as a spiritual being. Equipped with the powers they thus investigated, the initiates could be the leaders of the masses in Atlantis. And the unified leader of all was the deepest initiate, the great leader of the oracle of the sun, who proclaimed what is as the spiritual essence in the sun, the one who could be called by the name “Christ”. It was already proclaimed in ancient Atlantis.

This initiate of the oracle of the sun had now been given a very specific task to accomplish in a very specific time. He had the task of selecting from the masses of the Atlantean population those people who, through their souls, were particularly suited to laying the foundations for the post-Atlantean culture. We have to imagine what it was like in ancient Atlantean times: calculating, counting, combining, judging and so on were not abilities that souls had at that time; these were abilities that humanity was only to develop later. At that time, the souls had the ability to develop a certain dimmed clairvoyance and certain magical powers. You know how the people of ancient Atlantis used the seed powers of plants in a similar way to how we use the powers of coal today. Just as there are coal stores at our train stations today, where we store the coal we use to heat the engines that push our trains forward, so the Atlanteans had stores for large collections of all kinds of seeds. Let us consider a seed. It has the power to drive the stalk upwards. The Atlanteans were able to coax these forces out, just as we can coax out the energy stored in coal. And just as we move our locomotives forward today with the energy of coal, so the Atlanteans moved their vehicles, which hovered close to the ground, with the seed powers. In every respect, the Atlanteans were different from today's people. They were great inventors, who were able to achieve much through the use of these seed powers. They were comparable to our great scholars and technicians - they, who at that time, in dim clairvoyance, gained special insight into the nature of the seeds.

These great bearers of the Atlantean culture were now the least likely to be chosen and to carry over what was necessary to become founding for the post-Atlantean culture. Rather, it was the simplest people who developed the beginnings of calculating, counting, combining, and so on, those in whom the qualities that made up the splendor of the Atlanteans were least developed. We can take comfort in this fact when today's scholars look down on us. Just as the great leader of old had to choose those who were simple people, so today those must be chosen who have a sense of the future impact of the Christ principle, whether or not they march at the head of external culture. As in those days the call of the great initiate Manu went forth to those who had the future qualities in their first form, so today the call goes forth from the spiritual side through the anthroposophical movement to prepare the souls for the next cultural epoch. Not among those who have the brilliant qualities of today's scholarship are the souls that can carry the culture over.

These great adepts of the solar oracle gathered these simple people around them in a region west of present-day Ireland, while the other migrations from west to east had long since taken place. [The postscript ends here.]

Today we are to speak about the subject of asceticism. This subject is one that is judged differently from various sides. In asceticism, a spiritual current is usually already seen that, in what it represents in itself, already shows a kind of illness and that cannot at all proceed from healthy foundations of existence. But asceticism is an effective means of perfecting life, of reaching higher levels of existence. Sometimes asceticism is also seen as a withdrawal of human energies that could be used for existence; thus moderation and asceticism are considered to be more or less synonymous. The word is well suited to asceticism:

Confused by the hatred of the parties,
its image in history fluctuates.

Asceticism was something quite different in ancient Greece than it was in the Middle Ages. The nuance established by the Middle Ages for asceticism is indeed a questionable one. But spiritual science or theosophy has every interest in putting asceticism in its true light.

Asceticism in the sense in which it was meant in ancient Greece and wherever the word was understood in its general meaning has something to do with what underlies Theosophy. Asceticism is something that can lead to the highest heights of existence, but taken to an extreme, it can become idleness or even worse. “Asceticism” means ‘exercising one's powers’ so that one is able to develop and exercise one's highest abilities. ‘Askesis’, the Greek word, is related to ‘athlete’ and means ‘to make oneself strong’. In that the word indicates this in its original meaning, it has to do with the basis of spiritual research in Theosophy. And now we want to go into the distinguishing feature of asceticism in relation to many other scientific currents.

The theosophist has a different concept of knowledge than that which many other people have of knowing the world and what underlies it. With the senses one can know the external world, says the intellect; but one cannot explore everything about it, it exceeds the limits of its knowledge. Speaking in this sense means professing the opposite of what theosophy is; it says: reality is unlimited! It would even be able to give man a new sense, a physical sense, of reality if necessary. There are no limits to being, being is infinite. Man's soul is indeed limited in time to one stage of development, but it is up to man to expand this soul within it.

Man must not presume to want to exceed the limits of his knowledge, as science says against it. But spiritual science says: Try to expand your spiritual knowledge, your spiritual-scientific knowledge, as much as possible. The goal is the development of the soul, of the cognitive abilities of the human being. It must be admitted that there is something in the soul, something germinal in it. A person should not say, “This is how I am,” and be satisfied with it, but should say, “This is how I am now, and I will achieve new forms of existence to practice my powers.” This is asceticism.

Asceticism is something that enriches the human soul and makes a person stronger, opening up true and new realms of reality to them. Usually, asceticism is described as someone who practices it appearing gaunt and hollow-eyed, being idle, hating life and being disgusted by all the joys and demands of life. But an ascetic, properly understood, is akin to an athlete; true asceticism is elevation, expansion, enrichment of the true essence of man. Spiritual science or theosophy makes its knowledge and research accessible to a larger circle of people today. But you need not think that everyone must therefore also do the exercises - meditation and concentration and so on - and that the result will be the same for everyone as for the blind person who would have to be operated on, the opening of the eyes. Not everyone needs to do this, and not everyone will experience it; and not everyone can or needs to become a researcher in the spiritual world. But he, for his work in the spiritual world, needs the clairvoyant consciousness. To understand the messages of the researcher, none of this is necessary, one should just take them in impartially and examine them seriously. Everyone should test them against their own logic and sense of truth, which every person carries within them as a natural thing that they can rely on; this will then teach them to reject what a charlatan says and to agree with what a true spiritual researcher says; it will also teach them to distinguish one from the other.

It often happens that messages from the spiritual world arouse interest among listeners, especially those that deal with the subject of what kind of exercises and so on are necessary to enter the spiritual world. We will now begin with such a description today; how far one can follow it will be best seen from the subject itself.

The asceticism that is concerned with living in the spiritual world – and this is the only thing that matters for spiritual science – endeavors to develop abilities and perceptions in people that are silent in ordinary human life. Consider that you perceive from morning till evening through stimulation from the outside world; so you have a consciousness of yourself and of what is around you. In the evening, when you are tired, your soul can no longer perceive, your consciousness is silent, it falls silent. While you sleep, you are in the spiritual world, but you know nothing of it; why? Because today's man needs those external stimuli to see, which, as it were, entice perception. If he could give himself this push, which the objects give him as an external stimulus, this impetus from within, then man would have within him a stronger inner power than that which drives him from outside to perceive. But then he could also perceive in a world to which he drives himself from within, while he must perceive through external stimuli.

Let us assume that the former would be the case and that man would be blind and deaf to external stimuli, but would be able to receive the impulse to perceive within himself through invisible senses; then man would have awakened inner spiritual abilities in himself. But this can also happen in another way, namely in the sense in which we speak of asceticism in spiritual science. That is, a person commands himself through strong inner strength that he does not want to see or hear the external world; it sinks away for him, but not through fatigue, but through his arbitrariness. It is an inner world that then emerges, the outer one sinks.

Now let us turn to what man must do to achieve this. The preparation for this consists in his devoting himself to certain exercises. True asceticism has nothing to do with external means; what happens is an intimate, albeit energetic, process of the innermost of man's spiritual powers. The first thing he has to acquire is an especially heightened, intensified power of imagination! This occurs when a person stimulates his inner powers in such a way that he awakens within himself what had previously been dormant forces within him. ...

(As an example of this, Dr. Steiner cites the dialogue that one can imagine between the secret teacher and the mystery student when the student is being instructed in the contemplation of plants and humans.

Not to forget, however, that this dialogue never took place in this way.

(Description of the dialogue.)

This is to tell us: Man can stray, but the plant leads a pure chaste existence. The chaste red plant sap and the passionate human red blood. These thoughts must be transformed into an image and tried to visualize as a real ideal of man. Through this exercise, man will then gradually reach a stage of development through his own arbitrariness, as the plant has already reached a lower stage today. Goethe expresses this beautifully:

But if you do not have
this dying and becoming,
you are only a dull guest
on the dark earth.

In order to understand this ascent of man over himself, man must overcome something in himself, so as not to let it gain mastery over himself in self-aggrandizement. The disciple was told: Imagine that which should die as a withered piece of wood in the shape of a cross, and that which should come to life when man has conquered that which is expressed by his red blood, as a symbol of the purified plant-juice, think of it as the red rose. Imagine this vividly before your soul, surround the wood of the cross with living red roses, and you have before you the “Rose Cross”. Feel this mighty symbol deeply in your soul, do not just stare at it rigidly, but put into it all your perceptions and feelings, put them all into it as they fill you with devotion and devotion; when you compare the whole path of development through plants and humans up to the ideal of man in whom the red blood again flows pure and chastened, as in the red plant-juice in the petals of the red rose, feel and see this symbol, so that the Rosicrucian symbol becomes not merely an idea, a symbol, but a living power. Let all your feelings come to life in you as you contemplate and imagine, and let your heart warm as you do so, let this symbol come to life in you!

It is not an object that can be awakened by external perception and stimulation of the senses, nothing that can be seen in external reality, something that cannot awaken an external image in us. Hundreds and hundreds of such symbols could be cited from spiritual science or theosophy. But it is precisely such symbols, which do not come from external reality, that make man strong inwardly, that steel his will so that he can perceive a new world around him. The aim of such asceticism is the inner development of the human being's powers. We have characterized and shown what true asceticism is by the above example, and how through it man can become a citizen of the higher worlds. Asceticism is that which truly opens up a new, spiritual world to man and through which much can be communicated to him from it. At first, man should learn to hear the communications of the secret researcher and not immediately practice them himself. It is better if he first seeks to understand with his logic what the secret researcher says as a message from the spiritual world. So what we call asceticism leads us up into the spiritual worlds; and now let us see how humanity can relate to it. At first there will be those who say that these are fantasists, dreamers; and they will reject these explanations; but they will not always be wrong with us; because those who speak thus should say to themselves, one must first examine before one rejects. And we must say to ourselves that we must first know the reason why they reject, and we must have patience and consider that it is indeed a new world that is being shown to people. Wherever something like this is given, there is something that flows into us; we are to acquire new concepts, new ideas, which is not easy for everyone. For example, someone who initially only has a certain amount of abilities in his or her self cannot absorb this new, spiritual knowledge; for him, absorbing it would be like overeating in a spiritual sense. For him, to reject it is nothing more than his ego showing that he is incapable of absorbing it at first. It is instinct and self-preservation that tempt such people to reject spiritual science. These truths would extinguish their inner being; that is the one extreme where those poor egos of the present reject the truths of the spiritual researchers.

Others have a tendency to absorb everything that comes up and can be heard, but they also lack the will to penetrate it with understanding. Out of laziness, they don't want to make an effort, but they have an inclination to absorb, but they don't have the will to grasp what they hear with their will. But only then can harmony arise between the listener and what is heard; because only through receiving and processing does understanding arise. So one part is organized in such a way that it is unable to expand its spiritual abilities; it must reject the truths of Theosophy out of a sense of self-preservation. Others come from a sense of sensationalism, which is even less good; if one only wants to receive and not understand, that gives rise to blind faith in authority. One then hears them say: He said it, and so it must be true! But the one about whom this is said would rather be considered an authority less often, but in return be better understood.

(Example: What Lessing says about Klopstock).

The same applies to the secret researcher: he does not want to be praised at all and much rather not revered as a master personality, but to be understood and tested! For it is true, as has already been mentioned elsewhere, that if one wants to examine comfortably and not logically, it is then dangerous for the teacher to make the communications from the spiritual world to such people, for they can no longer distinguish truth from humbug and deception. There is only one way for the layman or the disciple to find the truth, and that is to examine everything with the strictest logic.

Now, we want to draw the attention of those who just want to absorb everything and who say, “the master said it,” to the danger of just blindly believing and not checking; you lose the strength and the educational result of the truth itself. For what truth is for man, its immense significance lies precisely in the fact that it is established in the innermost being of man. I know that three times three is nine; and if a million people come and claim that it is ten! This makes truth that great, that powerful educational tool, that the guiding principle for it lies within man, in his own inner being. This is why man makes something else the guiding principle of his inner being when it is not only about what comes from external sense perceptions.

But whoever only wants to hear new things abandons the educational means of truth, whereby truth is that strict means of education. Those who allow themselves to be overfed with truths allow the lack of judgment to take root in their habits; they allow someone else to be their judge of truth, thereby losing their sense of truth and falling into a habitual attachment to and love of untruthfulness. Out of laziness, true people can develop a tendency towards dishonesty, lying, dishonesty. Man must realize that truth research is a duty; but this realization must spur him on to examine logically and rationally everything he is taught from the spiritual world. What people who are too lazy to examine do to themselves can be compared, in a very good sense, to drowning. The person in question loses their self; this kind of reception of spiritual truths is drowning.

Now we want to discuss another thing that is even closer to what we call askesis or spiritual exercise. What does this askesis present itself as? We work on ourselves in order to become stronger for the world. Askesis is the practice of those powers that are not used at the present moment. Askesis can thus be compared to a healthy maneuver. The powers that are to be applied in an emergency are tested, tried and steeled there. Just as a military maneuver is related to war, so is asceticism related to the application of these forces themselves. The purpose of practicing the forces is for the sake of developing the forces; and the development of the forces must be done for the sake of growing the forces, so that they are there when you need them; therefore, you have to train them beforehand. You have to practice them before you need them, otherwise you won't have them when you need them. Example: If you train to be a singer, you have to practice a lot before you can perform and sing. Those who want to practice asceticism must practice and renounce the immediate use of their strength. You have to approach true asceticism as something that you only do to practice.

This kind of asceticism can be compared with something else: with children's play; they also practice their strengths now on objective things, which, so to speak, they are not yet touched by, but they practice them in preparation to have them and to be able to develop them in the time when the seriousness of life approaches them. To make one's powers pliable, flexible and mobile is the meaning of asceticism in relation to higher worlds and levels of knowledge; to develop these powers into abilities is the purpose of true asceticism.

In the development of spiritual abilities, something else comes into consideration. Through certain exercises, through meditation, through the presentation and contemplation of the Rosicrucian, man can strengthen his abilities and can also achieve certain visionary, clairvoyant abilities; powerful images and so on can be awakened in him, visionary clairvoyance is attained. Now the special thing occurs that the development of such powers can become dangerous if they are not directed towards something real, that is why study is such a necessary and important part of the student's task. One should not develop inner abilities without at the same time devoting oneself to an external, logical, rational understanding of the knowledge of the higher worlds. When a person becomes clairvoyant, a strong awareness must arise in him at the same time, and this is where the inner ability must be directed. Otherwise there is danger for the person. If a person has not previously acquired knowledge logically before entering the spiritual world, then the person does not know what to do with the inner ability. It is then a case of illusory images, of filling oneself with clairvoyant abilities; the process is then like an internal burning. For the awakening of such abilities is linked to the fact that the person feels the transition of abilities into passions, instincts, desires and so on. This is the other danger to which those who practice asceticism and who want to develop themselves in this way into the higher worlds, but without study, are exposed.

These are the two dangerous pitfalls – drowning, self-destruction, and burning to death – that await those who do not properly and thoroughly practice the ascent to the spiritual world and do not strictly follow the instructions.

Some will say, yes, meditation and all that stuff, that's fatal, I don't do that; but not eating meat, not drinking wine, I could dare to do that. But doing that is not so easy and not so simple and not successful either. Because only for the one who has already prepared his soul through spiritual work, for him the external measures and means are allowed as a relief for the journey. One must realize that they are only a relief, never anything else. Our body forms a resistance for our soul, and man would be able to do many things if he did not have this cumbersome body. Through external measures and aids, man can make this body more docile; he can prepare it as a better servant of the soul. A meat-free diet makes the body more docile in this respect and also more efficient.

In our time of true health fanaticism, where sunbathing and all kinds of other natural remedies are used, it happens that precisely those who are passionate about sunbathing, when they have to spend a quarter of an hour in the sun or stay in it, sigh and moan: “Oh, it's unbearable!” But anyone who practices true asceticism can also take a good walk in the sun, because it teaches people to endure life. Preparing oneself, making oneself capable of living, that is true asceticism!

Nothing can be achieved by external means alone. This only weakens the body – that is, if one only applies external means one-sidedly and does not regard them as adjuvants – because the body should be attuned to the soul. If the soul is lazy, so is the body. Otherwise the disharmony is too great. Those who apply and want to apply only external means to penetrate the spiritual world are preparing their body for a soul that they should first create. The soul must develop in parallel with the body.

Here we have reached the limits of our consideration, where asceticism can lead to the soul and body becoming unhealthy. You have to take care of your body and soul when you start practicing, because higher cognitive abilities are developed that then become realities in our soul; and every reality affects our body and soul. What can be achieved through true asceticism is a reality. A robust person must have a strong connection with the physical world; because there is a certain connection between the external world and the human being. — Example: What Fichte says about ideals, namely that those who have them know very well that they cannot be applied directly in the world, but are nevertheless their driving force.

A person who is whole within himself is also healthy when there is harmony between him, his inner self and the outer world. Based on this feeling, many people reject what they are not attuned to, for example, Theosophy. When a person takes in something and is not attuned to it and does not process it, then disharmony arises; this then takes hold of the physical body and what was previously only described as untruthfulness and so on, as the drowning of the soul, that is what then also makes the body sick. We must bear in mind that messages from the external world do not affect us so strongly that they cause such physical disharmony in the body; but messages from the spiritual world are realities, and therefore they affect the physical body; for everything physical is, after all, only an expression of the spiritual. This means that we make ourselves physically ill through the wrong reception and application of spiritual truths from the spirit.

This is even worse if the soul has been enriched by clairvoyant abilities without logical study; then the person burns inwardly, and this is transferred all the more as a consuming fire to the outer body, and the body becomes diseased. Therefore, man must strive to remain in balance with soul and body and their inner powers. Study and attainment of inner abilities must go hand in hand. If this is not the case, the consequence is otherwise the soul burning within and a morbid exterior. With correct asceticism, the organism becomes supple and flexible; but if a person digresses in either direction, then through asceticism, misunderstood or misapplied, the person will fall into and pass over into mental and physical illness. This is the great responsibility for those who make communications from spiritual science. And the leaders of the movement must always be aware of the existence of this responsibility in the most serious sense. The greatest caution and care is therefore required when accepting each disciple. But this responsibility must not deter anyone who is called to show the way, to give advice, nor deter anyone from coming. For the saying of Heraclitus applies to every soul, and with this I will conclude:

You cannot fathom the soul's limits,
even if you were to wander through all the streets and squares.

One of the most important lectures on the etheric appearance of Christ was given at Nuremberg on the 13th of November 1910. The text of this lecture containing many details was published in the News Sheet in 1937 (page 105) under the title “THE WISDOM CONTAINED IN ANCIENT DOCUMENTS AND IN THE GOSPELS. THE EVENT OF THE CHRIST.” The text of the lecture which preceded it was discovered on looking through the notes of the lecture. This lecture of the 12th of November contains many valuable details on the effects and influences of Karma. And it should meet an objective and historical interest to publish this brief resume of the lecture given on the 12th of November in the News Sheet.

MARIE STEINER

Today I must tell you a few things on morality and karma and tomorrow I shall speak on the appearance of Christ and reveal a few facts which have not yet been revealed.

Theosophy becomes really fruitful if we can observe its influence on our own life and if it becomes living substance within us. Theosophical principles can be looked upon as interesting doctrines, but theoretically it is difficult to gain a real conviction of the truth implied by the spiritual-scientific doctrines, in the real meaning of the word. Of course, all theosophical facts discovered along the path of genuine spiritual-scientific investigation can be tested by the human intellect and recognized through logic; but if we take in spiritual-scientific truths we are still a long way from being able to test them. Among our audience many people prefer to tread an easier path, which is to accept spiritual truths on the authority of a teacher. This is far more comfortable. On the other hand, however, there is hardly any other alternative for the great majority of people, for the independent testing of spiritual-scientific truths is a very difficult path; the other path, of observing life in itself, is far easier. But if the laws of Karma hold good, life itself must take on a form which shows us how Karma works in the experiences of life and in the development of character. Those who strive after spiritual truths will more easily gain a conviction of these truths by observing facts supported by life itself.

I shall take two widely-spread qualities as a starting point in this lecture. Taken as moral qualities, there has always been a strong, instinctive repugnance against them. ENVY and FALSEHOOD have always been considered as a special moral failing. This special aversion may be seen in the fact that in the case of no other human error is the repugnance so strong and instinctive as in the case of envy and falsehood. This feeling may be found in great men and in insignificant people. Benvenuto Cellini, who was a great man, once said that he felt himself capable of every kind of sin, but that he could not remember any real lie which he had told. Also Goethe found a certain relief in being able to say that he had never harboured any feeling of envy. Consequently the souls of the simplest people and the souls of highly developed men have an instinctive repugnance against envy and falsehood and defend themselves against them.

Without taking into consideration the theosophical aspect it may be said, first of all, that envy and falsehood are visibly an offence against a fundamental element of social life: they are an offence against the feeling of compassion. Compassion does not only imply sharing another's grief and pain, but it also implies experiencing his value. Compassion is a quality which is not greatly developed among men. It still contains a great amount of egoism. Of Herder it is said, for instance (he intended to study medicine) that he fainted when he first entered an operating theatre where a corpse was to be dissected; he fainted not through compassion, but through weakness and egoism, because he could not bear that sight. Compassion must become less selfish; we should be able to rejoice at another person's success and rise; we should be able to look upon his good qualities without any feeling of bitterness.

Compassion is a fundamental element in the soul life which we share with others because all human soul experiences are connected with each other. Envy and falsehood in particular offend against the capacity of appraising another person's value. We damage our fellow man through envy and falsehood.

Envy and falsehood bring us in opposition to the course of the universe; by envy and falsehood we harm the laws which govern the world's course of events. They can easily be recognized as errors and people do not tolerate them.

As a rule both envy and falsehood have occult backgrounds. Certain mysterious laws hold sway, which easily escape our observation, and they work in such a way that both envy and falsehood can arise in the same person in later years.

Envy does not always take on the form of conscious green envy. Of course, if anyone is conscious of this feeling, he tries to get rid of it. Envy as such is a quality rooted in the astral body of man. We know that feelings, passions, etc. should be looked for in the astral body. There is a certain law according to which qualities arising in the astral body and which are so detestable that we wish to get rid of them, gradually insinuate themselves into the etheric body. There they take on delusive aspects and appear in the guise of certain definite judgments which we pass on other people. No envy is contained in these judgments, yet we criticize people and find everything in them bad. This is a secret form of envy which creeps into our etheric body. There it takes on the form of an opinion, of a critical judgment. We say: This person has done this or that, and our statement may seem perfectly correct; nevertheless it contains envy in a masked form. What has taken place? A very significant process has taken place.

We know that the human soul passes through many incarnations and that there was a moment in the development of mankind when the tempters, Lucifer and Ahriman, crept into the human soul. In what form do Lucifer and Ahriman live within us today? This is not easy to discover without the aid of clairvoyant investigation, and Goethe expressed a deep truth when he said: “Folks do not notice the Devil, even when he takes them by the scruff of the neck!” IN fact, it is possible to ignore the devil; it is possible not to see him. From the standpoint of modern natural science it is easy to say that Mephistopheles does not exist; nevertheless, Lucifer and Ahriman live in human nature. Ahriman lives in the etheric body and Lucifer in the astral body of man.

Lucifer is a power that tempts the human soul by drawing it down morally and by leading it away from its origin. He casts us into the depths of earthly nature and we should beware of this. Lucifer is the power that draws us down into the depths of passion.

Ahriman, on the other hand, is the spirit of falsehood and error and he falsifies our judgments.

Both Lucifer and Ahriman are powers which are hostile to human progress. Yet they get on very well with each other. Envy is a quality in which the Luciferic power comes to expression. It is a detestable quality and that is why people dislike it. They seek to get rid of it, to overcome it and drive it away. When a person first discovers that his soul is filled with envy, he begins to fight against Lucifer, the source of envy. What does Lucifer do in that case? He simply hands over the matter to Ahriman, and Ahriman darkens the human judgment.

When we fight against Lucifer in the astral body, Ahriman can easily insinuate himself into the etheric body, darkening our judgments on other people. This is falsehood and falsehood is an Ahrimanic quality.

People also feel a strong dislike for falsehood and they try to fight against it. When we try to overcome falsehood, we can see that Ahriman hands over the scepter to Lucifer, so that a quality creeps into the astral body which appears in the form of an extremely pronounced EGOISM. Egoism is restrained falsehood.

These two qualities, falsehood and envy, are a crass expression of the way in which Lucifer and Ahriman work within the human soul.

It is possible to observe the influence of envy and falsehood even in the course of a single incarnation. Let us now speak of facts which prove the truth of theosophical teachings. Let us observe a certain period in a person's life and let us suppose that this person was strongly addicted to telling lies. The law of Karma would in that case exercise its influence and we should wait until this becomes manifest. It is, however, possible to observe in the present incarnation the connection which exists between an earlier and a later period of life. A study of human life may show us that a person perhaps lost the habit of telling lies—for life itself is a great school—but he will reveal instead a new, plainly marked characteristic: a certain timidity. There are people who cannot look us in the face and it is possible to observe a certain relationship between a feeling of shyness in later life and hypocrisy at some earlier period of life.

Another example: A person may be filled with the feeling of envy. When this has disappeared, when it has been overcome, we can observe that at some later period of life such a person is dependent on others; he will lack independence in the way in which he faces life—be a weak and swaying person.

These connections between falsehood and shyness, envy and lack of independence, which can already be observed in one and the same incarnation, are Karmic connections.

In reality, Karma works in such a way that a faint fulfillment of its laws already comes to expression in one and the same incarnation, though the decisive influence upon man's character only appears in the next incarnation. Helplessness and lack of independence will arise in old age, when envy appeared during youth. This is a faint nuance of the influence of Karma; it remains after death, works throughout kamaloka, etc., and it will be contained in the forces which build up the next life; it will become interwoven with the fundamental character which expresses itself in the three bodies: the physical, etheric and astral bodies.

Goethe expressed this in a very fine way by saying: The desires of our youth are fully realized in our old age. This applies, of course, both to good and bad desires.

In the next life the character qualities build up the three bodies, our character is then the architect of these three bodies. If envy has been a fundamental quality during one incarnation, it will exercise an influence upon the three bodies during the next incarnation and produce, as a result, a weak physical constitution. It works upon the human organism during the next incarnation.

When we see someone facing life in a helpless and dependent way, we must say: “Envy must have been at work during his past incarnation,” and we should behave towards him accordingly. If the laws of Karma hold good, it will soon appear whether our attitude is justified. When we see someone entering life with bad health and a weak constitution, we may take for granted that envy played a certain part in his life during his past incarnation.

When there is such a person in our environment, we must say that Karma led us together with him for a definite purpose: perhaps we were the object of his former envy. What can we now do for him? If Karma is a fact which can be reasonably accepted, if it is a valid truth, it should become manifest that by adopting the right attitude towards such a physically weak person in our environment, a good result can be achieved. What he needs is forgiveness; he needs to encounter this forgiving attitude in the widest measure. Under the condition that we have something to forgive him, we should envelop him in an atmosphere of forgiveness. “You have to forgive him something—therefore do it”; this is what we say to ourselves, but not to HIM—we shall act accordingly and await the result, and we shall see him gaining health and strength. Simply try to do what is right and the result will not fail to appear. This is how we may live in accordance with the laws of Karma and the whole of Theosophy will then become living substance.

Now someone might come along and say: It is quite right that things should have gone wrong with that person, for this is the retribution for what he did during his past incarnation. It is very reasonable that things should have taken this course, because his Karma demands it. People who say this do not understand Karma, for to understand Karma we must know that another person's Karma does not concern us at all! The fulfillment of Karma will come of its own accord; our only task is to help him! We must, however, draw in everything which might bring about a favourable change in his Karma. To know and to feel this forms part of a deep understanding of Karma and its laws. It is another matter when someone is passing through an esoteric development; in that case advice may be given as to the best way in which he can live out his Karma.

Moral qualities in fact produce results; they bring about Karmic effects. They may change during one incarnation. But in the next incarnation they must descend right down into the physical organism.

We said that falsehood may change into timidity during one and the same incarnation, so that a person withdraws into himself. All the more will falsehood in one incarnation produce timidity in the next incarnation. Such a person is born as a timid soul, full of fears. He will not only be shy towards the people of his environment, but he will also fall a prey to certain pathological conditions of fear. The timidity which appeared in one incarnation as a slight karmic effect of falsehood, will therefore appear in the next incarnation as a fundamental organic quality also of the physical body.

What is the right attitude towards a person in whose case we must assume that he told many lies during his past incarnation? We say to ourselves—we do not say this to him—and this should determine our actions: He will have told us many lies during a past incarnation; he misled us. We must try to bring him fruitful and valuable truths. Those who are led together with him by Karma must try to penetrate into his soul with love and devotion. Falsehood must be recompensed by truth; these are two extremes which bring about a kind of compensation.

The secret of the whole matter is that a favourable influence cannot be exercised upon him by anyone, but just by those who are karmically connected with him. Those who adopt this attitude will see what good results can be achieved if he brings him positive truths and has real understanding for him.

Karma is a real law; its result will appear in a very peculiar way. If we lovingly penetrate into the weaknesses of such people, our influence upon them will be an immense relief to them and bring them freedom and health. If we can immerse ourselves completely in them, we shall have a rejuvenating influence upon such people.

Our attitude towards people may be an understanding one or a critical one. What is the effect? We may help them or be unable to help them. We may come towards a person with understanding; i.e., immerse ourselves lovingly in his soul, with a real understanding for his weaknesses, if Karma demands this from us, as a task. But we may also criticize him and remain by this.

Let us observe life in both cases. What is the effect of criticism and rebuke upon the object of such rebuke? One effect can be that the reproaches helped him, but it may also be otherwise. People who habitually criticize and rebuke others will also bring about a certain result: a certain feeling of isolation will take hold of them; they will feel themselves cut off from the others.

Let us compare this with the effects produced in one incarnation, when we immerse ourselves with love and understanding in the other person's soul, in spite of his failings. In this case, too, the result may be a good one or a bad one, but the effect upon the soul will undoubtedly be a favourable one.

This shows us that entirely different laws hold sway when we remain standing, as it were, by criticism and rebuke, or when we progress as far as real understanding. Rebuke recoils upon ourselves and forms new Karma, but understanding gives rise to a store of wealth in the other soul; it dissolves Karma, smoothens it and eliminates it.

This is a very significant fact in life. Let us now recapitulate the result of our observations in a sentence which constitutes a deep truth; namely, that we are in the position to be of very little help to ourselves, and that we can, on the other hand, harm ourselves greatly. We can, however, be of great help to others, whereas we cannot cause them much harm by our own errors. Our good qualities can therefore be of great help to others; our bad qualities cause us great harm, but cannot cause much harm to others, at least not permanently.

This is a very peculiar law. It shows the effect of Karma in one and the same incarnation: for one who helps another person by his good qualities and by immersing himself lovingly in his soul, may be sure of a favourable effect in his own life at some later period. Do not say that this is egoism, that it is selfish to be good and noble. No, goodness must be something quite natural, and its good effect at some later time arises as a natural consequence.

If we do not go beyond our own interests, if we have no understanding for other people and only criticize them, no good effects will arise. The strange thing is that unless we are good towards others we cannot progress; this is a condition for our own progress.

This is a fundamental law passing over from one incarnation to the other, and appearing in a wonderful way. If in one incarnation we are instinctively led to goodness, if a kind of life instinct draws us towards a good life, this will appear in the next life as Theosophy, which will already have exercised its influence. Let us for instance imagine a person who was good to us at a time when we were not yet able to guide ourselves. Here we see a great difference between the different qualities of good—there are the good things in life which we do not deserve (we speak of undeserved good) and we can see that in one case its effect may be a favourable one, whereas in another case it is useless.

The clairvoyant may now perceive something quite special: Another person's good actions towards us, at a time in which we did not deserve them, appear as goodness which we earned back from him. If this is the case, their effect upon us will be a good one; if this is not the case, they cannot have any good effect upon us. When we observe the workings of Karma we should bear in mind that every action has its effect, even though it may not immediately appear to the physical eye.

The paths of Karma are very intricate paths, but if we study life we may understand them, for life contains the proofs for the way in which Karma works in the world. If we study Karma and act accordingly, the success in life itself will show us that we went out from a real law, which holds good.

There are three ways in which we can face Karma: We may not believe in it at all; we may believe in it, and then we may apply the test by observing life itself. This will enable us to recognize the truth of its laws. Theosophy is not only a theoretical truth, but a search for proofs which establish this truth in life itself.

If we look back upon the evolution of humanity, if we look back—let us say—as far as history permits it, we shall encounter something very strange. Various phenomena enable us to examine what we thus encounter. Above all, (and we shall see to-day that what we are about to say may be applied to every human heart, to every human soul) we may examine the evolution of humanity with the aid of various documents, traditions and writings which have been pre served. We shall find in them something very strange and peculiar. If we go back to the conceptions which were formed by the various peoples of ancient times in connection with the origin of the world and of the sources of what is good and moral, we shall find that the conceptions which thus arose are laid down in legends—in myths and legends. We come across such legends and myths in a more or less beautiful, lofty, sublime or even less significant form among the various peoples of the earth. A modern man is so very much inclined to consider these myths and legends as poems and to say: They were invented by the peoples during their infancy, because they did not as yet possess the sources of modern science. They have, for instance, formed all kinds of ideas about the origin of the world: the Greeks and their gods, the ancient Germanic peoples and their gods, and, if you like, the American peoples, whose legends have recently been dscovered and which are found to correspond with what exists among other peoples. If we learn that among the Central-American peoples Quetzalcoatl and Vitzliputzli play a role which is more primitive but similar to that of other mighty characters created by other races we shall see that such legends and myths exist among all these peoples ... And, as already stated, a modern man is easily inclined to say: These are poems, fantastic inventions of man's spirit, in order to explain the origin of the various beings of the world and of the various phenomena of Nature!

Among the various documents, there is one which I have already considered with a greater number of the friends who are now present. It is a lofty, mighty document: the Genesis, the beginning of the Old Testament. At Munich we have already seen how infinitely deep are the contents of the Genesis.¹ Several of you have also heard the explanations supplied by spiritual knowledge in connection with the various Gospels, which are, as it were, the last documents of this kind. We find that such documents have been preserved and that they have arisen at various periods of time as we were passing through our preceding incarnations, periods of time through which we have passed during our preceding lives on earth. Those who advance in spiritual knowledge must learn to realize that they have lived during times when men spoke, for instance, of Zeus, Hera and Chronos, and so forth, when they spoke of the phenomena of Nature in a different way from the one which is usual to-day, that they spoke of them in the form of myths, legends and fairy-tales. We must bear all this in mind. We must say to our selves: How do matters stand with our soul that has taken up these things (most people are not aware, so to speak, of what has been deposited within them) which now come to the fore again?

I shall now describe to you very simply what happens with a person who takes up within him these documents—to begin with, in the form of legends, myths and poems—and who then penetrates into occult science, into occultism, and who uses occult science as an instrument enabling him to understand them more and more. He will experience something very strange. I will take, for instance, just one case: What will take place within him in connection with the Old Testament?

In the case of the Old Testament, which most modern men read in such a way that they consider it as a very beautiful collection of all kinds of images about the world's origin, he will find that he will gradually say to himself: Infinite wisdom is contained in these things which are rendered in such a peculiar way! And he will gradually discover that the single words and sentences contain things—provided he understands them rightly—to which occult investigation can lead him along entirely independent paths. And his respect for these writings will grow. The most efficacious means perhaps of increasing our appreciation of these documents is to penetrate to some extent into spiritual science.

A question may then arise and may be placed before our soul. The human being may then say: How do matters really stand as far as this question is concerned? The ancient documents have been preserved: if we penetrate into them we discover in them the deepest, most significant spiritual meaning. Even if today we cannot feel entirely convinced of the fact that these documents contain, indeed, an overwhelming wisdom, we should persevere in our search and penetrate into them more and more. We shall then see that the wisdom which they contain is indeed overwhelming. It is not we who bring anything into them ... it would be quite ridiculous to say that we bring anything into them. The documents themselves contain this wisdom. Indeed, the greatest discoveries which can be made in the, sphere of spiritual science, the loftiest things which can be found again with great effort through occult investigation—all this may afterwards be discovered, for instance, in just one word of the Bible in the Genesis. This is very strange, is it not so?

We find, however, that there is a certain difference between the Old Testament and all the other legends, myths and documents. This is a fact which we should bear in mind. For there is a difference. Consider, for instance, the legends of the Greeks, of the ancient Germans, even what is contained in the Vedas of the Hindoos, or Persian documents. Take whatever you like—if you compare it with the Old Testament you will find a tremendous difference. This difference appears quite clearly to the unprejudiced investigation of an occultist the more he penetrates into these things. This difference appears in the following way: We shall gradually discover that all the other documents set forth in a legendary form the riddles of the phenomena of Nature, the riddles connected with all these phenomena of Nature, and also with the human being, in so far as he has a kind of natural form of life, in so far as the powers of Nature compel him to do this or the other thing. The Old Testament, however, is the one and only document in which we find the human being described from the very beginning as an ethical soul-being, not merely as a being of Nature. And everything in the Old Testament is described in such a way that the human being is placed within the course of evolution, as an ethical soul-being. Every other statement made by modern science rests upon a very weak foundation; it dissolves into nothing if we really observe things. This is the great difference which appears to us. We may therefore say: Everything else in the world shows us that men have obtained mighty revelations from one or the other direction, they have obtained mighty revelations which were expressed in the legendary form of myths and which have arisen out of deep wisdom. We may also say that as far as the Old Testament is concerned the human beings have had certain definite revelations which are connected with the ethical soul-mysteries of man. This is a fact which is, in any case, quite clear.

Another difference appears, however, if we compare the New Testament with all the other documents of this kind. We find in it a spirit which differs entirely from the one contained in any other document, even in the Old Testament. How can we grasp this difference if we approach the question as anthroposophists? We shall realize this difference if we first place another phenomenon before our soul.

Let us imagine, first of all, a man who has never heard anything about spiritual science, who is entirely the product of a scientific or of another so-called sensible education of our modern time, and who has, therefore, never had the chance to permeate the ancient documents with spiritual science. We may perhaps imagine him as a learned person or as an unlearned person—the difference is not so great—we may imagine him in any case as a person who has had no contact with spiritual science and we see him approach these ancient documents, Greek, Persian, Indian, Germanic documents, and so forth. We imagine him approaching these documents, equipped with everything which modern thinking can give him, if he is really unable to feel even a breath of what constitutes spiritual investigation a very strange thing will appear. There will be a difference according to his more or less greater inclination toward poetry or toward a matter-of-fact mentality, but on the whole we may say that something very strange will appear. Such a man will never be able to understand the ancient documents, he will never be able to penetrate into the way in which wisdom is offered by them, he is simply unable to do it, it is quite impossible for him to understand them. In this sphere, we come across the strangest examples; it may suffice to refer to one of the most recent attempts to explain these ancient documents. A little book has just appeared, which is extremely interesting because it is so absurd. It attempts to explain, as it were, all the myths up to the Gospels, beginning with the earliest documents of the most primitive peoples. It is really a book which is extraordinarily interesting because of its grotesque way, its grotesquely stupid way of grasping things. It is entitled “Orpheus,” and its author is Salomon Reinach, who is well known in France as an investigator in this sphere, and among scientists he is a characteristic example of a man who has not even had the slightest inkling of the way in which it is possible to penetrate into such things. In this book, a definite method is applied to everything, and the author passes sentence upon everything. He sees nothing but symbols, and there are no real beings behind Hermes, Orpheus, etc. These characters are merely symbols and allegories to him ... It is not proper to repeat the explanations which he gives for these symbols; he speaks of them in such a way that it is not necessary to repeat them. Every reality contained in these things can thus be proved to be non-existent ... the reality of Demeter and of Persephone is explained away, he decrees that they do not exist. According to this author, all these names are merely symbols. He follows a method according to which it would be easy to prove to children, eighty years hence, that a man named Salomon Reinach has never lived in France at all, at the beginning of the twentieth century, but that the civilization of that time has merely comprised the contents of this book in the name of Salomon Reinach. This could be proved quite well! In spite of all, these things have caused a great sensation. And according to this same method evidence has been produced in Germany to the effect that Jesus has never lived at all. This too has caused a great sensation.

You see, we may now ask: Why is it not possible to-day to penetrate into these things without the aid of spiritual science, (and it is a fact that it is not possible to do this without spiritual science) what is the true reason for this? If we wish to understand the true reason for this, we must gain a deeper insight into the evolution of humanity. We must look back a certain while into this evolution of humanity. And as a result we shall really feel compelled to say: Indeed, the science which men possess to-day, the science which is taught to-day in the elementary schools concerning the sun, and so forth, this is something which the ancients did not possess they did not possess a science which could be grasped with the understanding, with the intellect. This is something to which the human race has advanced little by little. And when our souls were born during earlier incarnations, they were certainly not able to take up this form of science, for this did not exist, this was not as yet incorporated in our civilization But the more we go back into the course of evolution, the more we shall find (quite apart from the fact of seeking the reasons for this which have often been explained to many of you here, in this or in that direction) that men possessed a deep wisdom of an entirely different kind from the one of to-day, wisdom concerning spiritual things which modern men are unable to express in their scientific form. This wisdom ruled in the souls of men, it lived in their souls. Wisdom was simply there. Particularly the initiated leaders of humanity possessed this wisdom, and if the anthroposophical spirit lives within us, it can be proved historically that a primal revelation, a primal wisdom was spread over the whole human race upon the earth, a wisdom which took on this or that form, ac cording to the various stages of evolution. If anyone considers history with a truly anthroposophical spirit he will discover this primal, original revelation. But something else is needed: the ordinary, modern scientific mentality must pass through a preparation if it wishes to penetrate into these documents and grasp their true meaning—I shall now relate a simple fact—a preparation is needed enabling a modern man to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. If he passes through this preparation he will be able to penetrate into the spirit of these writings. This preparation consists in the study of the only documents which can be studied to-day in a direct and immediate way, namely, the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul. If we are filled with an anthroposophical spirit it is possible to approach these documents in a direct and immediate way and to understand them.

Even if we know nothing whatever about Anthroposophy, but if our feelings are filled with an anthroposophical spirit (this can be the case with many people) we may feel that something special lives in the Gospels and in the Epistles of St. Paul. This is indeed a strange fact! And in the case of an occultist another strange thing arises, something quite special will arise in his case. Namely, in the case of an occultist we may find that in accordance with modern prejudices he has, let us say, a certain aversion to approach these Gospels. It is quite possible to be filled with an occultistic spirit and yet to feel an aversion to the Gospels, to say, that they are only one religion among many others. No attempt is made to approach the Gospels, and it is possible to understand this aversion. But if we do this as occultists, if we have this strange attitude as occultists, we shall find that we cannot grasp what is contained in other documents. Everywhere we shall find something which we cannot understand. We may be content with this, but if we continue to penetrate more and more deeply into these things we shall never reach a goal unless we have passed through a preparation by studying the Gospels. On the other hand, it is a fact that if someone who may even be a well-trained occultist approaches an oriental or an occidental document and comes across a very hard nut which he cannot crack ... he will immediately be enlightened about the things contained in other documents if he approaches—even if it is only in spirit—the events of Palestine and if he allows them to inspire him. This is an undeniable fact. A ray of light can go out of the Gospels, and this is an experience which can be made. We must admit that the Gospels and the Epistles of St. Paul are indeed necessary if we wish to go back into earlier times. It is not possible to ignore them, to take no notice of them. Particularly the occultist will always realize this. If he is really able to read the spiritual documents, the Akasha Chronicle, it will not be necessary for him to consult the written Gospels—but he must approach the events of Palestine, he cannot ignore them. Otherwise, certain preceding things will always remain dark. I am therefore not drawing your attention to the records, or to the written word, but to the events, in the form in which they have rea1ly taken place within the course of human evolution. This is a very important fact.

I wish to throw some light upon this fact also from another side. Let us bear in mind what I have already stated. It is not possible to ignore, as it were, the event of the Christ, and if we wish to understand what has been given to humanity in the form of a primordial revelation we shall always trip up somewhere. I must say the following if I wish to describe the true aspect of things. Let us suppose that a modern occultist investigates the past and that he has no understanding (for it is this understanding which is so important) for the event of the Christ. He disregards the event of the Christ and proceeds to investigate earlier events of human evolution. He will then find that he grows uncertain everywhere, really everywhere. Of course, he can persuade himself that he feels quite certain about these things, but if he is honest he will have to admit that things are not entirely as they should be. Let us now imagine an occult investigator before the time of Christ Jesus, an occult investigator who has reached such a high degree of development in clairvoyance and also in other directions that he is able, even before the Christian era, to survey the whole past in such a way that, had he lived after the event of the Christ, he would have passed through the Christ event in his retrospective survey, a man who is therefore in advance of his time. Let us suppose that he lived five or six centuries before Christ and that he reached the maturity of a modern occultist; that is to say he is able to go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event. And we may then ask ourselves: How would an occultist who is so much in advance of his time, that even five or six centuries before Christ he can go back into the earlier events of human evolution by passing through the Christ event, how would such an occultist have to appear in order to avoid falling a prey to the luciferic and ahrimanic powers? Let us suppose that it would really be necessary for him to pass through the Christ event ... This Christ event, however, has not yet taken place at the time in which he lived. In the case of such a man it appears that he will easily content himself with what he discovers—and he will then speak of all kinds of things which are not quite correct, for it is not possible to speak correctly about things if they are not seen correctly—but otherwise nothing will happen to him. Or else he will reach the point of saying: “There is something amiss, something I cannot find when I turn my gaze backwards. I cannot discover this something which I need along my path.” And he will then have to admit to himself: “Here I begin to grow uncertain. I must find this missing ‘something,’ but it does not exist as yet upon the earth. It cannot as yet be found within the evolution of the earth.”

You see, I have now painted theoretically, as it were, the portrait of a personality who lived during the 5th and 6th century before Christ, a personality who would have been mature enough to discover Christ Jesus in a retrospective survey, but he could not discover him because Christ Jesus had not as yet appeared upon the earth. He could not discover Christ Jesus as an earthly fact. A short time ago this theory took on the form of a vivid reality. I experienced it this year during a visit to one of our groups abroad which has adopted the anthroposophical manner of contemplating the world, during a visit to our group at Palermo. As the ship approached Palermo, I suddenly realized: “The solution of a riddle will present itself to you, a riddle which can only be solved easily here, at this place, through the immediate impressions which can be gained here.” Soon afterwards I found the solution of the riddle. The personality concerning whom I have just spoken to you in a theoretical manner, immediately appeared in the whole atmosphere of Sicily, I might say, in the whole astral body of Sicily. His presence was an altogether living one. In the whole atmosphere of Sicily continued to live a personality that is very enigmatic in many respects, the personality of Empedocles, the ancient philosopher. This ancient Greek philosopher has in fact lived in Sicily during the fifth century before Christ, and even external history knows that he was a profound initiate in many different spheres and that he accomplished magnificent things just here, in Sicily.

If to begin with, we turn, as it were, our spiritual gaze upon this man he will appear to us, from an occult standpoint in a very strange light. The occult fact which presents itself to us is the following. If we look back upon the development of Empedocles, if we follow his occupations as statesman, architect and philosopher, if we follow him upon his journeys, if we see him in the midst of his enthusiastic pupils initiating them into the various mysteries of the world—if we follow him spiritually in this manner, without the aid of external history, we shall discover in him a personality who possessed an infinite amount of scientific knowledge of the kind which is only known to a modern man. Empedocles had an altogether modern mentality, a modern aura, and he was indeed constituted in such a way that he sought to discover the origin of the world. In fact, according to his degree of development and everything which had taken place, he would necessarily have found the Christ in his retrospective survey. But the Christ had not yet appeared. It was not possible as yet to find Him upon the earth; He was still absent from the earth. These experiences in particular made Empedocles waver and developed within him a strange desire, and in his case it transformed itself into something entirely different from what takes place in the superficial minds of modern times. This desire transformed itself into the passion to consider the world in a materialistic way. Lucifer approached him. We should try to form a vivid picture of the way in which this took place. Empedocles possessed a modern spirit, but at the same time he was initiated in many different mysteries. He was clairvoyant to a high degree. Let us now imagine vividly that his modern way of thinking made him feel inclined to consider the world from a materialistic aspect; he has, in fact, drawn up a materialistic system which describes the world more or less from the stand point of a modern materialistic chemist, namely, as a combination and separation of elements. The one difference is that Empedocles distinguishes only four elements. He thought that various beings arise according to the way in which these four elements combine. As a result of these thoughts he felt the strong desire to discover in a true and real way what lies behind these material elements, what air and water really contain. If we peruse the Akasha Chronicle today and look into water, air, fire and earth we shall discover in them etherically the Christ. Empedocles could not find Him, but he felt the tremendous impulse to discover something in air and water, fire and earth, to find out what they really contain. And we can see how this personality is seized by the strong desire to penetrate at all costs into what constitutes the material elements. This desire finally induces him to make a kind of sacrifice. It is not merely a legend that Empedocles threw himself into the crater Aetna in order to unite himself with the elements. The luciferic force, the strong desire to grasp the elements, led him to a bodily union with the elements. The death of Empedocles continues to fill the atmosphere of Sicily, and this is a great mystery connected with this strange country.

Let us now picture the soul of Empedocles who has laid aside his body by allowing it to be burned. His soul is born again in a later period of time, when the Christ has already appeared upon the earth. Entirely new conditions now exist for this soul. In the past, this soul has, as it were, sacrificed itself to the elements. Now it is born again. But now it can discover the Christ when it looks back into time. And all the past knowledge concerning the elements rises up again in a new form, the knowledge which this soul once possessed arises in a completely new form. In fact, the personality of Empedocles was born again later, but at the present moment it is not permissible for me to mention his name. If we study the reincarnation of Empedocles in a more northern country, if we observe him as he then lived at the turning point of the Middle Ages and the modern time and if we compare this character with the Empedocles who threw himself into Mount Aetna, we shall see livingly before us the gigantic impulse which has arisen through the fact that the Christ event has in the meantime taken place upon the earth.

What thus takes place in the case of this one definite personality applies, however, to every soul, to the souls of each one of you. At the time in which the Christ event was drawing nigh, all these souls have looked back with a certain feeling of discomfort into past, even if they have not felt the mighty impulse experienced by Empedocles. They felt uncomfortable because they had lost their bearings and because the time of the modern scientific man who looks back into the past ... was gradually approaching, and something resembling the case of the men of earlier times begins to spread ... If we go back to earlier times we find that those who have preserved this tradition faced the masses and related to them—let us imagine this vividly—mighty tales which are contained, for instance, in the legends told to the ancient Greeks. But this induced the ancient Greeks to experience the truth of these legends, when they were, let us say, in a special condition which was still possible at that time to a greater extent than now, and these legends gave them, as it were, a push enabling them to look into the spiritual world. But the human beings lost this capacity. The inner force enabling them to rise into the spiritual world was lost to the extent in which intellectual knowledge began to develop. You may calculate and find in any little manual when our modern conceptions began to arise, these modern conceptions which children take up, if not with the mother's milk, at least with the school milk! These modern conceptions reach back to a few centuries before our Christian era. This is a tremendous turning-point. And if we wish to go back still further, if we wish to understand the ancient documents, it will not be possible for us to understand them, for now they appear to us merely as poems, legends and myths. We cannot go back further, and this is something which should really be borne in mind more clearly. More and more it will be the case that people who do not bring with them, as it were, an inherited disposition to understand the ancient documents, will be unable to understand them.

The opinion will gradually spread that there is a great field of illusion behind everything which is accepted as science, because the majority of scientists believes that now we fortunately know how the earth moves round, and that all the explanations of earlier times in this connection are nonsense. This opinion is already prevalent to-day. We go backwards into time ... The Copernican world-conception arises somewhat later, but even in the case of geometry we cannot go back further than Euclid. And further back, behind all this, a modern man can only see black darkness. He cannot find wisdom and the primordial revelation, he cannot find the path which leads into them. If we really accept this as a fact, something resulting from the deepest anthroposophical studies may then condense itself to a fundamental conviction—and this may take place even in the simplest mind, provided the feelings are sound.

Man must, after all, reach the point of saying to himself “The form in which I see the world is not its true aspect.” If this were its true aspect it would not be necessary to investigate it. Investigation would not be necessary at all, for the world would immediately appear in its true aspect. Modern investigation, however, does not consider the world in this way. The Copernican system would not exist if men were simply to accept what the senses reveal to them. Even external science contradicts the experiences gained through the senses. If we progress we shall see that we cannot stay by what the senses give us, by what we obtain through the external experiences which we make in the physical world. These must in any case be corrected, even by external science. This fact is perhaps not generally recognised; nevertheless, it is true. As soon as we begin to understand our own being—even if it is only with the aid of ordinary thinking and with what we can learn to-day—we shall be obliged to admit that the essential point of everything is to have an insight into the illusion created by the senses, for otherwise science would not exist and reflection would not exist. If this is indeed the case, we must discover something which enables us to understand without any difficulty in which direction and toward which goal the world is gradually developing. We shall find the confirmation of this fact if we consider matters a little in the light of Anthroposophy. We may therefore say to ourselves: Once upon a time there was a primordial wisdom; the human beings were constituted in such a way that they received a primordial wisdom which they could only see in pictures, but nevertheless they possessed such a primordial wisdom, and they have gradually lost the understanding for such a wisdom the more human evolution progressed; men were less and less able to grasp this primordial wisdom. And another fact is quite clear, namely, that they began to lose this understanding to the extent in which science and the intellectual understanding developed. We may now ask: What can have arisen at a certain definite moment?

Let us imagine the whole situation. Let us picture a man of pre-Christian times, who lived under certain conditions. He will have looked out into the world, he will have seen all manner of things, but within his soul there also lived the possibility of seeing behind these things. He still possessed this disposition. Consequently, it was an undeniable fact for him that there is an etheric body behind every flower. This was a fact for him. Gradually he began to lose this capacity. He lost it because it was banished by the intellectual understanding which rules to-day. The intellectual capacity cannot be united with the other one, for they are two hostile forces. This is an undeniable fact, and every occultist knows by experience that the understanding, or ordinary thought, sears and burns the clairvoyant manner of looking upon things. Even in the course of history, the knowledge based upon the ancient clairvoyance was lost to the extent in which the understanding, or the intellect in the ordinary meaning, have arisen, and the loss of the old clairvoyant wisdom also implied the loss of the capacity to understand the ancient traditions. A few centuries had to pass, and the kind of man I have just described to you had to be replaced by another kind who might perhaps have said: “It would, of course, be a serious prejudice to think the truth can be discovered in the way in which the world presents itself to our senses. Human reason must supplement everything!” Particularly this belief in human reason was the decisive factor; human reason must first pounce upon the phenomena which appear to the senses and then grasp them logically.

Such a kind of man would perhaps have said: “The special advantage of the human being over all the creatures of the earth is the fact that he is endowed with reason, that he can understand cause and effect as they manifest themselves behind the sense-phenomena. He is able to discover this. And his intellect enables him to communicate with other men through the means of speech. For it is easy to see that speech is a child of reason.” And he might also have said: “Reason is, of course, the highest of all things.” Now, if we wish to draw a vivid picture of such a person, we should imagine him saying to himself: “Rely on your understanding and reason, dissect everything with your reason, and then you will surely reach the truth!” Let us suppose that we are actually facing such a man. I have given you a description from a theoretical standpoint, yet this particular type of man has appeared very frequently. A characteristic thinker of this kind was Cicero, who lived shortly before Christ. If you study Cicero you will immediately see that he thinks exactly in this way, namely, that reason is able to grasp everything. It is not true that the world appears as it presents itself to the senses, nevertheless human reason is able to grasp everything! Just in the case of people who lived shortly before Christ we find an invincible faith in reason. They even identify reason with God himself, who rules within things. Cicero adopts this standpoint.

Let us suppose, however, that someone succeeds in discovering the secrets connected with all this. Let us suppose that someone contemplates all this in an entirely unprejudiced way and sees how everything results little by little. How would he then describe the whole period? Let us suppose that one century before Christ a man who is endowed with deep insight contemplates all these things ... How would the whole course of history appear to him? Well, he would say: “We can see two currents in humanity. One is the old clairvoyant power, with a descending course. Reason appears in its place, and it roots out and destroys within the human being the possibility of looking into the spiritual world. A great darkness spreads over the spiritual world. Those who accept the authority of reason will indeed think that their reason can discover what lies behind things. But these people forget the true nature of reason, about which they talk so much. Reason is linked up exclusively with the brain. It is a force which can only use the brain as its instrument. It belongs to the physical world and must, therefore, share the qualities of the physical world” ... Such a man would say: “You may, if you like, rely on your intellect and I say that it enables you to grasp what lies behind things, since the things in themselves are not real. Consider, however, that reason itself belongs to these things. You are a physical being among other physical beings, and your reason belongs to the physical world. If you think that reason enables you to discover what lies behind all the other things, you will demolish the foundation under your feet.” This is what he would say, and he would add: “Indeed, men are more and more inclined to use their reason, to rely upon their intellect. They have this inclination. But in doing so, they raise up before them a wall hiding the spiritual world, for they make use of an instrument which can not be applied to the spiritual world, for it is limited to the physical world. Humanity, however, unfolds in the very direction of developing this instrument.” And if this man had known the real course of events, he would also have said: “If men return to the spiritual world at all, they should not only be able to use their intellect, which can be applied solely to the physical world, but an impulse must arise enabling them to ascend once more to the spiritual worlds, an impulse which drives the intellect itself along this upward path. But this can only take place,” this person would have said, “if something dies within the human being, if something which calls forth in him the firm belief in the exclusive rule of reason perishes. This must die.” In fact, we imagine the human being gradually descending into the material world and developing his brain more and more. If the human being were to depend exclusively on his reason, he would be unable to abandon it, to come out of it. His physical body would then deceive him and persuade him to do away with everything which cannot be grasped by earthly reason. But it is the physical body which dulls man in this manner, because it gradually develops to a very high degree, and man does not realise that he thus remains within the physical world. Try to imagine this and you will see that the human being is then caught as if in a trap. He is quite unable to escape out of himself. Human evolution has so far reached the point of preventing man from going out of his own self, and so he faces the danger, of being gradually overwhelmed by his physical body. What can help the human being at all in this case? If just at the time when the intellect reaches this point, there arises the possibility of changing the intellect so, that the part which blinds it, dies, then this part must die. An impulse must arise which is able to overcome once and for all that part in man which can overwhelm him through a blind faith in mere reason. Try to feel the power of this impulse; try to feel that this was the meaning of human evolution! The bodily constitution developed in such a way that it would have overwhelmed man. He would have reached the point of thinking that he must remain within the physical world and yet be able to penetrate through Maya, without bearing in mind that he himself lived in this Maya through his intellect. This would have taken place had not something arisen which can tear him out of it, as soon as he accepts it, and which is able to counteract the fall into the physical sphere. Indeed, its influence reaches as far as the etheric body, so that the etheric body is then able to kill what leads man into a similar illusion. The human being would otherwise have remained imprisoned in this trap.

Let us now turn away from such a person who would have spoken in this way when the time of Christ Jesus was approaching, and let us consider the way in which a modern man, or anyone of us, would look at things. He would say to himself: If I consider the development of man in an unprejudiced way and see how the intellect, this instrument belonging to Maya, has gradually gained strength, I would undoubtedly be on the wrong track if I follow merely the course of the world's evolution. For, this is arranged in such a way that if I do not take up within me the impulse which kills that part leading me astray in this direction, I am unable to free myself from the intellect. What must therefore have taken place? I must be able to look back upon a time in which this impulse has entered. I must find something within the historical evolution of humanity which brings about the fact that the continuous stream of evolution has been reversed in a materialistic sense. If to-day I were to look within my own being without finding anything of this kind, what would I then have to find? I would trace in that case the gradual growth of the intellect, until I reached a time, at the beginning of our era, when the intellect began to work ... and further back? There it grows dark, pitch black darkness rules there, and I shall need something entirely different. Then it will grow light, and here everyone must encounter the Christ! Anyone who is at all willing to believe in the possibility of progress, and that during the following incarnations he will have within him something which will lead him upwards and will prevent his being overwhelmed by Maya, must meet the Christ when he looks back into time. Upon looking back, everyone must encounter the Christ. This can give him an impulse leading him upwards.

Let us now suppose that the gospels did not exist, and that we would not need them as anthroposophists. Let us suppose that we do not need the gospels; that all we need is to study the course of human evolution in an unprejudiced way and to say: What would become of every human being if he were unable to look back upon an event which has swung the whole meaning of the earlier course of evolution over to the other side? We simply must encounter the Christ if we go back into the course of evolution! Anthroposophists must be able to find Him, and the clairvoyants will find him under every circumstance. This is a mystery which is connected particularly with Christianity. Documents may be questioned. Indeed, the gospels are not real historical documents. All the clever people, Jensen and others, who decree in a trivially learned manner that the gospels do not exist and upon them as mere legends, have a certain justification for doing this, because they depend solely upon their external reason. But if we are anthroposophists we are able to say that we do not need the gospels; we only need the facts supplied by spiritual science itself, and if we go back into time we shall discover the living Christ, as He appeared to Paul in the event of Damascus. Paul has experienced in advance what we, too, are able to experience if we search for the Christ in a truly anthroposophical spirit. Paul was, after all, in the same position of a modern anthroposophist who does not wish to accept the gospels. At his time the gospels did not exist, but Paul was able to go to Jerusalem. Nevertheless, this did not convince him, for otherwise he would not have left Jerusalem. The events described in the gospels did not convince him. It is not necessary, therefore, that the contents of the gospels should convince a modern person. All that is necessary is that he should be in a position to experience, through Anthroposophy, what Paul has experienced, and this experience will then become for him an event of Damascus. He will then have the proof of Christ's existence, in the same way as Paul, without the aid of documents.

Of course, this points to very deep things in human evolution, to extraordinarily deep things in the evolution of man. In a certain sense, every human being, even the simplest man, may experience what the reincarnated Empedocles has experienced during the 15th and 16th century, who looked back into earlier times and was able to see what he was unable to see before. Before, he had grown so uncertain that he threw himself into Mount Aetna. He cast his glance backwards during the 15th and 16th century and what he was unable to grasp in any way during his previous incarnation he was now able to grasp clearly through the Christ principle. And this enabled him to become one of the most remarkable personalities of the later era.

This is how matters appear to every human being, without the aid of any document, simply through retrospection. At some later time, all men will be able to look back into an earlier incarnation and they will distinguish exactly the incarnations before and after Christ. What may be felt to-day instinctively by a simple soul who reads the gospels, will arise, later, in the form of knowledge. This is the chief difference between the gospels and other documents: they are the first documents which we must understand. The gospels are a great, beautiful and mighty point of transition. It we pass through it, light begins to spread, while everywhere else there is darkness.

It is indeed so. Christianity is only at the beginning of its evolution, and a modern man may find that he often loses his thread when he investigates earlier things. But if he returns to one of the events in the life of the Christ he will feel inspired, and it will grow light about him. Even a simple person may experience what occultists discover, namely, he will be able to feel within his soul a reflection, as it were, of what I have just explained. He may feel very depressed owing to his human weaknesses and mistakes and he may admit to himself: “What I am to-day, is the result of all the generations!” But then he would deny this and would have to admit to himself, instead, that he himself has been his own father and his own mother. There is, consequently, something within us connecting us with the rest of humanity, and we may feel very depressed by all human mistakes, weaknesses and illnesses. Nevertheless, even the simplest soul always has the possibility of rising. These words should not be understood in the orthodox meaning. What is possible for an occultist is also possible for the simplest soul. Such a simple man may feel as weak possible, but if he begins to read the gospels, strength will flow out of the gospels, because the power of the Word streams out of them and penetrates into the etheric body. The gospels are strengthening words, words of strength. They do not speak merely to the intellect, but penetrate into the deeper forces of the soul. And they are not merely based upon the intellect which exists in Maya, but they penetrate into the deeper forces, which can, as it were, console the intellect concerning its own nature. This is the great strength of the gospels; they exist for every one of us, and this is the powerful element distinguishing them from all the other documents. This fact, too, may not be accepted, but its rejection would imply that the possibility of human progress is denied altogether.

You see, this points to a fact which cannot be grasped right away. And now you will be able to realize what was needed for the preparation of a person whom I have already set before your soul hypothetically, who announced, one century before our era: “A man must come who will give us the impulse which will bring about the great turning point in the course of events.”

This person was a significant man, and he also underwent the necessary preparation. For a long time, the attempt had already been made, among those who knew things, to bring about the possibility that at least a few people, as it were, should understand the times which were approaching, that they should understand what was being prepared, namely, that, on the one hand, men were being drawn into a snare, and that, on the other hand, through the appearance of the Christ, they could be led upwards again. This was taught prophetically. The man who was chosen to teach this prophetically, more than one century before our era, within the circles of people who were able to understand these teachings, was an initiate of the community of the Essenes, which was closely related to the circles frequented by the Christ. He announced the coming of One Who would lead men upwards again. The man who taught this within the community of the Essenes was a very significant individuality. External history really knows very little about him, but at least a few writers mention the legends referring to him which were handed down traditionally. Thus he is not merely a mythological character, or one who is named exclusively in occultism, He lived a hundred years before Christ and he even instructed one of his five or six pupils to write down his teachings. One of the pupils of this man, who drew attention to the Christ and announced His coming, understood the meaning of his teachings. This man, therefore, had a pupil, who was called Matthew, and he wrote down the mysteries relating to the Christ. The individuality who taught them was Jeshu ben Pandira.² He had to suffer martyrdom because he taught these things, he was stoned to death in his own country, and afterwards his lifeless body was hanged. We should not confuse Jeshu ben Pandira with Jesus of Nazareth. Jeshu ben Pandira, the great prophet of the Christ, instructed his pupils to write down what he knew, and these documents then came into the hands of the man who included them with the mysteries which they contained, into the gospel which is known to us as the Gospel according to Matthew. It is an important, a preeminently important fact to realize, in the first place, the necessity of the Christ impulse, and in the second place, in an occult historical way, how Jeshu ben Pandira, through the fact that he was first stoned and immediately afterwards crucified, set forth, as it were, symbolically what took place afterwards in the Mystery of Golgotha. Christ was not stoned, but crucified, and a wonderful thing took place simultaneously with His death, for at the very moment when His blood streamed out of His wounds something passed over into the atmosphere of the earth, which brings to those who take up this event in their etheric body when they look back into time, to those who pass through this event and look, as it were, into the grave of the Christ, something leading them into a past filled with light, because they have passed through this moment. But without this experience, darkness spreads over everything which lies before it.

Consider what has been said to-day. It was my task to point this out to you. This subject, however, is so vast and encompassing that mere indications can be given. Nevertheless, these indications were treated so that if you investigate what you already know and what you carry in your heart, you will find to what a great extent life itself and your own soul prove the truth of what I have told you to-day.

• 1. Secrets at the Bible Story of Creation
• 2. Compare the lecture published in German by the Philos. Anthrop. Verlag “Jeshu ben Pandira, der Vorbereiter für ein Verständnis des Christus-Impulses.”

Dear attendees,

If today, as an outsider, one considers the attitude and way of thinking of spiritual science – or, as one is accustomed to calling it, theosophy – and tries to form an opinion about the peculiarity of this spiritual science or theosophy based on the usual conceptions of our time , then an outsider can very easily form the, in a sense, justified opinion that spiritual science is something that conjures up high ideals before the human soul: ideals that tend towards certain insights - perhaps the outsider will say, towards supposed insights - about the human soul, about nature and spirit. And outsiders will say to themselves: Well, these ideas, these insights are very beautiful, they satisfy the human soul that longs for inner certainty, and so it is understandable that many profess Theosophy out of this thirst. And when those who have something to say in spiritual science express what they know about the world of appearances and what goes beyond what our natural science - which is admired by spiritual science - has to say, the outsider may say to himself: Yes, what the spiritual scientist has to say about natural phenomena sounds fantastic. The fantastic element is something that the outsider must notice at first. Those who are immersed in spiritual science will find it extremely understandable that the outsider finds so much fantasy in spiritual science. Those who really want to be grounded in natural science can only say: I can't do anything with it. That is quite understandable. If we now consider, by contrast, a person who has penetrated somewhat deeper into theosophy, who has familiarized himself with what is really presented to the striving soul, who has informed himself about what the human soul and human spirit are, we can see feelings of a completely different kind arising in him. Such a person can direct his gaze to what our present age, out of its scientific views, has to say about the task, goal, and value of spiritual life and its engagement in practical work. And here it sometimes seems truly fantastic to the person who is familiar with spiritual science what the materialistic attitude has to say about individual branches of spiritual life. One need only listen to what is offered in the field of education and pedagogy. To the spiritual researcher, it seems like a collection of empty phrases and words. One can look around in the wide range of what educational cultural endeavors are and will find all kinds of fine words. Who has not heard the words that everything that is implanted into the human soul should be avoided, because it is about the education of the human individuality. But who can say anything other than fantastic, empty words if they cannot grasp the true concept of what the human individuality is. Compared to spiritual science, materialistic science appears as a sum of abstractions; it appears as something unrealistic. And if you cannot convince yourself that spiritual science not only has to cultivate life practice, but that it is capable of realistically getting to the bottom of things, you misunderstand the importance of realistic knowledge for life practice.

When we reflect on the growing child, in relation to whom we have an educational task, with the ideas of spiritual science, then, as this child finds its way into life, we are overcome by the feeling that we have a sacred mystery before us in this being, which we can only solve with deep reverence. In every growing soul we sense that there is something in it that is different from anything we see. We sense an unknown in the developing human being, and we are right. Our awe and reverence cannot be great enough when we face the education of the child, and our humility before every being that always confronts us like a new mystery cannot be great enough either. I would not dare to speak about it if I had only been occupied with spiritual science. But I dare to speak about it because for fifteen years as an educator I have felt the sacred riddles myself.

From the point of view of the modern man, it is child's play not only to scoff but also to refute with the appearance of reason the fantastic idea of the re-embodiment of man, the idea of the reappearance of the human soul in a new life. Today, this idea of re-embodiment will only be mentioned in as much as it is pointed out that our soul, which today lives through the time between birth and death in our body, has often gone through life and that we live through the present life as a cause in order to experience the effects and fruits later. Theoretically, this idea is easy to refute. The matter looks different when one is involved in practical educational work and sees the child's soul growing and developing from week to week, from year to year, with the right feelings. If one starts from the premise that one wants to educate correctly, one must say to oneself: You have to intervene in what has been laid down for millennia. And if you look at every expression of the child from this point of view and take every measure accordingly, then you will see how fruitful the education is. Anyone who knows the laws of so-called logical refutation knows how little a theoretical refutation means. But if you work in the spirit of this view, then you feel its truth.

Now one is indeed faced with a difficult task if one wants to see clearly what is growing in the developing child's soul. Everyone knows the purely external facts. But who has not experienced in life how powerless the educator often is when certain tasks are set by external laws or by the demands of parents, how powerless he feels when the tasks set contradict the abilities and talents that are present in the child. Who has not felt and seen in life that we often cannot achieve anything, even with the greatest effort, if the child's talent does not meet us halfway. How often does life show us how powerless we are, not only because of the child's lack of talent, but also because of our lack of insight.

We have tried to educate the child; however, it is not immediately apparent when we have educated the child wrongly. If we follow a pupil in his later life, something peculiar often becomes apparent to us, namely that he must later squeeze talent and aptitude out of his soul through difficult struggles. And we realize: if we had recognized this, we would have been able to help him, we would have saved him much effort in what could only come later. And we realize how necessary it is to focus on this difficult question: what about the child's abilities and talents, and how should we approach the educational tasks?

Even today, there is understandable confusion regarding these fundamental questions, because there are still influential suggestive ideas and suggestive concepts that understandably have a numbing effect on people, and such concepts guide the whole of human thinking. One such concept is that of inheritance. When talking about a child's disposition and talents, who would not initially think: What has been inherited from parents and ancestors? I have already pointed out that Goethe once expressed the words with very understandable modesty, but they stem from deeper insights:

From my father I have the stature, the serious conduct of life, from my mother the cheerful nature and the desire to tell stories.

And after he expresses some more inheritance relationships, he concludes with the words:

What is now to be called original about the whole figure

?

Posterity has already answered this in part, and a later posterity will still answer it.

Anyone who has studied Goethe for a little more than twenty years has a right to speak about him without bias. All respect for the Frankfurt councilman, from whom Goethe inherited “the stature to lead a serious life”! And when one sees the mother's mobile, loving way of looking at life and dealing with people, then one also realizes what Goethe means to say about what he inherited from his mother, “the cheerful nature and the desire to tell stories.” Try adding all this up and see what comes out. When one adds up and reflects on all that was inherited, one finds: What Goethe could not inherit was precisely that which was effective – that was the actual Goethe himself, that was what allowed the guiding powers to flow in. They used the inheritance that presented itself to them to express [what was special about him.

And it is the same with every individual, as with great and significant people. You can't get by if you want to trace everything back to heredity and don't take into account the individuality that unfolds according to its own laws. For those who look at this life impartially, the question of how what we may trace back to our ancestors, what is visibly there, relates to the individual, is by no means simplified. What is inherited is not denied by spiritual science. But how does spiritual science relate to what is incorporated into what is inherited? After all, inheritance can be seen everywhere. There are people who say that when new traits appear that we do not find in our ancestors, we can still think of heredity, because the traits that we have inherited may have been present in our other ancestors, but they had no opportunity to develop them. This is something that is often said. If you talk like that, then you really have a very vague concept of traits. That is not realistic; one can dream up concepts anywhere. Such people seem to me like someone who says: every brick has the potential to fall on someone's head. But there has to be someone there [for the brick to fall on]. Those who think realistically cannot speak of potential in this way.

It is the task of true education to separate what is inheritable from what is not. Basically, one could – because it is popular today to delve into the animal kingdom – get an idea of heredity. The chicken egg contains what is inherited, but warmth must be added from the outside. Thus we see that an essential prerequisite is warmth, which is not present in the germ itself. Nevertheless, a superficial consideration shows that in animals the things are hereditary, while in humans we must certainly also speak of non-heritable things. Consider how, in the animal, what we call instinct is undoubtedly there from the start, and visibly so, in that it must lie in the line of inheritance; and the animal is a generic creature in that it inherits all the qualities that are more abundant in it than in man, for example, in relation to skill. In this respect, man is worse off than the animal. When he is humble, man tends to twist the concepts according to humility, or when he is proud, to twist them according to pride. And when he is proud, he is inclined to say that animals are far below man. This does not apply in such an absolute sense. Everyone can read about how culture has developed, how long it took human intelligence to come up with paper production, for example. The wasps had already invented paper long before that. So when we look at the animal kingdom, we can see that intelligence is simply realized directly from instincts. One could conclude from this that humans are actually no more intelligent than animals.

There are certain things that humans cannot inherit. Everyone will admit that the ability to build a wasp nest is inherited. But no one should doubt that a person who is placed in a wasteland will never develop language or self-awareness. Language and human self-awareness cannot be inherited; they are not passed on to the next generation, they must always be learned anew. Thus, outward appearances teach that the most important things are not to be judged as they are in the animal kingdom. Nevertheless, who would deny that there are indeed things that are inherited? Who would deny that? When Schopenhauer says that he inherited much of his thinking nature from his mother and much of his will nature from his father, who would deny that there is something important and true in this, even if it is expressed in a misleading way. Thus we see that man actually comes into existence with inherited traits, and we have the task of distinguishing these inherited traits from that which is not inheritable. Experience shows this. Now someone might say: We are happy to admit that language and self-awareness cannot be inherited, but we do not need to make such a subtle distinction, because that takes care of itself; if a person is born into a particular language area, it will simply follow that [he speaks that language].

But what if there are perhaps non-inheritable characteristics that we first have to extract from the deeper sources of human individuality? In this case, it is not quite so easy to distinguish these abilities and talents that lie at the core of a person's being from the inherited characteristics. It is certainly a matter of heredity when seven musicians come from the Bach family. Nevertheless, anyone who takes a practical approach to education will not be able to do other than to single out the inner core of the being from what is inherited. Here one must be completely clear about how the conditions of heredity present themselves in life. We see when a child comes into existence that it resembles the father or the mother more, that it has certain qualities that point to the mother and certain qualities that point to the father. Anyone who looks at life with an open mind will soon notice that there is indeed a difference between what is transmitted from the father and what is transmitted from the mother to the children. Of course, the circumstances mix, but one can still distinguish between what is maternal and what is paternal. And if you look deeper, it becomes clear how the two parts are distributed: it turns out that everything we see in inherited traits and that relates to the quality of intelligence or judgment, to the agility of intelligence or judgment, can be traced back to the mother's traits. And those qualities that can be summarized by saying that the strength of character, the strength and the power to face life, everything that is of a strong-willed nature in the son and daughter, can be traced back to the qualities of the father. I am not saying that the child's intelligence leads back to the mother's intelligence, but I am saying that the child's intelligence leads back to qualities of the mother's intelligence, and the child's strength of character leads back to qualities of the father's character.

If we look at these things more closely, it soon becomes apparent that there are great differences in the way parental life progresses and in the characteristics of the child's life, especially with regard to whether a child is, so to speak, an early child of marriage or a late one. If a child is born later, it shows the educator completely different relationships to the parents than if it is born during the parents' youth. Observation shows that in children born late in marriage, those qualities of the mother or father that have already been lived out in a certain way in their profession tend to emerge more strongly, and in these children the imprint of the parents is much more clearly visible. There is much greater flexibility of intelligence, and the character is much less clearly defined. It is interesting to consider these facts in relation to the child, because we have to take them into account and ask ourselves: what is it that carries the inheritance?

Inheritance is a process that takes place in the physical world. What is inherited? What is inherited is what has actually entered the physical body. If we say that the qualities of intelligence are inherited, we must know that what appears in the child is bound to the physical body, for example to the brain. Because we receive this as an instrument, so to speak, it is natural that we show hereditary traits. We inherit the more intimate formation of the organs and have to adapt to them. Thus it is explainable - because we have inherited organs - that we are dependent on these organs. A somewhat crude comparison: if you are born without a hand, you see how dependent you are on it. It is basically always the physical that comes into consideration when we speak of inheritance, as I have done now. And from this crystallizes that which shows itself to the practical observation of life as an individual core, which we do not understand when we trace it back to inheritance conditions.

The child comes into the world with a certain agility of intelligence and judgment. We look at the mother and see the origins. We study the child's character by looking at the father and thus gain insight into the child's character. But then something strange remains – and that is the most important thing for the educator. Only when he brings this into harmony with heredity can everything [that happens in education] be successful. The judgments that develop have qualities that point to the mother. But within this type of judgment, there are indications of very specific spheres of life that cannot be traced back to the mother. Within the mother's qualities, one child may show an inclination towards music, for example, while another may gravitate towards mathematics. It would be a serious mistake to direct the child's intelligence in any particular direction. The nature of the intelligence can be inherited, but the specific direction, the aptitude for this or that, may be revealed by the nature of the intelligence, but it cannot be inherited. It is left to us as educators to look at the mother and to understand the mobility of the intelligence, for example, why the child must think slowly or quickly. But it still remains for us to understand the inclination towards this or that, towards the specifically individual.

In other respects, strength of character and self-will clearly emerge as traits inherited from the father, and we understand this in the child when we look at the father. But there is one thing we cannot understand. Something emerges, crystallizing like a nucleus: that is the direction of interest towards which this character is turning. We see this direction of interest in one child, and a different direction of interest in another – these are specifically individual.

And if we are clever as educators, we will ask: What are the judgmental qualities of the mother and the character traits of the father? But if we want to educate properly, we need to know the direction of interest of the character and the direction of intelligence. It is very easy to confuse these two aspects. This is why, in a family where a child takes after the father, the father has a difficult time bringing up the child. And conversely, where the child takes after the mother, the mother has a difficult time. Children who take after their father are easier for their mother to bring up. Children who are particularly mother-oriented are more easily brought up by the father. If a child is father-oriented, then it has the will impulses of the father; the father cannot transfer the direction of interest, but the talents occur within the mother's sphere. One consequence is that the father will understand little of the child in this area; the child will take after the father in character, and the mother is best able to cultivate the talents. If, on the other hand, the child takes after the mother, the mother will find it difficult to direct the child's interest; the father can do that:

A talent develops in seclusion,
a character in the stream of the world.

Talents develop in the mildness of the mother's care; characters develop in the firmness of the father's care. This is a golden principle.

As a rule, people do not approach us in such a way that they clearly represent a mixture of the qualities inherited from father and mother; as a rule, it is the case that either more paternal or more maternal influence comes to the fore. This gives rise to extraordinarily important principles for the educator. If we assume that the maternal element predominates, then we can often see that the child appears to be of excellent character, and it is easy to guess the specific talent in this abundance of intelligence. But if the paternal element is suppressed, then it becomes really difficult for us to find the special direction of interest in the suppressed paternal inheritance. In such cases we, as educators, must supply what has not been provided by heredity. We must look particularly at the father to see whether he is relaxed or firm, and then we must replace what has been left out of the inheritance. We can do this by looking at the opposite side. We soon find the talents and abilities, but what is not given in the inheritance, we must replace through education.

What should the educator do? There is something infinitely important here: if he sees that what can be inherited from the father is not pronounced sharply enough, then he must work to ensure that the talents are not left without guidance. He must work to direct the child's attention to such activities and pursuits that correspond to his talents. The talents must be tied to external objects. The interests must be awakened. A child who is inclined towards the mother, we must especially accustom to the fact that it has the objects corresponding to its talents in the environment, to which we draw its attention. But we must not follow the principle: the child has its own abilities, so we let it follow them.

Now, let us assume that a child takes after his father, then it becomes difficult for us to guess the talents, abilities and aptitudes. On the other hand, the direction of interest confronts us with an extraordinarily strong will impulse. This interest will express itself in the intensity of desire. And we must be especially careful not to assume that the direction of interest will always point to the right gift. In such a case, we must pay particular attention to studying the interests in the right way. But if we allow interests to mature for which there is no gift, we harm the child. What expresses itself as a soul quality and does not correspond to any gift is reflected back into the soul. This is a constant source of illness that disturbs the physical nervous system. Many such disturbances can be traced back to a failure to harmonize interests with gifts and talents. It will show - which is extremely instructive to see - how certain interests express themselves impulsively, but lead to clumsiness, while others lead to skill. Far too little attention is paid to this. But one should carefully distinguish between the interests. And then, as an educator, one has the task of keeping away what would lead the interest to clumsiness.

The best way to get along is to ask yourself: What is the father like and what is the mother like? - and then carefully examine what appears as a crystal core within the paternal and maternal inheritance treasure. In this sense, we can say that education must really be based on knowledge and not on empty phrases such as “educate harmoniously” or “take the individuality into account”. How can we educate harmoniously if we do not know what the interests are? How can we emphasize the individuality if we do not know how to find what is specifically individual?

Now, this is only one side of education. The human being is not placed in the world for his own sake, but for the sake of humanity. We cannot merely take into account what appears in the child as inherited. The educator will soon realize that with the law of karma a great, harmonious relationship is expressed in spiritual-scientific terms. You can easily observe outside [in nature] how a being is placed where it belongs. The edelweiss does not grow in the lowlands, but on mountain heights. Every being grows into its environment and cannot thrive where it does not fit in. It is the same with the human core, which fits into the “environment” to which it belongs. Things fit together better than one might think. That is why the talents go well with the mother and the interests go well with the father. Nevertheless, we have to look at something else. The human being is not designed to speak his own language, but that of the community into which he is born. That is the generic. Thus, through the common language, the whole way of thinking and feeling penetrates into the soul.

This can be observed to a certain extent. Try to compare the soul of a Franconian person with that of a West Prussian person, and try to realize how the respective way of thinking and feeling works within him. It is the same with everything into which the human being is placed in accordance with the species. If we educate consciously, we must know that we do not educate the human being only individually. Just as we cannot give him his own language, we cannot do anything extra for each child as educators. Human nature is designed so that the human being fits into what is there in the cultural process. The human being must be educated into what belongs to humanity; it must take root in him. If we bear this in mind, we shall say to ourselves: In the face of these elements we seem quite powerless. If we look at the talents and at the demands of life, it may seem impossible to us to bring harmony into them.

[Only the intimate observation of the human being can help us here]. I will describe two children to you, [put them before you as examples]. One of them was born into an environment where a particular language was spoken. They grew up with this language; it became the property of their soul – a part of the whole inner human being. Anyone who has reflected on the relationship between language and the human being will know that through language, the human being not only learns to think logically, but also to feel. For example, the way the A or U sound works in any language has an enormous effect on the soul's capacity for feeling. Language provides a “skeleton” for feelings and sensations. If we place next to this child, who is completely interwoven with his language, so that he has not only learned to think in language but also to 'be' in language, another child who, by the will of fate, is forced to learn and make another language his own after he has barely learned his mother tongue. We will observe how his soul life is much more mobile, much less grounded. I would like to say that a language that acts like a “skeleton” of the soul gives more robust natures. A language that wears our soul like a “dress” makes the soul more fluid, less solid. The result is that the soul of such a child is much more easily influenced; it cannot face the external influences of life with such robustness.

If we now leave aside the language, it can teach us that it is of great importance for education when what is later to be the educational principle and purpose in life connects with the earlier stages. All erraticism in education destroys the soul life in an enormous way. One of the greatest damages to the soul is when one does not build on what has gone before. On the other hand, conscious building has a wonderful effect. If you have a child with a weak character and you sit down with him from time to time and begin to speak very subtly of what he did three years ago, you can do much more to correct the present than you can by directing your thoughts to the present. You can make the biggest mistakes if you lash out at the child with punishments and disciplinary measures out of anger. When the deed is fresh, it is easy to make mistakes. Life is not without contradictions, you cannot help but make mistakes, but they can be improved. If you are inclined to punish, sit down with the child and talk about a previous misbehavior; the child has moved on and no longer feels the previous one so strongly. Feelings become dulled; they take a completely different path than thoughts and memory. It turns out that we can discuss the past objectively, and the more often we do this, the more we can refresh our memory and turn our attention to the past, and the more we can do for the development of character.

These are the individual rules that arise for the unbiased observer. However, one needs the perspective of spiritual science to group the details correctly. But then one can see the big picture and draw important principles from it. One is forced to look not only at the individual, but also at the whole. Then, however, one must look for harmony between the individual, single nature and the general human nature. By going back to the past, you can draw a certain sympathy. You will find it very difficult to reconcile the child's selfishness with the demands of the environment, but when you go back to past experiences, you will see how the child responds to them. The educator must reconcile the earlier with the later. He must see to it that what the individual human being must harmonize with the demands of all humanity happens by drawing on the past. You educate all the better the more you draw on the child's earlier experiences.

So you have to gather together these things that are good for raising children. In particular, it is a wrong to leave pronounced talents undeveloped and thus put the child in constant conflict with the environment. All these are causes of illness. Suppressed talents and interests creep into the human soul and can later manifest as mental illnesses. We commit a sin against human health when we leave a person's talents undeveloped and his interests unused. And we also do wrong when we fail to take into account the need for adaptation to the environment. If we do not do this, then what arises as a contradiction between the child's soul and the demands of life seems to be pushed back into the soul and is felt as a deep dissatisfaction in life. And for all people who go through life and always complain: I have such a difficult time in my soul - then the soul's judge must say: Yes, there are interests that should have been legitimately cultivated, there are talents that should have been developed, and that has been missed. And that is why the person cannot cope with putting themselves into life and is unsatisfied.

One could easily say: What you are talking about is based on more intimate properties of the soul that can be discovered within the intelligence and the direction of the will. But these are precisely the most important things for the educator; they are the core of the soul and where he can do the most harm. Why? The interests and talents we cultivate initially lead to a certain agility of judgment, and at thirty years of age it is dexterity of the fingers and hands. If someone is thirty years old and handles something clumsily, it leads back to the time of about his seventh year, when he has not yet learned the agility of thought. And the apathy that sets in when we do not develop the interests that shows up as a casual attitude in all practical tasks. Above all, it must be noted that it is precisely the individual essence of the child that is expressed in these qualities.

The humanities scholar will recommend that the child be kept busy, but in such a way that it happens through play. Why does the child play, and why should he play? I will mention something from later life. You know a phenomenon in life, fatigue. Where does fatigue come from? You will often get the answer that it shows up in the evening when the muscles are worn out. Is it true that muscles can come into a state of fatigue by their own nature? If that were so, then the muscles that move your heart would have to be resting from fatigue. It is not in the nature of the muscle to get tired. The muscle does what it is supposed to do; it does not get tired. The heart muscle remains unaffected by external activity. Fatigue only occurs when you ask your muscle to do something that relates to the outside world, that is connected with a conscious action. We can say that a mismatch between our muscles and the demands of the outside world causes fatigue. This is true: fatigue comes from the internal organization not matching the outside world. It shows that there is a certain contradiction between the outside world and the internal organization.

I only want to draw attention to one thing: we must be clear that the human process of culture cannot proceed only according to the implanted laws, so that it only corresponds to the inner [physical] organization. The essence of the human soul life is not directed towards the preservation of the species, but towards the development of the soul-spiritual. Two currents are expressed here: progress [of the soul-spiritual] and that which is inner [bodily] organization. It is written in the eternal laws of existence that man must sacrifice purely organic laws to spiritual laws. He who sees through these things will not complain about it. But he will find it understandable that, on the other hand, a balance is necessary. We must be prepared for life in a healthy way, so that we can grasp external things with our hands and think about external things with our brains. A balance must be created, and this will only be achieved if we are able, at certain times, to cultivate an activity that is not directed towards the outside world, but is content with the activity itself.

When it comes to play, our inner nature follows what is required here. We do our child the greatest favor when we shape the play individually, and in doing so we strengthen our inner being. If you shape the play in a stereotyped way, you can see the consequences. Today, people want to fit everything into a template; they do not even want to admit that clothing should be tailored to suit the individual. It is the basic trait of contemporary culture that even those people who are the worst Nietzschean followers [i.e. the worst individualists] will still eat together at a “table d'hôte”. We must not allow this to influence our education, especially not in play. We have to organize play in such a way that we individualize, that we pay careful attention to the talents and interests of this or that child, otherwise we are committing a sin.

This can lead us to the realization that it is necessary for us as practical educators to believe in the spiritual in the child and not in the muscles, which are supposed to have the strength to counteract their wear and tear. The soul should be left to its own devices in play, and the material should not interfere, so that the child can be free from the “tiresome” influence of the outside world. If we do not believe in an inner soul-being that liberates itself, then we cannot educate practically. But if we approach the subject in a truly practical way, we can see something else of significance; we can also recognize that it is necessary to be free from the coarse material laws of the outer world in childhood. The earlier these laws impinge upon the child, the more they take hold, and this does not allow free activity in play. Childhood needs truths that do not slavishly adhere to what is in the outside world; it needs truths that it can embrace with heart and soul. That is why fairy tales and myths should be given to the child's soul; in this way, inner truths liberate the soul. Mankind used to do this out of a sure instinct, and in our time it will be necessary to take more account of this.

Now one may ask: how does an educator acquire these special talents? It is not really that difficult, because what I have already mentioned is actually the main thing that belongs to the educator, and in a very comprehensive way: the holy awe for what wants to break free as the individual core of the human being. If we have a sense of awe for that which has been preparing itself for millennia and in whose development we must assist, then a sense of responsibility arises that blesses us, that is, it has a certain quality: it makes us “genius” in our education. The educator often has no idea why he is doing the right thing. The child itself tells him what it needs. What is necessary in the educator's profession is love, which is characterized by the fact that we learn to love the blossoming of the child's abilities; and we will see what love can do in the spirit. In the outer life, love may often be blind. When love is directed towards the inner becoming, it opens the soul, for behind this love there is always a mighty faith – the faith that truly enables us to view life in the right sense and that shows us the human being as standing in a world of spiritual life as well as of sensory life, and that we have to establish the connection between them. In the child we see the spirit descending, the marriage of the spirit with the body. And when we see in the child how the spirit unites with the body, then our educational activity can become an expression of what we can call the actual belief in life, which may be expressed in the words:

It surges to the human mind
From the depths of the world, full of mystery
The rich abundance of matter,
It flows from the heights of the world
Into the depths of the soul, full of content
The spirit's clarifying light.
They find each other in the human heart
To form a reality full of wisdom.